The Elementary Forms of the Religious LifeDurkheim, Émile
Religion
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Durkheim, Émile
Cults; Religion; Religion -- Philosophy; Rites and ceremonies; Totemism
During this time, the American tradition continued to develop with an
independence which it has kept up until very recent times. Three groups
of societies were the special object of the researches which were
concerned with totemism. These are, first, certain tribes of the
North-west, the Tlinkit, the Haida, the Kwakiutl, the Salish and the
Tsimshian; then, the great nation of the Sioux; and finally, the Pueblo
Indians in the south-western part of the United States. The first were
studied principally by Dall, Krause, Boas, Swanton, Hill Tout; the
second by Dorsey; the last by Mindeleff, Mrs. Stevenson and
Cushing.[189] But however rich the harvest of facts thus gathered in all
parts of the country may have been, the documents at our disposal were
still fragmentary. Though the American religions contain numerous traces
of totemism, they have passed the stage of real totemism. On the other
hand, observations in Australia had brought little more than scattered
beliefs and isolated rites, initiation rituals and interdictions
relative to totemism. It was with facts taken from all these sources
that Frazer attempted to draw a picture of totemism in its entirety.
Whatever may be the incontestable merit of the reconstruction undertaken
in such circumstances, it could not help being incomplete and
hypothetical. A totemic religion in complete action had not yet been
observed.
It is only in very recent years that this serious deficiency has been
repaired. Two observers of remarkable ability, Baldwin Spencer and F. J.
Gillen, discovered[190] in the interior of the Australian continent a
considerable number of tribes whose basis and unity was founded in
totemic beliefs. The results of their observations have been published
in two works, which have given a new life to the study of totemism. The
first of these, _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_,[191] deals
with the more central of these tribes, the Arunta, the Luritcha, and a
little farther to the south, on the shores of Lake Eyre, the Urabunna.
The second, which is entitled _The Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_,[192] deals with the societies north of the Urabunna,
occupying the territory between MacDonnell's Range and Carpenter Gulf.
Among the principal of these we may mention the Unmatjera, the Kaitish,
the Warramunga, the Worgaia, the Tjingilli, the Binbinga, the Walpari,
the Gnanji and finally, on the very shores of the gulf, the Mara and the
Anula.[193]
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