The Secret of the Totem

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Lang Andrew. The Secret of the Totem

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

CHAPTER II. METHOD OF INQUIRY

CHAPTER III. THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

CHAPTER IV. THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

CHAPTER V. THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

CHAPTER VI. THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

CHAPTER VII. RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

CHAPTER VIII. A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

CHAPTER IX. TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

CHAPTER X. MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

CHAPTER XI. MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

APPENDIX. SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM

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The question of the origin of totemism has more than the merely curious or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In the course of the inquiry we may be able to discern and discriminate the relative contributions of unreflecting passion, on one hand, and of deliberate reason, on the other, to the structure of the earliest extant form of human society. That form is the savage local tribe, as known to us in America and in Australia.

Men live in united local communities, relatively large, and carefully regimented, before they have learned to domesticate animals, or to obey chiefs, or to practise the rudest form of agriculture, or to fashion clay into pottery, or to build permanent hovels. Customary law is older than any of these things, and the most ancient law which we can observe unites a tribe by that system of marriages which expresses itself in totemism.

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The arrangement works thus, a man of phratry Dilbi, and of matrimonial class Muri, may not marry any woman that he chooses, in the other phratry, Kupathin. He can only marry a Kubatha, that is, a female of the class Kumbo. Their children, female descent prevailing, are of Kupathin phratry, and of the mother's totem, but do not belong to the class either of father (Muri) or of mother (Kumbo). They must belong to the other class within her phratry, namely Ipai. This rule applies throughout; thus, if a man of phratry Dilbi, and of Kubi class, marries a woman of Ipai class in phratry Kupathin, their children are neither of class Kubi nor of class Ipai, but of class Kumbo, the linked or sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.

Suppose for the sake of argument that the class names denote, or once denoted animals, so that, say —

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