Totem
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Totem. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a natural object, one of a class taken by a tribe, a family, or a single person, and treated with superstitious respect as an outward symbol of an existing intimate unseen relation. The totem is considered as helpful to the man, who in his turn abstains from killing it if an animal, or eating it if a plant, and who often assimilates himself to it by wearing its skin or the like, or tattooing its picture on his body. The whole members of the clan who have a totem in common count themselves of one blood, and claim the totem as their common ancestor. The restriction on killing and eating it is absolute, and sometimes men are tabooed from touching or even looking at it under pain of expulsion from the tribe. Elabdeath or prate ceremonies connected with birth, marriage, and death point more closely to the identification of the man and the totem, and such ceremonies as those of the Australians at puberty are intended to initiate the youth into the restrictions that must be observed in sexual commerce.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
among the Indians of North America , a natural object, usually an animal, assumed as the token or emblem of a clan or family. A representation of the totem served to designate the members of the clan, much as emblems are used by members of the various fraternal orders. The totem of the Indian was pricked in the skin or on the clothing and upon weapons of the chase, domestic utensils, etc. In a way the figure of the clan totem was an idol, at least it is clear that it was regarded with reverence. The Indians of the Pacific coast set up totem poles, posts on which their totem was carved. A totem pole of this sort has been secured by the city of Seattle. Longfellow speaks of totem posts in Hiawatha. And they painted on the grave-posts-- Each his own ancestral Totem, Each the symbol of his household; Figures of the Bear and Reindeer, Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver, Each inverted as a token That the owner was departed.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts treat "totemism" as a single worldwide institution with fixed rules — Collier's in 1921 says the ban on killing or eating the totem "is absolute" — and that unified category has since collapsed. Alexander Goldenweiser had already picked it apart in 1910, and Claude Lévi-Strauss's Totemism (1962) argued that the supposed institution was largely an illusion created by outsiders lumping unrelated customs together; anthropologists now describe particular clan-crest systems rather than a global stage of religion. Aiton's guess in 1910 that a carved pole "was an idol" is also rejected: Northwest Coast poles are heraldic and memorial art recording lineage rights and histories, not objects of worship. As for the pole Aiton says Seattle "secured" in 1899, it was cut down and taken from a Tlingit village at Tongass without permission; after it burned in 1938 the city commissioned Tlingit carvers to make the replacement that stands in Pioneer Square today.
Written for this edition, 2026.