Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/190

 1 74 The 0)'igin of Exogamy and Toteinism.

evidence to prove that any totemist would rather die of hiuif^er than eat his totem : several Australian tribes eat their totems freely. For the extraordinary influence of the name as implying the closest rapport between all who bear it, I merely refer to Mr. Frazer's Golderi BoiigJi, vol. i., pp. 404-46. On my theory, as totemists certainly do not know how they got their totem names, they would seldom suspect, like the Bahurutsi, that they were nicknames, perhaps derisive. I have proved on unimpeachable evidence, Mr. Price's, that the Northern Bakuena think that a process occurred which only "strong evidence" would make Mr. Frazer believe in. However, I am able to prove that savages can accept, and have accepted, " clan " nicknames from without.

Take this " strong evidence " : Mr. Frazer writes of the Wendal or Wyandot, the Hurons' name for themselves. "According to L. H. Morgan the original form of the name Wyandot is ivane-dote, " calf of the leg," a name given to these Indians by the Iroquois and adopted by themselves."^^ Again, the Black Feet. Indians have, or had, exogamous clans with male descent. The names of these clans are no longer totemic. Among them now are Liars, Biters, Patched Moccasins, " They Don't Laugh," Worms, Buffalo Dung, Crazy Dogs.'^*^

I cite these as obvious and derisive sobriquets, but the clans have now no other names. Other clan names occur among the Dacotas, who, as Mr. Frazer points out, appear, in the seventeenth century, to have had badges, as that of the Eagle, Panther, Tiger, Buffalo, etc., from which each band " is denominated." ^'^ Now their clans are styled "Not encumbered with much baggage," "Bad Nation,"

'■^ Toteinisin and Ex op amy ^ vol. iii., p. 30, n. I.

^Grinnell, Blackfoot Lodge Tales, pp. 208-10, cited in Toteiitistn and Exogamy, vol. iii., p. 84, n. 3 ; The Secret of the Totem, p. 132.

3' J. Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts 0/ North America (3rd ed., 1781), p. 256.