mal, et la nation entiere a aussi le sien, dont elle
prend le nom, et dont la figure est sa marque, ou, se l'on veut, ses
armoiries, on ne signe point autrement les traites qu'en traceant ces
figures." Among the animal totems Charlevoix notices porcupine, bear,
wolf and turtle. The armoiries, the totemistic heraldry of the peoples
of Virginia, greatly interested a heraldic ancestor of Gibbon the
historian,(2) who settled in the colony. According to Schoolcraft,(3)
the totem or family badge, of a dead warrior is drawn in a reverse
position on his grave-post. In the same way the leopards of England are
drawn reversed on the shield of an English king opposite the mention
of his death in old monkish chronicles. As a general rule,(4) persons
bearing the same totem in America cannot intermarry. "The union must be
between various totems." Moreover, as in the case of the Australians,
"the descent of the chief is in the female line". We thus find among
the Red Men precisely the same totemistic regulations as among the
Aborigines of Australia. Like the Australians, the Red Men "never"
(perhaps we should read "hardly ever") eat their totems. Totemists,
in short, spare the beasts that are their own kith and kin. To avoid
multiplying details which all corroborate each other, it may suffice to
refer to Schoolcraft for totemism among the Iowas(5) and the Pueblos;(6)
for the Iroquois, to Lafitau, a missionary of the early part of the
eighteenth century. Lafitau was perhaps the first writer who ever
explained certain features in Greek and other ancient myths and
practices as survivals from totemism. The Chimera, a composite creature,
lion, goat and serpent, might represent, Lafitau thought, a league
of three totem tribes, just as wolf, bear and turtle represented the
Iroquois League.

(1) Histoire de la France-Nouvelle, iii. 266.

(2) Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam, by John Gibbon, Blue Mantle,
London, 1682. "The dancers, were painted some party per pale, gul and
sab, some party per fesse of the same colours;" whence Gibbon concluded
"that heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of the humane
race".

(3) Vol. i. p. 356.

(4) Schoolcraft, v. 73.

(5) Ibid., iii. 268.

(6) Ibid., iv. 86.

The martyred Pere Rasles, again, writing in 1723,(1) says that one stock
of the Outaonaks claims descent from a hare ("the great hare was a man
of prodigious size"), while another stock derive their lineage from the
carp, and a th