One of our most intelligent friends from Ulithi, Ricardo, explained that before the coming of the Catholic missionaries, totem worship of plants and animals was widespread. He cited as his example the taro plant, which had been Ulithi's major totem. The taro plant supposedly gave birth to the first Ulithian during the beginning of the world, and from generation to generation the children were taught to believe that the taro was the original source of life, and to mutilate or destroy it meant that the person concerned would be subject to illness, blindness, and even death. with dramatic ability which must be seen to be believed. Ricardo pantomimed in elaborate detail the anguish and pain which, in the old days, his people believed was caused by a violation of the holiness of the taro.
At Ulithi, where Christianity has replaced the belief in totem origins, and where the social unit is considerably more important and the chief is invested with more power, the clan has virtually disappeared, and only among the very old is there still the belief in the totemic origin of the world.
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