Taboo associations had much to do with totems and every totem had its taboo. Among many American Indian tribes, a hunter might not kill the animal represented by his totem. Among certain others only a part of such ani mal was tabooed. The moon being the goddess of fertility, her power was greatest when her full face looked toward the earth. Hence among many races, the planting of grain was tabooed except at the full of the moon. Yet putatoes and bulbous plants could be planted only when she showed the least of her face, for it was feared she might make the part above the ground grow at the expense of that beneath it. Among the forest tribes of the eastern United States and Canada the killing of the ground squirrel was tabooed because he was credited with the discovery of medicines or their introduction to man. Among the Al gonquins the white rabbit was tabooed to the hunter because the great culture god Nanabozbo frequently assumed the form of a white rab bit. The white dog could not be eaten by the plains Indian because he was reserved as an offering to the great spirit. Among many primitive peoples the names of the dead were tabooed for a certain length of time lest the pronouncing of them might call their spirits back to earth or incite them to unfriendly action.
To such a length was this fear of the dead carried that some tribes buried the name with the departed and in its place bestowed another by which the dead was afterward referred to and remembered. Sometimes tabooes were as wide as the tribe or the nation; and many of these ancient tabooes have survived in the shape of national feeling against the use of certain objects.
The custom of malting certain places sacred to certain deities arose out of the practice of setting apart such places for the worship of these deities, or through the fact that certain places were believed to be the abode of all powerful beings. This belief tabooed such places to all but the powerful beings who it was claimed had already pre-empted them.
(See NATURE WORSHIP; AMERICAN MYTHOL OGY). Consult Bancroft,