Introduction to the History of Religions Part 12

+456+. The non-Aryan tribes of India generally refrain from eating their totems, or, in some cases, from injuring or using them; and this is true even of those tribes (for example, the Khonds and Oraons of Bengal) that have somewhat developed theistic systems. Occasionally exemptions from the rule of abstention are procured, perhaps under Aryan influence; such influence has affected many of the tribes, but has not usually destroyed the old totemic customs. Among the Todas (in the south), however, Rivers found only feeble suggestions of totemic objects and food restrictions; the buffalo-cult seems to have ousted all others.[811]

+457+. Among the native tribes of Africa there is special respect for the object with which the clan or tribe has particularly definite relations. The Bakuana do not eat the animal whose name is borne by the clan; if an animal (the lion, for example) is dangerous, it is killed with an apology. The Herrero (of German Southeast Africa) abstain from the flesh of the chameleon, and will not eat gray sheep or oxen. Among the half-civilized Baganda, of the east, certain of the clans refrain from eating the object from which a clan takes its name; the noteworthy political organization of these people seems to have obliterated old clan functions in part. In the west (Senegambia, Ashanti, Dahomi, Nigeria, Congo) there are food restrictions, but these are not generally connected with totemic social organizations.

+458+. There is little evidence for totemic food restrictions in North America. The custom of apologizing to an animal on killing it, frequent elsewhere, is reported as existing among the Algonkin Ottawas and Menomini; but this is not necessarily totemic. The more advanced tribes of the East and South (Algonkin, Iroquois, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasas, Cherokees, Natchez), the peoples of the Pacific Coast, and the agricultural tribes of the middle of the continent (Pueblos, Mandans, and others) appear to be free from restrictions as to eating. The Navahos are said to refrain from the flesh of fish, turkeys, swine, and bears, but the grounds of the interdiction are not clear.[812] The distinctest evidence of totemistic clan food-taboos are found among the Siouan Caddos (of the southern Mississippi Valley) and the Omahas (of the Middle West). Both these groups are in part agricultural, and it does not appear how they have come to differ from their neighbors in this regard. Food restrictions are reported for the Northwest region.[813]

+459+. There is no clear report of totemic food restrictions in Central America or in South America;[814] but these regions have as yet not been thoroughly examined for clan usages.

+460+. (e) _Magical ceremonies for increasing the supply of food._ Such ceremonies exist, or have existed, in many regions and among peoples of various grades of culture, civilized as well as savage, but the cases in which they are, or were, conducted by totemistic clans are comparatively few. This sort of economic function of the totem clan is most definite and important in Central and parts of Southeast Australia, where every clan is charged with the duty of increasing the supply of its totem for the benefit of its connected clans; and magical rites are performed in the fertile coast region no less than in the arid region about Lake Eyre--that is, in these cases the employment of magic seems not to be conditioned on the natural resources of the land. Similar totemic clan functions appear in the islands of Torres Straits, the Turtle and Dugong clans performing ceremonies to increase the supply of turtles and to attract dugongs. Magical control of totems for the benefit of the whole community is reported to be found in the Siouan Omaha clans (in the center of the North American continent). The tribes just mentioned are those in which the social organization is definitely totemistic.

+461+. Elsewhere the economic function attaches to other bodies than totemic clans, as in parts of Southeast Australia, and in West Australia (where the ceremonies are conducted by the exogamous cla.s.ses). In New Guinea the totemic character of the performances appears to be doubtful.

A single instance of clan action has been found among the East African Baganda--the women of the Gra.s.shopper clan undertake to increase the supply of their totem; why this duty is a.s.signed to the women is not clear--the custom appears to involve a relaxation of totemistic rules.

The economic festivals and "dances" of the Siouan Mandans and Hidatsa are general tribal ceremonies. Among the Pueblo Indians such rites are the care of religious fraternities;[815] the Zuni Frog clan performs a ceremony to procure rain, but this duty is mainly committed to rain-priests. In Northwestern America the magical performances are not connected with totemic clans.

+462+. _Definition of totemism._ It appears, then, that not one of the points just mentioned is found invariably in the systems of organization commonly called totemic. Exogamy is an independent phenomenon; the clan does not always bear the name of the totem, and is not always held to have descended from it; usages in regard to eating it vary greatly; magical economic ceremonies are performed by other than totemic bodies.

There is no known clan that includes all these elements in its organization, though in Central Australia there is an approach to complete inclusion; the features lacking are clan exogamy and absolute prohibition of eating the totem, but practically a clan does not eat its totem, and exogamy, for reasons given above, may be left out of consideration. The Central Australian system may be said to be substantially complete; with it the North American systems stand in sharp contrast, and from it many others diverge.

+463+. But, with all these differences, the fact remains that in totemism the human group stands in a peculiar relation to some nonhuman object.[816] This general statement must, however, be defined in two particulars: the relation is an alliance for the benefit of both parties; and the nonhuman object is not regarded as a G.o.d and is not wors.h.i.+ped. The first of these particulars marks totemism off from that general regard that is paid by savages to animals, plants, certain heavenly bodies, and other physical things;[817] the second particular distinguishes it from the cult of ghosts and G.o.ds proper. We may therefore define it as an alliance, offensive and defensive, between a human group and a nonhuman group or object that is not wors.h.i.+ped, the friendly relation existing between every member of the one group and every member of the other group.[818]

+464+. This relation having been formed, the various features mentioned above will naturally become attached to it in various ways and to different extents. The clan will somehow get a name, when and how we need not now ask; usually its name is that of the totem--this is in keeping with the intimate connection between the two. To trace the origin of the clan to the totem is only to do what is done abundantly among uncivilized and civilized peoples (Hebrews, Greeks, and others); the eponymous ancestor is constructed out of the current name of the clan. To refrain from killing or eating a friendly animal or plant is a simple mark of respect. The conception of special ability in a clan to insure a supply of its totem for food is in accord with savage ideas of magical endowment. When the custom of exogamy arose it would naturally attach to the clan as the social unit.

+465+. In view of the diverse physical surroundings of the tribes of the earth and their intellectual differences, it cannot be surprising that they have combined these elements of organization in various ways. In their efforts to secure food, good marriage relations, protection of property, and defense against enemies, they have from time to time adopted such measures as the circ.u.mstances made desirable and possible.

There is evidence that in some instances clans have changed their social regulations, sometimes by a process of internal growth, sometimes by borrowing from without. It is not always possible to trace such movements, and it is impossible now to say what the earliest social const.i.tution of men was. The probability is that the earliest state was an unformed one, without governmental or other inst.i.tutions, and that totemism was one of the first attempts to introduce order into society.

In accordance with what is said above, the term 'totemism' may be used to mean particularly a simple alliance between men and nonhuman things, and then more generally to mean such an alliance combined in whatever way, with one or more of the particular customs described in preceding paragraphs.[819]

+466+. _Geographical survey of totemistic usages._ If totemism be taken in the simpler sense, as a certain sort of intimate relation between men and nonhuman things, it will be found to be widely distributed in the noncivilized world. Its occurrence becomes rarer in proportion as adjuncts are attached to it; as is remarked above, it is hardly possible to find a clan whose const.i.tution embraces all adjuncts. Where usages like exogamy occur, or where there is reverence for an object, without belief in a definite, nontheistic relation between a human clan and a nonhuman object, we cannot recognize totemism proper; such usages must be treated as belonging to man's general att.i.tude toward his nonhuman a.s.sociates. The question whether they represent germinal or decadent totemism, or neither, must be considered separately in every case.

+467+. The two great totemistic regions of the world are Australia and North America, and in each of these the variations of custom run through the gamut of possible differences. In each of them also the native population may include different stocks, though on this point there is uncertainty. Differences of climate and topographical situations there are, but these do not always account for the diversities of culture and custom.[820]

+468+. _Australia._ In the heart of Central Australia (the home of the Arunta and other tribes) there are clans that bear the names of their totems, and trace their descent from half-human totem ancestors, with whom they consider themselves to be identical; totems, however, are not hereditary, but are determined by the ancestor connected with the place where the mother first becomes aware of the child within her; each clan performs magical ceremonies to secure a supply of its totem for the a.s.sociated clans, and, when the totem is an animal or a plant, hunts or gathers it and brings it to be distributed; at the distribution the headman of the providing clan must eat a little of the food ceremonially, and at other times clansmen eat of it sparingly;[821] the rule of exogamy relates not to the totemic clans, but to the phratries or subphratries.

+469+. In the South Central region these features are found, with an exception in the rule concerning eating one's totem. Sometimes, as in the Urabanna tribe, such eating is forbidden. But among the Warramunga there is a relaxation of the rule in the case of old people--for them the food restriction is removed (apparently a humanitarian provision); on the other hand, for other clansfolk there is an extension of the rule--the prohibition includes two subcla.s.ses of the moiety to which the clan belongs, and conditionally includes the whole moiety (this is perhaps a cautionary measure, to guard against the possibility of unlawful eating on the part of clansmen).

+470+. The special feature in North Australia (on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Carpentaria) is the absolute prohibition of eating the totem. In regard to the performance of magical ceremonies for increase of the totem also there is the peculiarity that a clan is not bound to conduct such performances--it is optional with it to do so or not; it has magical power, but is not required by custom to exercise it. It is suggested by Spencer and Gillen that this variation from the usage of the Central region is to be attributed to the more regular rainfall on the coast, which insures a more regular supply of food and thus does away with the necessity for magic.[822] Possibly, also, this climatic feature may account for the stricter rule of prohibition mentioned above; as the rule is sometimes relaxed when it is hard to get food, so, on the other hand, it may be strictly enforced when food is plentiful.

+471+. Still a different situation appears in the southeastern part of the continent (New South Wales and Victoria)--several prominent features of the Central system are absent. The Dieri clans bear the names of their totems, from which also they think themselves descended, but they eat them freely. Some adjacent tribes eat them only at a pinch, others refrain from them. The clans of the Narrinyeri are mostly localized, and the clan-names are not now those of the totems;[823] the totems are eaten. The Kurnai show the greatest divergence from the ordinary type--they have neither totemic clans nor exogamous cla.s.ses; their rule of exogamy relates to districts. Throughout the southeast the conduct of magical economic ceremonies by clans, every clan being responsible for its own totem, seems not to exist.

+472+. In certain tribes (the Wotjoballuk, the Yuin, the Kurnai, and others) there are s.e.x-patrons, animals intimately related to all the males or all the females of the tribe; the belief is said to be that the life of any individual of the animal group is the life of a man or a woman, and neither s.e.x group will kill its patron animal. So far as regards the conception of ident.i.ty with the animal and reverence for it, the inst.i.tution agrees with the usual totemic type; but since it is not connected with clans, some such designation for the animal as "patron"

or "guardian" is to be preferred to "totem."[824] Such animals, protectors of s.e.xes, are of rare occurrence, having been certainly found so far only in Southeast Australia, and they occur in a body of tribes that show a disposition to discard the clan const.i.tution. In this region individual men also sometimes have animal guardians, so that a general tendency toward individualism may be recognized. It is not unnatural to connect this tendency with the fertility of the south coast, which may weaken the clan organization. The organization by s.e.x is a singular phenomenon, of the history of which there are no records. It is doubtless a special development of the widespread separation of the s.e.xes, combined with an increasing recognition of the property rights and the social equality of women. At an early age boys were often kept apart from girls. Special taboos, of food and other things, were imposed on women. On the other hand, they were in some cases the owners of the tribal property, and were sometimes admitted to members.h.i.+p in secret societies. The organization of the s.e.x would follow under peculiarly favorable conditions.[825]

+473+. The remaining districts of Australia have been less carefully investigated than the central and southern parts, and information about their totemistic customs is not always satisfactory. So far as the accounts go there is a widespread divergence from simple clan organization in these districts. In Northeast Australia (Queensland) there are exogamous subcla.s.ses, and no clan taboos. In the southwest not clans but families are the social units; these trace their descent from animals, and there are individual animal patrons. In the northwest no clan organization is reported; there is cla.s.s exogamy, and in the magical ceremonies the performers are taken from the exogamous cla.s.ses.

+474+. _Torres Straits Islands._ These noteworthy variations in the totemism of the Australian continent appear to be connected in a general way with differences of climate and the degree of isolation of the clans and tribes. Similar variations appear in the Torres Straits islands and in British New Guinea. In the western islands of the Straits (the only part in which distinct totemism has been found) the social organization is to a certain extent independent of totemic relations: the clans are locally segregated, and marriage is mainly regulated by blood-kins.h.i.+p.

On the other hand, an intimate relation between a man and his totem is recognized--the latter, as a rule, is not eaten by the related clansmen (there are exceptions), magical economic ceremonies are performed by certain clans, and there is clan exogamy. A possible survival of an early social arrangement is the existence of subsidiary totems.

+475+. There is also a rudimentary cult of heroes: two of these (animal in form) have shrines and effigies, annual dances are performed in their honor, and stones are shown in which their souls are supposed to dwell.

The resemblance of this cult to certain forms of wors.h.i.+p in Polynesia (in Samoa, for example) is apparent; the stones may be compared with similar abodes of superhuman animals or spirits in Central Australia and elsewhere; the myths connect the two animal heroes with the origin of totems--a common procedure. One hero, Kwoiam of Mabuiag, is said to have been a real man, and to have been almost deified; divinization of dead men is not unusual in Polynesia.

+476+. _New Guinea._ In the eastern portion of British New Guinea the peculiarities of organization are[826] that the people live in hamlets; that there is generally a combination of totems in a clan; and that special regard is paid to the father's totem. There is no report of belief in descent from the totem.[827] The hamlets tend to become family groups, but clan exogamy is observed. The system of "linked totems"

seems to be designed to secure superhuman aid from all departments of the nonhuman world: ordinarily there will be a bird, a fish, a snake, and a plant--the bird has come to be the most important of these. A man may kill his own totem but not his father's--a rule that has arisen perhaps from a displacement of matrilineal descent (according to which a man's totem is that of his mother) by descent through the father. So far as appears, there are no magical ceremonies for increase of the supply of food. In both New Guinea and the Straits the fact that old customs are disappearing under foreign influence increases the difficulty of determining whether certain usages are primitive or decadent.

+477+. _Melanesia._ The social organization in the vast ma.s.s of islands called Melanesia[828] has not been fully investigated, but the existence of some general features has been established. Society is divided not into clans or tribes, but into exogamous cla.s.ses, and the cla.s.sificatory system of relations.h.i.+ps is general. The rules governing marriage are less elaborate than in Australia, the method of initiation is simpler, and the political organization is more definite. In regard to other usages commonly a.s.sociated with totemism the reported details are not numerous. There appears to be a movement away from Australian totemism, growing more p.r.o.nounced as we go eastward, and culminating in Fiji, in which totemic features are very rare.

+478+. In the Bismarck Archipelago every cla.s.s has connected with it certain animals regarded as relatives, but in New Britain, apparently, not as ancestors.[829] In New Ireland dances imitating the movements of the sacred animals are performed. Such animals are treated with great respect, and the relation to them const.i.tutes a bond of union between members of a cla.s.s.

+479+. Some peculiarities appear in the Solomon Islands. While there is the usual regard for the sacred objects (called _buto_), so that these are not to be eaten (in some cases not to be touched or seen), the names of the cla.s.ses are not always those of the sacred things, and there is difference of opinion among the natives as to whether the latter are ancestors or merely a.s.sociated with an ancestor: a man (particularly a chief) may announce that after death he will be incarnate in a given thing, as, for example, a banana--this then becomes sacred. But in some cases[830] the G.o.d of the cla.s.s is regarded as the ancestor; instead of a number of sacred animals there is a theistic system with regular wors.h.i.+p--a state of things quite distinct from totemism.[831]

+480+. In the New Hebrides group there is mention of a slight magical ceremony performed by a member of a cla.s.s to attract a cla.s.s animal, but there is no rule against eating the object whose name the cla.s.s bears.

The usage in the Santa Cruz group in regard to eating, and the belief as to descent from the sacred object, differ in different islands; they are sometimes lax and vague, sometimes strict and definite.

+481+. Belief in a vital connection between a man and some object chosen by himself is found in the Banks Islands; there is an obvious similarity between such an object and the North American manitu. Further, the belief is reported by Rivers that in these islands the character of a child is determined by an edible object from which the mother, before the birth of the child, received some sort of influence; the child will resemble the object or be identified with it, and will not, throughout life, eat of it.[832]

+482+. In the easternmost group, the Fijian, the relation between the tribes and their a.s.sociated sacred animals and plants was, and is, various. The rule was that these should not be injured, and, if edible, should not be eaten. But alongside of such sacred objects real G.o.ds are found; these dwell or are incarnate in certain birds, fish, and plants, and sometimes in men. In one district, in the interior of the large island Viti Levu, Rivers learned that every village had its deity, which in many cases might turn into an animal, and the animal would then become taboo;[833] the familiar custom of not eating a sacred thing was thus extended to any new object of this sort. The functions of the tribal sacred animals approached in some points those of G.o.ds: they were consulted by magicians on important occasions (war, sickness, marriage).

It was supposed (somewhat as in the Banks Islands) that the tribal sacred animal appeared to a mother just before the birth of her child.

+483+. Thus in Melanesia, along with a large ma.s.s of sacred objects connected more or less intimately with social units (but not with clans proper), there are usages and ideas that are commonly found a.s.sociated with clan totemism (belief in descent from a sacred thing and refusal to eat it when it is edible), but also other ideas and usages (omens from animals; superhuman determination, before a child's birth, of its character; creation of a new sacred thing by an individual man) that look away from clan organization to an individualistic form of society.[834]

+484+. _Micronesia and Polynesia._ The character of the social organization in Micronesia (the Caroline and Pelew groups, with which may be included the little island of Tikopia, southeast of the Santa Cruz group) is not very well known, but the published reports indicate a considerable divergence from clan totemism. The westernmost island of the Carolines, Uap (or Yap), according to a recent observer,[835]

retains many old beliefs, is without an exogamous system, and has a large apparatus of spirits and G.o.ds. Elsewhere in the Carolines and in Tikopia there are non-exogamous social groups, sacred animals greatly revered, and in some places belief in descent from an animal-G.o.d. Sacred animals and village G.o.ds (with exogamous families) are found in the Pelew group.[836] The diversity in Micronesian customs may be due in part to mixture of tribes resulting from migrations.

+485+. In Polynesia the family is generally the social unit, and there is a fairly good political organization, with more or less developed pantheons. G.o.ds are held to be incarnate in animals and trees, but there are also great G.o.ds divorced to some extent from phenomena. The theistic development is noteworthy in Hawaii, New Zealand, Samoa, Tahiti, and Tonga, and there are elaborate forms of wors.h.i.+p with priests and temples. The existing organization is not totemic, but here, as elsewhere in similar cases, the question has been raised whether or not the G.o.ds have arisen from sacred (or, more definitely, totemic) animals and plants,[837] and whether, in general, the existing organization was preceded by one approaching totemism.[838]

+486+. _Indonesia._ The Battas of the interior of Sumatra have clan exogamy (but the clans live mixed together), and every clan has sacred animals which it is unlawful to eat. One clan on the west coast a.s.serts its descent from a tiger. In the Moluccas villages claim descent from animals or plants, and these are taboo. The indications of totemic organization in Borneo are slight: there are sacred animals that are not eaten, and there is a vague feeling of kins.h.i.+p with animals--phenomena that are not necessarily totemic. The belief of the Sea Dyaks in individual guardians is to be distinguished from general respect for sacred animals.

+487+. _India._ The non-Aryan peoples of India are divided into a large number of exogamous clans, each with its sacred object, which it is unlawful to injure or use.[839] A departure from ordinary totemic usage appears in the fact that in many cases the sacred objects receive wors.h.i.+p. The social const.i.tution of these peoples seems to have undergone modifications, partly through adoption of agriculture (which has occurred generally), partly by direct Hindu religious influence; the history of the non-Aryans, however, is obscure in many points. The Aryans of India have exogamy but not totemism, and this is true in part of the a.s.samese. Totemism has not been observed in Burma[840] and China, or in the Malay Peninsula.

+488+. _North America._ The North American native tribes, scattered over a large territory, with widely different climatic and topographical features, and themselves divided into half a dozen linguistic stocks, show great diversities of social organization. While exogamous groups (clans, phratries, and local groups) are found almost everywhere, there is little precise information about certain fundamental points of totemic systems, particularly customs of killing and eating the totem and belief in descent from it. With a general apparatus that often suggests an original totemism, the American social type differs considerably from the Australian, resembling in some respects the Melanesian and the Polynesian, but with peculiarities that difference it from these. Among the Eskimo and the Californians no definite signs of totemism have been discovered. Among the other peoples the Rocky Mountain range makes a line of demarcation--the tribes of the Pacific Coast differ in organization decidedly not only from their eastern neighbors but also from all other known savage and half-civilized peoples. There are points of similarity to these, but the general Pacific Coast type is unique.

+489+. Beginning with the _Eastern_ tribes, we find that the Iroquois and their allies (Mohawks, Senecas, and others),[841] mainly agricultural, had the tribe or the phratry rather than the clan as their political and religious unit. The Iroquois League, organized by the great statesman Hiawatha in the fifteenth century, was a federal union of five (later of six) tribes that showed remarkable political wisdom and skill. The great festivals were tribal. The clan is recognized in a myth that describes the metamorphosis of a turtle into a man who became the progenitor of the clan of that name, and it was socially influential by reason of the brotherhood that existed among members of clans having the same name in different tribes, and through the fact that a man's personal name was the property of the clan. The totem figure was used as a badge. Whether or not the totem was killed and eaten is not known. In the form, then, in which it is known, the Iroquois organization cannot be called totemic--whether it was originally such must be left undetermined.

+490+. The Cherokees, belonging to the southern division of the Iroquois stock (living formerly in Tennessee and North Carolina), killed the animals they respected, but with ceremonies. Their Green Corn dance, the object of which was to insure a good crop, was expiatory, and was accompanied by a general amnesty.[842]

+491+. Wyandot (Huron) myths[843] account for their Snake and Hawk clans by stories of marriages between women and a snake or a hawk; here human beings are a.s.sumed to have existed before the genesis of the clan (a difference from the Australian scheme), but it is true that the clan is held to have descended in part from an animal.

+492+. In the great Algonkin stock[844] the evidence for a distinct totemic organization is similarly indefinite. The Lenape (Delawares), who were agricultural and well advanced in manufacture, gave prominence to families rather than to clans, and the totem was a badge. The Ojibwas, hunters (dwelling by the Great Lakes and in the valley of the St. Lawrence),[845] also used their sacred animal forms as badges; whether they ate such animals or claimed descent from them we are not informed. The friendly relation existing between the Otter and Beaver clans is explained by a story of a marriage between an Otter clansman and a Beaver woman. For the Potawatamies it was lawful to kill and eat the totem. The Ottawas (of Canada) and the combined Sauks and Foxes (of the Mississippi Valley) had traditions of descent from the totem. The Menomini (of the same region) would kill the totem, but always with an apology to it; their myths embody varying conceptions of the relation of eponymous animals to clans: sometimes the origin of a clan is referred to the action of a supernatural being who changed a bear, for example, into a man, or to adventures of animals; sometimes eponymous birds (eagle and hawk) are described as being spirits or deities. Such introduction of supernatural beings involves a deviation from the conception of the eponymous animal as independent creator of a clan.[846]

+493+. For the tribes bordering on the Gulf of Mexico no signs have been preserved of an organization based on the relation between clans and eponymous animals, plants, and other objects. The great Maskoki stock (including Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasas, and some other less important tribes) had a well-formed political system, and their religion was represented by the Chief Magician or Priest (Medicine Man).

They performed magical ceremonies for increase of food, but these were tribal, and the Creek annual fast (_puskita_, busk) had high religious and ethical significance.[847]

+494+. The Caddoan group, dwelling formerly west of the Mississippi, in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, had an approach to specific totemism. In the Caddo tribe clansmen refrained from killing the eponymous animal; but all members of the tribe refrained from killing eagles and panthers.

Whether this custom represents former clan restrictions is uncertain.

For the related Skidi p.a.w.nee (who formerly dwelt in the Nebraska region) there is evidence, from folk-tales, of a belief in the origin of clans from marriages between human beings and animals, and of belief that through such marriages benefits accrued to the people. But such beliefs appear not to have affected the p.a.w.nee social organization.[848]

+495+. The Nakchi (Natchez) people (of the lower Mississippi Valley) dwelt in villages that had such names as "pond-lily people," "hickory people," "swan people," "forest people." These are possibly survivals of totemic names, but there is no account of the existence of totemic groups among them. On the other hand, they had a highly developed sun-wors.h.i.+p, with human sacrifices.

+496+. Customs in the Siouan stock vary. In the Dakota tribe there is no known evidence of totemism. The Omahas (of the Missouri Valley), who are partly agriculturalists, partly hunters, refrain from eating or using eponymous objects, certain clans are credited with magical power over such objects, and there are traces, in ceremonies and myths, of the descent of clans, each from its eponym. This combination of more definite totemistic conceptions is not found in any other member of the Siouan stock. The Osages had a tradition or myth of their descent from animals, but their civil organization was nontotemic--they were divided into two groups, termed respectively the Peace Side and the War Side, and the members of the former group took no animal life, though they ate flesh that they obtained from the War Side. The origin of this custom is uncertain--the two divisions of the tribe, the hunters and the tillers of the soil, exchanged products, but how this division of labor arose (whether from a union of two tribes or otherwise) is not clear. Among the Hidatsa, it is reported, there was a belief that spirit children might enter into a woman and be born into the world. The resemblance to the Central Australian belief is striking, but it does not appear that such entrance of spirit children was supposed to be the only mode of human birth. The Mandans (living on the Missouri River, in North Dakota) now have no totemic system; but little or nothing is known of their early history.[849] In the Siouan tribes the figure of the individual animal guardian (the manitu or "medicine") plays a prominent 'role'.

+497+. There are indications that the inst.i.tutions of the Pueblo tribes (who are now wholly agricultural) have undergone modifications, perhaps under foreign (Spanish) influence. Hopi myths represent clans as descended from ancestors originally animal, and transformed into human shape by deities. But the elaborate sun-wors.h.i.+p and the complicated solstice ceremonies are tribal.[850] The Zuni economic ceremonies appear to have pa.s.sed from under clan control. Thus, the magical ceremony for procuring rain, properly the function of the Frog clan, is now in the hands of rain-priests; and the magical, dramatic performances for insuring a supply of food are conducted by nontotemic religious fraternities. The great Snake "dance" may have been originally a totemic ceremony intended to secure rain and corn.[851]

+498+. For a former totemic organization among the Navahos, Apaches, and Mohaves (these last live on the Colorado River) there are only vague traditions and other faint traces; the taboos on foods now touch not a particular clan but a whole tribe.