578 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



however, and the point is chiefly that in the Efatese custom we have 

 evidence of primitive totemism absolutely without reference to re- 

 ligion. The Efatese came perhaps from Arabia and may represent 

 a primitive Semitic condition, where a purely economic and social 

 matter became gradually overlaid with a religious coloring. So our 

 Iroquois did not worship their totems, jior descend from their 

 totems. Nor did the taboos of the Omahas have anything to do 

 w T ith their totems, and they also may descend from guardians. Even 

 the name of the Omaha group is not that of the totem. Thus totem- 

 ism is not a homogeneous institution. Under the appearance of 

 uniformity it conceals a heterogeneous collection of social and reli- 

 gious conditions as vague and unsystematic as are those of taboo and 

 fetishism. It consists, if it means anything specific, in clan respect 

 for a class of plants or animals and usually in a regard for ancestors ; 

 but there is no proof that the most primitive totemism represents a 

 condition in which these elements were already fused and confused, 

 so that the plant or animal was the clan ancestor, whose descendants 

 have human brothers who will not slay them. The clan worship of 

 an inviolate totem is a late, not a primitive form. Originally, real 

 totemism may or may not be religious; it starts with a certain 

 relation to the source of food and is apt to end with food, but 

 on its course it is obnoxious to all the ills of a diseased religious con- 

 sciousness. The taboo of eating totem flesh is general in North 

 America (though not universal), but such a taboo is not necessarily 

 coterminous with the class; it may include a larger group, hence it 

 may not be totemic in origin. 



Certain aspects of totemism, such as tattooing and the use of 

 totempoles and the " medicine " carried by totemists, may be omitted 

 from the discussion of primitive totemism. So the various taboos 

 incidental to totemism are results which in themselves do not explain 

 totemism. A vital error is that the sacrifice of the totem is funda- 

 mental ; this leads to the idea that all sacrifice is based on totemism 

 Lastly, there is a bookf ul of errors based on false notions of " original 

 totemism " and to be avoided as idle speculations. One well-known 

 writer has declared that all domestication of animals reverts to 

 totemism; wild animals, finding that as totems they were not mo- 

 lested, came to man and became household pets; wolves became dogs, 

 tigers became cats. So plants were cultivated first as totems until 

 man discovered that maize was good to eat and tobacco to smoke! 

 Wundt explains man's present dislike to a diet of vermin on the 

 assumption that we have inherited the feeling that vermin are sacred 

 ancestral totems. This incredible suggestion is made in all serious- 



