Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/214

202 the permanent possession of land by the clan and a right of individual occupancy for periods sufficient to offer a proper stimulus for improvements. This was done by the institution of the Sabbatical year or the year of jubilee. The Indians, not having reached the true sedentary stage (except in rare instances), were not obliged to invent that device. Thus it holds true among both peoples that no man could acquire an absolute property in land. The estate was not in him but in his clan.

Forbidden Food.—The Indians long observed a prohibition against killing or eating any part of the animal connected with their totem. For instance, most of the southern Indians abstained from killing the wolf; the Navajo do not kill bears; the Osage never killed the beaver until the skins became valuable for sale. Afterward some of the animals previously held sacred were killed; but apologies were made to them at the time, and in almost all cases a particular ceremony was observed with regard to certain parts of those animals which were not to be used for food on the principle of synecdoche, the temptation to use the food being too strong to permit entire abstinence. The Cheroki forbade the use of the tongues of the deer and bear for food. They cut these members out and cast them into the fire sacramentally. A practice reported this year as still existing among the Ojibwa is in point, though with instructive variation. There is a formal restriction against members of the bear clan eating the animal, yet by a subdivision within the same clan an arrangement is made so that sub-clans may among them eat the whole animal. When a bear is killed, the head and paws are eaten by those who form one branch of the bear totem, and the remainder is reserved for the others. Other Indians have invented a differentiation in which some clansmen may eat the ham and not the shoulder of certain animals, and others the shoulder and not the ham.

The Egyptians did not allow the eating of animals that bore wool. This prohibition has been attributed to the sacred character of the sphinx, and it has other religious connections. It is supposed by some writers that the legislation of Moses with reference to forbidden food was aimed to antagonize social union with the Egyptians by prohibiting to the Israelites edibles generally used by the Egyptians, and vice versa. It is true that some kinds of food forbidden to one of these nations were allowed to the other, but the rule was not general, and in particular the abstinence of both peoples from swine is inconsistent with the hypothesis. A more conclusive criticism is that the legislation so interpreted would have been too late for application. The Israelites had left Egypt before even the alleged time of its promulgation.

The survival of totemism may be inferred from the lists of forbidden food in Leviticus xi and Deuteronomy xiv. It would