582 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



vegetable totems (maize, for example) are clearly sacred because 

 they are a food supply. Sun supply and food supply in Australia 

 brought forth the same rites. In other words, both rituals were for 

 the same purpose, to increase the power of food giver and light 

 giver as food giver. Nor can it be objected that "things not 

 fit to eat" are made totems. Different times, different stomachs. 

 Even our immediate forefathers ate things that we would 

 rather revere than eat, and savages eat anything edible. Again, 

 inedible things, such as poisonous objects, become holy by way 

 of being lrygienically taboo, and such a taboo plant, as holy, 

 tends to confuse totem holiness with taboo holiness. In India 

 there are many taboo trees and taboo plants, though none is a 

 totem to the Aryan. They are taboo either because they are sacred 

 to a god or because they are poisonous. So we have poisonous 

 totems. The Begandas of Africa say that their whole totem sys- 

 tem (it is not really totemism, but resembles it) is based on purely 

 hygienic principles. Their "totem" is injurious; it made their an- 

 cestors ill ; hence it is " holy " ; hence not eaten. But others may eat 

 it. Many other peoples permit their neighbors to kill the totem they 

 themselves would like to kill and eat did they dare. The Australian 

 Blackfellow now kills rarely what he used to kill and eat freely. 

 Alabama and Georgia Indians always used to eat their totems. Is 

 it not an assumption to say that these edible totems represent a later 

 stage? Australian custom suggests that the non-edible totem is the 

 later totem, the more edible the earlier. Moreover, worship is a 

 secondary stage. The Omaha Indians never worshiped their totems. 

 The Californians show a middle stage, that of the Egyptians and 

 Todas, who kill but rarely and eat the totem as a sacrament. Then 

 behind that lies the stage in'which the totem is killed freely all the 

 year round, but once a year is killed as a sacrament. Such is said to 

 be the totemism found among some tribes of the Caucasus, and it is 

 the usage, but without totemic kinship, of the Ainus already de- 

 scribed. The animal killed is offered apologies lest its spirit retali- 

 ate; but this apologetic attitude is found with savages even when 

 they kill an ordinary animal or cut down a tree. It is assumed 

 merely to safeguard the slayer from its victim's angry spirit. 1 



One plant and one animal in India have been divine for millen- 

 niums — the moon plant and the cow. Their deification as drink and 

 food was gradual. At first anyone might drink the moon-plant beer 

 and any guest had a cow killed for his food. The Soma then became 

 reserved for the priest, the cow became reserved as milk giver. Both 



1 The apology to any animal slain is made in America ; to the tree, for example, in 

 Africa. It does not imply constant worship, but only a passing respectful solicitude, lest 

 the animal or tree, being vexed, retaliate. This attitude results in a sort of momentary 

 " worship " (placation) . 



