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Updated: June 11, 2025
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. Their Green Corn dance, the object of which was to insure a good crop, was expiatory, and was accompanied by a general amnesty.
There seems to be no trace of clan or totemic grouping among the Bagobo. Blood relationship is traced as far as the second cousin and is a bar to marriage. The suggestion that a man might marry his mother-in-law was received with horror, but whether this was due to local mother-in-law stories or to an idea of relationship could not be ascertained. However, a man may marry the sister of his wife.
+273+. It is not impossible that totem posts may be connected with original totem trees or other sacred trees. A tree as totem would naturally be the object of some sort of cult, and when it took the form of a post or pole, would have totemic symbols carved on it. In all such cases there is a coalescence of totemism and tree worship.
They may be regarded as declensions from an earlier belief in the direct descent of the clan from the totem, or as independent conceptions that never grew into this belief. Both these ideas of the form of descent are found in widely separated regions and in communities differing one from another in general culture and in the degree of importance they attach to the totemic constitution.
Supposing the reptilian figure to be a totemic one, our minds naturally recall the legend of the Snake-hero and the Corn-mist-maid whom he brought from a mythic land to dwell with his people. The peculiar hairdress is likewise represented in the figures on the food basin illustrated in plate CXXIX, c, which represent a man and a woman.
+547+. The belief that a man might deposit his soul in an animal or a plant or some other object is found in West Africa, North America, and probably elsewhere. This view would account for totemic reverence and for the sense of kinship, but the objection to it is that in most totemic organizations the belief in question has not been certified.
When the totemic constitution of the tribe or clan is weakened, the crest may become more important than the totem, as is the case among the Haidas. But the adoption of the crest name does not invalidate the general rule that the clan bears the name of its totem. +447+. Names of families and of persons do not come into consideration here.
Upon vessels of special function, like these we have just noticed, peculiar figures may be regarded as emblematic; on other classes, no matter how evidently conventional and expressive decorations may seem, excepting always, totemic designs, it is wise to use great caution in their interpretation as intentional and not merely imitative.
It might take its name from an associated animal or plant or heavenly body or from a place. The badge and the name once adopted, other totemic features would follow.
Among the least civilized peoples these ceremonies were often cruel, superstitious, and long drawn out in their exaction of self-control, sacrifice, and subordination to the tribal will. The sagacity of the elders of the tribe in preserving their own control and in perpetuating totemic lore must compel the unfeigned admiration of the modern ethnologist.
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