562 
group, that group is termed a phratry. An Australian tribe is 
generally divided into two exogamous phratries. 
North America is the home of the term ‘‘ totem,” and though 
typical totemism does occur there, it is often modified by other 
customs. In Australia we find true totemism rampant, and it 
occurs in Africa, where also it is subject to much modification. 
Quite recently the Rev. J. Roscue has published an important 
paper (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxxii. 1902, p. 25) on the 
Baganda, in which he describes a perfectly typical case of 
totemism. Among the Baganda there are a number of kins 
each of which has a totem, mzzzvo. The kin, £za, is called 
after its totem ; no member of a kin may kill or eat his totem, 
though one of another kin may do so with impunity. No one 
mentions his totem. Old people affirm their fathers found some 
things injurious to them either as food or to their personal 
safety, and made their children promise not to kill or eat that 
particular thing. No man may marry into his mother’s kin, 
because all the members of it are looked upon as sisters of his 
mother; nor may he marry into his father’s kin except in the 
case of two very large kins. In Uganda, royalty follows the 
totem of the mother, whilst the common people follow the 
paternal totem. Each kin has its own special part of the 
country where the dead are always buried. For sympathy or 
assistance the member of a kin always turns to his particular 
kin. From what Mr. Roscoe says about the married women of 
the Green Locust kin, it is evident that the magical aspect of 
totemism is present as it is in Australia and Torres Straits. 
The Baganda are thus a true totemic people who are in an 
interesting transitional condition between matriarchy and 
patriarchy. Totemic practices also occur in various parts of 
Asia. 
To put the matter briefly, totemism consists of the following 
five elements :-— 
(1) Social organisation with 
symbols. 
(2) Reciprocal responsibilities between the kin and the totem. 
(3) Magical increase! or repression of the totem by the 
kinsmen. 
(4) Social duties of the kinsmen. 
(5) Myths of explanation. 
Totemism is only one of several animal cults, and it is now 
necessary to consider certain cults that have been termed 
totemic before I proceed with the main object of this Address. 
Manitu (Guardian Spirzt). 
Very widely spread in North America was the belief in 
guardian spirits which appeared to young men in visions after 
prayer and fasting. It then became the duty of the youth to 
seek until he should find the animal he had seen in his trance ; 
when found he must slay and preserve some part of it. In 
cases when the vision had been of no concrete form, a symbol 
was taken to represent it: this memento was ever after to be 
the sign of his vision, the most sacred thing he could ever 
possess, for by it his natural powers were so to be reinforced as 
to give him success as a bunter, victory as a warrior, and even 
power to see into the future. 
The guardian spirit was obtained in various ways by different 
American tribes, but the dream apparition was the most widely 
spread. Dr. Frazer (‘‘ Totemism,” 1887, pp. 2, 53) calls it 
“individual totem”; Miss Fletcher speaks of the object 
dreamed of (the wahwbe of the Omaha) as the ‘ personal totem ” 
or simply as the ‘‘totem”; it is termed by the Algonkin 
manitu, by the Huron ofkz, by the Salish Indians sz/za, and 
nagual in Mexico. Perhaps it would be best to adopt either 
wahube or manitu to express the guardian spirit. 
Miss Alice C. Fletcher finds that among the Omaha (‘‘ The 
Import of the Totem,” Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci., Detroit 
Meeting, August, 1897) those who have received similar visions, 
that is, those who have the same wahude, formed brotherhoods 
which gradually developed a classified membership with initi- 
atory rites and other rituals. These religious societies acquired 
great power ; still later, according to this observer, an artificial 
social structure, the ‘* gens,” was organised on the lines of the 
earlier religious societies. Each ‘‘ gens” had its particular 
totem kinsmen and totem 
1 The first intimation of this aspect of totemism is entirely due to the 
researches of Messrs Spencer and Gillen (‘‘The Native Tribes of Central 
Australia,” 1899). Dr. J. G. Frazer, appreciating the value of these obser- 
vations, extended the conception to totemism generally, /ousn. Anthrop. 
Inst., xxviii. 1899, p. 285, read December 14, 1898; the Hortn7ehtly Review, 
April, 1899, pp. 664, 665; cf also ‘‘ Israel and Totemism,” by S. A. Cook, 
Jewish Quart. Review, April, 1902, pp. 25, 26 of reprint. 
NO. 1718, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
[OcTOBER 2, 1902 
name, which referred directly or symbolically to its totem, and its 
members practised exogamy and traced their descent only through 
the father. ‘‘ As totems could be obtained in but one way— 
through the rite of vision—the totem of a ‘ gens’ must have come 
into existence in that manner, and must have represented the 
manifestation of an ancestor’s vision, that of a man whose 
ability and opportunity served to make him the founder of a 
family.” Mr. C. Hill-Tout ( Zvavs. Roy. Soc. Canada, 2nd ser., 
Vii., sect. 2, 1901, p. 6), in discussing the origin of the totemism 
of the aborigines of British Columbia, states: ‘‘ There is little 
room for doubt that our clan totems are a development of the 
personal or individual totem or tutelar spirit, as this is in turn 
a development of an earlier fetishism.” 
Dr. F. Boas points out (‘* Report U.S. Nat. Mus.,” 1895 
(1897), pp. 322, 323, 334) that the tribes of the northern portion 
of the North Pacific group of peoples, such as the Tlingit, Haida 
and Tsimshian, have a maternal organisation with animal 
totems ; the clans bear the names of their respective totems and 
are exogamous. The central tribes, particularly the Kwakiutl, 
show a peculiar transitional stage. The southern tribes have a 
purely paternal organisation, and their groups are simple 
village communities which are often exogamic. 
Dr. Boas distinctly asserts (/.c.,p. 323) that ‘‘ the natives do not 
consider themselves descendants of the totems; all endeavours 
to obtain information regarding the supposed origin of the rela- 
tion between man and animal invariably led to the telling of a 
myth in which it is stated how a certain ancestor of the 
clan in question obtained his totem. . . . It is evident that 
legends of this character correspond almost exactly to the tales. 
of the acquisition of manitows among the eastern Indians, and 
they are evidence that the totem of this group of tribes is in the 
main the hereditary manitow of a family. This analogy be- 
comes still clearer when we consider that each man among these 
tribes acquires a guardian spirit, but that he can acquire only 
such as belong to his clan. Thus a person may have the general 
crest of his clan, and besides use as his personal crest such 
guardian spirits as he has acquired. This accounts partly for 
the great multiplicity of combinations of crests on the carvings 
of these people.” 
Throughout a considerable portion of North America there 
appears to be a mixture of variously developed cults of the 
totem and of the »anztu. It is not perhaps possible at present 
to dogmatise as to the relative chronology of these two cults. 
Personally I am in favour of the superior antiquity of the totem 
cult, as the conception of an individual spirit-helper appears to 
me to be of a higher grade than the ideas generally expressed 
by purely totemic peoples, or what may be gathered by implica- 
tion from a study of their ceremonies. 
The social organisation appears to be very weak in some 
Californian tribes ; our knowledge of the Seri in this respect is 
very meagre, but Dr. Dixon definitely denies (Lz//. Amer. Mus. 
Nat. Hist., xvii., pt. 2, 1902, p. 35) the existence of totemic 
grouping among the Maidu. 
Accepting then for the present the priority of the totem cult, 
we find a substratum of totemism underlying many of the social 
organisations in North America. Religious societies are a 
noticeable feature of the social life of North-west America ; 
those societies have the guardian spirit (#anz¢z) as their central 
idea, but it appears as if the organisation is rooted in a clan 
(matriarchal totemic kin) system which has been smothered and 
virtually destroyed by the parasitic growth. The problems to 
be solved in North-west America are very complicated, and we 
must await with patience further researches. It is perfectly 
evident from the researches of Boas, Nelson, Hill-Tout and 
others that comparatively recent great changes have taken place. 
Dr. Boas indeed states that ‘‘the present system of tribes and 
clans (of the Kwakiutl) is of recent growth and has undergone 
considerable changes” (/.c., p. 333). An interesting illustration 
of this is found in the alteration in the organisation of the 
(Kwakiutl) tribe during the season of the winter ceremonial. 
‘«During this period the place of the clans is taken by a number of 
societies, namely, the groups of all those individuals upon whom 
the same or almost the same power or secret has been bestowed 
by one of the spirits” (/.c., p. 418). The characteristic North 
1 But Mr. E. S. Hartland points out (‘‘ Folk-lore,”’ xi. 1g00, p. 61) that we 
have clear evidence from the legends of the descent at all events of some of 
the clans from non-human ancestors; and Mr. Hill-Tout says: ‘ Among 
the Salish tribes it is uniformly believed that in the early days, before the 
time of the tribal heroes or great transformers, the beings who then inhabited 
the world partook of the character of both men and animals, assuming the 
form of either apparently at will.’ 
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