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Sometimes, as in the Urabanna tribe, such eating is forbidden. 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.
On the day of David's arrival Towaskook himself was disguised in a huge bear head from which protruded a pair of buffalo horns that had somehow drifted up there from the western prairies, and it was his special business to perform various antics about his totem pole for at least six hours between sunrise and sunset, chanting all the time most dolorous supplications to the squat monster who sat, grinning, at the top.
Frazer's remarks on individual totems in his book on totemism: "An Australian seems usually to get his individual totem by dreaming that he has been transformed into an animal of that species." "In America the individual totem is usually the first animal of which a youth dreams during the long and generally solitary fast which American Indians observe at puberty."
The totem or charm used in medicine was ordinarily that of the medicine lodge to which the practitioner belonged, though there were some great men who boasted a special revelation. There are two ceremonial usages which, so far as I have been able to ascertain, were universal among American Indians, and apparently fundamental.
Now if the rite as it occurs in Australia is pure magic, and if religion is not a variety of magic but fundamentally different from it, then the rite which, as it occurs everywhere else, is religious, cannot be derived from, or a variety of, the Australian piece of magic; and the spring and harvest customs which are found in Australia cannot be "based on the same ancient modes of thought or form part of the same primitive heathendom" as the sacramental rites which are found everywhere else in the world. The solemn annual eating of the totem plant or animal in Australia must have a totally different basis from that on which the sacrament and communion stands in every other part of the globe: in Australia it is based on magic, elsewhere on that which is, according to Dr. Frazer, fundamentally different and opposed to magic, viz. religion. Before, however, we commit ourselves to this conclusion, we may be allowed to ask, What is it that compels us thus to sever the Australian from the other forms of the rite? The reply would seem to be that, whereas the other forms are admittedly religious, the Australian is "a magical rite intended to assure the revival of nature in spring." Now, if that were really the nature of the Australian rite, we might have to accept the conclusion to which we hesitate to commit ourselves. But, as a matter of fact, the Australian rite is not intended to assure the revival of nature in spring, and has nothing magical about it. It is perfectly true that in spring in Australia certain proceedings are performed which are based upon the principle that like produces like; and that these proceedings are, by students of the science of religion, termed perhaps incorrectly magical. But these spring customs are quite different from the harvest customs; and it is the harvest customs which constitute the link between the rite in Australia and the rite in the rest of the world. The crucial question, therefore, is whether the Australian harvest rite is magical, or is even based on the principle that like produces like. And the answer is that it is plainly not. The harvest rite in Australia consists, as we know it now, simply in the fact that at the appointed time a little of the totem plant or animal is solemnly and sparingly eaten by the headman of the totem. The solemnity with which the rite is performed is unmistakable, and may well be termed religious. And no attempt even, so far as I am aware, has been made to show that this solemn eating is regarded as magic by the performers of the rite, or how it can be so regarded by students of the science of religion. Until the attempt is made and made successfully, we are more than justified in refusing to regard the rite as magical; we are bound to refuse to regard it as such. But if the rite is not magical and
A savage inherits his totem name, usually through the mother's side. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help himself. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max Muller also points out. Of totems, I, for one, must always write in the sense of Mr. McLennan, who introduced totemism to science.
Those with whom the Beewee shares the winds he counts as relations. Another totem is Gouyou, or Bandicoot. The animal has disappeared from the Narran district, but the totem tribe is still strong, though not so numerous as either the Beewees or Dinewans. Multiplex totems of Gouyou
To this we may add the testimony of John Long, who says, * "one part of the religious superstition of the savages consists in each of them having his totem, or favourite spirit, which he believes watches over him. This totem they conceive assumes the shape of some beast or other, and therefore they never kill, hunt, or eat the animal whose form they think the totem bears."
In the totem scheme of other islands and continental groups all the women of his mother's totem were taboo to a man, though their relationship might be remote. Yet as husband and wife had different totems, and children took their mothers' totems, a man might in rare instances, even with this barrier, wed his own daughter. This has happened in Buka and in North Bougainville.
But the assignation of a totem to a sex is comparatively rare, and has hitherto been discovered nowhere but in Australia. Far more commonly the totem is appropriated not to a sex, but to a clan, and is hereditary either in the male or female line.
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