hey are
fixed in general by climatic and topographical conditions. Where food is
plentiful, thought and life are likely to be freer. In general, savage
peoples are constantly on the alert to discover supplies of food, and
they show ingenuity in devising economic methods--when one resource
fails they look for another. Hunters and fishers are dependent on wild
animals for food, and stand in awe of them. The domestication of animals
leads men to regard them simply as material for the maintenance of
life--the mystery that once attached to them vanishes; they are
considered not as man's equals or superiors but as his servants. The
same result follows when they are used as aids in tilling the soil or in
transportation. Agricultural peoples also have generally some knowledge
of the arts of life and a somewhat settled civil and political
organization, and these tend to separate them from the lower animals and
to diminish or destroy their sense of kinship with them.

+524+. We find, in fact, that in many cases totemic regulations are less
strict where the food supply is plentiful and where agriculture is
practiced. The correspondence is not exact--other considerations come
in, such as isolation and the unknown quantity of natural tribal
endowments; but the relation between the economic and totemic conditions
is so widespread that it cannot be considered as accidental.

+525+. Thus, for example, the contrast between the social system of
sterile Central Australia and that of certain tribes on the
comparatively fertile southeast coast is marked; the Kurnai have
practically no clan totemism. In the islands of Torres Straits and in
New Guinea agriculture marks a dividing line between stricter and looser
organizations based on regard for the totem. The agricultural Melanesian
and Polynesian tribes, with great regard for animal patrons, lay stress
on the family or on voluntary associations rather than on the clan. In
Africa the partially civilized peoples, such as the Baganda and adjacent
tribes in the east, and Yoruba, Dahomi, and Ashanti in the west, have
fairly well-developed religious organizations, in which totems play a
subordinate part. The customs of certain tribes in the south are
especially worthy of note: the pastoral Herrero have a double system of
clans, maternal and paternal, and their food restrictions are curiously
minute, relating to parts of animals or to their color; the Bakuana, who
are pastoral and agricultural, k