Note 398 — Chapter II · TOTEMIC BELIEFS—continued The Totemic Animal and Man

For example, here is a legend of the Tsimshian. In the course of a hunt, an Indian met a black bear which took him to its home, and taught him to catch salmon and build canoes. The man stayed with the bear for two years, and then returned to his native village. But the people were afraid of him, because he was just like a bear. He could not talk or eat anything except raw food. Then he was rubbed with magic herbs and gradually regained his original form. After that, whenever he was in trouble, he called upon his bear friends, who came to aid him. He built a house and painted a bear on the foundation. His sister made a blanket for the dance, upon which a bear was designed. That is why the descendants of this sister had the bear as their emblem (Boas, Kwakiutl, p. 323. Cf. Vth Rep. on the N.W. Tribes of Canada, pp. 23, 29 ff.; Hill Tout, Report on the Ethnology of the Statlumh of British Columbia, in J.A.I., 1905, XXXV, p. 150).

Thus we see the inconveniences in making this mystical relationship between the man and the animal the distinctive characteristic of totemism, as M. Van Gennep proposes (Totémisme et méthode comparative, in Revue de l'histoire des religions, Vol. LVIII, July, 1908, p. 55). This relationship is a mythical representation of otherwise profound facts; but it may be omitted without causing the disappearance of the essential traits of totemism. Undoubtedly there are always close bonds between the people of the clan and the totemic animal, but these are not necessarily bonds of blood-relationship, though they are frequently conceived in this form.