Indian totem kindreds. This, indeed, is an
example where the criterion of "recurrence" or "coincidence" seems to be
valuable. Bowditch's Mission to Ashantee (1873), p. 181.

(2) This view, however, does not prevail among the totemistic tribes of
British Columbia, for example.

(3) Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p. 50. This amazing tale is
supported by the statement that kinship went by the female side (p.
49); the father was thus not of the kin of his child by the alien woman.
Cieza was with Validillo in 1538.

(4) In Pinkerton, xvi. 400.

While in the case of the Ashantee tribes, we can only infer the
existence of a belief in kinship with the animals from the presence
of the other features of fully developed totemism (especially from the
refusal to eat the name-giving animal), we have direct evidence for the
opinion in another part of Africa, among the Bechuanas.(1) Casalis,
who passed twenty-three years as a missionary in South Africa, thus
describes the institution: "While the united communities usually bear
the name of their chief or of the district which they inhabit" (local
tribes, as in Australia), "each stock (tribu) derives its title from
an animal or a vegetable. All the Bechuanas are subdivided thus into
Bakuenas (crocodile-men), Batlapis (men of the fish), Banarer (of the
buffalo), Banukus (porcupines), Bamoraras (wild vines), and so forth.
The Bakuenas call the crocodile their father, sing about him in their
feasts, swear by him, and mark the ears of their cattle with an incision
which resembles the open jaws of the creature." This custom of marking
the cattle with the crest, as it were, of the stock, takes among some
races the shape of deforming themselves, so as the more to resemble the
animal from which they claim descent. "The chief of the family which
holds the chief rank in the stock is called 'The Great Man of the
Crocodile'. Precisely in the same way the Duchess of Sutherland is
styled in Gaelic 'The Great Lady of the Cat,'" though totemism is
probably not the origin of this title.

(1) E. Casalis, Les Bassoutos, 1859.

Casalis proceeds: "No one would dare to eat the flesh or wear the skin
of the animal whose name he bears. If the animal be dangerous--the
lion, for example--people only kill him after offering every apology and
asking his pardon. Purification must follow such a sacrifice." Casalis
was much struck with the resemblance between these practices and the
similar customs of N