Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/404

 384 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs.

applies to all ages, even the most primitive. Among their village sobriquets I note at a hasty glance :

Largitzen

Cows

Houneal

Frogs

Angouleme

Lizards

Artois

Dogs

Aire

Pigeons

Avalon

Birds

Eaters of Old Ewes ,, Onions

,, Crows

and we shall see that many Sioux groups, many English villages are blazoned, as in Mr. Haddon's theory, by the names of the things which they eat. Thus, among very early men, the names by which the groups knew each others' neighbours would be names given from without. To call them " nicknames " is to invite the objection that nick- names are essentially derisive, and that groups so low could not yet use the language of derision. I see no reason why early articulate-speaking men (or even men whose language is gesture-language) should be so modern as to lack all sense of humour. But the names need not have been derisive. If these peoples had the present savage belief in the wakan, or mystic power, of animals, the names may even have been laudatory. I ask for no more than names conferred from without, call them nicknames, sobriquets, or what you like.

We are acquainted with no race that is just entering on totemism, unless we agree with Mr. Hill-Tout that totemism is nascent among the Salish tribe, who live in village com- munities. Consequently we c3.v\not prove that early hostile groups would name each other after plants and aninials. I am only able to demonstrate that, alike in English and French folklore, and among American tribes who reckon by the male line, who are agricultural and settled, the villages or groups are ndsatd, from without, after plants and animals, and after what they are supposed to be specially apt to use