Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
As to the first question, we must remember that the origin and
determining causes of totemism are still unknown. Mr. M'Lennan's theory
of the origin of totemism has never been published. It may be said
without indiscretion that Mr. M'Lennan thought totemism arose at a period
when ideas of kinship scarcely existed at all. 'Men only thought of
marking one off from another,' as Garcilasso de la Vega says: the totem
was but a badge worn by all the persons who found themselves existing in
close relations; perhaps in the same cave or set of caves. People united
by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship not yet brought into
explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by a badge, and might
thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their descent
from the object which the badge represented. I do not know whether it
has been observed that the totems are, as a rule, objects which may be
easily drawn or tattooed, and still more easily indicated in
gesture-language. Some interesting facts will be found in the 'First
Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology,' p. 458 (Washington, 1881).
Here we read how the 'Crow' tribe is indicated in sign-language by 'the
hands held out on each side, striking the air in the manner of flying.'
The Bunaks (another bird tribe) are indicated by an imitation of the cry
of the bird. In mentioning the Snakes, the hand imitates the crawling
motion of the serpent, and the fingers pointed up behind the ear denote
the Wolves. Plainly names of the totem sort are well suited to the
convenience of savages, who converse much in gesture-language. Above
all, the very nature of totemism shows that it took its present shape at
a time when men, animals, and plants were conceived of as physically
akin; when names were handed on through the female line; when exogamy was
the rule of marriage, and when the family theoretically included all
persons bearing the same family name, that is, all who claimed kindred
with the same plant, animal, or object, whether the persons are really
akin or not. These ideas and customs are not the ideas natural to men
organised in the patriarchal family.
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