Lang Andrew
Social Origins and Primal Law
OTHER SOURCES OF SACREDNESS IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS
Now any such superstitious respect for an animal, whatever its origin, will take the same inevitable forms; and thus, if individuals select nyarongs, naguals, and so on, they must necessarily behave to these things as they do to their hereditary totems. There is no other way in which they can behave, if they regard the animals as mysteriously friendly and protective, though the idea that they are friendly and protective has different origins, in either case.
Thus the exigencies of my guess as to the origin of Totemism, compel me to disagree with a dictum of Mr. Frazer, 'if the relations are similar, the explanation which holds good of the one ought equally to hold good of the other.'253 The conclusion is not necessary. You may revere a rat (your totem), and a cat (your nagual) for quite different reasons, and in quite different capacities, you being the kinsman of your totem, the protégé of your nagual; but, if you revere them, your reverence can only show itself in the same ways. There are no other ways.254
RECAPITULATION
Does my guess at the origin of totems seem out of harmony with human nature? You, belonging to a local group, must call other groups by one name or another. Plant and animal names come very handy. The names fluctuate at first, but are at last accepted by the groups to which they are applied. The origin of the names being forgotten, an explanation of them is needed, and, as in every case where it is needed, it is provided in myths. The myths, once believed in, are acted upon; they become the parents of tabus, magic, rites of various kinds. Social rules must be developed, some already exist; and each group called by an animal, plant, or other such name, becomes, under that name, a social unit, and accepts, as such, the customary legislation, just as a parish does. You must not marry within the totem name: either because of the totem tabu in general, or because the totem comes to be conceived of as denoting kinship, and (for one reason or another) you had already a tendency not to marry within the limit of the group. The usual totem rules may be thwarted by other rules derived from a peculiar system of animism, very philosophically elaborated, as among the Arunta of Central Australia. The institution, in short, may develop or may dwindle, may persist in practice, or fade into faint survival, or blend with analogous superstitions, or wholly vanish, in varying conditions. Totemism affects art; to some extent it may have affected religious evolution. It is certainly a source of innumerable myths.
But, if my guess holds water, Totemism arose out of names given from without, these names being of a serviceable sort, as they could be, and are, not only readily expressed in words, but readily conveyed in gesture language from a considerable distance. The names could be 'signalled.'255 'There is an Emu man: look out!' This could easily and silently be expressed in gesture language. Place-names, and many nicknames, could not so be signalled.
This theory, of course, is not in accordance with any savage explanations of the origin of their totem. It could not be! Their explanations are such fables as only men in their intellectual condition could invent: they are myths, they involve impossibilities. My hypothesis (or myth) does not, I think, involve anything impossible or far-fetched, or incapable of proof in a general way. It is human, it is inevitable, that plant and animal names should be given, especially among groups more or less hostile. We call the French 'frogs.' It is also a fact that names given from without come to be accepted. It is a fact that names, once accepted, are explained by myths; it is a fact that myths come to be believed, and that belief influences behaviour.
AN OBJECTION ANSWERED
Here I foresee an objection; it will be said that, on the other hand, behaviour produces myths. Men find themselves performing some apparently idiotic rite: they ask themselves, 'Why do we do this thing?' and they invent a myth as an answer. Certainly they do, but you believe in a God, or in Saints, and act (or you ought to act) in a manner pleasing to these guardians of conduct. You don't believe in a God, because you behave well, and it is not because you behave well to a totem that you believe in a totem. You treat him as game, not as vermin, because you believe in him, and your belief is based on the myth which your ancestors invented to account for their having a totem.
My guess has the advantage of going behind the age of settled dwellings, agriculture, kinship through males, and the causal action of individuals. It reverts to the group stage of human life. Groups give and accept the names; invent the myths, act on their belief in the myths, and so introduce the sanction of what had perhaps been a mere tendency towards exogamy. On the other hand, my guess has the disadvantage of dealing with a hypothetical stage of society, behind experience. But this cannot be avoided, for if we base our hypotheses of the origin of Totemism on our experience of the ways of societies which have passed, or are passing, out of Totemism, our theories must necessarily be invalidated. It may be replied that I have myself given illustrations of my theory from the folk-lore of civilised society. But the only begetters of these illustrative cases are boys – and boys are in the savage stage, 'at least as far as they are able.'
In a tone more serious, it may be reiterated that no theory of the origin of Totemism is likely to be correct which derives the totem, in the first instance, in any way, from the individual, the private man. Long ago, Mr. Fison wrote, 'Sir John Lubbock considers that the "worship of plants and animals is susceptible of a very simple explanation, and has really originated from the practice of naming, first individuals, and then their families, after particular animals."'256 Mr. Fison replied, 'This is surely a reversal of the true order. The Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group, not of an individual. The individual takes it, in common with his fellows, only because he is a member of the group. And, even if it were first given to an individual, his family, i.e. his children, could not inherit it from him,' when descent is reckoned on the female side.257
It is a commonplace, perhaps an overworked commonplace, that the group, not the individual, is the earlier social unit. Yet the hypotheses of Lord Avebury, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Wilken, Mr. Boas, Miss Alice Fletcher, and Messrs. Hose and McDougall, all derive from individuals, in one way or other, the most archaic names of human groups. The hypothesis of Mr. Max Müller leaves the origin of the group name unexplained. The later hypothesis (especially provisional), of Mr. Frazer, does start from the group name, but I am not certain whether we are to understand that each group name is derived from the plant Or animal or selected by the group as the object of its magical rites, or whether, for some unknown reason, each group already bore the name of the animal, or plant, or element, before entering on the great co-operative industrial system. Now it seems to me certain that the names, in each case, were originally not names of individuals, or in any way derived from individuals, but were names of groups. As to how pristine groups might obtain such names I have offered what, in the nature of the case, has to be only a conjecture. But named, as soon as men had intelligence and speech, the groups, as groups, had to be, and the actual names are such as, whether in savagery or in full civilisation, are given to individuals, and are also, in civilised rural society, given to local groups, to members of parishes and villages. So far, the cause which I suggest is a vera causa of collective group names.
OTHER OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
A well-known Folk-lorist to whom I submitted my theory, rather 'in the rough,' replied to me thus: 'I have thought of Totemism as meaning a social system, that is, as including belief, worship, kinship, society. And therefore, the animal or plant names are an essential part of the system. You, as I understand it, come along and say the name is the result of one of the trifles of the human mind, therefore did not enter into the totem system very deeply, and certainly did not belong to the beliefs and the worship, except as the result of a later myth-making age. Of course your book may explain all, and I shall look forward to studying it, as I have always enjoyed your studies.
'But I confess I don't much believe in these accidents causing or rather entering into so widely spread a system as Totemism. Cut away the name and nothing is left to Totemism except myth, survivals, and a social grouping without any apparent cement. Blood kinship as a basis of society surely arose much later, unless Dr. Reevers's remarkable evidence from the Haddon expedition to New Guinea helps the matter. He found, you remember, blood kinship traceable by definite genealogies beneath, so to speak, a system of Totemism, and but for the most minute examination blood kinship would have escaped observation once more and Totemism only would have been reported. Is this blood kinship the true social basis and Totemism only a veneer?
'I have goodly notes on Totemism and non-Totemism, and I confess it difficult to eliminate the name as an important part of the system. It covers every part – is the shell into which all the rest fits. Now I have too much respect for our savage friends to think they used myth any further than we do. We go every Sunday saying "I believe," but we don't build up much upon this. Our social fabric, nay our religion, is not of this. And so of the savage. If I grant you the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen out of a pre-existing name system, I am no nearer the understanding of totem-kinship as the basis of a social group.'
These are natural objections, on a first view of my suggestions. Totemism is a social system, but there was an age before totemism, an age of undeveloped totemism; into these we try to peer. But the method of name-giving which I postulate is hardly 'a trifle of the human mind.' It is, as I have proved, a widely diffused, probably an universal tendency of the human mind. Not less universal, in the savage intellectual condition, is the belief in the personality and human characteristics of all things whatsoever; man is only one tribe in the cosmic kinship, and is capable of specially close kinship with animals. Nobody denies this, and the resulting myths to explain the connection of the groups and their totems are not only natural, but inevitable – the real origin of the connection, 'in the dark backward and abysm of time,' being forgotten. We may go to church, and say 'I believe,' and we may not act up to our creeds. 'And so of the savage.' But it is not 'so of the savage.' His belief in a myth of kinship with an Emu is carried into practice, and regulates his conduct, magical and social. This is not contestable. In the same way a Christian who believes in the efficacy of masses for the welfare of his dead friends, pays for masses. At the lowest, he 'thinks the experiment well worth trying.' To other myths, say as to the origin of the spots on a beast, a savage may 'give but a doubtsome credit.' They are not of a nature to affect his conduct in any way. But the totem myths do affect his conduct, quite undeniably, and, even if there are sceptics, public opinion and customary law compel them to regulate their behaviour on the lines of the general belief. We are not to be told that nobody believes in anything! The 'social grouping' consequent on the beliefs is not 'without any apparent cement.' The cement is the belief in the actual kinship of all persons having the same totem name, and sacred totem blood, even if they belong to remote and hostile tribes. All wolves are brethren in the wolf; all bears are brethren in the bear; and so men-bears are sisters to women-bears, and brothers may not marry sisters. Here is 'apparent cement' of the very best quality, and in abundance, given the acknowledged condition of the savage intellect.
Manifestly these ideas belong, as a whole, to 'a later myth-making age ' – that is to an age later than the dateless period of the hypothetical anonymous groups. But, between that hypothetical period and the evolution of the idea of group kinship with animals and plants, and with all men of the same animal and plant stock names, there is time enough and to spare for the full evolution of Totemism.
Again, to a Darwinian, the enormous influence of 'accidents' in evolution ought not to be a matter hard of belief; without 'accidents' (in the Darwinian sense of the word), there would be no differentiation at all, and no evolution. The Darwinian 'accident' seems to mean a variation of unknown cause. But the giving of plant and animal group names is hardly an 'accident' of this kind. 'What else are you to call it?' the player asked, when questioned as to the origin of the words 'a yorker.' And by what names so handy and serviceable as plant and animal names were pristine men to call the neighbouring groups?
I have shown why place names were less handy, and how, in nomadic life, they were scarcely possible. Local names come in as Totemism goes out. Long nicknames, 'Boil-food-with-the-paunch-skin,' 'Take down their leggings,' 'Travel-with-very-light-baggage,' 'Shot-at-some-white-object' (Siouan nicknames of gentes), are much less handy, much less easy to be signalled by gesture language, and are certainly much later than 'Emu,' 'Wolf,' 'Kangaroo,' 'Eagle,' 'Skunk,' and other totem names. If such totem names were, originally, the favourite form of nomenclature for hostile groups (like our 'Sick Vulture' for a famous scholar, or 'Talking Potato,' for Mr. J. W. Croker), I see not much of an 'accident' in the circumstance.
The totem names, then, came in upon a very early society: and myth, belief, custom, and rite, crystallised round them, and round the idea of blood kindred, which must be very early indeed.
My critic asks, 'Is blood kinship the true social basis, and Totemism only a veneer?' That question I have already answered. In my opinion mankind, in evolving prohibitions of marriage, first had their eyes on contiguity, that of 'hearth-mates.' Groups of hearth-mates were next distinguished by totem names. But these names could give no superstitious sanction to customary laws, till the idea of 'blood kinship' with, or descent from, or evolution out of, or other form of kinship with the totem was developed. At this period, the totem name roughly indicated ties of blood kinship. But the Australians, as we saw, have now reached a clearer idea of what blood kinship is, and, by a bye-law, prohibit marriages of 'too near flesh,' in cases where, though the persons are akin by blood, totem law does not interfere. Totem law has had an educating influence in developing the objection to marriages between people contiguous as hearth-mates, into the objection to marriages between persons too near in blood kinship. Thus Totemism is not 'only a veneer.'
On the foundation of all these blended ideas, Totemism arose, a stately but fantastic structure, varying in shape under changing conditions, like an iceberg in summer seas. It is, indeed, 'a far cry' from anonymous human groups, and groups of plant or animal names, to Helen, the daughter of the swan, that was Zeus! But the pedigree is hardly disputable.
On the other hand, suppress the totem names, give the original groups such titles as the Sioux 'Take-down-their-leggings,' or 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' (some names you must give them), and what is left? Suppose such names to have been those of pristine groups, and suppose them to be tending to exogamy. A 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' man may not marry a 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' girl; but must marry a 'Take-down-their-leggings' girl, or a 'shoot-in-the-woods' girl, or a 'Do-not-split-the-body-of-a-buffalo-with-a-knife-but-cut – it-up-as-they-please' girl! That is rather cumbrous: marriage rules on that basis are not readily conceivable.
And where is here the tabu sanction? Brother Wolf or Brother Emu is a thinkable, powerful, sacred kinsman, who will not have his tabu tampered with. But there is no sanctity in Do-not-split-the-body-of-a-buffalo-with-a-knife-but – cut-it-up-as-they-please!
Luckily we have here a case in point. My theory is that animal names being once given to the groups, the animal, in accordance with savage ideas, became a kinsman and protector. The animal or vegetable or other type, in each case, sanctioned various tabus, including exogamy. Had the name been another kind of nickname, as 'Boil-meat-in-the paunch-skin,' what was there to sanction the tabu? Or, if the group name was a local name, where was the sanction? Exogamy does persist where totem groups have become local, and are now known by the names of their places of settlement. But not always. Of an Australian tribe, the Gournditch Mara, we read that it consisted of four local divisions, water (mere?), swamp, mountain, and river. But there was no exogamous rule affecting marriage. A man of the group dwelling in the swamp might marry a woman of the same group. There was descent in the male line; wife-lending was highly condemned. The office of headman was hereditary in the male line, 'before any whites came into the country.' The benighted tribe was not devoid of superstition.
'They believed that there was a future good and bright place, to which those who were good went after death, and that there was a Man at that place who took care of the world and of all the people.' The place was called Mūmble-Mirring. The dark, bad place was Burreet Barrat. 'This belief they had before there was any white person in the country.'
As these statements are odious to most anthropologists, they cannot be true, and thus a slur is cast on all that we learn about the Gournditch Mara. But though a missionary (the Rev. Mr. Stähle) cannot, of course, be trusted here, he had no professional motive for fictions about the marriage laws of the tribe. They had no ceremonies of initiation, no seasons of license, apparently no totems, and the merely local names of groups naturally carried no exogamous prohibition: conveyed no tabu sanction.258 Had there never been any totem names, exogamy might never have arisen.
How my friendly critic is 'no nearer to the understanding of totem kinship as the basis of a social group,' if, for the sake of the argument, he grants 'the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen from a pre-existing name system,' I am at a loss to comprehend. Here are groups, Bear, Wolf, Trout, Racoon, firmly, though erroneously, believing that they are akin to these animals. Naturally they 'behave as such.' Each racoon has duties to other racoons, and to the actual racoons. He does not shoot a racoon if he can get anything else; he does not shoot a racoon sitting. He is brother to racoons of his own sex, and to sisters in the racoon of the other sex. He does not marry them. The belief in the racoon kinship is the basis of that social group – the man has other social groups of other kinds. Savages believe in their beliefs, to the extent of dying from fear after infringing a tabu in which they believe. Thus I would reply to the objections offered after a first glance at my conjecture.
TOTEMS AND MAGICAL SOCIETIES
A man has other social groups than his own totem group in certain regions. Totem groups among the Arunta, we have seen, work magic 'to secure the increase of the plant or animal which gives its name to the totem.' The Arunta have no myth as to the origin of these performances, styled Intichiuma.259 This, as far as Australia is concerned, seems to be a peculiarity of the Arunta system alone, or all but alone, and, as we saw, it has even been suggested that these rites are the origin of Totemism. But such rites appear to be most firmly established and organised among societies which are passing out of Totemism. Such a society is that of the Omaha tribe of North America, where descent is reckoned in the male line.260 Among the Omahas we find the Elk totem group with male kinship; they may not touch a male Elk, or eat its flesh: if they do, as in New Caledonia, they break out into sores. This kindred, with the Bears, 'worship the thunder' in spring. Their special business and duty is 'to stop the rain.' But, if they are a Weather Society, in this respect, that fact does not appear in their totem names, Elk and Bear.
Other Omaha gentes, or 'subgentes,' are also totemic, and are named from that which they may not eat, as wild turkeys, wild geese, cranes, and blackbirds. The people of the black-bird totem actually do a little totem magic, against their totem; they chew and spit out corn, to prevent the blackbirds from feeding on the crops.261 The reptile group does not touch or eat reptiles, but, if worms injure the corn, they pound a few worms up into flour, make a soup thereof, and eat it (is this 'totem sacrifice'?), all for the good of the crops. The worm group does this magic (involving the eating of its totem) not for the benefit of worms (as among the Arunta) but to control the mischievous action of worms.
Now turning to Magical or Magico-Religious Societies among these Indians, we find a Wind Society, but it contains members of many totems, buffalo, eagle, hawk, and so on, plus 'The South wind people,' who, apparently, may be a totem group of that name, which, as among the Arunta, might work wind-magic.262 But our authority, the late Mr. Dorsey, calls all the members of this Wind Magic Society 'Wind gentes,' and surely this breeds much confusion. By a gens he usually means a totem kin with male descent (by 'clan,' he means a totem kin with female descent). Thus all 'wind gentes' ought to be wind totem groups: only wind totem groups ought to be in the Wind Society, which is not the case: and all water gentes, or earth, or fire gentes ought to be of water, earth, or fire totems. But this, again, is not the case.
All sorts of totem kindreds enter into the earth, wind, fire, and water Magical Societies, or Magico-Religious Societies. They belong to them as members of any universities, or of certain selected universities, may belong to an University Club: or, again, may be Catholics, Anglicans, Brownists, or Presbyterians. These American Magical Societies, though composed of members of totem kindreds, are not, in themselves, totemic societies. Members of other totems serve in the societies which work magic for earth, wind, fire, and so on. Among the Arunta, on the other hand, the magic for each object is worked solely by the men who have that object for totem. To a certain extent, however, this rule is changing, and members of other totems may, at least, be present at each totem's Intichiuma, or magical rites.263 'In addition to the members of the totem' (water) 'other men are invited to come, though they will not be allowed to take any part in the actual Intichiuma ceremony.' From presence, by invitation, to participation in the rites (as in the American Shamanistic Societies), is a step which may come to be taken, and thus the Arunta totem groups would become mere 'Shamanistic Societies.'
A most curious and interesting account of the Omaha Magical Societies is given by Miss Alice Fletcher, in her essay, already cited, on 'The Import of the Totem.' To obtain the 'personal totem' (manitu) a youth must first listen to his elders. They tell him 'to go forth to cry to Wa-kon-da. You shall not ask for any particular thing, whatever is good, that may Wa-kon-da give.'
Fiat voluntas tua!
'Four days and nights upon the hills the youth shall pray, crying, and, when he stops, shall wipe his tears with the palms of his hands, lift his wet hands to heaven, then lay them on the earth.'
To the ordinary mind, this describes such prayers as are the petitions of the Saints. But, in accordance with the views of the official school of American anthropology, it is averred that nothing of the kind is intended by the Omaha. 'There is no evidence that they did regard the power represented by that word (Wa-kon-da) as a supreme being, nor is there any intimation that they had ever conceived of a single great ruling spirit,' says Miss Fletcher (1897).
The prayer is evidence enough. Prayer is directed to a person, and whether he is envisaged as 'a spirit,' or not, is a mere detail of metaphysical terminology. If Miss Fletcher is right, Wa-kon-da is a pantheistic conception, but as He, (or It) also listens to prayer, He (or It) is personal. We see rather an anthropomorphic conception of deity, passing towards pantheism, or to divinity no longer anthropomorphic, than a notion of impersonal force immanent in the universe, passing towards anthropomorphism – as in Miss Fletcher's theory. The idea of such a force, or cosmic rapport (the Maori mana), is, indeed, familiar to us in the speculations of the lower barbaric races. It does credit to their metaphysics, but, prima facie, seems likely to be later in evolution than the idea of an anthropomorphic Maker, like the Australian Baiame.
At all events, the Omaha appears to live, in prayer, on a high religious level, and it is open to the friends of religious borrowing, to say that he took his creed from Europeans. I am not certain that Miss Fletcher is indisposed to agree with me on this point of Red Indian unborrowed theism. In her Indian Song and Story,264 she gives Pawnee songs, 'hitherto sealed from the knowledge of the white race.' Here is one:
Lift thine eyes! 'Tis the gods who come near,
Bringing thee joy, release from all pain.
Sending sorrow and sighing
Far from the child, Ti-ra-wa makes fain.
Ah, you look, you know who comes,
Claiming you his, and bidding you rise,
Blithely smiling and happy,
Child of Ti-ra-wa, Lord of the Skies!
Ti-ra-wa is Hau-ars, 'a contraction of the word meaning father.' The song is used to still children who cry at a religious ceremony.
However it be, the Omaha prays to Wa-kon-da, not for 'any particular thing,' but for whatever, in the gift of Wa-kon-da, is good, and mainly for a manitu ('personal totem'). The Omaha also believe in telepathy. 'Thought and will can be projected to help a friend.' A magical society exists, to concentrate and direct this expenditure of energy, and the process is strengthened by such things as the neophyte beholds in vision, after prayer to Wa-kon-da. He sent an answer to prayer, a feather of a bird, a tuft of a beast's hair, a crystal, a black stone, representing the species, or element of nature, which was to be the neophyte's 'personal totem,' or manitu. If it were thunder, the man could control the elements; if it were an eagle, he had an eagle eye for the future; if it were a bear (or a badger), he was not so gifted.
Now, according to Miss Fletcher, the Bear Magical Society is composed of men, who, after prayer, have seen the bear in dream or vision; those who saw representatives 'of thunder or water beings' form the Society which deals with the weather. 'The membership came from every kinship group' (totem kin) 'in the tribe.' Thus the Magical Societies are composed of men of any totem, and, the less purely totemic the tribe, the stronger is the Magical Society.
The totem kins now, among the Omaha, have descent in the male line. All this is 'late,' and 'late' is the totem priesthood held by 'hereditary chiefs of the gens.' Miss Fletcher regards the totem of the 'gens,' with the beliefs crystallised around it, as an ingenious 'expedient,' with a social 'purpose!' the totem of each kindred having been inherited from the vision and manitu of some ancestral chief. We need not again point out that, even now, among the Omaha, advanced as they are, manitus are not hereditable, and that Miss Fletcher's system cannot account for Totemism in tribes which reckon descent on the spindle side. Miss Fletcher justly remarks that the real totem, 'the gentile totem,' 'gave no immediate hold upon the supernatural, as did the individual totem' (manitu) 'to its possessor. It served solely as a mark of kinship, and its connection with the supernatural was manifest only in its punishment of the violation of tabu.'
In brief, the real totem, and the individual manitu, with its magical societies, are two things totally apart, and apart we must keep them, in our studies of early society. Not to do so is to make the topic incomprehensible.
