DECEASED MEMBERS

American Anthropologist

NEW SERIES

VOL. 13

TH

APRIL-JUNE, 1911

A NEW CONCEPTION OF TOTEMISM1

BY ROBERT H. LOWIE

No. 2

HE significance of Dr Goldenweiser's recent paper on totemism lies in the fact that it presents for the first time what may be legitimately called "an American view of totemism,""American" not only because it takes into account the data of American ethnography, but in the far more important sense that it is a view based on methodological principles which are becoming the common property of all the active younger American students of ethnology.

According to the traditional view, totemism is an integral phenomenon which is everywhere essentially alike. Thus, in Frazer's latest work on the subject, Totemism and Exogamy, the burden of proof is explicitly thrust on the shoulders of those who question the identity of totemic phenomena in different quarters of the globe and who uphold the theory of convergent evolution. In Part I of his paper, "Australia and British Columbia," Dr. Goldenweiser has anticipated this challenge. He selects the series of features that are commonly regarded as distinctive of totemism, and compares the forms they assume in the two areas considered. The result is sufficiently striking. On superficial consideration, it appears that the Australian totem group resembles the clan of British Columbia in the exogamic regulation of marriage. But this resemblance is not significant; in both cases the exogamous

1 Totemism, An Analytical Study. By A. A. Goldenweiser. Reprinted from the Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. XXIII, April-June, 1910, No. LXXXVIII, pp. 115. 189

AMANTH., N. S., 13-13

character of the clan is not a primary, but a derivative trait. Because the clans are, in both areas, parts of the larger phratric units, and because these phratries are exogamous, the totem clans must be exogamous, even though the clan, as a clan, may have nothing to do with exogamy. In other features, the totem clans of Australia and British Columbia clearly diverge. In Australia the social importance of the clan dwindles into insignificance as compared with that of the phratry; in British Columbia the clan is the social unit, par excellence. On the Northwest coast there is evidence for the development of the clans from village communities, such as nowhere exist in Australia. Finally, the American clans are graded as to rank-a condition likewise lacking in Australian totemism. In the matter of clan names, what similarity exists is again of a superficial kind. In Australia all clans are named from their totems; in British Columbia clans frequently derive their names from localities. But precisely where the American social divisions (phratries) are named after animals, we occasionally find that the eponymous animal is not identical with the crest animal, which is the one that corresponds, in religious function, to the Australian totem. If phratries are compared it is found that those of the Tlingit and Haida bear animal names, but that only a few of the Australian phratry names are definitely known to refer to animals. The view that the totemite is a lineal descendant of his totem is clearly developed in Australia; on the Northwest Coast, on the other hand, there is a fundamental belief in human descent: the crest animal is one which has in some way been associated with the human ancestor of the group. Nevertheless, the author points out, there are myths in which the association is very close, and, in one group of traditions, the ancestor is the crest animal transformed. These instances, instead of militating against the author's point of view, constitute in reality strong evidence in support of it. For the myths in question result from the reaction of the guardian-spirit concept upon the basic belief that human beings have human ancestors. Now, the guardian spirit concept is practically foreign to Australia. What similarity there exists between the Australian and the American myths is accordingly an ideal instance of convergent evolution. There remains the criterion of the taboo

against eating or killing totems. Of this phase of totemic life Australia remains the classical example; in British Columbia, on the other hand, not a single instance of totemic taboos has hitherto been discovered, though there is an abundance of taboos of nontotemic character.

A survey of the currently assumed symptoms of totemism in the two areas discussed thus reveals far-reaching differences. It would be artificial, however, to confine the comparison within the limits set by conventional definitions of totemism. If we wish to disabuse ourselves of the preconceptions expressed in these definitions, Dr Goldenweiser insists, we must not neglect to consider those cultural features which are empirically found in intimate association with the criteria generally recognized as totemic. In Australia, two elements have risen to so commanding a position within the totemic complex that each has been assumed as the essence and starting-point of totemism generically. These elements are the intichiuma ceremonies conducted for the multiplication of the totem animals, and the belief in the reincarnation of ancestral spirits. On the Northwest Coast of America, analogous features are indeed found, but they are wholly dissociated from totemic institutions. A parallel condition of affairs is revealed in viewing the dominant traits of social life in northwestern America. The social life of the Kwakiutl is unintelligible without taking into account the groups of individuals sharing the same guardian spirit; among the tribes farther north the clan tradition is essentially an account of the ancestor's acquisition of his guardian spirit, while the circumstances incident thereto are dramatized in the dances of the secret societies. In Australia guardian spirits are rare, and, where found, are generally quite distinct from the totems; even when the two concepts do coincide, the guardian-spirit factor is of relatively slight moment. A second trait of special significance in the American area is the relationship of totemism to art, the saturation of practically all decorative attempts with totemic motives, and the retroactive tendency to give, secondarily, a totemic interpretation to designs purely decorative in origin. This intimate connection is largely dependent on the quasi-realistic style characteristic of Northwest American art. In Australia, where geo