Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/385

 The Origin of Totem Naiiies and Beliefs, 365

affinity to the spirit of some beast, bird, or reptile. Not that he sprung from the creature in any way," (as is a common totemic myth], " but that the spirit which was in him was akin to that of the creature." This is vague. Mr. Rusden does not say that his native informant said, that the " spirit " was the man's totem in each case.^ But Mr. Thomas, on this evidence, writes, " This belief suggests that the interpretation suggested for individual totemism can also be applied to clan totemism ; " apparently because, among the extinct tribe, not only sorcerers, but, in this case, every one was the receptacle of an animal (not a plant) spirit. But even granting Mr. Thomas's notion, (unsup- ported, I think, by evidence), that an American Indian thinks that the spirit of his animal manitu dwells within him, obviously the animal spirits of the Geawe-gal may be the spirits — not of their kin-totems, if they had any — but of their individual nianitus, which we do not know to be confined to sorcerers. Every one is a sorcerer, better or worse, in a society where every one works magic.

Next, the werwolf has a way of returning "to look at" (to eat, I think), the body of his victim. Now in North Queensland, as in Scotland, the body of a dead man is surrounded with dust or ashes, (flour in Scotland), and the dust is inspected, to find the tracks of some bird or animal." From such marks, if any^ " the totem of the malefactor is inferred." The malefactor is the person who, by the usual superstition, is thought magically to have caused the death of the tribesman. " These facts seem best interpreted if we suppose that in North Queensland the sorcerer is believed to return in animal form, and that the form is that of his totem, for in no other way does it seem possible to identify the man's totem by observing the footsteps."

Is the man's kin-totem meant? If so, the process could not identify "the malefactor" — there are hundreds of men

' Kamilaroi and Kttrnai, p. 280.
 * /. A. L,, xiii., p. 191, note i.