cheap European trade goods. Already our museums are gradually acquiring specimens illustrating the influences of the European markets; and necklets and ornaments chiefly composed of German beads, but of native arrangement, are commonly met with. The traveller of the near future will, I fear, find in his anxiety to obtain collections illustrative of aboriginal art, that his most valued examples will prove to have simply been "Made in Germany."
THE ORIGIN OF TOTEM NAMES AND BELIEFS.
By A. Lang, M.A., LL.D., etc.
(Read at Meeting of 16th July, 1902.)
[These pages have been a good deal altered since the draft was read to the Society. They are meant to form part of a book not yet named, my own portion being introductory to "Primal Law," a treatise left in MS. by my cousin, the late Mr. J. J. Atkinson.]
Totem names are the titles of groups of kindred, real or imagined; they are derived from animals, plants, and other natural objects; they appear among tribes who reckon descent either on the sword or spindle side, and the totem name of each group is usually (but not in the case of the Arunta) the mark of the exogamous limit. None may marry a person of the same totem name. But, in company with this prohibition, is found a body of myths, superstitions, rites, magical practices, and artistic uses of the totem.[1]
- ↑ As to the word "totem" but little is certainly known. Its earliest occurrence in literature, to my knowledge, is in a work by J. Long (1791), Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter. Long sojourned among the Algonquin branch of the North American Indians. He spells the word
