The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

[510] According to information given by Howitt in a personal letter to Frazer (Totemism and Exogamy, I, p. 495, and n. 2).

[511] Hill Tout, Ethnol. Rep. on the Stseelis and Skaulits Tribes, J.A.I., XXXIV, p. 324.

[512] Howitt, Australian Medicine Men, J.A.I., XVI, p. 34; Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains, I, p. 370; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, VI, p. 68. It is the same with the atai and tamaniu in Mota (Codrington, The Melanesians, pp. 250 f.).

[513] Thus the line of demarcation between the animal protectors and fetishes, which Frazer has attempted to establish, does not exist. According to him, fetishism commences when the protector is an individual object and not a class (Totemism, p. 56); but it frequently happens in Australia that a determined animal takes this part (see Howitt, Australian Medicine Men, J.A.I., XVI, p. 34). The truth is that the ideas of fetish and fetishism do not correspond to any definite thing.

[514] Brinton, Nagualism, in Proceed. Amer. Philos. Soc., XXXIII, p. 32.

[515] Charlevoix, VI, p. 67.

[516] Hill Tout, Rep. on the Ethnol. of the Statlumh of British Columbia, J.A.I., XXXV, p. 142.

[517] Hill Tout, Ethnol. Rep. on the Stseelis and Skaulits Tribes, J.A.I., XXXIV, pp. 311 ff.

[518] Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 133.

[519] Langloh Parker, op. cit., p. 20.

[520] J. W. Powell, An American View of Totemism, in Man, 1902, No. 84; Tylor, ibid., No. 1; Andrew Lang has expressed analogous ideas in Social Origins, pp. 133-135. Also Frazer himself, turning from his former opinion, now thinks that until we are better acquainted with the relations existing between collective totems and "guardian spirits," it would be better to designate them by different names (Totemism and Exogamy, III, p. 456).

[521] This is the case in Australia among the Yuin (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 81), and the Narrinyeri (Meyer, Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe, in Woods, pp. 197 ff.).

[522] "The totem resembles the patron of the individual no more than an escutcheon resembles the image of a saint," says Tylor (op. cit., p. 2). Likewise, if Frazer has taken up the theory of Tylor, it is because he refuses all religious character to the totem of the clan (Totemism and Exogamy, III, p. 452).

[523] See below, chapter ix of this book.

[524] Yet according to one passage in Mathews, the individual totem is hereditary among the Wotjobaluk. "Each individual," he says, "claims some animal, plant or inanimate object as his special and personal totem, which he inherits from his mother" (Journ. and Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXVIII, p. 291). But it is evident that if all the children in the same family had the personal totem of their mother, neither they nor she would really have personal totems at all. Mathews probably means to say that each individual chooses his individual totem from the list of things attributed to the clan of his mother. In fact, we shall see that each clan has its individual totems which are its exclusive property; the members of the other clans cannot make use of them. In this sense, birth determines the personal totem to a certain extent, but to a certain extent only.

[525] Heckewelder, An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania, in Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society, I, p. 238.

[526] See Dorsey, Siouan Cults, XIth Rep., p. 507; Catlin, op. cit., I, p. 37; Miss Fletcher, The Import of the Totem, in Smithsonian Rep. for 1897, p. 580; Teit, The Thompson Indians, pp. 317-320; Hill Tout, J.A.I., XXXV, p. 144.

[527] But some examples are found. The Kurnai magicians see their personal totems revealed to them in dreams (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 387; On Australian Medicine Men, in J.A.I., XVI, p. 34). The men of Cape Bedford believe that when an old man dreams of something during the night, this thing is the personal totem of the first person he meets the next day (W. E. Roth, Superstition, Magic and Medicine, p. 19). But it is probable that only supplementary and accessory totems are acquired in this way; for in this same tribe another process is used at the moment of initiation, as we said in the text.

[528] In certain tribes of which Roth speaks (ibid.); also in certain tribes near to Maryborough (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 147).

[529] Among the Wiradjuri (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 406; On Australian Medicine Men, in J.A.I., XVI, p. 50).

[530] Roth, loc. cit.

[531] Haddon, Head Hunters, pp. 193 ff.

[532] Among the Wiradjuri (same references as above, n. 4).

[533] In general, it seems as though these transmissions from father to son never take place except when the father is a shaman or a magician. This is also the case among the Thompson Indians (Teit, The Thompson Indians, p. 320) and the Wiradjuri, of whom we just spoke.

[534] Hill Tout (J.A.I., XXXV, pp. 146 f.). The essential rite is the blowing upon the skin: if this were not done correctly, the transmission would not take place. As we shall presently see, the breath is the soul. When both breathe upon the skin of the animal, the magician and the recipient each exhale a part of their souls, which are thus fused, while partaking at the same time of the nature of the animal, who also takes part in the ceremony in the form of its symbol.

[535] N. W. Thomas, Further Remarks on Mr. Hill Tout's Views on Totemism, in Man, 1904, p. 85.

[536] Langloh Parker, op. cit., pp. 20, 29.

[537] Hill Tout, in J.A.I., XXXV, pp. 143 and 146; ibid., XXXIV, p. 324.

[538] Parker, op. cit., p. 30; Teit, The Thompson Indians, p. 320; Hill Tout, in J.A.I., XXXV, p. 144.

[539] Charlevoix, VI, p. 69.

[540] Hill Tout, ibid., p. 145.

[541] Thus at the birth of a child, a tree is planted which is cared for piously; for it is believed that its fate and the child's are united. Frazer, in his Golden Bough, gives a number of customs and beliefs translating this same idea in different ways. (Cf. Hartland, Legend of Perseus, II, pp. 1-55.)

[542] Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 148 ff.; Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 194, 201 ff.; Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 52. Petrie also mentions it in Queensland (Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland, pp. 62 and 118).

[543]Journ. and Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXVIII, p. 339. Must we see a trace of sexual totemism in the following custom of the Warramunga? When a dead person is buried, a bone of the arm is kept. If it is a woman, the feathers of an emu are added to the bark in which it is wrapped up; if it is a man, the feathers of an owl (Nor. Tr., p. 169).

[544] Some cases are cited where each sexual group has two sexual totems; thus the Wurunjerri unite the sexual totems of the Kurnai (the emu-wren and the linnet) to those of the Wotjobaluk (the bat and the nightjar owl). See Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 150.

[545]Totemism, p. 51.

[546]Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 215.

[547] Threlkeld, quoted by Mathews, loc. cit., p. 339.

[548] Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 148, 151.

[549]Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 200-203; Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 149; Petrie, op. cit., p. 62. Among the Kurnai, these bloody battles frequently terminate in marriages of which they are, as it were, a sort of ritual precursor. Sometimes they are merely plays (Petrie, loc. cit.).