CONCERNING TOTEMS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 73, 2 May 1914, Page 3

CONCERNING TOTEMS.

That marvellous tribute to British literary industry and erudition, the Oxford English Dictionary, is gradually approaching completion, having now reached nearly the end of "T's." Under the heading "Totem," is condensed a vast amount of well-sifted knowledge as to the origin and meaning of a word round which have been waged many modern anthropological battles. "Totem" is thus defined:—

Among the American Indians: The hereditary mark, emblem, or badge of a tribe, clan, or group of Indians, consisting of a figure or representation of some animal, less commonly a plant or other natural object, after which the group is named; thus sometimes used to denote the tribe, clan, or division of a "nation," having such a mark; also applied to the animal or natural object itself, sometimes considered to be ancestrally or frater : nally related to the clan, being spoken of as a brother or sister, and treated as an object of friendly regard, or sometimes even as incarnating a guardian spirit who may be appealed to or worshipped.

By anthropologists the name has been extended to refer to other savage peoples and tribes, which (though they may not use totem marks) are similarly divided into groups or clans named after animals, etc.; such animals, animal-names, or animal-named groups, being spoken or written of as their totems, and their organisation, their complex system of mutual and marriage relations and religious usages, being styled Totemism.