584 STUDY FROM THE OMAHA. TRIBE: IMPORT OF THE TOTEM. 



the totem. The influence of this training in the religions 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, augmenting 

 the natural tie of blood relationship in an exogomous group. We find 

 this training further operative in the establishment of rites and cere- 

 monies in honor of the gentile totem, which bore a strong resemblance 

 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. 



Related 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 abstrac- 

 tions and anthropomorphism, blended with practical observations of 

 nature. Thus, in the varied experiences of disintegration and coales- 

 cing during past gener^itious, composite gentes came into existence 

 through the supposed affinity of totems. Oat of the ten Omaha gentes, 

 three only observe a single tabu; the other seven were composed of 

 subgroups, called Tow'-wo«-gdhow u-zhir«ga (u-zhi«ga, a small part), 

 each of which had its own special tabu, obligatory ui3on its own mem- 

 bers only, and not upon the other subgroups of the gens. While there 

 was no common totem in a comj)osite gens, the totems of the subgroups 

 which formed such gens had a kind of natural relation to each other; 

 the objects they symbolized were more or less affiliated in the natural 

 world, as, for example, in the Mow'-dhiw-ka-ga-Z^e gens (the earth makers), 

 where the totems of the subgroups represented the earth, the stone, 

 and the animals that lived in holes in the ground, as the wolf. 



The relation between the totems of composite gentes is not always 

 patent; it frequently exists because of fancied resemblances, or from a 

 subtle association growing out of conditions which have sequence in 

 the Indian mind, although disconnected, 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 oj)ening being left as an entrance way into 

 the inclosed space. This encampment was called by the untranslatable 

 name, Hu'-dhu-ga. When the entire tribe camped together, each of the 

 ten gentes, while still preserving its own internal order, opened its 

 line of tents and became a segment of the greater tribal Hu'-ghu-ga, 

 in which each gens had its fixed, unchangeable position, so that the 

 opening of the tribal Hu'-dhu-ga was always between the same two 

 gentes. Both these gentes were related to Thunder. That upon the 

 right, as one entered the circle, Avas the Iri-shta'-thuw-da — flashing eye — 

 known as the Thunder gens or people. To a subgroup of this gens 

 belonged the right of consecrating the child to the Thunder godj in 

 the ceremony of cutting the first lock of hair; another subgroup kept 

 the ritual used in filling the Sacred Tribal Pijies. On the left of the 



