Totemism Defined

I think I have defined totemism, {71} and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer’s work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan’s essays, or ‘Totemism’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  However, I shall define totemism once more.  It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature.  One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on.  Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me.  In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases.  Where all these notes are combined we have totemism.  It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and sacrifice, {72a} and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; {72b} in Pictish names; {72c} in claims of descent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts; in the animals sacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on.  Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination.  Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic.  Mr. Max Muller asks if ‘any Egyptologists have adopted’ the totem theory.  He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce’s reference to a prehistoric age, ’when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.’

Dr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that ‘animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.’  Who says that they do?  ‘Clan Chattan,’ with its cat crest, may be based, not on a totem, but on a popular etymology.  Animal names of individuals have nothing to do with totems.  A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts.

What a Totem is

Though our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere (i. 198-202).  ’Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American Indians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board ("ododam").’  The totem was originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object ’placed by North American Indians in front of their settlements.’

The Evidence for Sign-boards