Social Origins and Primal Law

TOTEMS AND MAGICAL SOCIETIES

A man has other social groups than his own totem group in certain regions. Totem groups among the Arunta, we have seen, work magic 'to secure the increase of the plant or animal which gives its name to the totem.' The Arunta have no myth as to the origin of these performances, styled Intichiuma.259 This, as far as Australia is concerned, seems to be a peculiarity of the Arunta system alone, or all but alone, and, as we saw, it has even been suggested that these rites are the origin of Totemism. But such rites appear to be most firmly established and organised among societies which are passing out of Totemism. Such a society is that of the Omaha tribe of North America, where descent is reckoned in the male line.260 Among the Omahas we find the Elk totem group with male kinship; they may not touch a male Elk, or eat its flesh: if they do, as in New Caledonia, they break out into sores. This kindred, with the Bears, 'worship the thunder' in spring. Their special business and duty is 'to stop the rain.' But, if they are a Weather Society, in this respect, that fact does not appear in their totem names, Elk and Bear.

Other Omaha gentes, or 'subgentes,' are also totemic, and are named from that which they may not eat, as wild turkeys, wild geese, cranes, and blackbirds. The people of the black-bird totem actually do a little totem magic, against their totem; they chew and spit out corn, to prevent the blackbirds from feeding on the crops.261 The reptile group does not touch or eat reptiles, but, if worms injure the corn, they pound a few worms up into flour, make a soup thereof, and eat it (is this 'totem sacrifice'?), all for the good of the crops. The worm group does this magic (involving the eating of its totem) not for the benefit of worms (as among the Arunta) but to control the mischievous action of worms.

Now turning to Magical or Magico-Religious Societies among these Indians, we find a Wind Society, but it contains members of many totems, buffalo, eagle, hawk, and so on, plus 'The South wind people,' who, apparently, may be a totem group of that name, which, as among the Arunta, might work wind-magic.262 But our authority, the late Mr. Dorsey, calls all the members of this Wind Magic Society 'Wind gentes,' and surely this breeds much confusion. By a gens he usually means a totem kin with male descent (by 'clan,' he means a totem kin with female descent). Thus all 'wind gentes' ought to be wind totem groups: only wind totem groups ought to be in the Wind Society, which is not the case: and all water gentes, or earth, or fire gentes ought to be of water, earth, or fire totems. But this, again, is not the case.

All sorts of totem kindreds enter into the earth, wind, fire, and water Magical Societies, or Magico-Religious Societies. They belong to them as members of any universities, or of certain selected universities, may belong to an University Club: or, again, may be Catholics, Anglicans, Brownists, or Presbyterians. These American Magical Societies, though composed of members of totem kindreds, are not, in themselves, totemic societies. Members of other totems serve in the societies which work magic for earth, wind, fire, and so on. Among the Arunta, on the other hand, the magic for each object is worked solely by the men who have that object for totem. To a certain extent, however, this rule is changing, and members of other totems may, at least, be present at each totem's Intichiuma, or magical rites.263 'In addition to the members of the totem' (water) 'other men are invited to come, though they will not be allowed to take any part in the actual Intichiuma ceremony.' From presence, by invitation, to participation in the rites (as in the American Shamanistic Societies), is a step which may come to be taken, and thus the Arunta totem groups would become mere 'Shamanistic Societies.'

A most curious and interesting account of the Omaha Magical Societies is given by Miss Alice Fletcher, in her essay, already cited, on 'The Import of the Totem.' To obtain the 'personal totem' (manitu) a youth must first listen to his elders. They tell him 'to go forth to cry to Wa-kon-da. You shall not ask for any particular thing, whatever is good, that may Wa-kon-da give.'

Fiat voluntas tua!

'Four days and nights upon the hills the youth shall pray, crying, and, when he stops, shall wipe his tears with the palms of his hands, lift his wet hands to heaven, then lay them on the earth.'

To the ordinary mind, this describes such prayers as are the petitions of the Saints. But, in accordance with the views of the official school of American anthropology, it is averred that nothing of the kind is intended by the Omaha. 'There is no evidence that they did regard the power represented by that word (Wa-kon-da) as a supreme being, nor is there any intimation that they had ever conceived of a single great ruling spirit,' says Miss Fletcher (1897).

The prayer is evidence enough. Prayer is directed to a person, and whether he is envisaged as 'a spirit,' or not, is a mere detail of metaphysical terminology. If Miss Fletcher is right, Wa-kon-da is a pantheistic conception, but as He, (or It) also listens to prayer, He (or It) is personal. We see rather an anthropomorphic conception of deity, passing towards pantheism, or to divinity no longer anthropomorphic, than a notion of impersonal force immanent in the universe, passing towards anthropomorphism – as in Miss Fletcher's theory. The idea of such a force, or cosmic rapport (the Maori mana), is, indeed, familiar to us in the speculations of the lower barbaric races. It does credit to their metaphysics, but, prima facie, seems likely to be later in evolution than the idea of an anthropomorphic Maker, like the Australian Baiame.

At all events, the Omaha appears to live, in prayer, on a high religious level, and it is open to the friends of religious borrowing, to say that he took his creed from Europeans. I am not certain that Miss Fletcher is indisposed to agree with me on this point of Red Indian unborrowed theism. In her Indian Song and Story,264 she gives Pawnee songs, 'hitherto sealed from the knowledge of the white race.' Here is one:

Ti-ra-wa is Hau-ars, 'a contraction of the word meaning father.' The song is used to still children who cry at a religious ceremony.

However it be, the Omaha prays to Wa-kon-da, not for 'any particular thing,' but for whatever, in the gift of Wa-kon-da, is good, and mainly for a manitu ('personal totem'). The Omaha also believe in telepathy. 'Thought and will can be projected to help a friend.' A magical society exists, to concentrate and direct this expenditure of energy, and the process is strengthened by such things as the neophyte beholds in vision, after prayer to Wa-kon-da. He sent an answer to prayer, a feather of a bird, a tuft of a beast's hair, a crystal, a black stone, representing the species, or element of nature, which was to be the neophyte's 'personal totem,' or manitu. If it were thunder, the man could control the elements; if it were an eagle, he had an eagle eye for the future; if it were a bear (or a badger), he was not so gifted.

Now, according to Miss Fletcher, the Bear Magical Society is composed of men, who, after prayer, have seen the bear in dream or vision; those who saw representatives 'of thunder or water beings' form the Society which deals with the weather. 'The membership came from every kinship group' (totem kin) 'in the tribe.' Thus the Magical Societies are composed of men of any totem, and, the less purely totemic the tribe, the stronger is the Magical Society.

The totem kins now, among the Omaha, have descent in the male line. All this is 'late,' and 'late' is the totem priesthood held by 'hereditary chiefs of the gens.' Miss Fletcher regards the totem of the 'gens,' with the beliefs crystallised around it, as an ingenious 'expedient,' with a social 'purpose!' the totem of each kindred having been inherited from the vision and manitu of some ancestral chief. We need not again point out that, even now, among the Omaha, advanced as they are, manitus are not hereditable, and that Miss Fletcher's system cannot account for Totemism in tribes which reckon descent on the spindle side. Miss Fletcher justly remarks that the real totem, 'the gentile totem,' 'gave no immediate hold upon the supernatural, as did the individual totem' (manitu) 'to its possessor. It served solely as a mark of kinship, and its connection with the supernatural was manifest only in its punishment of the violation of tabu.'

In brief, the real totem, and the individual manitu, with its magical societies, are two things totally apart, and apart we must keep them, in our studies of early society. Not to do so is to make the topic incomprehensible.

TOTEM SURVIVALS

In other books, especially in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, and Custom and Myth, I have examined apparent survivals of Totemism, in ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and other civilised countries. Of these the most notable are the Greek myths of descent of families from animals, explained as the temporary vehicles of Zeus or Apollo: and the worship of special animals by each of the Nomes of Egypt. Other arguments I have offered, especially in the case of Apollo and the Shrew Mouse. I remain of the opinion that many of the Greek mythical and religious phenomena noted, are most probably to be explained as survivals of a totemic past. Of course Totemism is only one element in animal worship, and the Corn Spirit, disguised as almost any animal you please, may be one of the other elements. But, as far as I have studied the subject, I agree with Mr. Tylor in his 'protest against the manner in which totems have been placed almost at the foundation of religion. Totemism … has been exaggerated out of proportion to its real theological magnitude… The rise and growth of ideas of deity, a branch of knowledge requiring the largest range of information and the greatest care in inference, cannot, I hold, be judged on the basis of a section of theology of secondary importance – namely, animal worship – much less of a special section of that – namely, the association of a species of animals (and of a vast variety of other things) 'with a clan of men which results in Totemism. A theoretical structure has been raised quite too wide and high for such a foundation.'265 The totem god himself I regard as only the hypothesis by which certain barbaric races account to themselves for the survivals of Totemism among them. The so-called 'totem sacrament' is not 'god-eating,' but a piece of magic, used in ceremonies designed to foster – or to vex and annoy – the totem. As Mr. Tylor writes, 'till the totem sacrament is vouched for by some more real proof, it had better fall out of speculative theology.'

DID THE ANCESTORS OF THE CIVILISED RACES PASS THROUGH THE AUSTRALIAN STAGE?

That the ancestors of the Aryan-speaking peoples passed through the 'stone age' of culture, few will deny. That they also passed through the totemic stage as regards marriage law is, however, a problem perhaps not to be solved. For reasons unknown, the 'white' races (not to speak of Egyptians, Babylonians, Chinese, and Japanese) have a peculiar aptitude for civilisation, are peculiarly accessible to ideas. It might therefore be argued that conceivably they were readily accessible to the idea of blood kinship. The maternal affection, in a race whose children (unlike the offspring of the lower animals) are so long in attaining maturity, cannot but suggest the idea of blood kinship. Among totemic peoples it seems that this idea was originally defined by the totem name, a definition at once too wide and too narrow. It is not physically unthinkable that our own ancestors may have been more acutely intelligent, and, if so, why should not they simply forbid unions between persons too near akin in blood? We have found no such moral or instinctive reason among totemic peoples who were, apparently, led to exogamy, first by non-moral causes, or causes in which the moral element was not explicit, and then, by aid of corollaries from rules thus based, came to forbid marriages of 'too near flesh.' Without the training of totemic institutions, it is hard to see how the Aryan-speaking peoples (however naturally gifted from the first) arrived at the same conception of incest. It seems absurd to suppose that black men and red men arrived at the idea of incest, and at the laws which prohibit it, by the devious and unpromising path of Totemism, while white men reached the same point in some other way. Yet if it has appeared difficult to find traces of Totemism among the Melanesians, much more difficult must it be to prove that races with so long a civilised history as, for example, the Greeks, were once under totemic institutions.

I have already indicated my inclination to believe that Totemism has left its traces, in Greece, in the myths of descent from bulls, bears, swans, dogs, ants, and so forth, and in certain peculiar aspects of animal worship. It is usual for scholars to explain these facts away, as things borrowed by early Greeks from some other race. But 'the receiver is as bad as the thief,' and if Greeks were capable of accepting totemic ideas, they were capable of evolving totemic institutions. We are not to invent an ideal 'Aryan,' and then to explain all his traces of savagery as borrowings by him from some unknown prior race. There is no reason at all for supposing that the peoples who speak languages called, for convenience, 'Aryan,' were better bred than any other peoples at the beginning.

It would greatly add to the force of the presumptions in favour of an 'Aryan' totemic past, if we could point to apparent survivals not only in myth and early art, but in actual institutions. Now there are Greek institutions, in Attica, the 'deme,' the genos, and the phratria, which may be interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as survivals of Totemism. We have seen that gens (equivalent to the Greek γένος [genos]) and that phratria (Φρατρία) are used, by certain students, to designate the totem kin, and the two 'primary exogamous divisions' (say Dilbi and Kupathin) of Australia and North America. To use gens thus is misleading, especially as 'totem kin' is adequate and unambiguous. But we have here employed 'phratria' to designate the 'primary exogamous division,' because no better word is handy, while we do not maintain that the Attic phratria is a survival of the institution usual in Australia.

Messrs. Fison and Howitt, in an instructive paper, have offered, as a provisional hypothesis, the theory that the Attic deme (a local association) may have arisen from the kind of local tribe (or horde) in Australia, while the Attic phratries and γένη (associations depending on birth and kinship) were survivals of the 'primary exogamous divisions' and totem kins.266 The present writer had made similar suggestions long ago.267 Concerning the γένος and Φρατρία we know but little: inevitably, for we have seen that, even in Australia, still more in Melanesia, local names and local communities are beginning to encroach on and usurp the authority of the totem kin, and other associations based on common blood, real or reputed. Infinitely more must this have been the case in Greece. If savage phratries and totem kins once existed in Attica, they must have been nearly obliterated long before the historical period. At most they would only survive in connection with ritual and religion. Again, our definitions of γένος and Φρατρία are derived from late grammarians and lexicographers. Thus our means of knowledge are limited and darkling.

Messrs. Howitt and Fison start from the horde, or tribe, the horde meaning the largest local Australian community, composed of subtribes, if we are not merely to say 'tribe,' and leave 'horde' out of the question. The members of the horde or tribe are, as we know, of many various totems, but of only two 'primary exogamous divisions' or phratries. Into these the members are born, mostly taking the mother's phratry and totem. As a rule, both father and mother belong to the tribe, but if a woman does come in out of an alien tribe, her children, though deriving totem and phratry names through her, are of their father's local tribe. An alien woman may be assigned, by the elder men, to this or that totem: or to the totem corresponding to that which she had in her own local tribe. The children of male aliens follow the totem of their mother, a member of the tribe.

In Attica, too, was a local community, the deme – thus Thucydides was a Halimusian by deme. The historical demes were organised by Cleisthenes, on a local basis. Some of them bore the names of the γένη which occupied them, and often the names were derived from plants. Either these plants were characteristic of the localities, or conceivably the γένη had old totemic plant names, like the plum and other vegetable totems of the Australians. All about the local demes, the members of the phratriæ were scattered, like members of various totem names among the Australian local tribes. An alien could belong to a local deme, but not to a Φρατρία. His children, if by marriage with a free woman, were reckoned in her father's Φρατρία male descent prevailing, of course, in Attica. In Australia the tribes-woman's children by an alien would usually go to her totem and 'primary exogamous division.' The child of an alien woman, in Attica, even if the father was high born, could not be admitted to a Φρατρία: which certainly looks like a survival of the archaic reckoning by female descent. To try to insert an alien child in a deme was a civil, in a Φρατρία was a religious offence.268 The ancient court of the Areopagus had to do with these offences against customary religion. Messrs. Fison and Howitt draw a parallel between the Areopagus and the Great Council of the Dieri tribe, whose headman was inspired by 'the great spirit Kuchi,' of whom one would like to know more.

An Attic boy was presented to his Φρατρία at once; full membership of the local deme came with adolescence, and after military training and service. As we know, a series of initiations, and instruction 'as to the existence of a great spirit,' with a probation of a year, are to be passed before the Australian lad is allowed to marry and attend the assembly of his local tribe. Better examples of initiation, and of a retreat in the hills in company with an adult, and instructor, are to be found in Sparta than in Athens. But the Australian 'and Attic analogies are pretty close. On the most important point there is no analogy. There were plenty of Φρατρίαι, of 'phratries' each Australian tribe has only two. Again, these two are exogamous: that is their main raison d'être. We have not a glimpse of exogamy in the Φρατρία of Attica.

The γένος, we may agree, I think, with Messrs. Fison and Howitt, was, originally, like the totem kin, an association of persons supposed to be related by ties of blood. The grammarian Pollux says 'they who belonged to the γένος were styled γεννῆται' (men of the γένος, and 'men of the same milk'), 'not that they were related γένει, but they were so called from their union (or assemblage – ἐκ δὲ τῆς συνόδον).' What is meant by γένει μὲν οὐ προσήκοντες 'not genealogically related'? I conceive Pollux to mean that the members of the γένος were not all of traceable or recognised degrees of kinship. Thus a Cameron, if asked whether he is related to another Cameron, may say, and not so long ago would have said, 'he is not my relation, but my clansman.' Messrs. Fison and Howitt take much the same view. By 'relations,' Pollux meant 'such as parents, sons, brothers, and those before them, and their progeny,' that is, from grandfathers and granduncles to grandsons and great-nephews. This might be the notion of relationship in the time of Pollux, the second century of our era, but, as Messrs. Fison and Howitt justly remark, Attic ideas of kinship before the συνοικισμὸς ascribed to Theseus would be much more extensive, as in Scotland and Britanny. The humblest Stewart, Douglas, Ruthven, or Hamilton would call himself 'the King's poor cousin.' But the Greeks of our second century were more modern, more like the English.

Yet the very words γένος and gens indicate the idea of blood relationship, just as 'clan' does. The γένη had common sacra, and a common place of burial. They were clans, but we have no proof that they were ever exogamous or totemic. However, the myths and rituals of Greece certainly yield facts of which a totemic past seems the most plausible explanation. Mr. Jevons writes, 'we find fragments of the system' (Totemism), 'one here and another there, which, if only they had not been scattered, but had been found together, would have made a living whole. Thus we have families whose names indicate that they were originally totem clans, e. g. there were Cynadæ at Athens, as there was a Dog clan among the Mohicans; but we have no evidence to show that the dog was sacred to the Cynadæ… On the other hand, storks were revered by the Thessalians, but there is nothing to show that there was a stork clan in Thessaly.'269 Wolves were buried solemnly in Attica, where there was a wolf hero, and lobsters were buried in Seriphos, like the gazelle in Arabia. But we have no evidence of a wolf kin in Attica, though we have in Italy (the Hirpi) nor of a lobster kin in Seriphos. (For other traces, fairly numerous, I may refer to my Custom and Myth, and Myth, Ritual, and Religion, while deprecating the idea that all worship or reverence of animals is of totemistic origin.)

It will probably be admitted that, if Greeks (or ancient dwellers on Greek soil) were at some remote period totemistic, and next, by reckoning descent in the male line, became attached to localities, then something like demes, phratries, and γένη might very naturally be evolved. And many traces in ritual, myth, and custom do point to Totemism in the remote past. Indeed, it is remarkable that we should still be able to point to so many apparent relics of institutions already almost obliterated among the Melanesians.

On the whole, I regard it as more probable than not, that, in the education of mankind, Totemism has played a part everywhere; a beneficent part. But this is only a private opinion: one believes in it as one believes in telepathy, without asserting that the evidence is of constraining value.

PRIMAL LAW