Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/407

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs. 387

How THE Names became known.

Here the questions arise, how would each group come to know what name each of its neighbours called it, and how would hostile groups come to have the same nicknames for each other ? Well, they would know the nicknames through taunts exchanged in battle.

" Run, you deer, run ! "

" Off with you, you hares ! "

" Scuttle, you skunks ! "

They would readily recognise the appropriateness of the names, if derived from the plants, trees, or animals most abundant in their area, and most important to their food supply ; for, at this hypothetical stage, and before myths had crystallised round the names, they would have no scruples about eating their name-giving plants, fruits, fishes, birds, and animals. They would also hear their names from war captives at the torture-stake, or on the road to the oven or the butcher. But the chief way in which the new group- names spread would be through captured women, for, though there might as yet be only a tendency towards exogamy, still girls of alien groups would be captured as mates. " We call you the Skunks," or whatever it might be, such a bride might remark, and so knowledge of the new group-names would be diffused.

TOTEMIC AND OTHER GrOUP NaMES, ENGLISH AND

North American Indian.

It may seem almost flippant to suggest that this old mystery of totemism arises, in the first instance, only from group-names given from without, some of them, perhaps, derisive. But I am able to demonstrate that, in North America, the names of what some American authorities call ^^ gentes" (meaning old totem-groups, which now reckon descent through the male, not the female line) actually are nicknames — in certain cases derisive. More- over, I am able to prove that, when the names of these

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