It is a common, possibly a universal custom, for totemistic peoples to decorate their belongings with their totems. This is well known to occur in North America. The Thlinkets paint or carve their totem on shields, helmets, canoes, blankets, household furniture, and houses. In single combats between chosen champions of different Thlinket clans, each wears a helmet representing his totem. In front of the houses of the chiefs and leading men of the Haidas are erected posts carved with the totems of the inmates. As the houses sometimes contain several families of different totems, the post often exhibits a number of totems, carved one above the other. Or these carvings one above the other represent the paternal totems in the female line, which, descent being in the female line, necessarily change from generation to generation. The totem is painted or carved on the clansman's tomb or grave-post, the figure being sometimes reversed to denote death. It is always the Indian's totem name, not his personal name, which is thus recorded. Other examples will be found in Mr. Frazer's valuable little book.
I have already (p. 17) referred to the delineation of totem animals on drums, pipes, and other objects from Torres Straits and the adjoining coast of New Guinea. Two representations of a totem are usually placed symmetrically on the object; I rather suspect that this is the rule. The cassowary is the most frequent animal on the drums, and I have reason to believe that only a certain clan, or clans, can beat the drums, in which case it is evident that the cassowary men are the chief if not the sole musicians.
When the totem representations are realistic in character there is no difficulty in recognising them; but this is by no means the usual case. Abundant evidence has been given in this book of the degeneration of animal forms into simple decorative devices.
Many savages, however, lay no stress upon realism. A certain simple or complex mark represents a given object, it may not in the very least resemble that object any more than the written or printed name of an animal bears any relation to that animal. The mark is a sign for that object, and if it can be recognised, it answers its purpose. In many cases it can be shown that the mark is in reality a degraded picture of the object, in a vast number of examples we have no evidence.