According to Father Geronimo Boscana, the Acagchemen tribe of Upper California furnish a curious parallel to this notion.

They worshipped the _panes_ bird, which seems to have been an eagle or vulture, and each year, in the temple of each village, one of them was solemnly killed without shedding blood, and the body buried.

Yet the natives maintained and believed that it was the same individual bird they sacrificed each year, and more than this, that the same bird was slain by each of the villages." [146] An account of the North American Indians quoted by the same author states that they believe all the animals of each species to have an elder brother, who is as it were the principle and origin of all the individuals, and this elder brother is marvellously great and powerful.

According to another view each species has its archetype in the land of souls; there exists, for example, a _manitu_ or archetype of all oxen, which animates all oxen.

[147] Generally in the relations between the totem-clan and its totem-animal, and in all the fables about animals, one animal is taken as representing the species, and it is tacitly assumed that all the animals of the species have the same knowledge and qualities and would behave in the same manner as the typical one.