Lhill-tout] TOTEMISM : ITS ORIGIN AND IMPORT 7S 



I remarked just now tihat the clifEerence between the American 

 and European views of the doctrine ol totemism was due partly to 

 the attitude of the students. This becomes clear from the abovei 

 citations from Mr. Lang's article. He is unable rightly to appreciate 

 the evidence brought together by American students in support of 

 the views herein set forth, because of certain prepossessions. One 

 of these, as I have shown, is his belief that the personal totem 

 is not hereditable, and th.e other is that group totems could not 

 have arisen from the personal totem as claimed by Miss Fletcher, 

 myself, and other American students, because under mother-right men 

 are never founders of families or clans or totems. The evidence which 

 I offered of the evolution of family or group totems from personal 

 totems, gathered with much care and caution by personal investigation 

 among the Salish tribes, is summarily dismissed because these tribes are 

 no longer under matriarchy. And in like manner Miss Fletcher's con- 

 clusions based upon a close and sympathetic study of a Siouan people are 

 set aside because the Omahas are under patriarchal rule. Whereas 

 American tribal society abounds in data which show that, although group 

 totemism did in all probability first appear in the admittedly earlier 

 matriarchal state, it may and does arise under any and all conditions of 

 savage society. The particular form which totemism in any given tribe 

 shall take depends entirely upon the social structure of that tribe. 

 Under matriarchal conditions the social unit is the clan, and under 

 patriarchal rule the gens. These severally occupy the place which is 

 taken by the family group in later social organization. The clan and 

 the gens totem, then, clearly answer to the family totem of village 

 society; or rather the latter answers to the two others and all arise in 

 the same way. But whereas under the clan and gens organization the 

 group-totem is necessarily confined to those social units, in village 

 society with descent counted on both sides of the house it spreads outside 

 of the family into the tribe at large or even beyond it ; for here the factor 

 of affinity is operating as well as that of consanguinity. The main 

 difference, then, between the group-totem of village society and that of 

 the earlier states of clan and gentile organization, lies in the fact that 

 the totem-groups of matriarchy and patriarchy are formed, strictly, 

 in theory at least, on consanguineous lines, while those of the village 

 state include within them those connected by ties of affinity as well as 

 those of blood."^ 



^ We have been accustomed to regard the " villag-e community " as the 

 social unit of savages organized on the lines of the Salish peoples. Later 

 and closer study of their social organization has led me to reject this view 

 and regard the " family " as the real social unit. This family is composed of 

 the elements of the other two more primitive states, the clan and gens, and 



