90 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



" 1 may kill it/' never, " I shall kill it." All young people when eat- 

 ing the first berries, roots or other products of the earth addressed a 

 prayer to the Suaiflo'weT-E.O'ot, thus : — " I inform thee that I intend 

 to eat thee. Mayest thou always help me to ascend, so that I may 

 always be able to reach the tops of mountains and may I never be 

 clumsy! I ask this from thee, Sunflower-Eoot. Tho,u art the 

 greatest of all in mystery."^ These examples might be supplemented 

 by scores of others from other American tribes. The taboos and restric- 

 tion in food imposed upon menstruating women, upon widows, widow- 

 ers and orphans, all belong to the same class and have a similar sig- 

 nificance. The First Fruits ceremonies of the Fraser Eiver tribes, the 

 many customs connected with the salmon all show the same beliefs in 

 the mysterious powers of animals and plants; and the various restric- 

 tions or taboos all have the same object — the propitiation of the spirits 

 or ghosts of the animals or plants. 



It is not in totemism qua totemism, then, that we should look for 

 the explanation of taboos of this kind, but in the savage's general ani- 

 mistic conceptions of nature. Theyi are the natural outgrowth of his 

 anthropopathie apprehension of things, and are only incidentally con- 

 nected with totemism. 



With regard to the claims of kinship between the totem and the 

 totem-group. Dr. Haddon seems to overlook entirely the large body of 

 contrary evidence on this head gathered by Dr. Boas from the North- 

 west tribes and by other students elsewhere. I do not see how any one 

 familiar with the later American evidence in this connection can hold 

 that the tote^m oibject is comimonly regarded by the totem-group as the 

 ancestor and founder of their clan. I know this was the earlier view 

 even of American students, hut this has been generally modified by later 

 and wider research. It is true the to'tems are usually addressed by the 

 natives themselves as " grandfather " or " grandmother," but these 

 terms, as most students are aware, among primitive races are more 

 terms of respect than terms of relationship. When an Indian wishes to 

 show regard to a person or an animal he always addresses him by a title 

 indicative of superior age, such as elder brother, uncle, father, grand- 

 father or the like. This custom I suspect, before it was properly under- 

 stood, had a great deal to do with misleading unwary students, and 

 possibly even the savages themselves, at times, into thinking that the 

 totem object was the ancestor and founder of the clan or gens. The 

 true relation between the totem object and the totem-group wall be 

 invariably found to be the same as that existing between the individual 

 £.nd his personal totem — a relation of " mystery " not of blood. I 



^ The Thompson Indians of B.C., by J. Tait. Memoirs of the Amer. Mus. 

 of Nat. Hist., Vol. II, p. 346, et seq. 



