[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