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Totem   Listen
noun
Totem  n.  
1.
A rude picture, as of a bird, beast, or the like, used by the North American Indians as a symbolic designation, as of a family or a clan; also, the object or animal itself, considered as an symbol of the family. "And they painted on the grave posts Of the graves, yet unforgotten, Each his own ancestral totem Each the symbol of his household; Figures of the bear and reindeer, Of the turtle, crane, and beaver." "The totem, the clan deity, the beast or bird who in some supernatural way attends to the clan and watches over it."
2.
Anything which serves as a venerated or mystic symbol or emblem.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Totem" Quotes from Famous Books



... they were all laughing and talking excitedly, and already one or two of them were adorned with articles of Yarloo's clothing which he had given them. The much-envied recipients of these gifts were probably relations or members of the same totem, and the wise boy had made the most of his opportunities for showing ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... society] suggest that the differences which, after ages of change, separate the civilised man from savage or barbarian, are not so great as the vulgar opinion would have them.... Like the savage, he is a man of party with a newspaper for a totem ... and like a savage he is apt to make of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Thy course no chance Directed. Talismanic art Thou held by this nomadic tribe: For, when the First Wacumic ruled The band, from all the hosts of field And feathery flock of heaven, thou wert Elected Totem. Favored One! Their fate forever linked to thine; Thy image crested on their shields; ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... 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 near ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... him fashion and adorn The gorgeous altar and the totem pole; With fervent zeal, and blind simplicity, From base materials of wood or stone, Carve out a God, then kneel ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... mulieribus 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 Bucer led ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... 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, ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney

... Arctic animals on which they subsist and from whom they believe their ancient clans are sprung. The dances vary in complexity from the ordinary social dance, in which all share promiscuously and in which individual action is subordinated to rhythm, to the pantomime totem dances performed by especially trained actors who hold their positions from year to year according to artistic merit.[1] Yet even in the totem dances the pantomime is subordinate to the rhythm, or rather superimposed upon it, so that ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... whom we have met on the road chanced to be among the original charter members of the troop. All of them belonged to the Wolf Patrol; for it often happens that fellows wearing the same totem are brought closer ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... by the gens was, in the Indian dialect, the totem of the clan. This organization and custom we find running all through the Indian tribes. In many tribes the Indians were wont to carve a figure of their totem on a piece of slate, or even to carve a stone in the shape of the totem, ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen

... be found in aboriginal America. The clan itself, too, always had a name, which was usually that of some animal,—as Wolf, Eagle, or Salmon, and a rude drawing or pictograph of the creature served as a "totem" or primitive heraldic device. A mythological meaning was attached to this emblem. The clan had its own common religious rites and common burial place. There was a clan-council, of which women might be members; there were instances, indeed, of ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... 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

... to the east shore, where the steam from a sawmill served as a guide, and landed at a point that cannot be far from the western limit of the present Pioneer Place, in Seattle, near where the totem pole now stands. ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... have some idea of the peculiar custom and belief called 'totemism.' There is a stage of society in which people claim descent from and kinship with beasts, birds, vegetables, and other objects. This object, which is a 'totem,' or family mark, they religiously abstain from eating. The members of the tribe are divided into clans or stocks, each of which takes the name of some animal, plant, or object, as the bear, the buffalo, the woodpecker, the asparagus, and so forth. No member of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... head of the mound towered a gigantic totem pole, carved and painted with scenes of a most minute history, while at the foot of a smaller stake, alike carved and coloured, bore, one upon another, twelve rings of bone, each one of which stood for ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... basketry, and of artistic representations connected with their common religious or mythological ideas. Many singular forms of carvings and the method of superimposing figures of animals one upon another in their totem poles are found from Alaska to Panama, except in California. These distinguishing features of an incipient culture are found nowhere else in North America, even sporadically. Dall therefore concludes that "they have been impressed upon the American aboriginal world from without," ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame. This exploit was particularly gratifying to the three men; for they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin East, where miners had not yet appeared. It was brought about by ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... doom itself, the council proceeded with its task. Some manner of balloting was adopted, and immediate members of the Cayuse totem drew lots as to which must perform the lawful deed. It fell to a brother of the prisoner—a half-brother only, to be accurate, since the doomed ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... of all sizes lie on the beach. On their bows they carry a carved heron, probably some half-forgotten totem. The bird is more or less richly carved, according to the social standing of the owner, and a severe watch is kept to prevent people from carrying carvings too fine for their degree. Similarly, we find little sticks like small seats fastened to the canoes, their number indicating ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... geography is aided by means of small models of miniature homes of primitive peoples; as for instance, an Eskimo village with its snow igloos, the tents of the Labrador Eskimos, the permanent home of the Northwestern Eskimos, and the houses and "totem poles" of the Haida Indians. Some of the more civilized nations are typified by a "Lumber camp in a temperate zone," and by a series of "Dolls dressed in ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... dash thunderously, tell us nothing of these old and often dismal quarrels. They are but secular things after all; the things that are eternal reach deeper than creed or vestment. We do not ask what fetish or totem the sleepers in the grassy barrows believed in; we may ask if they lived their lives truly and faithfully, doing that which was good according to the light ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... 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 to account ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... great hall furnished in the most extravagantly complete style of Indian art. The walls were entirely covered with Navaho and Hopi blankets. There was a frieze of Apache hide-shields, each painted with a brave's totem, and beneath, a solid cornice of buffalo skulls. Puma-skins carpeted the floor; at least a hundred baskets trimmed with wood-pecker and quail feathers were scattered about; trophies of Indian bows, arrows, lances, war-clubs, tomahawks, pipes and knives decorated the wall spaces. Two couches ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the other fifteen stood up bareheaded, including the 'King's Stick,' called 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 ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... to the smallness and pettiness of the majority—a contrast so great that it is mentally and spiritually a glimpse of the world of new possibilities attainable when once the feverish clinging to the ideals of the totem post is abandoned. This vast nave, reminiscent in many ways of Winchester, but far more satisfying, is generally bathed in a cool, greenish light, and is, in reality, a magnificent vestibule to the crowded ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home

... to gain applause in these days, to denounce the Prussian system; my only purpose is to show that Bible-worship, precisely as saint-worship or totem-worship, delivers the worshipper up to the Slavers. This truth has held in America, precisely as in Prussia. During the middle of the last century there was fought out a mighty issue in our free republic; and what was the part played in this ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... of "Enterprise," with a white boy on one side and a colored boy on the other, "Heroes of Tomorrow." On the other side of the wagon stood typical figures, the French-Canadian trapper, the Alaska woman, bearing totem poles on her back, the American of Latin descent on his horse, bearing a standard, a German, an Italian, an American of English descent, a squaw with a papoose, and an Indian chief on his pony. The wagon was modelled on top of the arch. It was too ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... spendthrift youth, passed aboard tramp freighters between Lisbon and Rio, Leith and Natal, Tokyo, Melbourne and the Golden Gate—wherever the sea ran green; of ginseng-growing in China, shellac gathering in India, cattle-grazing in Wyoming. He spoke of Alaskan totem-poles, of Indian sign language, of Aztec monoliths buried in the forest. He sang "Lather an' Shavin's," "La Golondrina," "The Cowboy's Lament," and, clicking his fingers castanet-wise, hummed little Spanish airs whose words he would ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... 15 In the great, mysterious darkness Of the speechless days that shall be! "On the grave-posts of our fathers Are no signs, no figures painted; Who are in those graves we know not, 20 Only know they are our fathers. Of what kith they are and kindred, From what old, ancestral Totem, Be it Eagle, Bear or Beaver, They descended, this we know not, 25 Only know they are our fathers. "Face to face we speak together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us To the friends that dwell afar off; ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... careless of the smearing of my fingers, and took it to the moonlight. It was made of the softest of dressed doeskin, and embroidered in red porcupine quills with the figure of a beaver squatting on a rounded lodge. I had seen that design before. It was the totem sign of the house of the Baron, and this bag had hung from Pemaou's neck that day when he danced between me and the sunset and flung the war spear ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... him by signs, that she might try to ascertain what manner of man he was. He told her of the coming of a "Great Prophet" from the sky, and of his words that he had left with the people. The cross with the figure of a man he explained as his totem which he had told them to carry. He also said that those who love him are commanded to go among strange peoples to tell the news, and that all who believe must be marked with holy water and ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... of the dead, or they may be casual spirits unattached. An example analogous to European superstition is given by John Tanner in his Narrative of a Captivity among the Red Indians, 1830. In this case one man had slain his brother, or, at least, a man of his own Totem, and was himself put to death by the kindred. The spectres of both haunted a place which the Indians shunned, but Tanner (whose Totem was the same as that of the dead) passed a night on the scene. His dreams, if ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... understand that which lay at the back of Keeko's eyes. She could not read the words on the totem. She did not know their meaning when she heard them. All she knew was that the white man had ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... not for territory but for leadership, and mainly for the possession of this fetich. Anyhow, we know that the Zulus brought it down with them. They called it Ndhlondhlo, which means the Great Snake, but I don't suppose that it was any kind of snake. The snake was their totem, and they would naturally call their most sacred ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... meaning of the picture, but the captive comprehended it at once. It was the pride of Tayoga that he was of the clan of the Bear, of the nation Onondaga, of the great League of the Hodenosaunee, and here upon the arrows was his totem or sign of the Bear. It was a message and Robert knew that it was meant for him. Had ever a man a more faithful comrade? The Onondaga was still following in the hope of making a rescue, and he would follow as long as Robert was living. Once more ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... found on the Indian graveboards mark a step in advance. Every warrior has his crest, which is called his totem, and is painted on his tombstone. A celebrated war-chief, the Adjetatig of Wabojeeg, died on Lake Superior, about 1793. He was of the clan of the Addik, or American reindeer. This fact is symbolized by the figure of the deer. The reversed position denotes ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... he believed he somehow possessed the object itself, and so could control it; to the image, therefore, was transferred all the value and potence of the object. The object represented was deeply significant; it was perhaps the animal upon which the tribe depended for its food, its totem or guardian divinity; or else, as among the Egyptians, it was the man himself, of whom the image was meant to be an enduring habitation for the soul. If primitive men had copied indifferent objects, then ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... chief," replied the savage, softly, "but he wears only one totem, and that is one which cannot be ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... 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 can marry the child of a sister, but this is rigorously forbidden—the ...
— The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales • Robert Hamilton Mathews

... to regain the other part, he had lost his balance and been drowned. She showed Hector a rude figure of a bird engraved with some sharp instrument, and rubbed in with a blue colour. This, she said, was the totem or crest of the chief of the tribe, and was meant to represent a crow. The canoe had belonged to a chief of that name. While they were dividing the contents of the canoe among them to be carried to the shanty, Indiana, taking up the bass-rope and ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... when Waverley rides into the bear-warded avenue; it certainly never ceases till the golden image of the same totem is replaced in the Baron of Bradwardine's hand. And it is very particularly to be observed that this interest is of a kind absolutely novel in combination and idiosyncrasy. The elements of literary interest are nowhere new, except in what is, for ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... the shells? Little old New York. If the cops would let me set up at the corner of Broad and Wall, I'd own the Stock Exchange in a week. Madison and State is another good stand; so's Market and Kearney, or Pioneer Square, down by the totem pole. New York, Chicago, 'Frisco, Seattle, they're all hick towns. For every city guy that's been stung by a bee there's a hundred that still thinks honey comes from a fruit. This rush is just starting, and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... 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

... tattoo 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 the homes of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... Ketch and Ah 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 around it. Personally I think he should be ...
— Solar Stiff • Chas. A. Stopher

... 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 was honored, ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... Mohawks told Mr. Stewart that in their childhood this weird spot was held to be sacred to the Great Wolf, the totem of their tribe. Here, for more generations than any could count, their wise men had gathered about the mystic birch flame, in grave council of war. Here the tribe had assembled to seek strength of arm, hardness of heart, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... Christians in the sense that we're neither Jews, Mohammedans, nor Buddhists. But most of us don't belong to the same totem ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... strong warriors in the Chis-chis-chash; his father's shirt and leggins were black at the seams with the hair of other tribes. He, too, had stolen ponies, but had done no better than that thus far, while he burned to keep the wolf-totem red with honor. Only last night, a few of his boy companions, some even younger than himself, had gone away to the Absaroke for glory and scalps, and ponies and women—a war-party—the one thing to which an Indian pulsed with his last drop. He had thought to ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington

... to the number of apartments, one being usually allotted to a family. Each household was made up on the principle of kin. The married women, usually sisters, own or collateral, were of the same gens or clan, the symbol or totem of which was often painted upon the house, while their husbands and the wives of their sons belong to several other gentes. The children were of the gens of their mother. While husband and wife belonged to different gentes, ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... 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 Indians would ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... The bird form was probably in familiar use long before it was employed in the decoration of basketry. In Fig. 345 I present an ordinary graphic representation. It is copied from a Zuni shield and is the device of an order or the totem of a clan. The style is quite conventional, as a result of the various constraints surrounding its production. But what a strange metamorphosis takes place when it is presented in the basketmaker's language. Observe the conventional pattern shown upon ...
— A Study Of The Textile Art In Its Relation To The Development Of Form And Ornament • William H. Holmes

... American) red man; (of mixed blood) metisse, ladino, mestizo, guacho, griffe, mameluco, half-breed. Associated Words: tepee, wigwam, tomahawk, lodge, wickiup, sachemdom, pueblo, calumet, totem, totemism, powwow, roanoke, coup, gens, Manito, pogamoggan, potlatch, chinook, runtee, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... corrected aquexar. Ametallado fayned inameled. Totum est majus sua parte against factions and priuate profite Galens compositions not paracelsus separations Full musike of easy ayres withowt strange concordes and discordes In medio non sistit uirtus Totem est quod superest A stone withowt foyle A whery man that lookes one way and pulls another Ostracisme Mors in Olla ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... morning playing with my asylum and planning some intelligent presents to be sent later. He thinks that three neatly painted totem poles would add to the attractiveness of our Indian camps. He is also going to make us a present of three dozen pink rompers for the babies. Pink is a color that is very popular with the superintendent of this asylum, who ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster

... 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 and the vagaries of Mac. Quantuck ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... of Messrs. Spencer 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, 1904) and of Mr. J. G. Frazer (Fortnightly Review, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... "On the grave-posts of our fathers Are no signs, no figures painted; Who are in those graves we know not, Only know they are our fathers. Of what kith they are and kindred, From what old, ancestral Totem, Be it Eagle, Bear, or Beaver, They descended, this we know not, Only know they are our fathers. "Face to face we speak together, But we cannot speak when absent, Cannot send our voices from us ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... of these elementary symbols in a single device, sometimes a mythic idea was beautifully expressed. Take, as an example, the rain totem adopted by the late Lewis H. Morgan as a title illumination, from Maj. J.W. Powell, who received it from the Moki. Pueblos of Arizona as a token of his induction into the rain gens of that people. (See Fig. 557, a.) An earlier ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... effort to break free, and, as my hand attempted to close on his throat, the clutching fingers caught the band of his shirt, and ripped it wide open. There, directly before me, a scar across his hairy, exposed chest, was a broad, black mark, a tribal totem. I stared down ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... but there was no determinate line of demarcation, the dwellings of the Indians being mostly as large and solidly built of logs and planks as those of the whites. Some of them were adorned with tall totem poles. ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... pitch was baked out and barrelled for use in repairing the steamboats and many fishing boats of the area. We studied this aborigine woman and questioned our guide later about these people. Like our Indians they are. Pagans they are and in this volume is a picture of one of their totem poles. Untouched by the progress of civilization, they live in the great Slavic ocean of people that has rolled over them in wave after wave, but has not changed them a bit. Space can not be afforded for the numerous interesting anecdotes that are ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... religious beliefs. Totemism in a modified form is found in the Old Testament where animals speak on occasion, as the serpent in Genesis, or Balaam's ass. In the most remote periods it is probable that every clan had at least one totem animal which might no more be killed or eaten than the human individuals of the clan. The totem was protected by taboo. The totem was sacred and in this capacity it was looked upon as a source of strength and holiness, and to live ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... 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 family, ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... and plentiful feasts; for the grain, being in the milk is both sweet to the mouth and comfortable to the stomach. Of totem, I know not the meaning; but if it appertaineth in any wise to the art of Indian music, it need not be inquired after at their hands. They never join their voices in praise, and it would seem that they are among the profanest of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... Alaskan ethnology was made, twenty totem poles and two native houses and one war canoe being located about the building. The totem poles came from different places on Prince of Wales Island and from two different tribes. At an old village called Tuxekan ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... faultless. Of this one, I can say with the Psalmist, "I studied that I might know this thing, it is a labour in my sight" (Psalm 72). And I can say it with St. Columban, Totum, dicere volui in breve, totem non potui. In the book I quote Cardinal Bona. In his wonderful Rerum Liturgicarum (II., xx., 6) he wrote what I add as a finish, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... the West. Those wholesome, frank, good-natured people whom you met last winter at the Grand Canyons and who told you of the funny performance of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in Yiddish at the People's Theatre on the East Side in New York, and insisted that you see the totem pole in Seattle; and then take a cottage for a month at Catalina Island; who gave you the tip about Abson's quaint little beefsteak chop-house up an alley in Chicago, who told you of Mrs. O'Hagan's second-hand furniture shop in Charleston, where you can get real colonial ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... a 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 tribal ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... 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 one of ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... what finer morality is preached to-day than was preached by Christ, by Buddha, by Socrates and Plato, by Confucius and whoever was the author of the "Mahabharata"? Good Lord, fifty thousand years ago, in our totem-families, our women were cleaner, our family and group ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... Besides trees, the country people worshiped stones, rocks or meteors that had fallen from the sky like the one taken from Pessinus to Pergamum and thence to Rome. They also venerated certain animals, especially the most powerful of them all, the lion, who may at one time have been the totem of savage tribes.[2] In mythology as well as in art the lion remained the riding or driving animal of the Great Mother. Their conception of the divinity was indistinct and impersonal. A goddess of the earth, called Ma or Cybele, was revered as the fecund ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... 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 ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... 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] Now, since a very slight suggestion of the totem given by its ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... injuriously lessened the food supply. There is a tribe of Bushmen who will eat no goat's flesh, although goats are the most numerous domestic animals in the district.[53] Where totemism exists it is regularly accompanied by a taboo on eating the totem animal. Whatever may be the real principle in totemism, it overrules the interest in an abundant food supply. "The origin of the sacred regard paid to the cow must be sought in the primitive nomadic life of the Indo-European race," because ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... tribe, receive the mark of the turtle on his breast, and become a Delaware. On his refusal, he was bound to a tree, and was about to undergo the torture, when a girl among the listeners sprang to his side. She, too, was a Pequot, but the turtle totem was on her bosom, and when she begged his life, because they had been betrothed, the captors paused to talk of it. She had chosen well the time to interfere, for a band of Hurons was approaching, and even as the talk went on their ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... especially as 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

... The Alaska Room contains models of totem poles, carvings on ivory and wood, boats, snowshoes, shields, baskets of several varieties, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... 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 with ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... is not the only kind of work—and they are not the only kind of people. Even the savage, having exerted himself to get his dinner, and having had his dinner, and being, in a small way, human, begins to exert himself further to decorate his tools and weapons, his canoes and totem poles—because he likes to. Nobody pays him for it. He enjoys the act of doing it, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... Powhatans of Virginia, the Lenni-Lenape of the Delaware, the warlike hordes of New England, the Ottawas of the far North, and the Western tribes, perhaps without exception, spoke of this 'chimerical beast,' as one of the old missionaries calls it as their common ancestor. The totem or clan which bore his name was looked up to with ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... the triangular space above the eves was painted the startling conventionalized head of a wolf. The ears rose weirdly from the gable edge of the roof. Two monster eyes glared through the twilight above a grinning, squared mouth twenty feet across. On either side of the oval door stood a totem, hollow at the base and containing the ashes of long-dead chiefs. The corner-posts were carved into life-size grotesque ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... says. 'Let them call Killisnoo down out of the sky whither I have sent her.' But the priests knew their limits. 'May your klooches bear you sons as the spawn of the salmon,' I says, turning to go; 'and may your totem pole stand long in the land, and the smoke of your ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... forest; the Sioux of the plains upon his war-pony; the Apache, cruel and unyielding as his arid desert; the Pueblo Indians, with remains of ancient Spanish civilization lurking in the fastnesses of their massed communal dwellings; the Tlingit of the Pacific Coast, with his totem-poles. With a typical bright American youth as a central figure, a good idea of a great field of national activity is given, and made thrilling in its human side by the heroism demanded by the little-known adventures of those who do the work ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... perfidious chief 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

... up and prove it. Dirty Dan O'Leary had volunteered, had been mesmerized after a struggle, and, upon being told that he was Dick Whittington's cat, had proceeded to cut some feline capers that would have tickled the sensibilities of a totem-pole. Mr. Daney's honest cachinnations now were so infectious that Nan commenced to laugh with him—heartily, but no longer with that strident little note of resentment, and cumulatively, as Mr. Daney's mirth mounted until the honest ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... saddle in the hills, and looking downward on the far side of the island, we saw the village—a large cluster of grass huts and gaily colored totem-poles close by the ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... 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

... occupied as the place of their genesis. These people are socially divided into family groups called wingwu, the descendants of sisters, and groups of wingwu tracing descent from the same female ancestor, and having a common totem called myumu. Each of these totemic groups preserves a creation myth, carrying in its details special reference to themselves; but all of them claim a common origin in the interior of the earth, although the place of emergence to the surface is set in widely separated localities. They ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... The King's Coin A Night with "North Eagle" Hoolool of the Totem Pole The Wolf-Brothers We-hro's Sacrifice The Potlatch The Scarlet Eye Sons of Savages Jack o' Lantern The Barnardo Boy The Broken String Maurice of His Majesty's Mails The Whistling Swans The Delaware ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... my Camp Fire is 'Ohio.' It is an Indian name and means 'beautiful.' You know Ohio is called the 'Buckeye State,' Buckeye meaning 'Ohio Horse-Chestnuts.' Unlike your horse-chestnut, our tree is small and its flower is red. So our 'totem' or symbol is Buckeye,' or ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

... barrier 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 even ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... Incarnation (Ind. St. ii. p. 169), nor with Schroeder, who (Literatur und Cultur, p. 330) would derive the notion from the birth-stories of Buddha. In our opinion the avatar-theory is older than either and is often only an assimilation of outlying totem-gods to the Brahman's god, or as in the case of the flood-story the necessary belief that the 'fish' must have been the god of the race. Some of these avatars ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... vestige of endogamy nor of the totem system that is such a remarkable and widespread feature of Polynesian, Melanesian, and cognate peoples in Oceania. Neither is there any theoretical endogamic institution which obliges a Manbo to marry within his tribe, but, in ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... lycanthropy of the wer-tiger differs from that of the werwolf inasmuch as there is a definite god or spirit, in the shape of a tiger, that is directly responsible for the bestowal of the property. This tiger deity is looked upon and worshipped as a totem or national deity—that is to say, as a divine being that has the welfare of the Kandh nation especially at heart. It is communed with at home, but more particularly in the wild dreariness of the jungle, where, on ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... has been missing from the totem and wasn't to be found," answered the youth, rather confusedly. "Besides, I have been very busy. But don't let it trouble you. The curate has promised to help me, but advised that I proceed with great tact and caution, for the Civil Guard seems to be mixed up in it. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... boys standing 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 ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... the council women invest him with an elaborately ornamented tunic, place upon his head a chaplet of feathers, and paint the gentile totem on his face. The sachem of the tribe then announces to the people that the man has been made chief of the gens, and admitted to the council. This is ...
— Wyandot Government: A Short Study of Tribal Society - Bureau of American Ethnology • John Wesley Powell

... the same scent in France; 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 persuaded Dr. Frazer to accept ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... President of the United 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. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... inhabitants, drew on each for a definite quantity of supplies, and had these deposited at Meloche's house near his camp on Parent's Creek. A commissary was appointed to distribute the provisions as required. In payment he issued letters of credit, signed with his totem, the otter. It is said that all of them were afterwards redeemed; but this is almost past belief in the ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... and seen many wonders and much great medicine. But to-day there is a cloud in his mind. He understands but darkly. It would be a shame that Mighty Hand should bring water to the eyes of his white brother's papoose, but who can say if the Fiery Totem be not ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... havoc and his weapons lost their lusting, Till his stormy eyes allured her from the land of Totem Poles, Till she followed where he called her, followed with a woman's trusting, To the canyon where the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... complain that there is no honor and fine living in all of this, we shall have to agree with him. But we can answer that by guile we have preserved our joys, and cleared our way out from the shadows of his big totem pole. If we have but little magnificence, we have as much as anybody can ever have who is hounded by the legal virtues. And if we may keep a little gaiety for life, by that much do we make him bite the dust. It isn't pretty, but ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... trenches—men who a month or two ago had forgotten how to take their clothes off. They are, in fact, a highly civilised community. Some traces of their aboriginal state they still retain, and they cherish their totem, which is a bundle of black ribbons, rather like the flattened leaves of an artichoke, attached to the back of their collars. It is the badge of their tribe. Also at night some of them develop the most primitive of all instincts and crawl out on their stomachs with a hand-grenade to get ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... tied to the posts of the tent; they were the presents of the chiefs. At a few steps from the door was an immense shield, suspended upon four posts, and on which a beaver, the head of an eagle, and the claws of a bear were admirably painted—the first totem for me, the second for Gabriel, and the third for Roche. We gratefully thanked our hospitable hosts, and retired to rest in our ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... their descendants in their Psalm-Books and their Bibles, in their wills, their letters; and they, with the greatest unanimity of feeling, had it cut upon their several tombstones. It was their own family motto,—their totem, so to speak. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in the evolution of humanity, belief in a god and communion with him must there be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the Australians totem-gods and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that time the belief universally held by students of the science of religion that in Australia a totem was a god and a god might be a totem. It was conjectured ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... 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 the eaves which run down through ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard

... feast known as a "Potlatch." The Thlinkits are not hardy, nor, as a rule, long-lived, and diseases due to drink and dissipation are rapidly thinning them out. Shamanism exists here, but not to such an extent as amongst the Siberian races, and the totem poles, which are met with at every turn in Wrangell, are not objects of worship, but are used apparently for a heraldic purpose. Some of the ancient war canoes of this tribe are still in existence, but they are only brought out on the occasion of a ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... "Fourteen months—and at last we're going home. I'm going to train you and the cub for that sister of mine. Eh, won't you like that? You don't know what she's like, you homely little devil, or you wouldn't sit there staring at me like a totem-pole pup! And it isn't in your stupid head to imagine how pretty she is. You saw that sunset to-night? Well, she's prettier than THAT if she is my sister. Got anything to add to that, Miki? If not, let's say our prayers and go ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... be light and airy with you. He asked me what gens you belonged to. I told him I guessed it was the grouse gens. He said he had not been aware that such a totem existed among the Sioux. I replied that, so far as I could ascertain, you were the only surviving ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... for any family is that which the Keiths of Scotland selected a-many years ago: "They say. What say they? Let them say." It might even do for the top of this Totem-Pole of Tooralay. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... queer part of it. Gin'rally it's easy to tell from the dress, paint and style of an Injin what his tribe or totem is, but there's nothing of the kind 'bout Motoza to guide you. I think ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... 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 ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... American 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 ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... searchlights strayed in their direction, and down its white beam for the space of a hundred yards slid a ghostly white moth. It dipped suddenly and fell out of the light and in its wake, but above, burst three little green balls of fire—Tam's totem and sign-manual. ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... inferential primitive condition is found in the curious prohibition of communications between children-in-law and parents-in-law; the clan taboos are commonly connected with the tutelar beast-god, perhaps represented by a totem. ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee

... more than a tinge of distrust. Still others patronized us. A very few overlooked our faded flannel shirts, our soiled trousers, our floppy old hats with their rattlesnake bands, the wear and tear of our equipment, to respond to us heartily. Them in return we generally perceived to belong to our totem. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... 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 Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... blackened by paint and weather, must be the one I sought. I rested close within its shadow, striving to assure myself there was no possibility of mistake. As my eyes lifted, I could trace in dim outline the totem of the chief faintly sketched on the taut skin: it was the same I had noted on the brawny breast of ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... subtle appearance. The gods may in visions or dreams be met with in their own proper embodiments; or, as is more common, they may be regarded as present for practical purposes: in some inanimate object, as in the case of the fetish; in some animal species, as in the case of the totem; in some place, as in the case of the shrine; or even in some human being, as in the case of the inspired prophet and miracle worker. In more refined and highly developed religions the medium of God's presence is less specific. He is ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... during the hour Donald blessed the memory of Jean 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 ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... boy, he cooked his own supper. He had already packed all his stores under the shelter of the wigwam and the canoe, covering the latter with the ground-sheet. He had also lighted the hurricane lamp and suspended it from the top of the totem pole. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... Boys off for bear. The fat boy frightened by a totem pole. In a place of many mysteries. Tad makes a great find. A discovery ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin

... bubbles up on the shore and through the water at the boat's bow, and as we strike a match the whole surface flames like the brandy on a Christmas plum-pudding. On the opposite side of the river are "lobsticks," a new word to us and a new thing. To stand as a living totem-pole, the Indians select on a striking promontory a tall spruce and from a section of the trunk lop all the branches except two, which are left as wings. If the lobstick is to stand a monument to a certain ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... be no mercy from Stumm. That large man was beginning to fascinate me, even though I hated him. Gaudian was clearly a good fellow, a white man and a gentleman. I could have worked with him for he belonged to my own totem. But the other was an incarnation of all that makes Germany detested, and yet he wasn't altogether the ordinary German, and I couldn't help admiring him. I noticed he neither smoked nor drank. His grossness was apparently not in the way of fleshly appetites. Cruelty, ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... and his sigh evokes a procession of marvelous ghosts tattooed from head to toe and capering like a company of debonair totem poles over the cobblestones of another South State Street. But the macabre days are gone. The Barnum bacchanal of the nineties lies in its grave with a fading lithograph for a tombstone. Along with the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... their organisations to the less elaborately studied Anula and Mara. I have therefore passed over the questions discussed by Dr Durkheim. We have still more to learn as to the descent of the totem, the relation of totem-kin, class and phratry, and the like; totemism is therefore treated only incidentally in the present work, and lack of knowledge compels me to pass over many ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... this law 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 tablets which tell us the family histories, no less than the story ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... of the most widely found modes of showing respect to animals is known as totemism (see TOTEM AND TOTEMISM), but except in decadent forms there is but little positive worship; in Central Australia, however, the rites of the Wollunqua totem group are directed towards placating this mythical animal, and cannot be termed anything ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... or, of the two clans. From otara or katara, clan or totem (in the reduplicate ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale

... sympathetic magic more systematically carried into practice for the maintenance of the food supply than in the barren regions of Central Australia. Here the tribes are divided into a number of totem clans, each of which is charged with the duty of multiplying their totem for the good of the community by means of magical ceremonies. Most of the totems are edible animals and plants, and the general result supposed to be accomplished by these ceremonies ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... into the world physically connected with the placenta, which was accredited with the attributes of the life-giving and birth-promoting Great Mother and intimately related to the moon and the earliest totem. It was obviously, also, closely concerned in the nutrition of the embryo, for was it not the stalk upon which the latter was growing like some fruit on its stem? It was a not unnatural inference to suppose that, as the elements of the personality were not indissolubly connected with the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... 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 ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... or all, of these interpretations will be welcomed by Sanskrit scholars. The followers of McLennan have long ago been purged out of the land by the edict of Oxford against this sect of mythological heretics. They would doubtless have maintained that the cow was Gladstone's totem, or family crest, and that, like other totemists, he ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... the third night-watch I heard, Far and low, a spirit-bird; Very mournful, very wild, Sang the totem of my child. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... 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 another altogether. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... save thee, my son; since they cannot take the totem from thee after the life is gone. Turn away from me thy head—let me not look upon thine eyes as I strike, lest my hands grow weak and tremble. Turn thine eyes away; ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... having originated this beastly practice, but now I suppose the credit for the discovery belongs to the Songhees, who must have taught our friends, and then gave it up themselves. Groups of men may have been seen carving miniature canoes with carved Indians paddling in them, also totem poles and bows and arrows, while three or four Indians would be at work shaping a full-grown canoe which might possibly hold half a dozen Indians. It was very interesting watching them at work and many an hour I have spent watching ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett



Words linked to "Totem" :   U.S., US, totemic, clan, U.S.A., tribe, kindred, kin, kinship group, emblem, kin group, totem pole



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