396 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



tribes, many natural objects and places of striking character... 

 though it is easy to understand how the superficial inquirer, 

 dominated by definite spiritual concepts, perhaps deceived by 

 crafty native informants, came to adopt and perpetuate the 

 erroneous interpretation. The term may be translated into 

 ' mystery ' perhaps more satisfactorily than into any other single 

 English word, yet this rendering is at the same time too limited, 

 as wakanda vaguely connotes also power, sacred, ancient, grandeur, 

 animate, immortal, etc. ' 



A closer study of the tribal system has also dissipated another 



widespread fallacy, that of the cattle horde theory, 

 SocfaiSystem. -universal chaos and promiscuity as the starting 



point of all human society : " The social organi- 

 zations of the lower grade are no less definite, perhaps more 

 definite, than those pertaining to the higher grade ; so that when 

 the history of demotic growth among the American Indians is 

 traced backward, the organizations are found on the whole to 

 grow more definite, albeit more simple. When the lines of 

 development revealed through research are projected still farther 

 toward their origin, they indicate an initial condition, directly 

 antithetic to the postulated horde, in which the scant population 

 was segregated in small discrete bodies, probably family groups ; 

 and that in each of these bodies there was a definite organization, 

 while each group was practically independent of, and probably 

 inimical to, all other groups 2 ." 



And thus the family, the initial unit, segments into a number 

 of clans, each distinguished by its totem, its name, its heraldic 

 badge, which badge, becoming more and more venerated from 

 age to age, acquires inherited privileges, becomes the object 

 of endless superstitious practices and is ultimately almost deified. 



Miss Fletcher, who has made a special study of the 



The Totem. 



totemic concept as prevalent amongst some of the 

 Siouan tribes, may be right in regarding the totem as the personal 

 fetish grown hereditary. But it is difficult to follow her when she 

 speaks of the origin of this personal totem through a puberty rite 

 involving a trance or vision. ''Those who had seen the Bear 







1 Op. cit., pp. 182-3. ; Op. cit., p. 200. 



