Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/375

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs. 355

in speaking of totems and totemism, and we must be specially careful not to exaggerate the more or less religious respect with which totems are, in many cases, regarded. The Australians, as far as they have the idea of a creative being, Baiame, Nooreli, and so forth, do not regard their totems as shrines or incarnations of him. That appears to be the later speculation of peoples who, probably by way of animism and ancestor worship, are already in the stage of polytheism. Totems in their earliest known stage have very little to do with religion, and probably, in origin, had nothing religious about them.

Savage Speculations as to the Origin of Totemism.

Peoples who are still in the totemistic stage, as we have seen, know nothing about the beginnings of the institution. All that they tell the civilised inquirers is no more than the myth handed down by their own tradition. Thus the Dieri or Dieyrie, in Australia (as we have elsewhere remarked), say that the totems were appointed by the ancestors for the purpose of regulating marriages after consultation with Mura Mura, or with "the" Muramura. The Woeworung, according to Mr. Howitt, have a similar legend.^ It is not necessary, here, to ask whether Mura Mura is " the Supreme Being" (Gason, Howitt) or "ancestral spirits" (Fison).^ The most common savage myth is of the Darwinian variety : each totem-kin is descended from, or evolved out of, the plant or animal type which supplies its totem. Again, as in fairy tales, a woman gave birth to animals, whence the totem kins derive their descent. In North West America totems are often accounted for by myths of ancestral heroes who had adventures with this or that animal. "The Tlingit" (Thlinket) " hold that souls of ancestors are reborn in children, that a man will be reborn as a man, a wolf as a wolf, a raven as a raven." Nevertheless the totems are

" Howitt, Oil the Organisation of Australian Tribes, p. 136, note, 1S89. '■^ See Miss llowitl's paper, infra, p. 403.

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