The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

[245] Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 124.

[246] Howitt, pp. 121, 123, 124; Curr, III, p. 461.

[247] Howitt, p. 126.

[248] Howitt, pp. 98 ff.

[249] Curr, II, p. 165; Brough Smyth, I, p. 423; Howitt, op. cit., p. 429.

[250] Howitt, pp. 101, 102.

[251] J. Mathews, Two Representative Tribes of Queensland, p. 139.

[252] Still other reasons could be given in support of this hypothesis, but it would be necessary to bring in considerations relative to the organization of the family, and we wish to keep these two studies separate. Also this question is only of secondary interest to our subject.

[253] For example, Mukwara, which is the name of a phratry among the Barkinji, the Paruinji and the Milpulko, designates the eagle-hawk, according to Brough Smyth; now one of the clans of this phratry has the eagle-hawk as totem. But here the animal is designated by the word Bilyara. Many cases of the same thing are cited by Lang, op. cit., p. 162.

[254] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 115. According to Howitt (op. cit., pp. 121 and 454), among the Wotjobaluk, the clan of the pelican is found in the two phratries equally. This fact seems doubtful to us. It is very possible that the two clans may have two varieties of pelicans as totems. Information given by Mathews on the same tribe seems to point to this (Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria, in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales, 1904, pp. 287 f.).

[255] In connection with this question, see our memoir on Le Totémisme, in the Année Sociologique, Vol. V, pp. 82 ff.

[256] On the question of Australian matrimonial classes in general, see our memoir on La Prohibition de l'inceste, in the Année Soc., I, pp. 9 ff., and especially for the tribes with eight classes, L'Organisation matrimoniale des societés Australiennes, in Année Soc., VIII, pp. 118-147.

[257] This principle is not maintained everywhere with an equal strictness. In the central tribes of eight classes notably, beside the class with which marriage is regularly permitted, there is another with which a sort of secondary concubinage is allowed (Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., p. 106). It is the same with certain tribes of four classes. Each class has a choice between the two classes of the other phratry. This is the case with the Kabi (see Mathews, in Curr, III, 162).

[258] See Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, pp. 56 ff.; Palmer, Notes on some Australian Tribes, J.A.I., XIII (1884), pp. 302 ff.

[259] Nevertheless, some tribes are cited where the matrimonial classes bear the names of animals or plants: this is the case with the Kabi (Mathew, Two Representative Tribes, p. 150), the tribes observed by Mrs. Bates (The Marriage Laws and Customs of the West Australian Aborigines, in Victorian Geographical Journal, XXIII-XXIV, p. 47), and perhaps in two tribes observed by Palmer. But these facts are very rare and their significance badly established. Also, it is not surprising that the classes, as well as the sexual groups, should sometimes adopt the names of animals. This exceptional extension of the totemic denominations in no way modifies our conception of totemism.

[260] Perhaps the same explanation is applicable to certain other tribes of the South-East and the East where, if we are to believe the informers of Howitt, totems specially attached to each matrimonial class are to be found. This is the case among the Wiradjuri, the Wakelbura and the Bunta-Murra on the Bulloo River (Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 210, 221, 226). However, the evidence collected is suspect, according to his own admission. In fact, it appears from the lists which he has drawn up, that many totems are found equally in the two classes of the same phratry.

The explanation which we propose, after Frazer (Totemism and Exogamy, pp. 531 ff.), raises one difficulty. In principle, each clan and consequently each totem, is represented equally in the two classes of a single phratry, since one of the classes is that of the children and the other that of the parents from whom the former get their totems. So when the clans disappeared, the totemic interdictions which survived should have remained in both matrimonial classes, while in the actual cases cited, each class has its own. Whence comes this differentiation? The example of the Kaiabara (a tribe of southern Queensland) allows us to see how it may have come about. In this tribe, the children have the totem of their mother, but it is particularized by some distinctive mark. If the mother has the black eagle-hawk as totem, the child has the white eagle-hawk (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 229). This appears to be the beginning of a tendency for the totems to differentiate themselves according to the matrimonial classes.

[261] A tribe of only a few hundred members frequently has fifty or sixty clans, or even many more. On this point, see Durkheim and Mauss, De quelques formes primitives de classification, in the Année Sociologique, Vol. VI, p. 28, n. 1.

[262] Except among the Pueblo Indians of the South-West, where they are more numerous. See Hodge, Pueblo Indian Clans, in American Anthropologist, 1st series, Vol. IX, pp. 345 ff. It may always be asked whether the groups which have these totems are clans or sub-clans.

[263] See the tables arranged by Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. 153-185.

[264] Krause, Die Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 112; Swanton, Social Condition, Beliefs and Linguistic Relationship of the Tlingit Indians, in XXVIth Rep., p. 308.

[265] Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida, p. 62.

[266] "The distinction between the two clans is absolute in every respect," says Swanton, p. 68; he gives the name clan to what we call phratries. The two phratries, he says elsewhere, are like two foreign nations in their relations to each other.

[267] Among the Haida at least, the totem of the real clans is altered more than that of the phratries. In fact, usage permits a clan to sell or give away the right of bearing its totem, as a result of which each clan has a number of totems, some of which it has in common with other clans (see Swanton, pp. 107 and 268). Since Swanton calls the phratries clans, he is obliged to give the name of family to the real clans, and of household to the regular families. But the real sense of his terminology is not to be doubted.

[268]Journals of two Expeditions in N.W. and W. Australia, II, p. 228.

[269]Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 165.

[270]Indian Tribes, I, p. 420; cf. I, p. 52. This etymology is very doubtful. Cf. Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (Smithsonian Inst. Bur. of Ethnol., Pt. II, s.v., Totem, p. 787).

[271] Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, III, 184; Garrick Mallery, Picture Writing of the American Indians, in Tenth Report, 1893, p. 377.

[272] Hearne, Journey to the Northern Ocean, p. 148 (quoted from Frazer, Totemism, p. 30).

[273] Charlevoix, Histoire et description de la Nouvelle France, V, p. 329.

[274] Krause, Tlinkit-Indianer, p. 248.

[275] Erminnie A. Smith, Myths of the Iroquois, in Sec. Rep. of the Bur. of Ethnol., p. 78.

[276] Dodge, Our Wild Indians, p. 225.

[277] Powell, Wyandot Government, in First Rep. of the Bur. of Ethnol., 1881, p. 64.

[278] Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, in Third Rep., pp. 229, 240, 248.

[279] Krause, op. cit., pp. 130 f.

[280] Krause, p. 308.

[281] See a photograph of a Haida village in Swanton, op. cit., Pl. IX. Cf. Tylor, Totem Post of the Haida Village of Masset, J.A.I., New Series I, p. 133.

[282] Hill Tout, Report on the Ethnology of the Statlumh of British Columbia, J.A.I., XXXV, p. 155.

[283] Krause, op. cit., p. 230; Swanton, Haida, pp. 129, 135 ff.; Schoolcraft, op. cit., I, pp. 52-53, 337, 356. In the latter case the totem is represented upside down, in sign of mourning. Similar usages are found among the Creek (C. Swan, in Schoolcraft, V, p. 265) and the Delaware (Heckewelder, An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania, pp. 246-247).