Totemism and Exogamy- Volume 3

Abstract

The institution of totemism was first observed and described by Europeans among the Indian tribes of North America and it is known to have prevailed widely though by no means universally, among them. Within the great area now covered by the United States and Canada the system was most highly developed by the tribes to the east of the Mississippi, who lived in settled villages and cultivated the soil; it was practised by some but not all of the hunting tribes, who roamed the great western prairies and it was wholly unknown to the Californian Indians the rudest representatives of the Redskin race in North America, who had made little progress in the arts of life and in particular were wholly ignorant of agriculture.