Section II., 1903 [ 61 ] Tra^js. R. S. C. 



VI. — Totemism: A Consideration of its Origin and Import. 

 By Charles Hill-Tout. 



Hon. Secretary of the Ethnological Survey of Canada, etc. 

 (Communicated by Honorary Secretary and read May, 19, 1903.) 



Tw'o years ago I had the honour to present to the Society a short 

 paper on the subject of Totemism as it O'btains in tribal society in 

 British Columbia. 



The scope of the present paper is more comprehensive; it aims 

 at a consideration of the suibject from a general point of view. 



The doetrine of totemism has of late much exercised the minds 

 of anthropologists, and there has been a considerable increase in the 

 literature upon it. This has not, unfortunately, resulted in an accept- 

 able solution of the problem of totemism, but rather the reverse. It 

 has brought out in a painfully clear manner that American and 

 European students hold widely-difEering views upon the subject, and 

 appear to look at the question from a fundamentally different stand- 

 point. Even their terminology seems to have little in common. 



This has apparently come about from the fact that students of 

 this country have dealt with data drawn almost exclusively fro^m Amer- 

 ican sources, wliile those of Europe seem to have fixed their attention 

 more particularly upon data gathered in Australia and other parts of 

 the world. 



This would seem to suggest that the totemism of tribal man in 

 America is different from that fonnd among primitive peoples else- 

 where. But this certainly cannot be the case. Totemism, vfherever 

 found, in its naked and virgin state, is demonstrably the outcome of 

 the mind of savage man contemplating the relations existing between 

 himself and his physical environment, that is of anthropopathic con- 

 ceptions of the universe, and in its fundamentals must of necessity 

 be everywhere the same. The difference, if difference there be, will be 

 found to lie partly in the attitude of the student himself and partly in 

 the fact that too much stress has been laid by certain European ex- 

 ponents of totemism upon subsidiary features of it, which, as I shall 

 attempt to show, are not really essential elements, but only, more or 

 less, local adjuncts or accidents, which differ materially in number 

 and character in different centres and among different peoples. If 

 these concomitants of totemism, mostly social, be set aside and the 

 underlying concept be regarded alone, totemism will be seen to be 

 the same in all parts of the world. 



