totemismsystem of belief in which humans are believed to have kinship with a totem or a mystical relationship is said to exist between a group or an individual and a totem. A totem is an object, such as an animal or plant that serves as the emblem or symbol of a kinship group or a person. The term totemism has been used to characterize a cluster of traits in the religion and in the social organization of many primitive peoples.


The term totem is derived from ototeman from the language of the Algonkian Algonquian tribe of the Ojibwa (in the area of the Great Lakes in eastern North America); it originally meant “his brother–sister kin.” The grammatical root, ote, signifies a blood relationship between brothers and sisters who have the same mother and who may not marry each other. In English, the word totem was introduced in 1791 by a British merchant and translator who gave it a false meaning in the belief that it designated the guardian spirit of an individual, who appeared in the form of an animal—an idea which the Ojibwa clans do indeed portray by their wearing of animal skins. It was reported at the end of the 18th century that the Ojibwa name their clans after those animals that live in the area in which they live and appear to be either friendly or fearful. The first accurate report about totemism in North America was written by a Methodist missionary, Peter Jones, himself an Ojibwa chief, who died in 1856 and whose report was published posthumously. According to Jones, the Great Spirit had given toodaims (“totems”) to their clans; and because of this act, it should never be forgotten that members of the group are related to one another and on this account may not marry among themselves.


The nature of totemism

It is advisable to define totemism as broadly as possible but concretely enough so that some justice can be done to its many forms. Totemism is, then, a complex of varied ideas and ways of behaviour based on a world view drawn from nature. There are ideological, mystical, emotional, reverential, and genealogical relationships of social groups or specific persons with animals or natural objects, the so-called totems. It is necessary to differentiate between group and individual totemism. These forms exhibit common basic characteristics, which occur with different emphases and not always in a complete form. The general characteristics are essentially the following: (1) viewing the totem as a companion, relative, protector, progenitor, or helper—superhuman powers and abilities are ascribed to totems and totems are not only offered respect or occasional veneration but also can become objects of awe and fear; (2) use of special names and emblems to refer to the totem; (3) partial identification with the totem or symbolic assimilation to it; (4) prohibition against killing, eating, or touching the totem, even as a rule to shun it; and (5) totemistic rituals.

Though it is generally agreed that totemism is not a religion, in certain cases it can contain religious elements in varying degrees, just as totemism can appear conjoined with magic. Totemism is frequently mixed with different kinds of other beliefs—the cult of ancestors, ideas of the soul, beliefs in powers and the spirits. Such mixtures make the understanding of particular totemistic forms difficult. The cultic veneration of definite animals and natural things and powers by all those who belong to an ethnic unit do not belong to totemism itself.

Group totemism

Group (social or collective) totemism is the most widely disseminated form of totemism. Though the following characteristics can belong to it, they must not be taken to be part of a whole system: (1) mystic association of animal and plant species, natural phenomena, or created objects with unilineally related groups (lineages, clans, tribes, moieties, phratries) or with local groups and families; (2) hereditary transmission of the totems (patrilineal or matrilineal); (3) names of groups that can be based either directly or indirectly on the totem (the same holds true for personal names used within groups); (4) totemistic emblems, symbols, and taboo formulas are, as a rule, a concern of the entire group, but they can also belong to subdivisions of that group. Taboos and prohibitions can apply to the species itself or they can be limited to parts of animals and plants (partial taboos instead of partial totems). (5) Totems for groups are sometimes connected with a large number of animals and natural objects (multiplex totems) whereby a distinction can be made between principal totems and subsidiary ones (linked totems). Totems are associated or coordinated on the basis of analogies or on the basis of myth or ritual. (Just why particular animals or natural things—which sometimes possess absolutely no recognizable worth for the communities concerned—were selected as totems is often hard to fathom and may be based on eventful and decisive moments in a people’s past which are no longer known.) (6) Accounts of the nature of totems and the origin of the societies in question are informative, even if they are sometimes valuable only as supplementary rationalizations; they are especially informative with regard to their presuppositions. If, for example, one group supposes that it is derived directly or indirectly from the totem, this may be recounted (as a rationalization) that an animal progenitor was changed into a human being who then became the founder of the group or that the ancestral lord of the group was descended from a conjugal union between a man and a representative of the animal species. Groups of men and species of animals and plants can also have progenitors in common. In other cases, there are traditions that the human progenitor of a kin group had certain favourable or unfavourable experiences with an animal or natural object and then ordered that his descendants had to respect the whole species of that animal.

Group totemism is now found especially among peoples in Africa, India, Oceania (especially in Melanesia), North America, and parts of South America who farm rather than simply gather food from nature. Peoples with hunting and partly harvesting economies who exhibit this form of totemism include, among others, the Australian Aborigines (hunters who occupy a special position due to the many forms of totemism among them), the African Pygmies, and various tribes of North America—such as those on the northwest coast (predominantly fishermen), in parts of California, and in northeast North America. Moreover, group totemism is represented in a distinctive form among the Ugrians and west Siberians (hunters and fishermen who also breed reindeer) as well as among tribes of herdsmen in north and Central Asia.

Individual totemism



Some examples of totemism



(Murik Lakes, west of the mouth of the Sepik River, north New Guinea) Patrilineal, exogamous groups (consanguineous sibs) are spread over several villages and are associated with animals, especially fish. They believe that they are born from totems and they make them taboo. Children are given an opportunity to decide during their initiation whether they will respect the paternal or maternal totem. Each group of relatives has a holy place to which the totem animal brings the souls of the dead and from which the souls of children are also believed to come. Totem animals are represented in various manifestations, as spirit creatures in sacred flutes, in disguises, and in figures preserved in each man’s house. At the end of initiation ceremonies, the totems are mimicked by the members of the group.


(Sungai Dayak, Sarawak, Malaysia) Among these peoples, individual totemism is clearly discernible. Particular persons dream of a spirit of an ancestor or a dead relative; this spirit appears in a human form, presents himself as a helper and protector, and names an animal (sometimes one of the natural objects) in which he is manifested. The Iban then observe the mannerisms of animals and recognize in the behaviour of the animals the embodiment of their protector spirit (ngarong). Sometimes, members of the tribe also carry with them a part of such an animal. Not only the particular animal, but the whole species of the animal is given due respect. Meals and blood offerings are also presented to the spirit animal. Young men, who wish to obtain such a protector spirit for themselves, sleep on the graves of prominent persons or seek out solitude and fast so that they may dream of a helper spirit. Actually, only a few persons can name such animals as their very own. Individuals with protector spirits have also attempted to require from their descendants the respect and the taboo given the animal representing the spirit. As a rule, such descendants do not expect special help from the protector spirit, but they observe the totemistic regulations anyway. Thus it can be concluded that particular families or groups of relatives of the Iban represent totem communities.


(Munda-speaking hunter and harvester tribe that resides in the jungle of Chotanāgpur Plateau, northeast Deccan, India) The Birhor are organized into patrilineal, exogamous totem groups. According to one imperfect list of 37 clans, 12 are based on animals, 10 on plants, eight on Hindu castes and localities, and the rest on objects. The totems are passed on within the group, but no account of their origin is available. From tales about the tribe’s origins, it appears that the totem had a fortuitous connection with the birth of the ancestor of the clan. The Birhor think that there is a temperamental or physical similarity between the members of the clan and their totems. Prohibitions with regard to taboo are sometimes cultivated to an extreme degree. In regard to eating, killing, or destroying them, the clan totems are regarded as if they were human members of the group. Moreover, it is believed that an offense against the totems through a breach of taboo will produce a corresponding decrease in the size of the clan. If a person comes upon a dead totem animal, he must smear his forehead with oil or a red dye, but he must not actually mourn over it; he also does not bury it. The close and vital relationship between the totem and the clan is shown in a definite ceremony: the yearly offering to the chief spirit of the ancestral hill. Each Birhor has a tradition of an old settlement—thought to be located on a hill in the area. Once a year, the men of each clan come together at an open place. The elder of the clan functions as the priest who gives the offering. A diagram with four sections is drawn on the ground with rice flour. In one of these, the elder sits while gazing in the direction of the ancestral hill. The emblem of the particular totem is placed in one of the other places of the diagram; depending on the circumstances, this emblem could be a flower, a piece of horn or skin, a wing, or a twig. This emblem represents the clan as a whole. If an animal is needed for such a ceremony, it is provided by the members of another clan who do not hold it as a totem. The Birhor show great fear of the spirits of the ancestral hill and avoid these places as far as possible.


(Liberia, West Africa) In this society, there is not only group totemism but individual totemism as well. Both categories have the same designations, namely, “thing of possession,” “thing of birth,” “thing of the back of men.” These phrases express the idea that the totem always accompanies man, belongs to him, and stands behind him as a guide and warner of dangers. The totem also punishes the breach of any taboo. The totems are animals, plants, and natural phenomena. The kin groups that live in several villages were matrilineal at an earlier time, but they are beginning to exhibit patrilineal tendencies. The group totems, especially the animal totems, are considered as the residence of the ancestors; they are respected and are given offerings. Moreover, a great role is played by individual totems that, in addition to being taboo, are also given offerings. Animal personal totems can be transmitted from father to son or from mother to daughter; on the other hand, individual plant totems are assigned at birth (plants of a tree of life for the child) or later. The totem also communicates magical powers. It is even believed possible to alter one’s own totem animal; further, it is considered an alter ego. Persons with the same individual totem prefer to be united in communities. The well-known leopard confederation, a secret association, seems to have grown out of such desires. Entirely different groups produce patrilineal taboo communities which are supposedly related by blood; they comprise persons of several tribes. The animals, plants, and actions made taboo by these groups are not considered as totems. In a certain respect, the individual totems in this community seem to be the basis of group totemism.

A short history of totemistic theory
McLennan to Thurnwald


The first theory was proposed by the Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan. Following the vogue of 19th-century research, he wanted to comprehend totemism in a broad perspective, and in his study “The Worship of Animals and Plants” (1869, 1870) he did not seek to explain the specific origin of the totemistic phenomenon but sought to indicate that all of the human race had in ancient times gone through a totemistic stage.




Basing his view on research done among primitives in Australia and Melanesia, Frazer saw the origin of totemism as one possibility in the primitive interpretation of the conception and birth of children (“conceptionalism”). According to this primitive idea, women become impregnated when a spirit of an animal or a spiritual fruit enters into their wombs. Since the children therefore participate in the nature of the animal or plant, these plants or animals take on significance. These ideas were hereditary and resulted in the beginning of totem clans derived from a particular natural creature.

A Russian-American ethnologist, Alexander Goldenweiser, subjected totemistic phenomena to sharp criticism. This critical work had lasting importance, especially in the United States, where it engendered a skeptical attitude concerning totemism. Goldenweiser saw in totemism three phenomena that could exist singly and actually coincided only in the rarest of cases. These phenomena were: (1) clan organization; (2) clans taking animal or plant names or having “emblems” obtained from nature; and (3) belief in a relationship between groups and their totems. Goldenweiser did not perceive these phenomena as a unity, since any of them could exist apart from the others.

In another treatise published in 1910, a German ethnologist, Richard Thurnwald, claimed to recognize in totemism the expression of a specific way of thinking among the primitives. Primitives judge the natural environment according to its external appearance without analyzing it any closer and assume that there are sympathetic connections and combinations of natural things; from these ideas come lasting rules of behaviour (like taboos, respect, and social relationships). For the psychology of totemism, Thurnwald later (1917–18) put forth a detailed, systematic presentation; by means of concrete examples, he also raised questions about the connections of totemism with ancestor worship, notions of souls, belief in power, magic, offerings, and oracles.

Durkheim to Radcliffe-Brown


In further contributions, Goldenweiser in 1915–16 and 1918 criticized Lang, Frazer, and Durkheim and insisted that totemism had nothing to do with religion; that man in no way viewed his totem as superior to himself or as a deified being but viewed it as his friend and equal. Goldenweiser also rejected Frazer’s thesis of “conceptionalism” as an explanation of totemism. On the other hand, Goldenweiser was of the opinion that all totemistic manifestations do have at least something of a kind of religion, but he was not inclined to include the guardian spirit conception within totemism.


The first theoretician of the Vienna school of ethnology, Fritz Graebner, attempted to explain the forms of both individual totemism and group totemism and designated them as a moderately creedal or semireligious complex of ideas according to which individual members or subgroups of a society are thought to be in an especially close (but not cultic) relationship to natural objects. According to Graebner, with the help of the cultural–historical method, one can establish (1) the extent to which totemistic forms belong to one definite cultural complex, (2) which forms are “older” or “younger,” and (3) the extent to which forms belong together genetically. Graebner tried to work out a “totemistic” complex (a “culture circle”) for the South Seas. This complex entailed a patrilineal group totemism as well as the material, economic, and religious elements that, in his opinion, appear to be combined with the totemism in that area.

Another member of the same school, Bernhard Ankermann, in 1915–16 championed the view that all totemisms, regardless of where they are found, contained a common kernel around which new characteristics are built. As seen from the standpoint of what was found in Africa, this kernel appeared to him to be the belief in a specific relationship between social groups and natural things—in a feeling of unity between both—a relationship he believed to be spread throughout the world, even if only in a modified or diminished form. Magical and animalistic ideas and rites are merged with totemism in a strong inseparable unity. The genesis of this type of relationship presupposes a state of mind that makes no distinction between man and beast. Although magic can be closely connected with totemism, the feeling of unity between man and beast has nothing to do with magic, which was connected with it only later. According to Ankermann, the totems are not something perilous, something to be shunned, but, on the contrary, totems are something friendly; and since this is directly due to kinship, a totem is thought to be like a brother and is to be treated as such. The totemistic taboo is believed to be due to the fact that the totem is a relative. Ankermann was inclined to see the formation of totemism in a “lower” form of hunting, in an emotional animal–man relationship, in animalistic behaviour. Men of early times, he thought, might have imitated those animals that attracted their attention most of all. According to Ankermann, pretension and reality, however, for the “primitives” are blurred into one thing. Primitive man identifies himself with the animal while he is imitating it; the habit of so doing could lead to a continuing identification. Early man imitated all animals that interested him, but he imitated those that shared his place of habitation above all.

In 1915–16 Wilhelm Schmidt, then the leader of the Vienna school of Ethnology, viewed totemism strictly according to the then-existing schemes of culture circles (today long abandoned); because totemism was disseminated throughout the world, he thought of it as a closed cultural complex in spite of local differences. He maintained that the differences in totemism shown by earlier theories are exaggerations and could, moreover, be due to the lack of particular elements of totemism, to the loss of certain forms of totemism, to incursions from the outside, or to different stages of the development of totemism, none of which would exclude a unified origin for all of totemism. Schmidt believed that the cultural–historical school of ethnology had produced proof that the older, genuine totemism occurred as an integral part of a culture located in a definite area and that it was “organically” connected with definite forms of technology, economy, art, and world view. From a “pure” totemism, Schmidt wanted to separate similar forms, such as sex and individual totemism. Moreover, though he did not designate totemism as a religion, he saw that it did have some sort of religious meaning. Schmidt (in opposition to Ankermann) wanted to regard the higher form of hunting as the economic basis for the totemistic “culture circle.”

The leading representative of British social anthropology, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, took a totally different view on the totemistic problem. Like Boas, he was skeptical of the reality of totemism. In this he opposed the other pioneer of social anthropology in England, Bronisław Malinowski, who wanted to admit the reality of totemism in some way and looked at it more from a biological and psychological point of view than from an ethnological one. According to Malinowski, totemism was not a cultural phenomenon but was the result of trying to satisfy basic human needs within the natural world. As far as Radcliffe-Brown was concerned, totemism was composed of elements that were taken from different areas and institutions, and what they have in common is a general tendency to characterize segments of the community through a connection with a portion of nature. In opposition to Durkheim’s theory of sacralization, Radcliffe-Brown took the point of view that nature is introduced into the social order rather than secondary to it. At first, he shared with Malinowski the opinion that an animal becomes totemistic when it is “good to eat.” He later came to oppose the usefulness of this viewpoint since many totems—such as crocodiles and flies—are dangerous and unpleasant.

In 1952, when Radcliffe-Brown rethought the problem, he found that the similarities and differences between species of animals are to a certain degree translated into ideas of friendship and conflict, or close relationships and opposition among people. The natural world is represented in the form of social relationships to the extent that these social relationships become valid in primitive societies. The structural principle which Radcliffe-Brown believed he had discovered at the end of his comparative study is based on the fusion of the two contrary ideas of friendship and animosity. Thus totemism speaks in its own way of interrelationships and antitheses, ideas that are also found in moieties. So totemism is formulated as a general problem in which the contrasts in nature serve to create an integral whole. Thinking in terms of opposing things is, according to Radcliffe-Brown, an essential structural principle for evaluating totemism.




Lévi-Strauss also critiqued the findings of A.P. Elkin, a specialist on Australia, where totemism had already played a special role in the formation of theories and where it exhibits an abundance of forms for expressing totemism. Elkin had differentiated the following forms: (1) individual totemism; (2) social totemism—itotemism—i.e., totemism that is in a family, moiety, section, subsection, patrilineal clan, or matrilineal clan; (3) cultic totemism with a religious content that is patrilineal and “conceptional” in form; (4) dream totemism—totemistic content in dreams—found in social or individual totemism. Elkin denied the unity of totemism, but (according to Lévi-Strauss) wanted to preserve its reality on the condition that he might trace it back to a multiplicity of types. For Elkin, there is no longer “one” totemism but many totemisms, each in itself a single irreducible whole.

In connection with the Australian material, Lévi-Strauss argued that matrilineal clan totemism—that passed on the “flesh” or “blood”—and the patrilineal clan totemism—based on dreaming—were in no way heterogeneous but were to be thought of as being mutually complementary. They were different means of connecting the material and spiritual world; they were two different, but correlative, types that express the relationship between nature and society.


Present situation and emerging trends
