[hill-tout] TOTEMISM : ITS ORIGIN AND IMPORT 87 



does not appear to me to be susceptible of such an explanation as he 

 has offered. 



Eegiarding, then, the evidence on this head from America, from 

 Australia and from Torres Straits, British Guinea and the other Paci- 

 fic centres, offered by Dr. Haddon himself, it seems to me impossible 

 to maintain that exogamy is a canon, rule, or essential element of 

 totemism. The most that can be said for it is, that it is a fairly com- 

 mon concomitant of it, and that it appears to have received the sanc- 

 tion; of the totemic deity. But this we can satisfactorily account for 

 without regarding it as an essential part of totemism. 



The common European view of exogamy seems to be the outcome 

 of the theory of endogamy and exogamy first profounded by McLennan. 

 For following him others of the earlier writers on marriage customs in 

 tribal society, " culled from the literature of travels a vast body of 

 stories about taboos in marriage; and it was finally concluded that cer- 

 tain tribes required their tribesmen to marry women who were foreigners 

 and aliens. This was called exogamy. Then it was held that other 

 tribes required or permitted their tribesmen to take wives within the 

 tribe ; and this was called endogamy. So an attempt was made to clas- 

 sify the tribes of mankind, not only in America but elsewhere, into 

 two groups, the exogamous and the endogamous. 



Now we understand that in all tribal society there is an endo- 

 gamous, or incest, group, which we call the clan in savagery and the 

 gens in barbarism; while, at the same time, the clansmen usually marry 

 within the tribe ly regulations which vary greatly from people to people. 

 It seems that the ties of marriage are used to bind different peoples 

 together in one la.rger group which we call the tribe, and that the clans 

 of a tribe may at one time have been distinct tribes; that when tribes 

 become weak or desire to form permanent alliances with other tribes for 

 ofi'ensive and defensive purposes, such tribes agree to become clans of 

 a united body and by treaty confirm the bargain, by pledging not to 

 maiTy within their own groups, but to exchange women with one 

 another. . . . Such a bargain or treaty enforced for many generations 

 as customary law, ultimately becomes sacred and marriage within the 

 group is incest. Perhaps there is no people, tribal or national, which 

 has not an incest group; so all peoples are endogamous as all peoples 

 are necessarily exogamous."^ 



Such were the views held and expressed by Major Powell regarding 

 the origin of endogamous and exogamous regulations, and in default of 

 a better may well be accepted as the explanation most in harmony ^^n.th. 

 the facts of the case. 



^ Sociology, or the Science of Institutions, W. J. Powell. Amer. Anthrop., 

 IP. 703-4, N.S.. I, 1899. 



