More about Totems

The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Muller knows this origin.  ’A totem is a clan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by a clan’ (i. 201).  ’All this applies in the first instance to Red Indians only.’  Yes, and ‘clan’ applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only!  When Mr. Max Muller speaks of ‘clans’ among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose connotation differs from anything known to exist in America.  But the analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough to justify Mr. Max Muller in speaking of Red Indian ‘clans.’  By parity of reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kobong and the American totem is so complete that we may speak of ‘Totemism’ in Australia.  It would be childish to talk of ‘Totemism’ in North America, ‘Kobongism’ in Australia, ‘Pacarissaism’ in the realm of the Incas:  totems, kobongs, and pacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point.  I am not aware that Australian blacks erect, or that the subjects of the Incas, or that African and Indian and Asiatic totemists, erected ’sign-boards’ anywhere, as the Ottawa writer assures us that the Ottawas do, or used to do.  And, if they don’t, how do we know that kobongs and pacarissas were developed out of sign-boards?

Heraldry and Totems

The Ottawas are armigeri, are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver’s Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings.  Examples are in South Kensington Museum.  But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism.  Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or more likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and quarterings.  Mr. Max Muller allows that there may be other origins.

Gods and Totems

Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i. 200).

This is a foolish liberty with language.  ’Why should not all the gods of Egypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of totemisms?’ Why not, indeed?  Professor Sayce remarks, ’They were the sacred animals of the clans,’ survivals from an age ’when the religion of Egypt was totemism.’  ’In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, i.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred character and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.’  So says Dr. Robertson Smith.  He and Mr. Sayce are ‘scholars,’ not mere unscholarly anthropologists. {76}

An Objection