"Totem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came, And he told me in a vision of the night: — "There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, And every single ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... Fitzpatrick and their many excursions in the vicinity of the post. By devious zigzags and retracings, he suddenly found himself face to face with a ten-foot stump that Indians had long ago carved into a sort of totem, which had been left standing as a curiosity. There, the trail began, and he was able to make faster time, although all evidence of a footway were, of course, obliterated. As he went deeper into the forest, the wind became steadier and less ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... girl looked troubled; M'zangwe had guessed right. "But what's all the excitement about the dog? What is it, the sacred totem-animal ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... weapons, or sitting on rough wooden benches, smoking pipes with a certain dignity that belonged to men of strength and courage. All around the lodge were rush mats, on which they slept, and near the door was a carved totem pole. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... bird-of-paradise, while about the room were scattered gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal kai-kai bowl from the Marquesas, and fragile cabinets from China and the Indies and inlaid ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... and Gillen also present much evidence as to a previously unknown form of totemism, in which the totem is not hereditary, and does not regulate marriage. This prevails among the Arunta "nation," and the Kaitish tribe. In the opinion of Mr. Spencer (Report Australian Association for Advancement of Science, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... Indians of North America, when a boy reaches puberty he is sent away from his father's lodge in search of a spiritual protector or totem. Seeking a secluded spot, he abstains from food until he is favoured in a dream with a vision of some animal or bird, which is at once adopted by him.[29] This custom obtains with most of the North American tribes. Among these tribes, also, the soothsayer prepares himself ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... or, of the two clans. From otara or katara, clan or totem (in the reduplicate form and ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... not long ago a French scholar published a book on the ensigns of the Roman army,[23] which originally represented certain animals, and using Dr. Frazer's early work on totemism with a very imperfect knowledge of the subject, tried to prove that these were originally totem signs. Roman names of families and old Italian tribe-names are still often quoted as totemistic; but the Fabii and Caepiones, named after cultivated plants, and the Picentes and Hirpini, after woodpecker and wolf, though tempting to the totemist, have not ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... be the analogue of geologic accretion, how tortuous is the trend and dip of the ethnological strata, how abrupt the overlapping of myths. How many aeons divided the totem coyote from the she-wolf of Romulus and Remus? Which is the primitive and parent flame, the sacred fire of Pueblo Estufas, of Greek Prytaneum, of Roman Vesta, of Persian Atish-khudahs? If the Laurentian system be the oldest upheaval of land, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... this majestic-looking savage was sober. Perhaps he felt it incumbent upon him as host not to partake himself of the luxuries with which he regaled his guests. He took us hospitably into his great community house of split cedar planks with carved totem poles for corner posts, and called his young men to take care of our canoe and to bring wood for a fire that he might feast us. The wife of this chief was one of the finest looking Indian women I have ever met,—tall, straight, lithe and dignified. ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... regard to the proper relation between mistress and maid. Still, he had never supposed that the spirit of domestic regeneration included a system of public endearments. He pondered upon the matter while he was eating his pudding, and it rendered him inattentive to Theodora's views on the origin of totem poles. Theodora saw his inattention, and, with the tact of the true hostess, she promptly changed the subject to one which should be less ponderous and more interesting. Leaving the totem poles, she began to talk of Quantuck ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... musket and bayonet at the bottom. The smaller one by a little house, with smoke issuing from the chimney, and a woman beside it. Above all, its head over the mountains pointing toward the house, its tail extending north of the bigger stream, was a comet—the "totem" or sign of the Ogallalla lover of Lizette. The story was told at a glance. Burning Star was already south of the Platte and lurking in the mountains ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... Lincolnshire; the raven, at Raveningham, in Norfolk; the sun, at Sunning, in Berks; and the serpent (Wyrm), at Wormingford, Worminghall, and Wormington, in Essex, Bucks, and Gloucester, respectively. Every one of these objects is a common and well-known totem amongst savage tribes; and the inference that at some earlier period the Anglo-Saxons had been Totemists is ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... to regard themselves as being in special alliance with some one animal, and as being descended from that animal as their common ancestor. The existence side by side of various tribes, each with its definite totem, has not yet been fully proved for the Gaulish system, and may well have been a developed social arrangement that was not an essential part of such a mode of thought in its primary forms. The place of ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... somersault, and these turn a somersault before worshipping their gods. So strong is the totemistic idea that some of the territorial groups worship objects with similar names. Thus the Mahobia group, whose name is undoubtedly derived from the town of Mahoba, have adopted the mahua tree as their totem, and digging a small hole in the ground place in it a little water and the liquor made from mahua flowers, and worship it. This represents the process of distillation of country liquor. Similarly, the Orahia group, who derive their name ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... unmarried men, of the classes men and women which may intermarry, are solemnly allotted to each other as more or less permanent paramours. [See Mr. Howitt's NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA, and my SECRET OF THE TOTEM, chapter iii.] That custom, for some unknown reason, is confined to certain tribes possessing the two social divisions with the untranslated names MATTERI and KIRARU. These tribes range from Lake Eyre southward, perhaps, as far as the sea. Their peculiar custom is unknown to the Euahlayi, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... impulse that it carried conviction. He would take this warrior's place and go to the Indian camp. So eager was he, and so full of his plan, that he did not feel any repulsion as he opened the warrior's deerskin shirt and took his totem from a place near his heart. It was a little deerskin bag containing a bunch of red feathers. This was his charm, his magic spell, his bringer of good luck, which had failed him so woefully this time. Henry, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... all, Christians in the sense that we're neither Jews, Mohammedans, nor Buddhists. But most of us don't belong to the same totem with Jesus." ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... probably belongs to the historical acquisitions of humanity and like other moral taboos it must be fixed in many individuals through organic heredity. (Cf. my work, Totem and Taboo, 1913.) Psychoanalytic studies show, however, how intensively the individual struggles with the incest temptations during his development and how frequently he puts them into phantasies and ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... trivial; but the more modest spirit of modern thought plainly teaches, if it teaches anything, the cardinal value of occasional little facts. I do not hesitate to say that many learned and elaborate explanations of the totem—the 'clan' deity—the beast or bird which in some supernatural way, attends to the clan and watches over it—do not seem to me to be nearly akin to the reality as it works and lives among—the lower races as the 'pretty fish' of my early ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... quum Dei permissu in carceres et vincula forte detrudendus sim, ad omnem eventum scriptum hoc condidi: quod ut legere, et ex eo causam meam cognoscere velitis, etiam atque etiam rogo. Fiet enim, ut hac re non parvo labore liberemini, dum quod multis ambagibus inquirere vos audio, id totem aperta confessione libere expromo. Atque ut rem omnem, quo melius et intelligi, et memoria comprehendi queat, compendio tradam, in novem omnino capita ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... their young scouts. The Alaskans hew all the timber out by hand, but, of course, the reader may use sawed or milled lumber. The proper entrance to a kolshian or rancheree, as Elliot calls it, is through a doorway made in the huge totem-pole at the front of the building. The roof is covered with splits or shakes held in place by poles laid across them, the sides are made of hewn planks set upright, and the front has two heavy planks at ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... rules, yet in certain cases Murri can marry Butha, and Kubbi may take Ippatha as his spouse— a similar liberty being allowed the men of phratry B. Again, where there is no objection arising from nearness of kin, a Murri man may marry a Matha woman, but her totem must be different from his, and she must belong to a distant family. This applies to the men of every section. By the strict letters of the foregoing table, it would appear that the child of a brother ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews
... Totem and High Priest Of the Independent Potentates; Grand Mogul of the Galaxy Of the Illustrious Stay-out-lates; The President of the Dandydudes, The Treasurer of the Sons of Glee; The Leader of the Clubtown Band And Architects ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... reptile, fish, plant, or strange stone had been fixed on as the abode of his tutelary spirit by some father of a family. The family grew into a clan, and the clan to a tribe, and the object sacred in the eyes of its father and founder became its "totem", crest, or symbol. As a rule, whatever thing was the totem of the individual or the clan was held sacred in their eyes, and, if it was an animal, was not killed, or, if killed, not eaten. Many of the northern ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Koo dragging in another Totem Pole. Guess that Ketch must be the biggest liar ever produced by the Eskimos. He tried to tell me that Totem Poles fall from the sky. Says he can always find one if he sees it fall because it's so hot it melts the snow ...
— Solar Stiff • Chas. A. Stopher
... point in favour of Mr. Atkinson's view is that it takes us so much further back. By it exogamy as a custom must have been much earlier than totemism, as at this stage the different group-families would not be distinguished by totem names; but its action as a law would become much stronger when reinforced by the totem superstitions, and would become fixed in rigid sexual taboos.[36] The strongest of these taboos is the avoidance between brothers and sisters; this is Mr. Atkinson's ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... composite photograph of the inhabitants of the British Isles. He is not an average man. He is a totem. When an Indian tribe chooses a fox or a bear as a totem, they must not be taken too literally. But the symbol has a real meaning. It indicates that there are some qualities in these animals that they admire. They have proved valuable in the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... in all the three Festivals there was a pervasive element of vague fear. Hitherto we have been dealing with early Greek religion chiefly from the point of view of mana, the positive power or force that man tries to acquire from his totem-animal or his god. But there is also a negative side to be considered: there is not only the mana, but the tabu, the Forbidden, the Thing Feared. We must cast away the old year; we must put our sins on to ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... the Mound-Builders, and must certainly have been well known to them. Moreover, the otter is one of the animals which figures largely in the mythology and folk-lore of the natives of America, and has been adopted in many tribes as their totem. Hence, this animal would seem to be a peculiarly apt subject for embodiment in sculptured form. It matters very little, however, whether these sculptures were intended as otters or not, the main point in the present ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... most numerous being Saugor, Damoh, Jubbulpore, Hoshangabad, Raipur, Bilaspur and Drug. The name is considered to be derived from the Sanskrit krishi, cultivation, or from kurma, the tortoise incarnation of Vishnu, whether because it is the totem of the caste or because, as suggested by one writer, the Kurmi supports the population of India as the tortoise supports the earth. It is true that many Kurmis say they belong to the Kashyap gotra, Kashyap being the name of a Rishi, which seems to have been derived from kachhap, the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... marsh-plants, and weeds that have been worshipped." He would rather connect it with Totemism,[5] urging that the primitive stages of religious evolution go to show that, "The ancient nations came, in pre-historic times, through the Totem stage, having animals, and plants, and the heavenly bodies conceived as animals, for gods before the anthropomorphic gods appeared;" While Mr. Herbert Spencer[6] again considers that, "Plant-worship, like the worship of idols and animals, is an aberrant species of ancestor-worship—a species ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... States asking for the possession of certain lakes near their reservation is a series of pictures of the sacred animals or "totems" which represent the several subtribes. Lines run from the hearts of the totem animals to the heart of the chief totem, while similar lines run from the eyes of the subsidiary totems to the eyes of the chief, and these indicate that all of the subtribes feel the same way about the matter and view it alike,—the sentiment is unanimous. From the ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... we see these various customs, which in several parts of the world have been observed as living elements of totem-cults, and which in other parts have been accepted as evidence of totem-worship in the past, but in the agricultural habits of the people we may see an efficient cause of the decay of totemism, if at some time in the past it has flourished among them. For it has been pointed out, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... tale of Ji-shib the Chippewa, and A-mi-kons the (p. 112) little beaver, his totem, follows Indian life from birth to early manhood. Dr. Jenks has prepared many small ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... et canibus monstrosa narratio. Forsam totem videri allegorica allusio possit ad Canibales de quibus Petrus [1] Martyr Mediolan de rebus Occatucis. [Footnote 1: Born at Florence in 1500, he entered the church very young, but the reading of the works of Zwingler and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... composition shows the Mother of Tomorrow and a surmounting group typifying the Spirit of Enterprise which has led the Aryan race to conquer the West. The figures, from left to right, are: 1. the French-Canadian (sometimes called "The Trapper"), on horseback; 2. the Alaskan, carrying totem poles, on foot; 3. the Spanish-American conqueror, mounted; 4. the German-American, on foot; 5. the Mother of Tomorrow, on the tongue of the ox-drawn prairie schooner; 6. the Italian-American, on foot; 7. the English-American, mounted; 8. an Indian squaw; ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... marks of the Haidas are heraldic designs or the family totem, or crests of the wearers, and are similar to the carvings depicted in the pillars and monuments around ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... antiquarian researches. But at the present day it is difficult to realize the interest which these proceedings and documents excited; they were often considered almost a matter of life or death to the frontier settlers. It is apparent that every chief had then his peculiar totem, or symbol. At a later period this system was abandoned, and they used only a simple cross. Among the chiefs who signed, is to be found the totem of Bombazeen and some others, whose names are perpetuated in history for their ...
— The Abenaki Indians - Their Treaties of 1713 & 1717, and a Vocabulary • Frederic Kidder
... for the divergence of drawing and ornament is doubtless the original motive of ornamentation, which is found in the clan or totem ideas. Either to invoke protection or to mark ownership, the totem symbol appears on all instruments and utensils; it has been shown, indeed, that practically all primitive ornament is based on totemic motives.[12] ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... would in a large camp be punished with death. The reason for this is the dread with which they regard the menstrual period of women. During such a time, a woman is kept entirely away from the camp, half a mile at least. A woman in such a condition has boughs of some tree of her totem tied round her loins, and is constantly watched and guarded, for it is thought that should any male be so unfortunate as to see a woman in such a condition, he would die. If such a woman were to let herself be seen by a man, she would probably be put to death. When the woman has recovered, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... mother, Meethetaske.[Footnote: "A turtle laying her eggs in the sand."] But with Onoah it was very different. With him the past was as much of a mystery as the future. No Indian could say even of what tribe he was born. The totem that he bore on his person belonged to no people then existing on the continent, and all connected with him, his history, nation, and ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Red Cloud and accepted by the whites was as follows: every pair of stakes was tied together and marked with two names, the white man's and the Indian's—the latter's mark or totem being used. They then were piled up in a lone tepee, half way between the Fort and the Indian camp, and the tepee put under guard of an Indian and a white soldier. The understanding was that as soon as the race was over the winners should take possession of the lodge and ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... note that the most modern school of analytical psychology has recently turned attention to the problem of taboo. Prof. Sigmund Freud, protagonist psychoanalysis, in an essay, Totem und Tabu, called attention to the analogy between the dualistic attitude toward the tabooed object as both sacred and unclean and the ambivalent attitude of the neurotic toward the salient objects in his environment. We must agree that in addition to ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... one considers the material side of the work—the pigment, the brush, the canvas! There is no mystery there; you know all about them! Worst of all is the commercialization of art. The rudely carved totem pole may appear grotesque to the white man, but it is the sincere expression of the faith and personality of the Indian craftsman, and has never been sold or bartered until ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... and they were Indians—every one. Jack could not be certain of the tribe to which they belonged, but inasmuch as it was apparent they were neither Shawanoes nor Hurons, he was confident they were Osages, though it was not impossible that their totem was ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... which makes the savage place his totem on the rocks, and it is, thanks to the same instinct, that this very day our savants are finding beneath the foundations of the temples and palaces which once decked the Phoenician plain, the baked ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... the buttons, conchas or side ornaments of shells, silver, horn or wooden discs, even small mirrors and circles of beadwork were used, and sometimes the conchas were left out altogether; they may have the owner's totem on them, usually a bunch of ermine tails hung from each side of the bonnet just below the concha. A bunch of horsehair will answer as well; (hh) the holes in the leather for holding the lace of the feather; 24 feathers are needed for ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of civilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call totemism. "Totem" means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as men. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as men-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not to imitate kangaroos—you cannot imitate yourself—but just ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... all wearing the regulation Camp Fire uniform, a loose blouse and dark blue serge skirt, and so she could not dress the part. Then, although the Camp Fire official log book had been given her to illustrate she had not even started to paint the totem of the Sunrise Camp on its brown leather cover, although Sunrise Hill stood, always before her in its changing beauty. The girls had taken its name for their camp with the thought that the hill might symbolize their own ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... coasts, 90 sq.; little that can be called religion among them, 91 sq.; their theory that the souls of the dead survive and are reborn in their descendants, 92 sq.; places where the souls of the dead await rebirth, and the mode in which they enter into women, 93 sq.; local totem centres, 94 sq.; totemism defined, 95; traditionary origin of the local totem centres (oknanikilla) where the souls of the dead assemble, 96; sacred birth-stones or birth-sticks (churinga) which the souls of ancestors are thought to have ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... was his agreement to make restitution to the robbed settlers. Pontiac gave them in payment for their purloined property promissory notes drawn on birch-bark and signed with the figure of an otter—the totem to which he belonged—all of which promises to pay, it is said, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... life. Such mythic ancestors are worshipped as divine. This superstition is called Totemism, and the mythic ancestor is known as the Totem. As a people passes gradually into a higher stage of culture, greater stress is constantly laid on the human qualities of the Totem, until it becomes at length an anthropomorphic god. To such deity the object previously reverenced as a Totem is attached, and a new and modified legend grows up ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... further south 'King's Mouf.' This spokesman, like the 'Meu-'minister of Dahome, repeated to his master our interpreter's words; and his long wand of office was capped with a silver elephant—King Blay's 'totem,' equivalent to our heraldic signs. So in Ashanti-land some caboceers cap their huge umbrellas with the twidam, or leopard, the Etchwee, or panther, of Bowdich, [Footnote: Mission, &c., p. 230 (orig. fol.). The other two patriarchal families which preside over the eight ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... passage indicates the existence in Ireland of totems, and of the rule that the person to whom a totem belongs must not ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... out receipts, for the supplies as taken. These receipts were pieces of bark, pictured with the kind of supplies taken, and signed with the figure of an otter—the totem of the Ottawas. After the war every receipt ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... around, also gaping at the fine snowy banner, upon which as the card under it, went on to state, was to be embroidered with colored silk the totem of the leading patrol ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren |
