166 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 
charming wife for his son, he took her home and educated her unti. 
she was fit to be married. She consented to be the son’s wife 
cautioning her husband to use her well. Some time after their 
marriage, however, being out of temper, he struck her, when she 
screamed, and rushed away into the water; but not without leaving 
behind her a beautiful daughter, who became afterwards the mother 
of the race1.” 
Members of a clan in Mandailing, on the west coast of Sumatra, 
assert that they are descended from a tiger, and at the present day, 
when a tiger is shot, the women of the clan are bound to offer betel 
to the dead beast. When members of this clan come upon the tracks 
of a tiger, they must, as a mark of homage, enclose them with 
three little sticks. Further, it is believed that the tiger will not 
attack or lacerate his kinsmen, the members of the clan*% The 
Battas of Central Sumatra are divided into a number of clans which 
have for their totems white buffaloes, goats, wild turtle-doves, dogs, 
cats, apes, tigers, and so forth; and one of the explanations which 
they give of their totems is that these creatures were their ancestors, 
and that their own souls after death can transmigrate into the 
animals®. In Amboyna and the neighbouring islands the inhabitants 
of some villages aver that they are descended from trees, such as 
the Capellenia moluccana, which had been fertilised by the Pandion 
Haliaetus. Others claim to be sprung from pigs, octopuses, croco- 
diles, sharks, and eels. People will not burn the wood of the trees 
from which they trace their descent, nor eat the flesh of the animals 
which they regard as their ancestors. Sicknesses of all sorts are 
believed to result from disregarding these taboos*. Similarly in 
Ceram persons who think they are descended from crocodiles, 
serpents, iguanas, and sharks will not eat the flesh of these animals® 
1 The Lord Bishop of Labuan, ‘‘On the Wild Tribes of the North-West Coast of 
Borneo,” Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London, New Series, nu. (London, 
1863), pp. 26sg. Such stories conform to a well-known type which may be called the 
Swan-Maiden type of story, or Beauty and the Beast, or Cupid and Psyche. The occurrence 
of stories of this type among totemic peoples, such as the Tshi-speaking negroes of the Gold 
Coast, who tell them to explain their totemic taboos, suggests that all such tales may have 
originated in totemism. I shall deal with this question elsewhere. 
2 H. Ris, ‘‘De Onderafdeeling Klein Mandailing Oeloe en Pahantan en hare Bevolking 
met uitzondering van de Oeloes,” Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- 
landsch-Indié, xuvt. (1896), p. 473. 
3 J. B. Neumann, “Het Pane en Bila-stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra,” Tijdschrift 
van het Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede Serie, m1. Afdeeling, Meer 
uitgebreide Artikelen, No. 2 (Amsterdam, 1886), pp. 311 sq.; id. iv. Tweede Serie, rv. 
Afdeeling, Meer uitgebreide Artikelen, No. 1 (Amsterdam, 1887), pp. 8 sq. 
4 J. G. F. Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The Hague, 
1886), pp. 32,61; G. W. W. C. Baron van Hoévell, Ambon en meer bepaaldelijk de Oeliasers 
(Dordrecht, 1875), p. 152. 
5 J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. p. 122. 
