The Indian Totem
The story of the Indian Totem, briefly told, is that: In the Long Ago, when the beasts of prey had multiplied and become more powerful than the children of men, the Sun-Father listened to the supplications of his children and changed the animals into stone. Then said the Sun-Father to the animals thus changed: "That ye may not be evil unto men, but that ye may be a great good unto them, ye have been changed into rock everlasting. By the magic breath of prayer, by the heart that shall endure forever within you, shall ye be made to serve instead of to devour mankind." Thus originated the totem of the red men, which is a representation, either in carved stone (a fetich) or in pictorial drawing, of the form of some animal--the deer, the wolf, the turtle, the bear, etc., which became the symbolic name of the family. "For the heart that shall endure within your shall ye be made to serve" is the secret and the power of fetichism.
Of the graves, yet unforgotten,
Each his own ancestral totem,
Each the symbol of his household;
Figures of the bear and reindeer,
Of the turtle, crane and beaver."
—LONGFELLOW
Like the hand clasp, or the password of modern secret societies, the scared symbols of the totem gave the right of friendship, hospitality, and help, alike among stranger tribes as among confederated ones. A warrior might change his name, he might be "Tender Foot" to-day and "Two Feathers" to-morrow, but his totem was never changed.