Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/56

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I have here given a list of every badge that is known as a family totem among the Ojibways throughout their widespread villages and bands.

The crane, catfish, bear, marten, wolf, and loon, are the principal families, not only in a civil point of view, but in numbers, as they comprise eight-tenths of the whole tribe. Many of these Totems are not known to the tribe in general, and the writer has learned them only through close inquiry. Among these may be named the goose, beaver, sucker, sturgeon, gull, hawk, cormorant, and white-fish totems. They are only known on the remotest northern boundaries of the Ojibway country, among the Musk-keeg-oes and "Bois Forts."

The old men of the Ojibways whom I have particularly questioned on this subject, affirm that all these different badges are only subdivisions of the five great original totems of the An-ish-in-aub-ag, who have assumed separate minor badges, without losing sight or remembrance of the main stock or family to which they belong. These divisions have been gradually taking place, caused in the same manner as the division into distinct tribes. They are easily classed under the five great heads, the names of which we have given.

Aish-ke-bug-e-coshe, the old and reliable head chief of the Pillager and Northern Ojibways, has rendered me