The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Unabridged). Durkheim Émile
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it is fully developed that its real signification appears with the greatest clearness. In this way also, American totemism, since it has a long history behind it, could serve to clarify certain aspects of Australian totemism.212 At the same time, it will put us in a better condition to see how totemism is bound up with the forms which follow, and to mark its place in the general historical development of religion.
So in the discussions which follow, we shall not forbid ourselves the use of certain facts borrowed from the Indian societies of North America. But we are not going to study American totemism here;213 such a study must be made directly and by itself, and cannot be mixed with the one which we are undertaking; it raises other problems and implies a wholly different set of special investigations. We shall have recourse to American facts merely in a supplementary way, and only when they seem to be able to make us understand Australian facts to advantage. It is these latter which constitute the real and immediate object of our researches.214
175 Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter.
176 This idea was so common that even M. Réville continued to make America the classic land of totemism (Religions des peuples non civilisés, I, p. 242).
177 Journals of Two Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia, II, p. 228.
178 The Worship of Animals and Plants. Totems and Totemism (1869, 1870).
179 This idea is found already very clearly expressed in a study by Gallatin entitled Synopsis of the Indian Tribes (Archæologia Americana, II, pp. 109 ff.), and in a notice by Morgan in the Cambrian Journal, 1860, p. 149.
180 This work had been prepared for and preceded by two others by the same author: The League of the Iroquois (1851), and Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871).
181 Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 1880.
182 In the very first volumes of the Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology are found the study of Powell, Wyandot Government (I, p. 59), that of Cushing, Zuñi Fetiches (II, p. 9), Smith, Myths of the Iroquois (ibid., p. 77), and the important work of Dorsey, Omaha Sociology (III, p. 211), which are also contributions to the study of totemism.
183 This first appeared, in an abridged form, in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.).
184 In his Primitive Culture, Tylor had already attempted an explanation of totemism, to which we shall return presently, but which we shall not give here; for by making totemism only a particular case of the ancestor-cult, he completely misunderstood its importance. In this chapter we mention only those theories which have contributed to the progress of the study of totemism.
185 Published at Cambridge, 1885.
186 First edition, 1889. This is the arrangement of a course given at the University of Aberdeen in 1888. Cf. the article Sacrifice in the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition).
187 London, 1890. A second edition in three volumes has since appeared (1900) and a third in five volumes is already in course of publication.
188 In this connection must be mentioned the interesting work of Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., 1894-1896.
189 We here confine ourselves to giving the names of the authors; their works will be indicated below, when we make use of them.
190 If Spencer and Gillen have been the first to study these tribes in a scientific and thorough manner, they were not the first to talk about them. Howitt had already described the social organization of the Wuaramongo (Warramunga of Spencer and Gillen) in 1888 in his Further Notes on the Australian Classes in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute (hereafter, J.A.I.), pp. 44 f. The Arunta had already been briefly studied by Schulze (The Aborigines of the Upper and Middle Finke River, in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, Vol. XIV, fasc. 2): the organization of the Chingalee (the Tjingilli of Spencer and Gillen), the Wombya, etc., by Mathews (Wombya Organization of the Australian Aborigines, in American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. II, p. 494; Divisions of some West Australian Tribes, ibid., p. 185; Proceedings Amer. Philos. Soc., XXXVII, pp. 151-152, and Journal Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXII, p. 71 and XXXIII, p. 111). The first results of the study made of the Arunta had also been published already in the Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Pt. IV (1896). The first part of this Report is by Stirling, the second by Gillen; the entire publication was placed under the direction of Baldwin Spencer.
191 London, 1899. Hereafter, Native Tribes or Nat. Tr.
192 London, 1904. Hereafter, Northern Tribes or Nor. Tr.
193 We write the Arunta, the Anula, the Tjingilli, etc., without adding the characteristic s of the plural. It does not seem very logical to add to these words, which are not European, a grammatical sign which would have no meaning except in our languages. Exceptions to this rule will be made when the name of the tribe has obviously been Europeanized (the Hurons for example).
194 Strehlow has been in Australia since 1892; at first he lived among the Dieri, and from them he went to the Arunta.
195 Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien. Four fascicules have been published up to the present. The last appeared at the moment when the present book was finished, so it could not be used. The two first have to do with the myths and legends, and the third with the cult. It is only just to add to the name of Strehlow that of von Leonhardi, who has had a great deal to do with this publication. Not only has he charged himself with editing the manuscripts of Strehlow, but by his judicious questions he has led the latter to be more precise on more than one point. It would be useful also to consult an article which von Leonhardi gave the Globus, where numerous extracts from his correspondence with Strehlow will be found (Ueber einige religiöse und totemistische Vorstellungen der Aranda und Loritja in Zentral Australien, in Globus, XCI, p. 285). Cf. an article on the same subject by N. W. Thomas in Folk-lore, XVI, pp. 428 ff.