These ideas show a close connection between animal-worship and ancestor-worship, and they have an important bearing on the origin of totemism. We have seen that the obligations of the totemic institution are based on the conception of kinship. This is also essential to ancestor-worship, which, like totemism, rests on the obligation of mutual aid and protection. The worshippers make the offerings and perform the rites required by their deceased ancestors, who in return give their protection and assistance to their descendants. This mutual obligation is associated with the superstitious regard for certain animals and other objects. The venerated animals are not killed or eaten by those who are connected with them by superstitious ties, and they are supposed, on their part, to act as protectors to their human allies, by whom they are viewed as guardian spirits. Catlin, the American traveller, gives a vivid description of the mode in which the Indian acquires such a guardian. He states[324] that every Indian must “make mystery,” that is, obtain the protection of some mysterious power which is supposed to be connected with what is known as the mystery bag. When a boy has attained the age of 14 or 15 years, he absents himself for several days from his father’s lodge, “lying on the ground in some remote or secluded spot, crying to the Great Spirit, and fasting the whole time. During this period of peril and abstinence, when he falls asleep, the first animal, bird, or reptile of which he dreams (or pretends to have dreamed, perhaps), he considers the Great Spirit has designated for his mysterious protector through life. He then returns home to his father’s lodge, and relates his success, and after allaying his thirst and satisfying his appetite, he sallies forth with weapons or traps until he can procure the animal or bird, the skin of which he preserves entire, and ornaments it according to his own fancy, and carries it with him through life, for good luck (as he calls it): as his strength in battle, and in death his guardian spirit, that is buried with him, and which is to conduct him safe to the beautiful hunting grounds, which he contemplates in the world to come.” In California it was thought that the Great Spirit sent, in a vision, to every child of seven years of age, the appearance of some animal to be its protector or guardian. The African fetish superstition is of much the same character, as the fetish object is worshipped solely that it may give the protecting aid which the Indian expects from his animal guardian. Mr. Cruickshank says,[325] in relation to the natives of the Gold Coast of Western Africa, that they believe “the Supreme Being has bestowed upon a variety of objects, animate and inanimate, the attributes of Deity, and that he directs every individual man in his choice of his object of worship.... It may be a block, a stone, a tree, a river, a lake, a mountain, a snake, an alligator, a bundle