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But as the topic of Totemism has been introduced, I may say that many of the mysterious archaic markings on rocks, and decorations of implements, in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design of the totem animal. They were associated with rites which the oldest blacks decline to explain. The markings are understood to be totemic.
There appears to be a movement away from Australian totemism, growing more pronounced as we go eastward, and culminating in Fiji, in which totemic features are very rare. +478+. In the Bismarck Archipelago every class has connected with it certain animals regarded as relatives, but in New Britain, apparently, not as ancestors.
In Central Australia it is held that what passes into the woman is a spirit child which has a certain object for its totem; but in this case the previous existence of the totem is assumed. The persons thus identified with a given object would, if united, constitute a group totemic in the respects that they believe themselves to be one with the object in question and refrain from eating it.
With, perhaps, no exceptions, the North American tribes practiced totemism in one or other of its various forms, and, although it by no means follows that all the carving and etchings of birds or animals by these tribes are totems, yet it is undoubtedly true that the totemic idea is traceable in no small majority of their artistic representations, whatever their form.
Individuals may have imposed their guardian animals or plants on communities. A badge, chosen for convenience, may have been the beginning of a totemic organization. In these and other ways a group of men may have come to form intimate relations with a nonhuman group or other object. In many cases a rule of exogamy, for the better regulation of marriage, would be adopted.
But at this point historical science tails off into mere guesswork. We reach relatively firm ground, on the other hand, when we pass on to consider the social organization of such exogamous and totemic peoples as the natives of Australia. The only trouble here is that the subject is too vast and complicated to permit of a handling at once summary and simple.
But in spite of all this, and although we do not think it is possible completely to disprove the truth of the hypothesis that some or all of these animal cults are vestiges of a once fully developed totemic system, we are inclined to reject it. We are led to do so by four considerations.
Perhaps the most useful thing that can be done for the reader in a short space is to provide him with a few elementary distinctions, applying not only to the Australians, but more or less to totemic societies in general.
+566+. This argument rests on the assumption of the universal mental incapacity of early men a subject admittedly obscure. But, if we leave the question of intellectual capacity aside, there are facts that seem to throw doubt on the totemic origin of domestication.
The clan finds itself confronted by various natural objects with which, it believes, it must form helpful relations; or some sort of relation is forced on it by the conditions of life. The question is how a human group came to enter into the totemic relation.
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