54 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (VoL. XXXII. 
people, as legends declare it to have been practiced when the Tiyo 
was initiated into its mysteries in the world which he visited.” “I 
am inclined to believe that the snake dance has two main purposes, 
the making of rain and the growth of corn, and renewed research 
confirms my belief, elsewhere expressed, that ophiolatry has little or 
nothing to do with it.” 
The Import of the Totem.! — Miss Fletcher’s studies have been 
aptly characterized as “ sympathetic and thorough,” and the present 
paper fully demonstrates the truth of the observation. Within the 
limits of a few pages is given a remarkably clear and concise account 
of the idea of the totem, one of the most obscure and perplexing 
subjects with which the student of American ethnology has to deal. 
The totem is based upon the Indian’s belief concerning nature and 
life, and it is only through an explanation of his customs and prac- 
tices, a knowledge of his rites and ceremonies, that we may come to 
know what this belief is. 
There are two classes of totems among the Omahas: (1) personal, 
belonging to the individual, and (2) social, that of societies and 
gentes. The personal totem is obtained by means of a puberty rite 
in which the youth fasts until he sees or hears in a dream or vision 
some animal or other form. This thing becomes the special medium 
through which he can obtain supernatural aid. It is his duty to 
seek and slay the animal seen in his vision (‘in cases where the 
vision has been of no concrete form, symbols are taken to represent 
it’) and preserve some part of it. This amulet represented the 
power of the whole class to which it belonged, a conception growing 
out of the anthropomorphic projection of man’s characteristics upon 
all nature and the belief in the continuity of life, “making it impos- 
sible for the part and the entirety to be disassociated.” 
“ The totem’s simplest form of social action was in the religious 
societies, whose structure was based upon the grouping together of 
men who had seen similar visions, . . . blood relationship was 
ignored.” “In the early struggle for existence, the advantages 
accruing from a permanent kinship group, both in resisting aggres- 
sion and in securing a food supply, could not fail to have been per- 
1 The Import of the Totem: A Study from the Omaha Tribe. By Alice C. 
Fletcher, Thaw Fellow and Assistant in Ethnology, Peabody Museum, Harvard 
University. A paper read before the Section of Anthropology of the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science at the Detroit meeting, August, 1897- 
Salem, The Salem Press, 1897. 
