This greater stability has even enabled the archaic system of phratries to maintain itself in America with a clearness and a relief no longer to be found in Australia. We have just seen that in the latter continent the phratry is everywhere in a state of decadence; very frequently it is nothing more than an anonymous group; when it has a name, this is either no longer understood, or in any case, it cannot mean a great deal to the native, since it is borrowed from a foreign language, or from one no longer spoken. Thus we have been able to infer the existence of totems for phratries only from a few survivals, which, for the most part, are so slightly marked that they have escaped the attention of many observers. In certain parts of America, on the contrary, this institution has retained its primitive importance. The tribes of the North-west coast, the Tlinkit and the Haida especially, have now attained a relatively advanced civilization; yet they are divided into two phratries which are subdivided into a certain number of clans: the phratries of the Crow and the Wolf among the Tlinkit,[264] of the Eagle and the Crow among the Haida.[265] And this division is not merely nominal; it corresponds to an ever-existing state of tribal customs and is deeply marked with the tribal life. The moral distance separating the clans is very slight in comparison with that separating the phratries.[266] The name of each is not a word whose sense is forgotten or only vaguely known; it is a totem in the full sense of the term; they have all its essential attributes, such as will be described below.[267] Consequently, upon this point also, American tribes must not be neglected, for we can study the totems of phratries directly there, while Australia offers only obscure vestiges of them.
But the totem is not merely a name; it is an emblem, a veritable coat-of-arms whose analogies with the arms of heraldry have often been remarked. In speaking of the Australians, Grey says, "each family adopt an animal or vegetable as their crest and sign,"[268] and what Grey calls a family is incontestably a clan. Also Fison and Howitt say, "the Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group."[269] Schoolcraft says the same thing about the totems of the Indians of North America. "The totem is in fact a design which corresponds to the heraldic emblems of civilized nations, and each person is authorized to bear it as a proof of the identity of the family to which it belongs. This is proved by the real etymology of the word, which is derived from _dodaim_, which means village or the residence of a family group."[270] Thus when the Indians entered into relations with the Europeans and contracts were formed between them, it was with its totem that each clan sealed the treaties thus concluded.[271]