president's address — SECTION F. 215 



or Tohallu and Jahallu {ballu = pigeon). That names of birds should 

 have been selected in preference to other names can, I think, be ex- 

 plained by the fact that the birds attracted more attention than the 

 few quadrupeds living in forests and hiding in trees and amongst rocks. 

 In other parts, the selection of plant totems would seem to be in recog- 

 nition of the fact that certain plants play a conspicuous role in the 

 life of the tribe as purveyors of food. 



Even at the present day new group names will occasionally come to 

 light, and their origin gives us a hint how other names have originated. 

 A few years ago I observed in a New Ireland village a carving in honor 

 of a dead native, representing a bird which I had never before seen 

 represented as totem. The carver, with great realistic truth, had 

 represented a crane, and investigation showed that this bird was a 

 totem of a small group of people having the following origin. Years 

 back a canoe containing several men and women had drifted ashore ; 

 the men were killed, but the women were taken by the natives as wives, 

 and as their totem was unknown it was found necessary to create a 

 new totem in order to designate the offspring. The crane was selected 

 for this purpose. At the time I was able to trace about 30 male and 

 female Cranes of all ages, and their foreign descent was plainly per- 

 ceptible, many having inherited the straight hair and lighter color of 

 their ancestresses, who, without doubt, must have been straight-haired, 

 light-skinned women who had drifted there from a Micronesian or 

 Polynesian island. An old man voluntarily offered the information 

 that the long, straight feathers of the bird were like the straight hair 

 of the castaway women, whom as a young man he had seen and still 

 remembered. It seems to me that certain characteristic features, which 

 were a reminder of some particular bird, originally caused women of 

 certain tribes to be called by the name of this bird. 



In Buka I have observed a similar thing. Here a canoe drifted on 

 shore in the beginning of 1880. The men were killed, but three women 

 were spared and taken as wives by the natives. I have known two of 

 these women, who told me they belonged to Asarai, in the Gilbert 

 Islands. These two were married to men of the Pigeon group, and their 

 children were supposed to belong to the Frigate Bird group, the Pigeons^ 

 of course, having taken it for granted that the women belonged to the 

 Frigate Bird group, in order that they might be able to take them as 

 their wives. 



In explaining native customs and their origin I have always found 

 that it is necessary to go back to the simplest way of explanation, and 

 I think that the explanation of the origin of totem as I have briefly 

 outlined it agrees perfectly with native reasoning. The system of totem 

 in itself would undoubtedly in the course of time lead to further develop- 

 ment ; it would bring into closer contact tribes who formerly lived in 

 hostility to one another ; it would effect an exchange of women, to the 

 mutual benefit of the tribes ; it wou^ld create family ties where none 

 existed before ; it would create the conception of property, both tribal 

 and individual ; in short, it would be the basis of social development. 

 But, together with this development, new customs would spring up, 

 modifying older customs and institutions or adding to them, so that 



