302 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 166. 



no immediate hold upon the supernatural, 

 as did the individual totem to its possessor ; 

 outside the rites already referred to, it 

 served solely as a mark of kinship, and its 

 connection with the supernatural was mani- 

 fest only in its punishment of the viola- 

 tion of tabu. Briefly stated, the inculca- 

 tion of the gentile totem was that the 

 individual belonged to a definite kinship 

 group, from which he could never sever 

 himself without incurring supernatural 

 punishment. 



Social growth depended upon the estab- 

 lishment of distinct groups and the one 

 power adequate for the purpose was that 

 ■which was believed to be capable of enforc- 

 ing the union of the people by supernatu- 

 rally inflicted penalties. The constructive 

 influence of the totem is apparent in the 

 unification of the To»i'-won-gdhon, or gens, 

 without which the organization of the 

 tribe would have been impossible. 



The Influence of the Religious Societies upon 

 the Gens. —In the religious societies the 

 people were made familiar with the idea 

 that a common vision could create a sort 

 of brotherhood. This fraternity was recog- 

 nized and expressed by the observance 

 of rites and ceremonies, in which all the 

 members took part, setting forth the pecu- 

 liar power of the totem. The influence of 

 this training in the religious societies is 

 traceable in the structure of the gens, where 

 the sign of a vision, the totem, became the 

 symbol of a bond between the people, aug- 

 menting the natural tie of blood relation- 

 ship in an exogamous group. We find this 

 training further operative in the establish- 

 m.ent of rites and ceremonies in honor of 

 the gentile totem, which bore a strong re- 

 semblance to those already familiar to the 

 people in the societies. In the gens the 

 hereditary chief was the priest, and this 

 centralization of authority tended to foster 

 the political development of the gens. 



Belated Totems. — Certain fixed habits of 



thought among the Omahas growing out of 

 their theories and beliefs concerning nature 

 and life — upon which the totem was based 

 — present a curious mixture of abstractions 

 and anthropomorphism, blended with prac- 

 tical observations of nature. Thus, in the 

 varied experiences of disintegration and 

 coalescing during past generations, com- 

 posite gentes came into existence through 

 the supposed afiinity of totems. Out of the 

 ten Omaha gentes, three only observe a 

 single tabu ; the other seven were com- 

 posed of sub-groups, called Tow'-wow-gdhon 

 u-zhinga (u-zhiwga, a small part), each of 

 which had its own special tabu, obligatory 

 upon its own members only, and not upon 

 the other sub-groups of the gens. While 

 there was no common totem in a com- 

 posite gens, the totems of the sub-groups 

 which formed such gens had a kind of 

 natural relation to each other ; the objects 

 they symbolized were more or less aflBliated 

 in the natural world, as, for example, in 

 the Mo?i'-dhin-ka-ga-/ie gens (the earth 

 makers), where the totems of the sub- 

 groups represented the earth, the stone 

 and the animals that lived in holes in the 

 ground, as the wolf. 



The relation between the totems of com- 

 posite gentes is not always patent ; it fre- 

 quently exists because of fancied resem- 

 blances, or from a subtle association 

 growing out of conditions which have se- 

 quence in the Indian mind, although dis- 

 connected and at variance with our own 

 observation and reason. 



The Totem in the Tribal Organization. — The 

 families within a gens pitched their tents 

 in a particular order or form, which was 

 that of a nearly complete circle, an open- 

 ing being left as an entrance way into the 

 the enclosed space. This encampment was 

 called by the untranslatable name Hu'- 

 dhu-ga. When the entire tribe camped to- 

 gether, each of the ten gentes, while still 

 preserving its own internal order, opened 



