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Updated: June 11, 2025
The hawk, heron, woodpecker, crow, beaver, otter, wild cat, squirrel, rattlesnake, and others, have all figured largely in the totemic divisions of our North American Indians. Their sacred nature too would enable us to understand how naturally pipes would be selected as the medium for totemic representations.
Many a bloody tragedy was enacted in the "Ranche" for their code was primitive, "an eye for an eye," and a life for a life. Feuds raged between the different totemic families. On striking the shore it was so heavily laden with the bodies of the dead that tradition says the canoe split from end to end. It is said that the bones of the dead are still to be seen in the undergrowth along the shore.
+117+. All these materials of decoration are transferred to the service of religion. The headdress becomes a mask to represent an animal in a sacred ceremony, or a priestly tiara. It is often difficult to see the precise significance of the paintings, but in certain cases they are totemic marks, and represent whatever is sacred in totemic belief.
Similarly, even today, the orthodox Jew, in case of grave illness in his family, changes the given name of the sufferer. To confuse the evil spirit causing the disease? Further survivals of totemism as found in the Old Testament are illustrated by the worship of the bull and the serpent. The famous golden calf of the Israelites, which was the object of Moses' anger, was a totemic idol.
But such beliefs appear not to have affected the Pawnee social organization. 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-worship, with human sacrifices. +496+. Customs in the Siouan stock vary. In the Dakota tribe there is no known evidence of totemism.
As rather favoring the idea of the totemic meaning of the carvings, it may be pointed out that a considerable number of the recognizable birds and animals are precisely the ones known to have been used as totems by many tribes of Indians.
The Cockatoo-girls and the Crow-girls abide each on their own side of the river, where they are visited by partners from across the water; who, whether they tend to stay and make themselves useful, or are merely intermittent in their attentions, remain outsiders from the totemic point of view and are treated as such.
In a small community a certain number of women would, however, choose the same object, and thus totemic groups would arise. This scheme of organization, though not open to the objection mentioned above, is geographically limited. +553+. Theories based on clan action.
Along with its very elaborate tabooism the island has beliefs concerning animals that are found in totemic systems but do not take the form of totemism proper.
But, when the totemic relation became a definite feature of social organization, the feeling was that the totem was in the nature of a clansman, of the same blood as the human group, and entitled to all the respect and affection with which men regarded their clan-brethren.
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