BULL. 30] 



TOTEM 



793 



to be the descendants of their totemic 

 animals, they are in a sense the cousins, 

 so to speak, of the earthly animals which 

 are also descendants of the supernatural 

 animals. The clan taboos and incidental 

 beliefs need not be repeated here, as they 

 have been mentioned in dealing with cus- 

 toms and the clans. But the animals of 

 the earth, in general, are considered as 

 thinking beings, with interests in life, 

 customs, and feelings not unlike those of 

 men. Even to-day these mutual elements 

 in the lives of men and animals are felt 

 to exist. The animals are all believed to 

 have their protecting supernatural kins- 

 men, as well as men; for that reason in 

 hunting them their protecting spirits 

 have to be overcome before one can hope 

 to bring them down. It is the same with 

 human beings. If one's guardian spirit 

 is all right, no harm can come. So in 

 warfare, the idea is to strengthen one's 

 own guardian spirit and to weaken the 

 enemy's. In this respect hunting and 

 fishing are much like warfare. The 

 magic songs and formulas engage in the 

 supernatural struggle and open the way, 

 while the actual weapons do the work 

 when the spiritual barriers are removed. 



According to Boas (Kwakiutl Indians, 

 Rep. U. S. Nat. Mus., 1895, 1897) the 

 Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Bellabella, 

 and Kitamat have " animal totems in the 

 projier sense of this term," but these 

 tutelary guardians are not found among 

 the Kwakiutl, who belong to the same 

 linguistic stock as the Kitamat. This 

 author states that the natives do not 

 regard themselves as descendants of the 

 "totem " or tutelary, and that the north- 

 ern tribes of the coast Salish have no 

 "animal totem in the restricted sense of 

 this term." Boas was unable to obtain 

 any information regarding the conjectured 

 origin of the clan or gentile patron or 

 tutelary, except the dubious light drawn 

 from the native traditions, but states 

 that these legends correspond in char- 

 acter "almost exactly to the tales of the 

 acquisition of manitows among the east- 

 ern Indians, and they are evidence that 

 the 'totem' of this group of tribes is, in 

 the main, the hereditary manitow of a 

 family." He also states Ihat "each man 

 among these tribes acquires a guardian 

 spirit," but is restricted to only such as 

 belongs to his clan. Native tradition 

 can shed no satisfactory light on the ques- 

 tion of the source and origin of the clan 

 or gentile patron spirit. 



Writing of the California Indians in 

 general, Merriam (Am. Antlir., x, no. 

 4, 1908) says that these Indians believe 

 that they "came from" certain animals, 

 trees, or rocks. This belief, while agree- 

 ing in the main with that of the modern 

 more or less accultured Yuchi, is in 

 strong contrast with the evidence on this 



point from e. and n. w. America, where 

 apparently the peoples do not regard 

 themselves as descendants of their clan 

 or gentile patron spirits. jMerriam re- 

 marks that "of the several degrees and 

 phases of totemism, at least three occur 

 in California, namely, (1) the non-he- 

 reditary individual totem; (2) the heredi- 

 tary patriarchal totem; and (3) the he- 

 reditary matriarchal clan totem." He is 

 also averse to the proposed restriction 

 of the term "totemism" to "cases ordi- 

 narily known as clan totemism," for the 

 reason that "clan totemism is so ob- 

 viously only a higher development of 

 personal totemism," deeming such re- 

 striction purposeless. But there is no 

 proof that such a develo])ment of the 

 personal tutelary rests on a basis of fact. 



In the acquirement of the personal tute- 

 lary the Iroquois ritual does not contem- 

 plate the killing of the object seen in a 

 vision or in a dream for the purpose of 

 obtaining a part of it as a token, symbol, 

 or a memento of it. So adversative to this 

 practice of the Omaha and other tribes 

 is the Iroquois procedure that some per- 

 sons, who have seen a particular animal, 

 regarded their own fate and destiny so 

 closely connected with that of the tutelary 

 animal that they measured the length of 

 their own lives by that of their tute- 

 lary, believing that its death not only 

 portended but also hastened their own. 

 More fortunate did those regard them- 

 selves whose tutelary was some material 

 object, embued with life by the creative 

 breath of myth, whose destruction was 

 not so certain or so common as that of an 

 animal or a bird. Thus it is seen how di- 

 verse are the dogmas and beliefs con- 

 nected with the personal tutelary. More- 

 over, in the rites designed to obtain a 

 personal tutelary for a youth, it was the 

 duty of the father's clan, or phratry of 

 clans, at the New Year ceremony of the 

 Iroquois, to receive and to interpret the 

 dream or vision, and to make of wood, 

 bark, stone, or other material a symbol, 

 token, or representation of the object 

 divined from the dream or vision t(j be 

 the tutelary of the youth, which is given 

 the youth to keep and carefully preserve. 



Kroeber (Ethnol. Gros Ventre, 147, 

 1908) writes that the Gros Ventres 

 (Atsina) are organized into gentes simi- 

 lar to those of the Siksika (Blackfeet) 

 and the Sioux, bearing nicknames which 

 are in no way totemic; that descent is 

 traced through the paternal line; that 

 there is prohibition of marriage within 

 each gens; and that the prohibition of 

 marriage extends to members of the 

 mother's gens, for the members of both 

 the father's and the mother's gentes are 

 regarded as related within the prohibited 

 degrees of kinship. He also states that 

 only some of the Gros Ventres seek to 



