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Lang Andrew
Social Origins and Primal Law

LORD AVEBURY ON RELATIONSHIPS

Analysing Mr. Morgan's collection of names for relationships, Lord Avebury (p. 182) says, 'in fact the idea of relationship, like that of marriage, was founded, not upon duty, but upon power.' We try to suggest that the classificatory names for relationships are, to a great extent, expressive of status, seniority, and mutual duties and services in the community – these duties and services themselves being gradually established by power – the power of the seniors. Yet some terms analysed by Lord Avebury have, linguistically, other sources. 'Wife,' in Cree, is 'part of myself,' dimidium animæ meæ, these twain are one flesh. Obviously this pretty term does not spring from 'communal marriage.' In Chocta, 'husband' is 'he who leads me,' – again not communal, but indicating the old-fashioned theory of wifely obedience. ('He who kicks me' would suffice, in some civilised quarters.) 'Daughter-in-law,' in Delaware, is 'my cook,' indicating service; and 'husband' is 'my aid through life,' showing the advanced Homeric, or Christian, view of marriage (pp. 180-181). 'Father' and 'Mother' in many African, European and Asian, Non-Aryan, Oceanic, Australian, and, really in Aryan languages, also often in America, are 'the easiest sounds which a child can pronounce indicating father and mother' (pp. 442-449). If babes could distinguish father and mother, these relationships, one thinks, could not have been unknown to adults. They may be, and are, extended in usage, so as to embrace what we call uncles and aunts and seniors of the kin, but this, I try to argue, does not necessarily imply that fatherhood and motherhood, owing to communal marriage, were long unknown.

The result of Lord Avebury's analysis of Mr. Morgan's tables of terms is to prove progress in the discrimination of degrees of kin, though ancient sweeping terms occasionally survive among races fairly advanced out of savagery. 'Relationship is, at first, regarded as a matter, not of blood, but of tribal organisation' (p. 208). Here I agree that words or terms for what we call relationship often do seem to denote status, duty, service, and intermarriageableness in the community. But I do not think that the ties of blood are thereby proved to have been unknown. Maternity could not be doubtful, especially where the mother nursed her child for several years.

Lord Avebury adds, 'the terms for what we call relationships are, among the lower races of men, mere expressions for the results of marriage customs, and do not comprise the idea of relationship as we understand it' (p. 210).

For this reason, I think, we must avoid the fallacy of arguing as if the terms did denote 'relationship as we understand it,' when we wish to prove a past of communal marriage. The terms indicate, in Lord Avebury's words, 'the connection of individuals inter se, their duties to one another, their rights, and the descent of their property.'

This is precisely my own opinion, and for this very reason I do not hold that these terms arose in ignorance as to who was the mother, or even the father, of a child. All the duties and rights, as Lord Avebury says, 'are regulated more by the relation to the tribe than to the family' – in our sense of 'family.' But this, in my view, proves that the terms (in their present significance) are relatively late and advanced, for the institution of the Tribe (as I understand the word) implies the friendly combination of many totem kins, and of many 'fire-circles,' into the tribe, the large local aggregate. No such combination can have been truly 'primitive.' But we have seen that Lord Avebury seems to use 'tribe' in various places, as equivalent to 'family,' 'clan,' gens, and, apparently, to 'totem kin.' Quite possibly he means that the horde is prior to what I may call the 'fire-circle,' the 'very small community,' which, in places, he terms 'the tribe,' or so I understand him. If so, I cannot follow him here, as I am not inclined to think that truly primitive man lived in hordes of considerable numbers: the difficulties of supply, among other reasons, make the idea improbable.

If I have failed to understand Lord Avebury, perhaps his somewhat indeterminate terminology may plead my excuse.

CHAPTER VIII
THE ORIGIN OF TOTEM NAMES AND BELIEFS

Up to this point, we have treated of totems just as we find them in savage practice. We have seen that totem names are the titles of groups of kindred, real or imagined; they are derived from animals, plants, and other natural objects; they appear among tribes who reckon descent either on the sword or spindle side, and the totem name of each group is usually (but not in the case of the Arunta) one mark of the exogamous limit. None may marry a person of the same totem name. But, in company with this prohibition, is found a body of myths, superstitions, rites, magical practices, and artistic uses of the totem.¹⁸⁵ We have shown (Chapter II.) that we cannot move a step without a clear and consistent hypothesis of the origins of Totemism. This we now try to produce.

SACRED ANIMALS IN SAVAGE SOCIETY

Savages, both in their groups of kin, in their magical societies, or clubs, and privately, as individuals, are apt to regard certain beasts, plants, and so on, as the guardians of the group, of the society, and of the private person. To these animal guardians, whether of the individual, the society, or the group of kin, they show a certain amount of reverence and respect. That reverence naturally takes much the same forms – the inevitable forms – as of not killing or eating the animal, occasionally praying to it, or of burying dead representatives of the species, as may happen. But I am unaware that the savage ever calls his personal selected animal or plant, or the guardian animal of his magical society (except among the Arunta, where the totem groups are evolving into magical clubs), by the same term as he applies to the hereditary guardian of his group of kindred; his totem, as I use the word. If I am right, this distinction has been overlooked, or thought insignificant, by some modern inquirers. Major. Powell, the Director of the Ethnological Bureau at Washington, appears to apply, the word totem both to the chosen animal friend of the individual, and to that of the magical society in America, which includes men of various group totems.¹⁸⁶ He also applies it to the totem of the kin.

Mr. Frazer, too, writes of (1) The Clan Totem, (2) The Sex Totem (in Australia), (3) 'The Individual Totem, belonging to a single individual, and not passing to his descendants,' and even indicates that one savage may have five totems.¹⁸⁷ This third rule as to the non-hereditable character of 'the individual totem' has, since Mr. Frazer wrote in 1887, been found to admit of more exceptions than we then knew. In a few cases and places, the animal selected by, or for, the private individual, is found to descend to his or her children. In my opinion it is better, for the present at least, to speak of such protective animals of individuals, by the names which their savage protégés give to them in each case: nyarongs (Sarawak) 'bush-souls,' (Calabar) naguals, (Central America) manitus (?) as among the Algonquins, Yunbeai in some Australian dialects, and so forth.¹⁸⁸ I myself here use 'totem' only of the object which lends its name, hereditarily, to a group of kin.

PROPOSED RESTRICTION OF THE USE OF THE WORD 'TOTEM'

This restriction I make, not for the purpose of simplifying the problem of totemism by disregarding 'the individual totem,' 'the sex totem,' and so on, but because I understand that savages everywhere use one word for their hereditary kin totem, and other words for the plant or animal protectors of individuals, of magical societies, and so forth. The true totem is a plant or animal or other thing, the hereditary friend and ally – of the kin – but all plant or animal allies of individuals or of magical societies are not totems. Though the attitude of a private person to his nagual, or of a magical society to its protective animal, may often closely resemble the attitude of the group to its hereditary totem, still, the origin of this attitude of respect may be different in each case.

This is obvious, for the individual or society deliberately adopts an animal protector and friend, usually suggested in a dream, after a fast, whereas we can scarcely conceive that the totem was deliberately adopted by the first members of the first totem groups. Savages look on animals as personalities like themselves, but more powerful, gifted with more wakan, or mana, or cosmic rapport: each man, therefore, and each organised magical society, looks out for, and, for some reason of dream or divination, adopts, a special animal friend. But it is hard to believe that the members of a primeval human group of unknown antiquity, consciously and deliberately made a compact to adopt, and for ever be faithful to – this or that plant, animal, element, or the like – to be inherited in the female line. For, on this plan, the group, say Wolves, instantly loses the totem it has adopted.

We cannot prove that it was not so, that a primitive group of rudimentary human beings did not make a covenant with Bear, or Wolf, as Israel did with Jehovah, and as an individual savage does with his nyarong, or nagual, or manitu. This covenant, if made and kept by each group, would be the Origin of Totemism. But, with female descent, the covenant could not be kept. I am not certain that this theory, involving joint and deliberate selection and retention of a totem, by a primeval human group, has ever been maintained, unless it be by Mr. Jevons. 'The primary object of a totem alliance between a human kin and an animal kind is to obtain a supernatural ally against supernatural foes.'¹⁸⁹ The term 'supernatural' seems here out of place – both the animal kind and the human kin being natural; and one has a difficulty in conceiving that very early groups of kin would make, and would adhere to, such alliances. Indeed, how could they adhere to their totems, when these descended through women of alien totem groups? But there seems to be nothing otherwise impossible or self-contradictory in this theory; nor can it be disproved, for lack of evidence. Only such theories as are self-contradictory, or inconsistent with the known and admitted facts of the case, are capable of absolute disproof.

It may, of course, be objected here that, though totems, in actual savage society, descend sometimes in the female line, still, descent in the male line may be the original rule; and that thus a group, like an individual, could seek, make a covenant with, and cleave to a grub, or frog, or lizard, as a supernatural ally. But, for reasons already indicated, in an earlier part of this work, I conceive that, originally, totems descended in the female line only. One reason for this opinion is that, as soon as descent of the totem comes by the male line, a distinct step in the upward movement towards civilisation and a settled life is made. It is not very probable that the backward step, from reckoning by male lineage to descent in the female line, has often been taken. On the other hand, tribes which now inherit the totem in the male line, exhibit in their institutions many survivals of female descent. An instance is that of the Mandans, as recorded by Mr. Dorsey.¹⁹⁰ Among the Melanesians, where female descent still exists, there is at work the most obvious tendency towards descent through males, as Dr. Codrington proves in an excellent work on that people. Dr. Durkheim, too, has pointed out the traces of uterine descent among the Arunta, who now reckon in the male line.¹⁹¹ On the other hand, where we find descent in the male line, I am not aware that we discover signs of movement in the opposite direction. In this opinion that, as a general rule, descent was reckoned in the female, not the male line, originally, I have the support of Mr. E. B. Tylor.¹⁹² For these reasons the hypothesis of the selection of and covenant with a 'supernatural ally,' plant or animal, by the deliberate joint action of an early group, at a given moment, involving staunch adherence to the original resolution, rather strains belief; and a suggestion perhaps more plausible will be offered later.

THE WORD 'TOTEM'

As to the precise original meaning and form of the word usually written 'totem' – whether it should be 'totam,' or 'toodaim,' or 'dodaim,' or 'ododam,' or 'ote,' philologists may dispute.¹⁹³ They may question whether the word means 'mark,' or 'family,' or 'tribe,' or clay for painting the family mark.¹⁹⁴ When we here use the word 'totem' we mean, at all events, the object which gives its name to a group of savage kindred, who may not marry within this hereditary name. In place of 'totem' we might use the equivalent murdu of the Dieri, or gaura of the Kunundaburi.¹⁹⁵

THE TOTEM 'CULT'

The 'cult,' if it deserves to be called a 'cult,' of the totem, among savages, is not confined to abstention from marriage within the name. Each kin usually abstains from killing, eating, or in any way using its totem (except in occasional ceremonies, religious or magical), is apt to claim i descent from or kindred with it, or alternations of metamorphosis into or out of it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, on posts carved with a kind of genealogical tree, or tattoos or paints or scarifies it on the skin – in different cases and places.

To what extent the blood-feud is taken up by all members of the slain man's totem, I am not fully aware: it varies in different regions. The eating or slaying of the totem, by a person of the totem name, is in places believed to be punished by disease or death, a point which the late Mr. J. J. Atkinson observed among the natives of New Caledonia (MS. penes me). Mr. Atkinson happened to be conversing with some natives on questions of anthropology, when his servant brought in a lizard which he had killed. On this one of the natives exhibited great distress, saying, 'Why have you killed my father? we were talking of my father, and he came to us' The son (his name was Jericha) then wrapped the dead lizard up in leaves, and reverently laid the body in the bush. This was not a case like that of the Zulu Idhlozi, the serpents that haunt houses, and are believed to be the vehicles of the souls of dead kinsfolk. The other natives present had for their 'father,' one, a mouse, the other a pigeon, and so on. If any one ate his animal 'father,' sores broke out on him, and Mr. Atkinson was shown a woman thus afflicted, for having eaten her 'father.' But I do not find, in his papers, that a man with a mouse for father might not marry a woman of the mouse set, nor have I elsewhere been able to ascertain what is New-Caledonian practice on this point.¹⁹⁶ When Mr. Atkinson made these observations (1874), he had only heard of totems in the novels of Cooper and other romancers.

'TOTEM GODS'

This example is here cited because, as far as I am aware, no other anthropologist has observed this amount of Totemism in New Caledonia. Students are divided into those who have a bias in favour of finding totemism everywhere; and those who aver, with unconcealed delight, that in this or the other place there are no totems. Such negative statements must always be received with caution. An European may live long among savages before he really knows them; and, without possessing totemism in full measure, many races retain obvious fragments of the institution.

Mr. Tylor has censured the use of the terms 'totems' and 'totem clans' with respect to the Fijians and Samoans, where certain animals, not to be eaten, are believed to be vehicles or shrines of certain gods. It is a very probable conjecture (so probable, I think, as almost to amount to a certainty), that the creatures which are now the shrines of Fijian or Samoan gods of the family, or of higher gods, were once totems in an earlier stage of Samoan and Fijian society and belief. As I have said elsewhere, 'in totemistic countries the totem is respected himself; in Samoa the animal is worshipful because a god abides within him. This appears to be a theory by which the reflective Samoans have explained to themselves what was once pure Totemism.'¹⁹⁷ But I must share in Mr. Tylor's protest against using the name of 'totem' for a plant or animal which is regarded as the shrine of a god. Such thorough totemists as some of the North American Indians, or the Australians, do not explain their totems as the shrines of gods, for they have no such gods to serve as explanations. That myth appears to be the Samoan or Fijian way of accounting for the existence of worshipful and friendly plants and animals.

Thus, at all events, and unluckily, the phrase 'the totem-god' is introduced into our speculations, and the cult of the 'totem-god' is confused with the much more limited respect paid by savages to actual totems. However attractive the theory of 'the totem-god' may be, we cannot speak of 'totems' where a god incarnate in a plant or animal is concerned. Such a deity may be a modified survival of Totemism, but a totem he is not. Moreover, it is hardly safe to say that, in the Samoan case, the god is 'developed from a totem;' we only know that the god has got into suspiciously totemistic society. On the whole, we cannot be too cautious in speaking of totems and Totemism: and we must be specially careful not to exaggerate the more or less religious respect with which totems are, in many cases, regarded. The Australians, as far as they have the idea of a creative being, Baiame, Nooreli, and so forth, do not regard their totems as shrines or incarnations of him. That appears to be the speculation of peoples who, probably by way of animism, and ancestor-worship, are already in the stage of polytheism. Totems, in their earliest known stage, have very little to do with religion, and probably, in origin, had nothing really religious about them.

SAVAGE SPECULATIONS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

Peoples who are still in the totemistic stage, as we have seen, know nothing about the beginnings of the institution. All that they tell the civilised inquirers is no more than the myth handed down by their own tradition. Thus the Dieri or Dieyrie, in Australia, say that the totems were appointed by the ancestors, for the purpose of regulating marriages, after consultation with Mura Mura, or with 'the' Muramura. The Woeworung, according to Mr. Howitt, have a similar legend.¹⁹⁸ It is not necessary here to ask whether Mura Mura is 'the Supreme Being' (Gason, Howitt), or 'ancestral spirits' (Fison).¹⁹⁹ The most common savage myth is of the Darwinian variety, each totem kin is descended from, or evolved out of, the plant or animal type which supplies its totem. Again, as in fairy tales, a woman gave birth to animals, whence the totem kins derive their descent. In North-West America, totems are often accounted for by myths of ancestral heroes. 'The Tlingit' (Thlinket) 'hold that souls of ancestors are reborn in children, that a man will be reborn as a man, a wolf as a wolf, a raven as a raven.' Nevertheless, the totems are regarded as 'relatives and protectors,' and it is explained that, in the past, a human ancestor had an adventure with this or that animal, whence he assumed his totem armorial bearings.²⁰⁰ In precisely the same way a myth, a very late myth, was invented, about the adventure of a Stewart with a lion, to account for the Lyon of the Stewarts.²⁰¹ The Haidas and Thlinkets, believing as they do that human souls are reborn human, cannot hold that a bestial soul animates a man, say, of the Raven totem.

The Arunta, on the other hand, suppose that the souls of animals which evolved into human beings, are reincarnated in each child born to the tribe. 'Two clans of Western Australia, who are named after a small opossum and a little fish, think that they are so called because they used to live chiefly on these creatures.'²⁰² This myth has some support in modern opinion: the kins, it is argued, received their totem names from the animals and plants which mainly formed their food supply; though now their totems are seldom eaten by them. These legends, and others, are clearly ætiological myths, like the Samoan hypothesis that gods are incarnate in the totems. The myths merely try to explain the original connection between men and totems, and are constructed on the lines of savage ideas about the relations of all things in the universe, all alike being personal, and rational, and capable of interbreeding, and of shape-shifting. Certain Kalamantans of Sarawak will not eat a species of deer, because 'an ancestor became a deer of this kind.'²⁰³ All such fables, of course, are valueless as history; and, in the savage state of the intellect, such myths were inevitable.