What is Totemism; what do we mean when we speak of Totemism? Is there any possibility of defining the institution? Is there anything which can be called the now most prevalent form, and to trace the processes of decline?
Concerning these questions there is much difference of opinion, as we shall presently see. In the meantime let me say that I am not so sanguine as to hope to provide a definition of totemism which a dilatory genius cannot cavil. I merely wish to examine and try to account for that widely known system of society in which sets of real or supposed blood-kindreds conceive themselves to be each in special rapport with a species of natural, rarely of artificial, objects, their totems. The sets of human beings are spoken of - as kins - by the names of these objects, and, under customary law, sanctioned by severe penalties, they may not marry within the kin as delimited by the names, say of Wolf, Crow, Raven, Wallaby, or what not.
This stage of society, usually and conveniently styled "totemic", is what I want to understand and make intelligible. There is such a stage of society found in Australia, in parts of America, India, Melanesia and elsewhere, and with this stage of society I am concerned. There are also communities, notably in Fiji, which do not, in each case, reckon themselves kindreds, which do not necessarily marry out of themselves, yet which display in various ways, such as by not killing or eating certain animals and plants, a sense of their special rapport with these objects.
There are also kindreds or "clans", which must marry out of themselves, but which bear no totemic names - no names of plant or animal: in some cases they do, in others they do not, pay regard of one sort or another, to one or more animals or plants. In short we may and do find plenty of exogamous human beings who are not, at present, totemic, but I know no totemic kindred which is not exogamous.
The various kinds and degrees of regard exhibited towards the name-giving plant, animal, or other such object common to each kin, are unessential to my purpose. Unessential are the many different myths, such as that of descent from the name-giving object, which the peoples have invented to account for their special relations with the object or totem. Whether or not tribes and other local communities - not being kindreds - which show respect to this or that animal, but do not necessarily marry out of themselves, were once exogamous; whether or not all exogamous sets of people who now show no special regard each for a given plant or animal were once totemic, are interesting questions. but they seem to concern my main purpose only when I can prove historically that a people whose exogamous kindreds now bear no totemic names have recently borne them; or that a people not now exogamous has recently been exogamous, and retains (though no longer as delimitations of out-marrying kindreds) some of the old totemic names. In such cases we can demonstrate that there are causes which have produced divergences from the widely diffused form of society already described with which I am concerned.
These remarks are rendered necessary by a difference in the opinions and methods of most English and of some American savants. As representing the ordinary English method we may take that which is, or recently was, the practice of Dr. Rivers (1909: 156-180).
Dr. Rivers begins by considering "the essential features of the institution" of totemism. There are three chief features of the relation between men and the classes of animals, plants, or inanimate objects which constitutes the essence of totemism.1 To continue, Dr.Rivers writes, "The first and most important feature is that the classes of animals or other objects are definitely connected with a social division, and in the typical form of the institution this social division is exogamous".2
Dr. Rivers goes on: "Often the division takes its name from the totem, or this may be used as its badge or its crest, but these points are less constant and essential. The second feature is the presence of a belief in kinship between the members of the social division and the totem, and in the most typical form there is belief in descent from the totem."3
Dr. River's third feature is respect shown by the social division for its totem, usually in "the prohibition of the totem as an article of food".4
The combination of these three features Dr.Rivers regards as "typical". "In anthropology, however, as in other sciences, phenomena do not always exist in their typical form, and there are many cases to be found where totemism has departed from these typical characters and remains none the less totemism".5 Dr.Rivers goes on: "Thus if a totemic people give up the practice of exogamy and come to regulate marriage merely by blood-kindred, the totem will no longer be the sign of an exogamous division, but it may remain connected with some other social division, either the tribe as a whole, or the people inhabiting a certain district, village or hamlet, or even a family in a sense more or less wide".6
The possible connection of animal worship with totemism (as in Samoa) or with occasional or conditional taboos on certain edible objects, need not now detain us. In Fiji Dr. Rivers and others find small independent communities each with a sacred animal or plant not to be eaten by members of the community, but there is no exogamy, and these communities cannot, on more than grounds of probability, be shown to have originally existed as exogamous totem kins, even when in the eighth or ninth generation, an animal appears in a genealogy as "the ancestor of the whole people" (1909: 158). If an animal, a tabooed animal, be spoken of as the ancestor of a small community which does not eat animals of that species, we may have a mere myth explaining a taboo which need not necessarily, in origin, have been totemic, though that it was is highly probable. It is also probable (I think, is certain) that exogamy has prevailed in Fiji.
As totemism, and exogamy too, are institutions out of which peoples have, on certain evidence, forced a way, and as dead institutions leave traces behind them, we may well suppose that at some period totemism and exogamy existed in Fiji. But, as I understand the views of the younger American school, we have no historical evidence good enough to establish a series of successive changes in the evolution away from and out of the most widely prevalent sort of totemism. From this view I absolutely dissent. We are acquainted with certain peoples, such as the Tlingit in N.W.America, who are not now, in the strict sense of the term, totemic. But the evidence that they have recently been totemic would be held good in a civil case by any Jury; while we know exactly how this tribe ceased to be absolutely totemistic (1910: 229).
Part of the method of Mr. Goldenweiser is to exhibit in tabular form the difference between the totemism of certain tribes of British Columbia, and that unique and exampled form of the Arunta of Central Australia, which is not now even exogamous. I give her Mr. Goldenweiser's table.
TOTEMISM IN BRITISH COLUMBIA AND CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
British Columbia Central Australia
Exogamy (1) Totemic phratries (Tlingit) Phratries
Totemic clans (Haida, Classes
Tsimshian, Northern Kwakiutl) Totem clans
(generally not indepen-
dent exogamous units)
Totemic names (2) Phratries (Tlingit) All totem clans
Clans (Haida)
2 of 4 clans (Tsimshian)
Clans (Northern Kwakiutl)
Taboo (3) Non-totemic taboo, common; Numerous totemic &
totemic, absent non-totemic taboos
Descent from Absent (Tlingit, Haida Universal
the Totem(4) Tsimshian) Occurs (Kwakiutl
and further south)
Magical cere- Not associated with totemism Intimately associated
monies (5) with totemism
Reincarnation(6) Not associated with totemism Intimately associated
with totemism
Guardian spirits (7) Intimately associated Not associated
with totemism with totemism
Art(8) Actively associated Not associated
with totemism with totemism
Rank (9) Conspicuous (in individuals Passively associated
and groups) with totemism
No of totems (10) Small Large
The reader should notice that assertions here made about "Central Australia" apply, apparently, to the Kaitish and the Arunta nation. As "classes" are attributed to Central tribes, the Urabunna (with two phratries only) cannot be included. The phrase "totem clans" (generally not exogamous units) must not mislead us. The Arunta nation has no "clans", and its totemic societies (if these are meant) are not exogamous. Again, the belief in "descent from the totem" is said to be "universal" in Central Australia. There, as far as the evidence is known to show, the belief does not exist. The belief takes various forms, but generally it is held that every human being incarnates a primal spirit with a totemic past. This belief is not to be called belief in descent from an animal or plant; any more than a set of people who do magic for the behoof of a plant or animal are to be styled a totem clan.
If we are to be taught method let our teachers begin by using English words like "clan" and "descent" in their well established significance. The reader will observe, if he has studied the subject, that the American tribes possess wealth, "castes", differences of rank -- noble and not noble; art; heraldry representing in "crests" the favoured animal of each exogamous kindred or clan; and heraldic ambitions leading wealthy clans to usurp the "crests" of other clans, even of clans not in their own phratry. Mr. Goldenweiser uses subtleties which, I think, tend to darken counsel. Thus he says "the clans of the Tlingit have never, to my knowledge, been considered exogamous" (ibid: 239, n.1). Does he mean that Tlingits may marry each into his or her own "clan"? If not, we here call these "clans" "exogamous". The members of a Tlingit "clan" cannot marry into any of the other groups of their clan or phratry."(ibid). Then (without pretending to interpret a word used in so many senses as "groups") we, here, call the Tlingit "clans" "exogamous". The clans thus behave exactly as the Dieri totemic clans; but no-one thinks of them" (of the Tlingit?) "as with clans, with names deriving from localities."(ibid).
As a matter of fact, "clans" quite recently bearing totemic names, now, in several instances, bear place-names tribes and in the Tlingit case the "crest" representing what used to be the clan's animal, and the animal name, have now been usurped by wealthy persons of clans in the opposite phratry; the crest and name now occur in both phratries. Thus the crest and name (representing what once was the clan-totem) no longer mark the exogamous limit. The clan name and crest, say, of Salmon or Moose, occurring now in both phratries, can no longer mark the exogamous limit; the totem clan names are useless for that purpose: while, through the habit of living in stationary towns, the exogamous clans now (save four or five which still retain animal names) bear titles derived from real or hypothetical places of residence. Meanwhile the houses or hamlets of each clan, more frequently than not, do bear the old animal clan-names, though even these are usurped by rich members of other clans whence, as from the similar usurpation of "crests", disputes arise.
Whereas the Wyandot or Hurons invariably bore such a personal name derived from his clan totem (Frazer, 1910, 3: 34:36), the Tlingit frequently, but not universally, take their personal names from the animal which their clans especially favoured (Swanton, 1908: ).
To the English student it is a matter of certainty that the Tlingit, before the invasion of heraldic ambition, had the prevalent organization of totem clans, one set in phratry Raven, the other in phratry Wolf; while a clan of Raven name was in Raven phratry, a clan of Wolf name was in Wolf phratry. So far (they have female descent) their totemism precisely resembled that of many Australian tribes with the phratries Eagle Hawk and Crow, and of southern Australian tribes with the phratries Black Cockatoo and White Cockatoo (Lang, 1905a: 154-171).
But the method of the younger American school as represented by Mr. Goldenweiser in his essay cited is to compare the Tlingit, not with the Australian tribes which, but for the ravages of heraldry and the adoption of town life, they would precisely resemble, but with the unique aberration of the Arunta. He is thus enabled to show that American and Australian totemism have scarcely a point of contact.
If we reply that the differences between this American form and a very common form of Australian totemism are due to social conditions - to the American wealth, rank, heraldry, and stationary mode of life, all advanced - he answers "that the American conditions are due to the fact that the tribes of British Columbia are "advanced" cannot be admitted". (1910: 289)7
As I understand the American method, the proofs of the alterations made by wealth, rank, heraldry, and settled habitations in the totemism of the Tlingit are destitute of historical evidence. Yet the processes of change are described (though not very lucidly) by Dr. Swanton in his paper (1908) on the Tlingit. Thus in Australia, and (according to Holmberg writing in 1856) among the Tlingit no totem animal in the Australian cases and no crest of an animal in the American case, existed in both phratries.8
Dr. Swanton says of the Tlingit, "Theoretically the emblems" (animal clan-emblems) "used on the Raven side were different from those of the Wolf or Eagle side", and he goes on to show how a rich clan "could use anything" (any clan-emblem) "while some families were too poor to have an emblem". (1908: 415) They ceased, in fact, to be armigerous. (Dr. Swanton here uses "family" as a synonym for "clan", but his context proves that of "clans", not of "families", he is speaking.)
Thus it is absolutely certain that wealth, rank and heraldry - non-Australian conditions - have broken up among the Tlingit, a totemism precisely similar to that of many Australian tribes. In these circumstances I must prefer the English method when it rests on evidence as good as that of Dr. Swanton, to the method of the younger American school- if I succeed in understanding that method.
Mr. Goldenweiser's "Method" (save in so far as we are "origin-hunters" while he is not) is only that of other people. We must first examine the facts in each reported case of totemism "individually and analytically", and then attack the mass "comparatively and synthetically". Though there are regions uninvestigated still, though totemism and exogamy in Western Australia present (as reported by Mrs. Bates who kindly lent us her manuscripts) several odd varieties, in the monumental Totemism and Exogamy of Mr. J. G. Frazer and in his authorities, we have facts enough. It is true that from these facts I draw conclusions remote from those of Mr. Frazer, who is backed it must be remembered, on some essential points, by the authority of the great British observers of totemic society in Australia: Mr. Howitt and Professor Baldwin Spencer; by Dr.Rivers, as I understand, who has examined totemism in Oceania and Melanesia; by Mr. Lewis Morgan in the past and by Mr. Hartland, not to mention others at home and abroad. Venturing, in reliance on Darwin's judgment, to differ from these students at the very starting point of our quest, I am compelled to criticise their logic while entertaining profound respect for their learning and disinterested labours in a stony and thorny wilderness of facts.
Theories and hypotheses must struggle for existence: one can only survive, if any does ultimately survive, at the cost of the existence of the others. For example, we have not gone far before we meet that singular phenomenon in early societies, the division of the community or local tribe into two sets (called "phratries") say Raven and Wolf, each containing a distinct and different set of totem kindreds, usually of animal or vegetable names. A man or woman who married into his or her tribe must marry out of his or her own phratry and totem kin, into another totem kin of the opposite phratry.
This institution can have arisen only in one of two ways. Either (i) a tribe previously destitute of restrictions on choice in marriage, or possessing restrictions of an unknown nature, was deliberately bisected into two out-marrying and intermarrying sets called phratries; or (ii) independent groups of kin, already outmarrying or "exogamous" federated themselves into the two outmarrying and intermarrying phratries, thereby constituting an organised tribe.
In one or other of these two ways the singular state of society which has briefly been described took its rise. The weight of opinion is with Mr. Frazer on the side of the first alternative, the deliberate bisection into the phratries of a community already so far united, organised and disciplined that it accepted the arrangement with entire obedience. The second alternative is preferred by Mr. Arnold Van Gennep and myself. Behind this difference of opinion lies another problem.
As to the origin of exogamy, totemism and so on, at least we have the facts of these institutions before us. But, in conjectures as to their beginnings, we are compelled to enter a region where we have no facts at all, and to ask, was Man, when he began to develop Exogamy and Totemism, a solitary and jealous animal like the gorilla; or did he dwell in very small communities, each male jealously guarding for himself his female mates? (and one or other of these views Darwin thought most probable.) Or, on the other hand, was man at this moment gregarious, and living in a state of "free love" without law or limit?
It will be found that the second view is held by the very highest authorities, by the late Mr. Howitt, the founder of Australian anthropology; by Mr. Baldwin Spencer, author, with Mr. Gillen, of two supremely careful and thorough books on the natives of central and northern Australia; by Mr. Hartland, and by Mr. J. G. Frazer to whom we owe that vast collection of facts and theories, Totemism and Exogamy . These scholars, so eminent in fieldwork or in the study, or in both, start from the conjecture that Man, when he first began to establish exogamy, was gregarious and promiscuous, and set about reforming himself. They have to explain his institutions in conformity with this conjecture.
In the following essay, in accordance with one of the two conjectures of Mr. Darwin, of Dr. Westermarck (I think) and with the late Mr. J. J. Atkinson in his brief and highly original sketch Primal Law 9, I start from the guess that primal man was a solitary and extremely jealous character. Like Sir E. B. Tylor, I believe that society began in the union of man with his female mate or mates and their offspring.
It does not appear to me that either the palaeontologist, examining the relics of man in the earliest ages, or the naturalist, can ever settle the question, "Was earliest mankind solitary and fierce in sexual jealousy; or was he gregarious, not jealous, and a free lover?" On our view of the correct answer hinges all our disputes: and the answer is a matter of conflicting probabilities. I may be asked, "If man were not gregarious, were solitary and jealous, how did he become social?" This question Mr. J. J. Atkinson answered, I think, in a very original and plausible way in his Primal Law ; though not without inconsistencies here and there, in his reasoning.
Again, it is asked, why should we postulate fierce sexual jealousy in half or
three-quarters brutal man, when many of les demi-civilis\*'es of today
exhibit what, to us, look like marks of much laxity on this head? One may
answer that we cannot judge primal man by a modern savage's hospitable way of
lending a female mate to a guest; or by the Dieri custom of legalised
concubinage ( pirrauru ). These people are very social, and as hospitable
as the Gaelic poet who promises to Prince Charles
"The loveliest Mary in all Glen Macquarrie
To lie in your breast to the dawn of day."
But if man only very slowly grew social, while some of the modern demi-civilis\*'es are now extremely social, lax, and hospitable, we cannot argue from them to the primal human animal. In any case each set of disputants must, and do, elaborate their whole theory of the evolution of exogamy in accordance with their opposite conjectures as to man's social conditions at the time when exogamy (the earliest system, at least among the Australians, for regulating the union of the sexes) first arose. The opposed conjectures on this point are incapable of proof or disproof.
It seems to me, therefore, that our only test of the value of the two contradictory guesses as to the social state and sexual manners of primal man, at the moment when exogamy arose, is to ask, "on which line of conjecture can we produce the more coherent and therefore the more satisfactory hypothesis as to the development of the actually existing rules of Exogamy?"
The hypothesis must, I think, assign intelligible human motives for each step in the evolution, 10 and its line, to use a humble simile, must run freely off the reel without kinking and jamming, without inconsistencies and self-contradictions. Only thus, if at all, can we capture the evasive solution of the whole set of problems. The right hypothesis must colligate all the known facts: yet will remain but a hypothesis, for we can have no experimental test, and no historical knowledge of society at an earlier stage than the earliest at which we find it in experience.
Thus considered, the question before us is one of logic. It is my purpose to examine the solutions of our problems proposed by Mr. Frazer, in his invaluable work, Totemism and Exogamy . His solutions of several problems were, in the main, accepted by Mr. Howitt, and are, I think, in the main accepted by Mr. Baldwin Spencer. Where their reasonings and inferences do not seem to be to be logical, coherent, consistent, and provided with a reply to every question, I am constrained, with all respect, to differ from their conclusions; indeed we hall see that they occasionally differ from each other.
If I can prove that the theories which I do not accept are not logically consistent, but self-contradictory; if no answer can be given by these hypotheses to this or that essential question; and if, on the other hand, my hypothesis be consistent and have its answer to every objection; if its explanations rest on natural human passions, needs, speculations and errors, then, so far, mine is the better case. NOTES