Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/187

 TJic Origin of Exogamy and Totemism. i 7 i

what was superfluous with other groups in exchange for [supphes of the objects on which the latter mainly lived]. His chief example was drawn from a myth of two totem kins in a tribe to the effect that their totem names, a small fish and a very small opossum, had once been their staple as food. But the known five other totem kins in the tribe, according to their myth, were descended from their totems, and one m\-th is as worthless as another.-^

Against Mr. Haddon's theory Mr. Baldwin Spencer urged obvious criticisms. Every group eats everything that is edible in its area.-'^'

Moreover, I add, nobody eats Morning Star or Rainbow ; the Red Ochre kin of the Dieri live very far from the red- ochre pits, and Mr. Haddon can hardly think that any kin lives mainly on carpet snakes, or black bees, or sandal wood, or bats, or wolves and ravens — dura ilia !

Mr. Haddon's theory, however, agrees with my own in the essential point that group assumed names were given from without.

I may best deal here with Mr. Frazer's other objections of igioto Mr. Haddon's theory, as in essence Mr. Haddon's idea and mine are much akin. Obviously unacquainted with my views, Mr. Frazer confines his criticism to those of Mr. Haddon, and is clearly unaware that in The Secret of the Totem (1905) I replied to his objections as formulated by other writers. Concerning Mr. Haddon's view Mr. Frazer writes,'^^ — " The view that the names of the totem clans were originally nicknames applied to them by their neigh- bours, which the persons so n icknamed adopted as honourable distinctions, appears to be very unlikely. Strong evidence would be needed to convince us that any group of men had complacently accepted a nickname bestowed on them, perhaps in derision, by their often hostile neighbours. ..." I

-*See Mr. Haddon's views in Report of the British Association, Belfast, 1902. •^' Totemism and Exogamy, vol. iv. , pp. 50-1 and Notes. ^^ Ibid., vol. iv., p. 51.