Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/389

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs. 369

totems are a development of the personal or individual totem or tutelar spirit." The Salish tribes, in fact, seek for " sulia, or tutelar spirits," and these " gave rise to the personal totem," answering to matiitu, nyarong, nagual, and so forth. " From the personal and family crest is but a step to the clan crest." Unluckily, with descent in the female line, the step cannot be taken. Mr. Hill-Tout takes a village-inhabiting tribe, a tribe of village communities, as one in which totemism is only nascent. " The village community apparently formed the original unit of organisa- tion." But the Australians, who have not come within measurable distance of the village community, have already the organisation of the totem-kin. Interesting as is Mr. Hill-Tout's account of the Salish Indians, we need not dwell longer on an hypothesis which makes village com- munities prior to the evolution of totemism. What he means by saying that " the gefis has developed into the clan," I am unable to conjecture. The school of Major Powell use "gens" of a totem-kin with male, "clan" of a totem kin with female, descent. Mr. Hill-Tout cannot mean that male descent is being converted into descent in the female line ? As he writes of " a four-clan system, each clan being made up of groups oi gentes," he may take a " clan " to signify what is usually called a " phratry " or " class division." ^

Messrs. Hose and McDougall. Among other efforts to show how the hereditary totem of a group might be derived from the special animal or plant friend of an individual male, may be noticed that of Messrs. Hose and McDougall.- The Ibans^ or Sea Dyaks, of Sarawak are probably of Malay stock, and are "a very imitative people " of mixed, inconsistent, and extravagant

' "The Origin of the Totemism of the Inhabitants of British Cohmibia," Transactions oj Royal Society of Canada, Second Series, vol. vii., 1901-1902. Quaritch, London.

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 * /. A. /., vol. xxxi., p. 196, ct scq.