A STUDY FROM THE OMAHA TEIBE: THE IMPOET OF 



THE TOTEM.i 



By Alice C. Fletcher,^ 



Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 



In this study of the significance of the Omaha totem, the aim will be 

 to set forth, as clearly as possible, first, what these Indians believed 

 concerning their totems, and, secondly, what these totems stood for in 

 the tribal structure. 



There will be no attempt in this paper to treat the subject of totems 

 in a world sense. The experience of many years of research within a 

 limited area has shown the writer that close, careful studies of the 

 various tribes and races of the two hemispheres are as yet too few to 

 afford sufficient evidence for a final summing up from which to deduce 

 points held in common, or the equally important lines of divergence, 

 found in the beliefs and customs involved in the use of totems. 



It is proper to call attention at the outset to a few of the i^erplexities 

 of a research at first hand in a matter as recondite as that under con- 

 sideration. There is the difficulty of adjusting one's own mental atti- 

 tude, of preventing one's own mental atmosphere from deflecting and 

 distorting the image of the Indian's thought. The fact that the impli- 

 cations of the totem are so rooted in the Indian's mentality that he is 

 unconscious of any strangeness in them, and is unable to discuss them 

 objectively, constitutes a grave obstacle to be overcome. Explanations 

 of his beliefs, customs, and practices have to be sought by indirect 

 rather than by direct methods, have to be eliminated from a tangle of 

 contradictions and verified by the careful noting of the many little 

 unconscious acts and sayings of the people, which let in a flood of 

 light, revealing the Indian's mode of thought, and disclosing its under- 

 lying ideas. By these slow processes, with the analysis of his songs, 

 rituals, and ceremonies, we can at last come upon his beliefs concerning 

 nature and life, and it is upon these that the totem is based. 



1 The vowels in the Indian words have the continental sound, n is the nasal n ; 

 p=:a sound between b and p; t =: a sound between d and t; z = a sound between 

 z and th; th=:th in thither; dh = th in the; /i. = the German sound of ch as in 

 bach ; e = e in met. 



^A paper read before the section of anthropology of the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science, at the Detroit meeting, August, 1897. 



SM 97 37 577 



