72 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



as tlie clan or gens is but a group od' families ^ connected by ties of 

 consanguinity. The main objection brought against this view of the 

 matter by Mr. Andrew Lang and others is that the personal totem is 

 not transmissible or hereditable. But is not this objection contrary to 

 the facts of the case? We have abundant evidence to show that the 

 personal totem is transmissible and hereditable. Even among tribes 

 like the Thompson, where it was the custoan for every one of both 

 sexes to acquire a guardian spirit at the period of puberty we find the 

 totem is in some instances hereditable. Teit says in his detailed account 

 of the guardian spirits of the Tliompson Indians, that " the totem of 

 the shamans are sometimes inherited directly from the parents;" and 

 among those tribes where individual totemism is not so prevalent, as, 

 for instance, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, the personal 

 totem of a chief or other proimineut individual, more particularly if 

 that totem has been acquired by means other than the usual dream or 

 vision, such as a personal encounter with the object in the forest or 

 in. the mountains, is commonly inherited and owned by his or her 

 posterity. It is but a few weeks ago that I made a special enquiry into 

 this subject among some of the Halkomelem tribes of the Lower 

 Fraser. "Dr. George," a noted shaman of the Tcil'Qe'Ek, related to 

 mc the manner in which bis grandfather had acquired their family 

 totem, the bear; and made it perfectly clear that the bear had been ever 

 since the totem of all his granfather's desicemdants. The important 

 totem of the S qoiàqî which, has members in a dozen different tribes of 

 the coast and Lower Fraser Salish, is another case in point. It matters 

 little to us ^ow the first possessor of the totem acquired it. We may 

 utterly disregard the account of its origin as given by the Indians them- 

 selves, the main fact for us is, that between a certain object or being 

 and a body of people, certain m,ysterious relations have been estab- 

 lished, identical with those existing between the imdividual and his 

 personal totem; and that these people trace their descent from and are 

 the lineal descendants of the man or woman who first acquired the 

 totem. Here is evidence direct and ample of the hereditability of the 

 individual totem and American data abound in it. 



Miss A. Fletcher in her close 'and dota il ed study of the Omahas, was 

 led to the conviction that the gentile totems of tbat tribe, 'and by impli- 

 cation those of others of the Siouan stock, were derived from the per- 

 sonal totems of leading members of the tribe. She writes: "As 

 totems could he obtmned but in one way — thro' the rite of vision — the 

 toteim of the gens must have come into existence in that manner and 

 must have represented the manifestations of an ancestor's vision, that 

 of a man whose ability and oipportunity served to make him the founder 



^ I here of course use the terms " family " in its restricted sense as applied 

 to the subdiivisions of the clan and gens. 



