totem" (this individual totem is quite distinct in Samoa from the clan totem, and is the child's guardian spirit). But though both guardian spirits and family gods may be obtained from the ranks of the community's gods, it is quite possible for the reverse process to take place. Thus in the Pelew Islands, where the gods are totem-gods, each tribe and each family has its own totem-god, and as a tribe develops into a state, the god of the family or tribe which is the most important politically becomes the highest god.2 And as a guardian spirit in some cases becomes hereditary and so a family god, the circulation of gods becomes complete; but as the community is prior chronologically to the family, and the emancipation of the individual from the customs which subordinate him and his interests to the community is later even than the segregation of the family, the flow of gods has its source in the gods of the community originally. It is not, however, always that a tribe has sufficient cohesion amongst its members to develop into a state. More often, indeed usually, the clan is unstable and eventually dissolves. Then its members, formerly united in the worship of the god that protected them, scatter; and the god becomes a mere memory, a name. His worship ceases, for now nothing brings his worshippers together. He is remembered vaguely as a good god; and if a white man asks the savage why then he does not worship him, the savage, not knowing, invents, and says it is unnecessary, the god is good and is quite harmless. So the white man falls into one of two errors: either he concludes that fear is the source of the savage's religion, and that he only worships evil spirits, or he sees in it "a monotheistic tendency," or perhaps a trace of primeval monotheism. The first error is due to the fact that, though the savage's conscience reproaches him, when he falls ill, for neglecting his gods, and so far fear plays a part in his education, still he does receive benefits from his gods, assistance in war, etc., and looks on them with friendly eyes. The other error lies in taking a single fact and explaining it without reference to its context. When a clan does so dissolve, or when in consequence 1 of the clan's expansion the clan-altar becomes remote from the majority of the tribe, the need of a more immediate protector and of more intimate and constant relations with him makes itself felt, with the result that a guardian spirit or family god is chosen, not always and probably not originally from amongst the gods of the community (if there be more than one). But whether the guardian spirit of the individual be drawn from the gods or from other unattached, supernatural spirits, the ritual adopted by the individual is that used by the community in worshipping its own gods. In North America, where totemism is the form of the community's religion, the individual also selects an animal species (not an individual animal) which is to be to him. what the clan totem is to the clan. We may call it an individual totem, or a manitoo (an Indian word for spirit, familiar to English readers in the phrase Great Manitoo, i.e. the Great Spirit), or a guardian spirit. The period at which such a manitoo is chosen is the time when the boy is to enter on the rights and duties of full manhood--a time of life often chosen by totem peoples for the initiation of the youth into the worship of the clan totem. The blood-offering which forms part of the latter ceremony is found in the former also. The Mosquito Indians in Central America "sealed their compact with it [the individual totem] by drawing blood from various parts of their body." The tattooing which is the outcome of the blood-letting rite accompanies and marks the choice of a guardian spirit. The Indians of Canada "tattooed their individual totems on their bodies." 2 The fasting which is the preparation for contact with things holy, and therefore for participation in the clan sacrifice, is an indispensable preliminary to the selection of a manitoo.3 The animal of which the youth dreams first during these rites becomes his individual totem. As the community seal their alliance with the totem species by the sacrifice of one of its members, so the individual kills one of the species which is to be his totem, and which henceforth will be sacred to him, and will be neither killed nor eaten by him. From the skin of the one member of the species which he 1 Frazer, Totemism, 55 (Bancroft, Native Races, i. 740). 2 Frazer, loc. cit, 3 Waitz, Anthropologie, iii. 118, 191. kills he makes his "medicine-bag"; and though the whole species is sacred to him, it is to this bag that he pays his especial devotion, just as in Egypt, though all cows were sacred, one was chosen and considered to be the special embodiment of Apis. "Feasts were often made, and dogs and horses sacrificed to a man's medicine-bag." 2 So, too, the West African negro, it will be remembered, offers sacrifices to his suhman, which is thus to be distinguished from an amulet. What Colonel Ellis says of the respect which the negro shows to his suhman is amply corroborated by the reverence the Indian pays to his medicine-bag: so far from abusing it, or punishing it, if it did not act, "days and even weeks of fasting and penance of various kinds were often. suffered to appease this fetish, which he imagined he had in some way offended." 3 So far from throwing it away, "if an Indian should sell or give away his medicine-bag, he would be disgraced in his tribe. If it was taken away from him in battle, he was for ever subjected to the degrading epithet of 'a man without medicine."" Finally, we may notice that throughout the Red Indian ritual no priest appears-a fact which indicates that here we have to do with a fairly primitive state of things. Going north, we find that amongst the Samoyedes every man must have a protecting spirit: he gives the shaman the skin of any animal he chooses, the shaman makes it into human likeness, and the worshipper makes offerings to it when he wants anything.5 Here, where totemism as the form of the community's religion has faded, the individual totem has also shrunk somewhat; the skin of the animal evidently corresponds to the medicine-bag of the North American Indians, but the animal species is apparently not held sacred by the individual any longer. The rites of fasting, blood-letting, etc., and the method of choosing an animal, are not mentioned; and the intervention of the priest indicates that we have to do with a comparatively advanced stage of religion. But the human likeness given to the skin, and, above all, the offerings made to it, show that it 1 This is not a native expression, but the French settlers'. 2 Dorman, Primitive Superstitions, 158 ff. 4 lbid. 5 Bastian, Der Mensch, ii. 129, - has not dwindled to a mere charm, but is still the abode of a protecting spirit. Amongst the Jakuts-to keep in northern zones the skin has disappeared, the human likeness is given to a wooden idol, the connection of the idol with a totem animal survives only in the fact that the idol is smeared with blood, and it is not for life but for some special occasion or purpose that a guardian spirit is thus invoked. But the sacrifice to the idol and the feast at which it occupies the seat of honour show that it is still the abode of a spirit, and not a mere mechanical charm. Here, too, the shaman takes part in the proceedings. Here, In Brazil, the maraca or tammaraca is a calabash or gourd containing stones and various small articles. Every Brazilian Indian has one. It is all-powerful. Its power is communicated to it by a priest, who gets it from a far-off spirit. Sacrifices, especially human, are made to it. the original totem animal has left not even its skin. The bag of animal skin-which amongst the Red Indians also is a receptacle for various small articles that are "great medicine"-has been given up for what we may call a box, supplied by the vegetable world. The Brazilian maraca finds its exact parallel in East Central Africa. When the "diviners give their response they shake a small gourd filled with pebbles, and inspect pieces of sticks, bones, claws, pottery, etc., which are in another gourd."3 Returning to the New World, it was usual for the priests amongst the northern Indians of Chili to have "some square bags of painted hide in which he keeps the spells, like the maraca or rattle of the Brazilian sorcerers.' Elsewhere in the New World, in the Antilles, there were tutelary deities (Chemis) of the individual and of the family which resided in idols, of human or animal form, and the figure of the Chemi was tattooed on the worshipper.5 In Peru, "conopas" were the tutelary deities of individuals; they received sacrifices, and might be handed down from father to son. Leaving the New World, we may note in passing that 1 Bastian, Allerlei, i. 213. 2 Müller, Amerikan. Urreligion. 262; cf. Dorman, op. cit. 159. 3 Duff Macdonald, Africana, 44. 5 Müller, op. cit. 171. 4 Kerr, Voyages, v. 405. 6 Dorman, op. cit. 160. "the evidence for the existence of individual totems in Australia, though conclusive, is very scanty." We go on, therefore, to Polynesia, where "tiki" is what "totem" is in North America. To every individual, every family, and every community, there is a tiki or totem animal. The individual totem is chosen from amongst the animals worshipped as totems by the various communities. It is chosen, by a method already described,2 at the birth of the child. But there are indications that originally the ceremony took place, not at birth, but at the same time of life as amongst the Red Indians.3 It is therefore interesting to notice that the tendency to antedate the ceremony, which in Polynesia has become fully established, had already begun to manifest itself in America; and further, that the mode of choice is the same in both cases, but that in America, apparently, the field of choice had not yet become limited to animals already totems. "Among the tribes of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, when a woman was about to be confined, the relations assembled in the hut and drew on the floor figures of different animals, rubbing each one out as soon as it was finished. This went on till the child was born, and the figure that remained sketched on the ground was the child's tona or totem." That in Polynesia also the choice was not originally limited to animals or plants already totems and therefore domesticated-if they were species capable of domestication—may be indicated by the fact that amongst the Maoris Tiki is the name of a god-the god of plants that have not been domesticated. Elsewhere Tiki is the god of tattooing-which again points to the connection between tattooing and the totem. "4 As, then, guardian spirits and family gods are found in Africa, Asia, America, Australia, and Polynesia, we may not unreasonably look for them in the Old World. We shall 1 Frazer, op. cit. 53. 2 Supra, pp. 180, 181. 4 3 Waitz, Anthropologie, vi. 320. Frazer, op. cit. 55. In Eastern Central Africa, at the "mysteries" which take place at puberty "in the initiation of males, figures of the whale are made on the ground, and in the initiation of females, figures of leopards, hyenas, and such animals as are seen by those that never leave their homes."-Duff Macdonald, Africana, i. 131. Perhaps these puberty-mysteries are remnants of the custom of choosing an individual totem at that time of life. |