The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

[471] See the examples in Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 122.

[472] See our De quelques formes primitives de classification, p. 28, n. 2.

[473] Strehlow, II, pp. 61-72.

[474]Nat. Tr., p. 112.

[475] See especially Nat. Tr., p. 447, and Nor. Tr., p. 151.

[476] Strehlow, III, pp. xiii-xviii. It sometimes happens that the same secondary totems are attached to two or three principal totems at the same time. This is undoubtedly because Strehlow has not been able to establish with certainty which is the principal totem.

Two interesting facts which appear from this table confirm certain propositions which we had already formulated. First, the principal totems are nearly all animals, with but rare exceptions. Also, stars are always only secondary or associated totems. This is another proof that these latter were only slowly advanced to the rank of totems and that at first the principal totems were preferably chosen from the animal kingdom.

[477] According to the myth, the associate totems served as food to the men of the principal totem in the fabulous times, or, when these are trees, they gave their shade (Strehlow, III, p. xii; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 403). The fact that the associate totems are believed to have been eaten does not imply that they are considered profane; for in the mythical period, the principal totem itself was consumed by the ancestors, the founders of the clan, according to the belief.

[478] Thus in the Wild Cat clan, the designs carved on the churinga represent the Hakea tree, which is a distinct totem to-day (Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 147 f.). Strehlow (III, p. xii, n. 4) says that this is frequent.

[479] Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., p. 182; Nat. Tr., pp. 151 and 297.

[480]Nat. Tr., pp. 151 and 158.

[481]Ibid., pp. 448 and 449.

[482] Thus Spencer and Gillen speak of a pigeon called Inturrita, sometimes as a principal totem (Nat. Tr., p. 410), sometimes as an associate totem (ibid., p. 448).

[483] Howitt, Further Notes, pp. 63-64.

[484] Thus it comes about that the clan has frequently been confounded with the tribe. This confusion, which frequently introduces trouble into the writings of ethnologists, has been made especially by Curr (I, pp. 61 ff.).

[485] This is the case especially among the Warramunga (Nor. Tr., p. 298).

[486] See, for example, Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 380 and passim.

[487] One might even ask if tribal totems do not exist sometimes. Thus, among the Arunta, there is an animal, the wild cat, which serves as totem to a particular clan, but which is forbidden for the whole tribe; even the people of other clans can eat it only very moderately (Nat. Tr., p. 168). But we believe that it would be an abuse to speak of a tribal totem in this case, for it does not follow from the fact that the free consumption of an animal is forbidden that this is a totem. Other causes can also give rise to an interdiction. The religious unity of the tribe is undoubtedly real, but this is affirmed with the aid of other symbols. We shall show what these are below (Bk. II, ch. ix).

[488] The totems belong to the tribe in the sense that this is interested as a body in the cult which each clan owes to its totem.

[489] Frazer has made a very complete collection of the texts relative to individual totemism in North America (Totemism and Exogamy, III, pp. 370-456).

[490] For example, among the Hurons, the Iroquois, the Algonquins (Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, VI, pp. 67-70; Sagard, Le grand voyage au pays des Hurons, p. 160), or among the Thompson Indians (Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, p. 355).

[491] This is the case of the Yuin (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 133), the Kurnai (ibid., p. 135), several tribes of Queensland (Roth, Superstition, Magic and Medicine, North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 5, p. 19; Haddon, Head-Hunters, p. 193); among the Delaware (Heckewelder, An Account of the History ... of the Indian Nations, p. 238), among the Thompson Indians (Teit, op. cit., p. 355), and among the Salish Statlumh (Hill Tout, Rep. of the Ethnol. of the Statlumh, J.A.I., XXXV. pp. 147 ff.).

[492] Hill Tout, loc. cit., p. 154.

[493] Catlin, Manners and Customs, etc., London, 1876, I, p. 36.

[494]Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, new edition, VI, pp. 172 ff.

[495] Charlevoix, op. cit., VI, p. 69.

[496] Dorsey, Siouan Cults, XIth Rep., p. 443.

[497] Boas, Kwakiutl, p. 323.

[498] Hill Tout, loc. cit., p. 154.

[499] Boas, Kwakiutl, p. 323.

[500] Miss Fletcher, The Import of the Totem, a Study from the Omaha Tribe (Smithsonian Rep. for 1897, p. 583).—Similar facts will be found in Teit, op. cit., pp. 354, 356; Peter Jones, History of the Ojibway Indians, p. 87.

[501] This is the case, for example, with the dog among the Salish Statlumh, owing to the condition of servitude in which it lives (Hill Tout, loc. cit., p. 153).

[502] Langloh Parker, Euahlayi, p. 21.

[503] "The spirit of a man," says Mrs. Parker (ibid.), "is in his Yuanbeai (his individual totem), and his Yuanbeai is in him."

[504] Langloh Parker, Euahlayi, p. 20. It is the same among certain Salish (Hill Tout, Ethn. Rep. on the Stseelis and Skaulits Tribes, J.A.I., XXXIV, p. 324). The fact is quite general among the Indians of Central America (Brinton, Nagualism, a Study in Native American Folklore and History, in Proceed. of the Am. Philos. Soc., XXXIII, p. 32).

[505] Parker, ibid.; Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 147; Dorsey, Siouan Cults, XIth Rep., p. 443. Frazer has made a collection of the American cases and established the generality of the interdiction (Totemism and Exogamy, III, p. 450). It is true that in America, as we have seen, the individual must kill the animal whose skin serves to make what ethnologists call his medicine-sack. But this usage has been observed in five tribes only; it is probably a late and altered form of the institution.

[506] Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 135, 147, 387; Australian Medicine Men, J.A.I., XVI, p. 34; Teit, The Shuswap, p. 607.

[507] Meyer, Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the Encounter Bay Tribe, in Woods, p. 197.

[508] Boas, VIth Rep. on the North-West Tribes of Canada, p. 93; Teit, The Thompson Indians, p. 336; Boas, Kwakiutl, p. 394.

[509] Facts will be found in Hill Tout, Rep. of the Ethnol. of the Statlumh, J.A.I., XXXV, pp. 144, 145. Cf. Langloh Parker, op. cit., p. 29.