Chapter LXII: Section 2: Gentile and Clan Designations

The clan and totemic system formerly called the gentile system undoubtedly prevailed anciently in Europe and Asia, but first became understood by observations of its existence in actual force among the aborigines of America and Australia, and typical representations of it are still found among them. In Australia it is called kobong. An animal or a plant, or sometimes a heavenly body was mythologically at first and at last sociologically connected with all persons of a certain stock, who believe, or once believed, that it was their tutelar god and they bear its name.

Each clan or gens took as a badge or objective totem the representation of the tutelar daimon from which it was named. As most Indian tribes were zootheistic, the object of their devotion was generally an animal--e. g., an eagle, a panther, a buffalo, a bear, a deer, a raccoon, a tortoise, a snake, or a fish, but sometimes was one of the winds, a celestial body, or other impressive object or phenomenon.

American Indians once generally observed a prohibition against killing the animal connected with their totem or eating any part of it. For instance, most of the southern Indians abstained from killing the wolf; the Navajo do not kill bears; the Osage never killed the beaver until the skins became valuable for sale. Afterward some of the animals previously held sacred were killed; but apologies were made to them at the time, and in almost all cases the prohibition or taboo survived with regard to certain parts of those animals which were not to be eaten on the principle of synecdoche, the temptation to use the food being too strong to permit entire abstinence. The Cherokee forbade the use of the tongues of the deer and bear for food. They cut these members out and cast them into the fire sacramentally. A practice still exists among the Ojibwa as follows: There is a formal restriction against members of the bear clan eating the animal, yet by a subdivision within the same clan an arrangement is made so that sub-clans may among them eat the whole animal. When a bear is killed, the head and paws are eaten by those who form one branch of the bear totem, and the remainder is reserved for the others. Other Indian tribes have invented a differentiation in which some clansmen may eat the ham and not the shoulder of certain animals, and others the shoulder and not the ham.

It follows, therefore, that sometimes the whole animal is designated as a clan totem, and also that sometimes only parts of it is selected. Many of the devices given in this paper under the heading of personal names have this origin. The following figures show a selection of parts of animals that may further illustrate the subject. It must, however, be borne in mind that some of the cases may be connected with individual visions or with personal adventures and not directly with the clan system. In the absence of detailed information in each instance discrimination is impossible.

Schoolcraft says that the Ojibwa always placed the totemic or clan pictorial mark upon the _adjedatig_ or grave-post, thereby sinking the personal name which is not generally indicative of the totem. The same practice is found in other tribes. The Pueblos depict the gentile or totemic pictorial sign upon their various styles of ceramic work.

Fig. 514, gives examples taken from Dakota drawings, which appear to be pictured totemic marks of gentes or clans. If not in every instance veritable examples, they illustrate the mode of their representation as distinct from the mere personal designations mentioned below, and yet without positive information in each case, it is not possible to decide on their correct assignment to this section of the present chapter.

_a._ Bear-Back. Red-Cloud’s Census.

This and the six following figures exhibit respectively the portions of the bear, viz, the back or chine, the ears, the head, the paw, the brains, and the nostrils or muzzle, which are probably the subject of taboo and are the sign of a clan or subclan.

_b._ Bear’s-Ears, a Brulé, was killed in an Oglala village by the Crows. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1785-’86.

_c._ Bear’s-Ears was killed in a fight with the Rees. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1793-’94.

This is another and more graphic delineation of the animal’s ears.

_d._ Bear-Head. Red-Cloud’s Census.

_e._ Bear-Paw. Red-Cloud’s Census. The paws of the bear are considered to be a delicacy.

_f._ Bear-Brains. Red-Cloud’s Census.

_g._ Bear-Nostrils. Red-Cloud’s Census.

_h._ Hump. Red-Cloud’s Census. The hump of the buffalo has been often praised as a delicious dish.

_i._ Elk-Head. Red-Cloud’s Census.

Fig. 515 represents carved uprights in a house of the Kwakiutl Indians, British Columbia, taken from a work of Dr. Franz Boas (_b_).

The author says that these uprights are always carved according to the crest of the gens of the house owner, and represent men standing on the heads of animals. This use of the term “crest” is not heraldically correct, as literally it would require the men to be standing on the coverings of their own heads, but the idea is plain, the word being used for a device similar in nature and significance to the crest in heraldry, and it was adopted by the ancestors of the Kwakiutl gentes in relation to certain exploits that they had made. Both human figures show painting and probably also tattooing on their faces.

The character on the left hand also shows a design on the breast. That on the right hand presents a curious artifice of carving by which the legs and an arm are exhibited while preserving the solidity of the upright.