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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

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-Title: The Secret of the Totem

-

-Author: Andrew Lang

-

-Release Date: April 11, 2014 [EBook #45363]

-

-Language: English

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-Character set encoding: UTF-8

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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

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-(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45363 ***

 

 THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

 

@@ -7236,359 +7208,5 @@ Boas, _Nat. Mus. Report_, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)--A. L.
 

 End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

 

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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45363 ***

diff --git a/45363/45363-h/45363-h.htm b/45363/45363-h/45363-h.htm
index 4316088..d0dfa18 100644
--- a/45363/45363-h/45363-h.htm
+++ b/45363/45363-h/45363-h.htm
@@ -119,40 +119,7 @@ v:link {color: #800000; text-decoration: none; }
 <body>

 

 

-<pre>

-

-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

-almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

-

-

-Title: The Secret of the Totem

-

-Author: Andrew Lang

-

-Release Date: April 11, 2014 [EBook #45363]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org

-(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

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-

-

-

-

-

-</pre>

+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45363 ***</div>

 

 <h1>THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM</h1>

 

@@ -8027,373 +7994,7 @@ pp. 60-61. Boas, <i>Nat. Mus. Report</i>, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)&mdash;A. L.<
 

 

 

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

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-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

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+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 45363 ***</div>

 

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+{

+  "DATA": {

+    "CREDIT": "Produced by Marc D'Hooghe (Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)"

+  }

+}

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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

+

+

+Title: The Secret of the Totem

+

+Author: Andrew Lang

+

+Release Date: April 11, 2014 [EBook #45363]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: UTF-8

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org

+(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

+

+

+

+

+

+THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

+

+BY

+

+ANDREW LANG

+

+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

+

+39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

+

+NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

+

+1905

+

+

+

+

+CONTENTS

+

+

+INTRODUCTION

+

+      I. ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

+     II. METHOD OF INQUIRY

+    III. THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

+     IV. THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

+      V. THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

+     VI. THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

+    VII. RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

+   VIII. A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

+     IX. TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

+      X. MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

+     XI. MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

+

+APPENDIX: AMERICAN THEORIES

+

+

+

+

+INTRODUCTION

+

+

+This book is the natural sequel of _Social Origins and Primal Law_,

+published three years ago. In _Primal Law_, Mr. J. J. Atkinson sought

+for the origin of marriage prohibitions in the social conditions of

+early man, as conceived of by Mr. Darwin. Man, in the opinion of the

+great naturalist, was a jealous animal; the sire, in each group,

+kept all his female mates to himself, expelling his adolescent male

+offspring. From this earliest and very drastic restriction, Mr.

+Atkinson, using the evidence of "avoidances" between kinsfolk in

+savage society, deduced the various prohibitions on sexual unions. His

+ingenious theory has been received with some favour, where it has been

+understood.

+

+Mr. Atkinson said little about totemism, and, in _Social Origins_,

+I offered a theory of the Origin of Totemism; an elaboration of the

+oldest of all scientific theories, that of Garcilasso de la Vega, an

+Inca on the maternal side, the author of the _History of the Incas_.

+Totems, he conceived, arose in the early efforts of human groups to

+differentiate each from the others. Mr. Max Müller and Dr. Pikler

+set forth the same notion, independently. The "clans," or, as I

+say, "groups," needed differentiation by names, such as are still

+used as personal names by savages, and by names easily expressed in

+pictographs, and easily signalled in gesture language. The origin of

+the group names, or sobriquets, once forgotten, the names, as usual,

+suggested a relation between the various name-giving objects and the

+groups which bore them. That relation was explained by the various

+myths which make the name-giving animals, plants, and other objects,

+mystic kinsmen, patrons, or ancestors of the groups named after them.

+From reflection on this mystic _rapport_ between the objects and the

+human groups of the same names, arose the various superstitions and

+tabus, including that which prohibits unions between men and women of

+the same animal group-name, whether by locality or maternal descent.

+

+Critics objected that such a "trivial accident" as a name could not be

+the germ, or one of the germs of a great social system. But "the name

+goes before everything," as the Scots used to say; and in this book I

+have set forth the great importance of names in early society, a fact

+universally acknowledged by anthropologists.

+

+It was also objected that names given from without would never be

+accepted and gloried in, so I now prove that such names have often been

+accepted and gloried in, even when they are derisive; which, among

+savages, names derived from plants and animals are not; they are rather

+honourable appellations.

+

+So far, I have only fortified my position. But some acute criticisms

+offered in _Man_ by Mr. N. W. Thomas enabled me to detect a weak point

+in my system, as given in _Social Origins_, and so led on to what I

+venture to think not unimportant discoveries regarding the Australian

+social organisations. To Mr. Thomas's researches, which I trust he will

+publish in full, I am much indebted, and he kindly read part of this

+book in type-written MS.

+

+I also owe much to Mrs. Langloh Parker, who generously permitted me to

+read, in her MS., her valuable account of the Euahlayi tribe of New

+South Wales, which is to be published by Messrs. Archibald Constable.

+No student has been so intimately acquainted as this lady with the

+women of an Australian tribe; while the men, in a place where they

+could be certain that they were free from tribal _espionnage_, were

+singularly communicative. Within its limits, Mrs. Langloh Parker's

+book, I think, may be reckoned almost as valuable as those of Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen.

+

+By the irony of fortune, I had no sooner seen my book in print, than

+Mr. J. G. Frazer's chapter on "The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism

+among the Australian Aborigines" (_Fortnightly Review_, September 1905)

+came into my hands. I then discovered that, just when I thought myself

+to have disentangled the ravelled thread of totemism, Mr. Frazer also

+thought, using another metaphor, that his own "plummets had found

+bottom"--a very different bottom. I then wrote Chapter XI., stating my

+objections to his theories. Many of these, mainly objections to the

+hypothesis of the relative primitiveness of the Arunta "nation," had

+often been urged before by others. I was unaware that they had been

+answered, but they have obviously been deemed inadequate. Meanwhile the

+question as between two entirely different solutions of the old mystery

+remains open.

+

+Since critics of my _Social Origins_ often missed my meaning, I am

+forced to suppose that I may in like manner have misconstrued some of

+the opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to

+contest. I have done my best to understand, and shall deeply regret

+any failures of interpretation on my own part.

+

+Necessarily I was unaware that in Mr. Frazer's opinion, as set forth in

+his essay of September 1905, "the common assumption that inheritance

+of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it

+through the father need not hold good." I have throughout argued on

+that assumption, which I understood to be held by Mr. Frazer, as well

+as by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Howitt, and most authorities. If it be correct,

+as I still think it is, it cannot but be fatal to the Arunta claim to

+primitiveness. But Arunta society is, in many points, so obviously

+highly organised, and so confessedly advanced, that I am quite unable

+to accept this tribe as an example of the most archaic state of affairs

+extant. If I am wrong, much of my argument is shaken, and of this it

+is necessary to warn the reader. But a tribe really must be highly

+advanced in organisation, if it can afford to meet and devote four

+months to ceremonials, as it did, in a region said to be relatively

+deficient in natural supplies.

+

+In this book I have been able to use the copious materials of Mr.

+Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in their two recent works. It

+seems arrogant to differ from some of the speculative opinions of these

+distinguished observers, but "we must go where the logos leads us."

+

+I end by thanking Mr. H. J. Ford for his design of Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+heading the totems in their phratries, and betrothing two interesting

+young human members of these divisions.

+

+

+

+

+THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

+

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+      The making of the local tribe of savagery--Earliest known

+      stage of society--Result of complex processes--Elaborate

+      tribal rules--Laws altered deliberately: sometimes

+      borrowed--Existing legislative methods of savages not

+      primitive--The tribe a gradual conquest of culture--The

+      tribe a combination of small pre-tribal kinships--History

+      of progress towards the tribe traceable in surviving

+      institutions--From passion to Law--Rudeness of native

+      culture in Australia--Varieties of social organisation

+      there--I. Tribes with two phratries, totems, female

+      descent--Tribes of this organisation differ as to

+      ceremonies and beliefs--Some beliefs tend to polytheism:

+      others towards monotheism--Some tribes of pristine

+      organisation have totemic magic and _pirrauru_: others

+      have not--The more northern tribes of pristine

+      organisation share the ceremonies and beliefs of central

+      tribes: not so the south-eastern tribes--Second form (a)

+      of social organisation has male descent--Second form (b)

+      has female descent _plus_ "matrimonial classes"--Account

+      of these--Eight-class system--The Arunta nation--Their

+      peculiar form of belief in reincarnation--_Churinga

+      nanja_--Recapitulation--The Euahlayi tribe.

+

+

+The question of the origin of totemism has more than the merely curious

+or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In

+the course of the inquiry we may be able to discern and discriminate

+the relative contributions of unreflecting passion, on one hand, and

+of deliberate reason, on the other, to the structure of the earliest

+extant form of human society. That form is the savage local tribe, as

+known to us in America and in Australia.

+

+Men live in united local communities, relatively large, and carefully

+regimented, before they have learned to domesticate animals, or to obey

+chiefs, or to practise the rudest form of agriculture, or to fashion

+clay into pottery, or to build permanent hovels. Customary law is older

+than any of these things, and the most ancient law which we can observe

+unites a tribe by that system of marriages which expresses itself in

+totemism.

+

+It is plain that the processes of evolution which have resulted in

+the most backward societies known to us, must have been very complex.

+If we reflect that the society of the Australian aborigines presents

+the institution of local tribes, each living peacefully, except for

+occasional internal squabbles, in a large definite tract of country;

+cultivating, on the whole, friendly relations with similar and

+similarly organised tribes; while obeying a most elaborate system of

+rules, it is obvious that these social conditions must be very remote

+from the absolutely primitive.[1] The rules of these tribes regulate

+every detail of private life with a minuteness and a rigour that

+remind us of what the Scottish Cavalier (1652) protested against as

+"the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial Government."

+Yet the tribes have neither presbyters, nor priests, nor kings.

+Their body of customary law, so copious and complex that, to the

+European, it seems as puzzling as algebra is to the savage, has been

+evolved, after a certain early point, by the slow secular action of

+"collective wisdom." We shall find that on this point, early deliberate

+modification of law, there can be no doubt.

+

+The recent personal researches of Mr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen make it certain that tribal affairs, now, among many

+tribes at least, are discussed with the utmost deliberation, and that

+modifications of institutions may be canvassed, adopted, or rejected,

+on the initiative of seniors, local "Headmen," and medicine men.[2] It

+is also certain that tribe borrows from tribe, in the matter of songs,

+dances, and institutions, while members of one tribe are permitted to

+be present at the sacred ceremonials of others, especially when these

+tribes are on intermarrying terms.[3] In such cases, the ceremonials

+of one tribe may affect those of another, the Arunta may influence the

+Urabunna, who borrow their sacred objects or _churinga_ for use in

+their own rites. We even hear of cases in which native religious ideas

+have been propagated by missionaries sent from tribe to tribe.[4]

+

+Thus, conservative as is the savage by nature, he is distinctly capable

+of deliberate modification of his rites, ceremonies, and customary

+laws, and of interchanging ideas on these subjects with neighbouring

+tribes.

+

+All this is true, to-day, and doubtless has long been true.

+

+But at this point we must guard against what we consider a prevalent

+fallacy. The legislative action of the natives, the initiative of local

+Headmen, and Heads of Totems and of "Classes" (social divisions), and

+of medicine men inspired by "some supernatural being, such as Kutchi

+of the Dieri, Bunjil of the Wurunjerri, or Daramulun of the Coast

+Murring,"[5] is only rendered possible by the existence, to-day, of

+social conditions which cannot be primitive. To-day the Tribe, with

+its innumerable rules, and its common faith in Kutchi or Daramulun,

+with its recognised local or social Headmen, with its regulations for

+dealing with other tribes, and with its heralds or messengers, is an

+institution "in being." But, necessarily, this was not always so; the

+Tribe itself is a great "conquest of culture," and that conquest must

+have been made very slowly.

+

+The prevalent fallacy, then, is to take unconsciously for granted

+that the people was, from the beginning, regimented into tribes, or

+existed in "hordes" already as capable as actual tribes of deliberative

+assemblies and legislative action, and that, in these hordes, a certain

+law, "the universal basis of their social system, was brought about by

+intention," as Mr. Howitt believes.[6]

+

+The law in question, "the universal basis of their social system,"

+was nothing less than a rule compelling people who had hitherto been

+promiscuous in their unions, to array themselves into a pair of tribal

+divisions, in which no member might marry another member of the same

+division, but must marry a member of the opposite division. The mere

+idea of such an act of legislation, for which no motive is assigned

+(and no motive is conceivable) postulates the pre-existence of a

+community like the Tribe of to-day, with powers to legislate, and to

+secure obedience for its legislative acts. This postulate cannot be

+granted, it refracts the institutions of to-day on a past state of

+society which, in all probability, could possess no such institutions.

+The "chaotic horde" of the hypothesis could not allot to various human

+groups the duty of working magic (to take an instance) for the good of

+various articles of the common food supply, nor could it establish

+a new and drastic rule, suddenly regulating sexual unions which had

+previously been utterly unregulated.

+

+Human history does not show us a relatively large mass segregating

+itself into smaller communities. It shows us small communities

+aggregating into larger combinations, the village into the city, the

+European tribes into the kingdom, the kingdoms into the nation, the

+nation into the empire. The Tribe itself, in savage society, is a

+combination of small kins, or sets of persons of various degrees of

+status; these kins have not been legislatively segregated out of a

+pre-existing horde having powers of legislation. The idea of such a

+legislative primeval horde has been unconsciously borrowed from the

+actual Tribe of experience to-day.

+

+That tribe is not primitive, far from it, but is very old.

+

+Tribal collective wisdom, when once the tribe was evolved, has

+probably been at work, in unrecorded ages, over all the world, and in

+most places seems, up to a certain point, to have followed much the

+same strange course. The path does not march straight to any point

+predetermined by man, but loops, and zigzags, and retreats, and returns

+on itself, like the course of a river beset by rocks and shoals, and

+parcelled into wandering streams, and lagging in morasses. Yet the

+river reaches the sea, and the loops and links of the path, frayed by

+innumerable generations of early men, led at last to the haven of the

+civilised Family, and the Family Peace.

+

+The history of the progress must necessarily be written in the

+strange characters of savage institutions, and in these odd and

+elaborate regulations which alarm the incurious mind under the names

+of "Phratries," "Totems," "Matrimonial Classes," "Pirrauru," and

+"Piraungaru." In these, as in some Maya or Easter Island inscription,

+graven in bizarre signs, lies the early social history of Man. We pore

+over the characters, turning them this way and that, deciphering a mark

+here and there, but unable to agree on any coherent rendering of the

+whole, so that some scholars deem the problems insoluble--and most are

+at odds among themselves.

+

+Possibly we can at last present a coherent translation of the record

+which lies half concealed and half revealed in the savage institutions

+with their uncouth names, and can trace the course of an evolution

+which, beginning in natural passions, emotions, and superstitions,

+reached a rudimentary social law. That law, again, from a period far

+behind our historical knowledge, has been deliberately modified by men,

+much as a Bill in Parliament is modified by amendments and compromises

+into an Act. The industry of students who examine the customs of the

+remotest races has accumulated a body of evidence in which the various

+ways out of early totemic society towards the civilised conception of

+the family may be distinctly traced.

+

+Meanwhile we are concerned rather with the way into totemism out of a

+prior non-totemic social condition, and with the development of the

+various stages of totemic society in Australia. The natives of that

+country, when unspoiled by European influences, are almost on one

+level as to material culture. Some tribes have rather better and more

+permanent shelters than others; some have less inadequate canoes than

+the rest; some drape themselves against cold weather in the skins of

+beasts, while others go bare; but all are non-agricultural hunting

+wanderers, without domesticated animals, without priests, and without

+chiefs on the level of those of the old Highland clans. They are

+ignorant of pottery, a fact which marks the very lowest culture; they

+know not the bow and arrow; their implements of stone vary from the

+polished "neolithic" to the rough-hewn "palæolithic" type: a man will

+use either sort as occasion serves.

+

+While everyday life and its implements are thus rude, there are great

+varieties of social organisation, of ceremonial institutions, and of

+what, among Europeans, would be called speculative and religious ideas,

+expressing themselves in myths and rites.

+

+Taking social organisation first, we begin with what all inquirers

+(except one or two who wrote before the recent great contributions to

+knowledge appeared) acknowledge to be the most pristine type extant

+Each tribe of this type is in two intermarrying divisions (which we

+call "exogamous moieties," or "phratries"), and each phratry bears

+a name which, when it can be translated, is, as a rule, that of an

+animal.[7] We shall show later why the meaning of the names has often

+been lost. Take the animal names of the phratries to be Emu and

+Kangaroo, no man of the Emu phratry may marry a woman of the same

+phratry, he must marry out of his phratry ("exogamy"); nor may a man

+of the Kangaroo phratry marry a woman of the same. Kangaroo phratry

+must marry into Emu, and Emu into Kangaroo. The phratry names in each

+case are, in the more primitive types of the organisation (which alone

+we are now considering) inherited from the mother.[8] A man of the Emu

+phratry marries a woman of the Kangaroo phratry, and to that phratry

+her children belong. Thus members of either phratry must be found in

+any casual knot or company of natives. Within each phratry there are,

+again, kinships also known by hereditary names of animals or plants.

+Thus, in Emu phratry, there may be kins called, say, Emu, Opossum,

+Wallaby, Grub, and others; in the Kangaroo phratry _different_ names

+prevail, such as Kangaroos, Lizards, Dingoes, Cockatoos, and others.

+The name-giving animals, in this case, are called by us "totems," and

+the human kins which bear their names are called "totem kins." No man

+or woman may marry a person of his or her own totem. But this, in fact,

+as matters stand in Australia, puts no fresh bar on marriage, because

+(except in four or five tribes of the Centre) if a man marries out

+of his phratry he must necessarily marry out of his totem kin, since

+there are no members of his totem name in the phratry into which he

+must marry. In America, in cases where there are no phratries, and

+universally, where totems exist without phratries, marriage between

+persons of the same totem is forbidden.

+

+The organisation of the more primitive tribes presents only the two

+exogamous moieties or phratries in each tribe and the totem kins in the

+phratries. We have Crow phratry and Eagle Hawk phratry, and, within

+Crow phratry, Crow totem kin,[9] with other totem kins; within Eagle

+Hawk phratry, Eagle Hawk totem kin, with other totem kins, which are

+never of the same names as those in Crow phratry.

+

+This we call the primitive type, all the other organisations are the

+result of advances on and modifications of this organisation. It also

+occurs in America,[10] where, however, the phratry is seldom extant,

+though it does exist occasionally, and is known to have existed among

+the Iroquois and to have decayed.

+

+On examining Mr. Howitt's map[11] it will be seen that this type of

+social organisation extends, or has extended, from Mount Gambier, by

+the sea, in the extreme south, past Lake Eyre, to some distance beyond

+Cooper's Creek or the Barcoo River, and even across the Diamantina

+River in Queensland. But it is far from being the case that all tribes

+with this pristine organisation possess identical ceremonies and ideas.

+On the other hand, from the southern borders of Lake Eyre, northwards,

+the tribes of this social organisation have peculiar ceremonies,

+unknown in the south and east, but usual further north and west. They

+initiate young men with the rites of circumcision or subincision (a

+cruel process unknown outside of Australia), or with both. In the

+south-east the knocking out of a front tooth takes the place of these

+bloody ordeals. The Lake Eyre tribes, again, do not, like those south

+and east of them, hold by, and inculcate at the rites, "the belief as

+to the existence of a great supernatural anthropomorphic Being, by

+whom the ceremonies were first instituted, and who still communicates

+with mankind through the medicine men, his servants."[12] Their myths

+rather repose on the idea of beings previous to man, "the prototypes

+of, but more powerful in magic than the native tribes. These beings, if

+they did not create man, at least perfected him from some unformed and

+scarcely human creatures."[13]

+

+Thus, the more northern tribes of primitive tribal organisation (say

+the Dieri and their congeners) have beliefs which might ripen into

+the Greek mythology of gods and Titans, while the faith of the tribes

+of the same social organisation, further south by east, might develop

+into a rude form of Hebrew monotheism, and the two myths may co-exist,

+and often do. The northern tribes about Lake Eyre, and the central and

+north tribes, work co-operative magic for the behoof of their totem

+animals, as part of the common food supply, a rite unknown to the south

+and east. They also practise a custom (_Pirrauru_) of allotting men

+and women, married or unmarried, as paramours to each other, after a

+symbolic ceremony. This arrangement also is unknown in the south and

+east, and even north by west, though almost everywhere there is sexual

+licence at certain ceremonial meetings. It is thus plain that the more

+northern tribes of the primitive organisation described, differ from

+their southern and eastern neighbours (i.) in their most important

+initiatory rites, (ii.) in some of their myths or beliefs,[14] (iii.)

+in their totemic magic, and (iv.) in their allotment of permanent

+paramours. In the first three points these northern tribes of primitive

+type resemble, not the south-eastern tribes of the same social

+type, but the more socially advanced central, western, and northern

+"nations," with whom some of them are in touch and even intermarry.

+It is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that all tribes of the primitive

+tribal organisation are _solidaires_ as to marriage, ceremonial rites,

+and beliefs.

+

+It is difficult to say which is the second type of tribal organisation.

+We have in Victoria, in a triangle with its apex on the Murray River,

+the organisation already described (1), but here descent is reckoned

+in the male, not in the female line. This implies some social advance:

+social institutions, with male descent of the totem name, are certain

+to become _local_, rather than totemistic. The Kangaroos, deriving the

+totem name from the father, are a local clan, in some cases, like the

+MacIans in Glencoe. The Kangaroo name prevails in the locality. This

+cannot occur, obviously, when the names are derived from mothers, and

+the women go to the husband's district. We may call the organisation

+thus described (2a), and as (2b) we should reckon the organisation

+which prevails, as a rule, on the east of Southern Australia, in

+Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern

+coast-line (with a gap in the centre of the coast-line), to the eastern

+limits of (1). Here we find (2b) a great set of tribes having female

+descent, but each individual belongs not only to one of two phratries,

+and to a totem, but also to a "Matrimonial Class." In each phratry

+there are two such classes. Among the Kamilaroi, in phratry Dilbi, are

+"classes" named Muri (male) and Kubi (male). In phratry Kupathin are

+Ipai (male) and Kumbo (male), while the women bear the feminine forms

+of these names. Their meaning is usually unknown, but in two or three

+tribes, where the meaning of the class names is known with certainty,

+they denote animals.

+

+The arrangement works thus, a man of phratry Dilbi, and of matrimonial

+class Muri, may not marry any woman that he chooses, in the other

+phratry, Kupathin. He can only marry a Kubatha, that is, a female of

+the class Kumbo. Their children, female descent prevailing, are of

+Kupathin _phratry_, and of the mother's totem, but do not belong to the

+_class_ either of father (Muri) or of mother (Kumbo). _They must belong

+to the other class within her phratry_, namely Ipai. This rule applies

+throughout; thus, if a man of phratry Dilbi, and of Kubi class, marries

+a woman of Ipai class in phratry Kupathin, their children are neither

+of class Kubi nor of class Ipai, but of class Kumbo, the linked or

+sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.

+

+Suppose for the sake of argument that the class names denote, or once

+denoted animals, so that, say--

+

+In phratry

+                { Muri = Turtle.

+   _Dilbi_ { Kubi = Bat.

+

+While in phratry

+                   { Ipai  = Carpet Snake.

+   _Kupathin_ { Kumbo = Native Cat.

+

+It is obvious that male Turtle would marry female Cat, and (with

+maternal descent) their children would, by class name, be Carpet

+Snakes. Bat would marry Carpet Snake, and their children would, by

+class name, be Cats. Persons of each generation would thus belong to

+classes of different animal names for ever, and no one might marry into

+either his or her own phratry, his or her own totem, or his or her own

+generation, that is, into his or her own class. It is exactly (where

+the classes bear animal names) as if two _generations_ had totems.

+The mothers of Muri class in Dilbi would have Turtle, the mothers in

+Kupathin (Ipai) would have Carpet Snake. Their children, in Kupathin,

+would have Cat. Not only the phratries and the totem kins, but each

+successive generation, would thus be delimited by bearing an animal

+name, and marriage would be forbidden between all persons not of

+different animal-named phratries, different animal-named totem kins,

+and different animal-named generations. In many cases, we repeat, the

+names of the phratries and of the classes have not yet been translated,

+and the meanings are unknown to the natives themselves. That the class

+names were originally animal names is a mere hypothesis, based on few

+examples.

+

+Say I am of phratry Crow, of totem Lizard, of generation and

+matrimonial class Turtle; then I must marry only a woman of phratry

+Eagle Hawk, of any totem in Eagle Hawk phratry,[15] and of generation

+and class name Cat. Our children, with female descent, will be of

+phratry Eagle Hawk, of totem the mother's, and of generation and class

+name Carpet Snake. _Their_ children will be of phratry Crow, of totem

+the mother's, and of generation and class name Cat again; and so on

+for ever. Each generation in a phratry has its class name, and may

+not marry within that name. The next generation has the other class

+name, and may not marry within that. Assuming that phratry names,

+totem names, and generation names are always names of animals (or of

+other objects in nature), the laws would amount, we repeat, simply to

+this: No person may marry another person who, by phratry, or totem,

+or generation, owns the same hereditary animal name or other name

+as himself or herself. Moreover no one may marry a person (where

+matrimonial classes exist) who bears the same class or generation name

+as his mother or father.

+

+In practice the rules are thus quite simple, mistake is

+impossible--complicated as the arrangements look on paper. Where

+totem and phratry names only exist, a man has merely to ask a woman,

+"What is your phratry name?" If it is his own, an amour is forbidden.

+Where phratry names are obsolete, and classes exist, he has only to

+ask, "What is your class name?" If it is that of either class in

+his own phratry of the tribe, to love is to break a sacred law. It

+is not necessary, as a rule, even to ask the totem name. What looks

+so perplexing is in essence, and in practical working, of extreme

+simplicity. But some tribes have deliberately modified the rules, to

+facilitate marriage.

+

+The conspicuous practical result of the Class arrangement (not

+primitive), is that just as totem law makes it impossible for a person

+to marry a sister or brother uterine, so Class law makes a marriage

+between father and daughter, mother and son, impossible.[16] But such

+marriages never occur in Australian tribes of pristine organisation

+(1) which have no class names, no collective names for successive

+generations. The origin of these class or generation names is a problem

+which will be discussed later.

+

+Such is the Class system where it exists in tribes with female descent.

+It has often led to the loss and disappearance of the phratry names,

+which are forgotten, since the two sets of opposed class names do the

+phratry work.

+

+We have next (3) the same arrangements with descent reckoned in the

+male line. This prevails on the south-east coast, from Hervey River to

+Warwick. In Gippsland, and in a section round Melbourne, there were

+"anomalous" arrangements which need not now detain us; the archaic

+systems tended to die out altogether.

+

+All these south central (Dieri), southern, and eastern tribes may

+be studied in Mr. Howitt's book, already cited, which contains the

+result of forty years' work, the information being collected partly by

+personal research and partly through many correspondents. Mr. Howitt

+has viewed the initiatory ceremonies of more than one tribe, and is

+familiar with their inmost secrets.

+

+For the tribes of the centre and north we must consult two books, the

+fruits of the personal researches of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, M.A., F.R.S.,

+Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne, and of Mr. F. J.

+Gillen, Sub-Protector of Aborigines, South Australia.[17] For many

+years Mr. Gillen has been in the confidence of the tribes, and he and

+Mr. Spencer have passed many months in the wilds, being admitted to

+view the most secret ceremonies, and being initiated into the myths of

+the people. Their photographs of natives are numerous and excellent.

+

+These observers begin in the south centre, where Mr. Howitt leaves off

+in his northerly researches, and go north. They start with the Urabunna

+tribe, north-east of Lake Eyre, congeners of Mr. Howitt's Dieri, and

+speaking a dialect akin to theirs, while the tribe intermarry marry

+with the Arunta (whose own dialect has points in common with theirs)

+of the centre of the continent These Urabunna are apparently in the

+form of social organisation which we style primitive (No. 1), but there

+are said, rather vaguely, to be more restrictions on marriage than is

+usual, people of one totem in Kiraru phratry being restricted to people

+of one totem in Matteri phratry.[18]

+

+They have phratries, totem kins, apparently no matrimonial classes

+(some of their rules are imperfectly ascertained), and they reckon

+descent in the female line. But, like the Dieri (and unlike the tribes

+of the south and east), they practise subincision; they have, or are

+said to have, no belief in "a supernatural anthropomorphic great

+Being"; they believe in "old semi-human ancestors," who scattered about

+spirits, which are perpetually reincarnated in new members of the

+tribe; they practise totemic magic; and they cultivate the Dieri custom

+of allotting paramours. Thus, by social organisation, they attach

+themselves to the south-eastern tribes (1), but, like the Dieri, and

+even more so (for, unlike the Dieri, they believe in reincarnation),

+they agree in ceremonies, and in the general idea of their totemic

+magic, rites, and mythical ideas, with tribes who, as regards social

+organisation, are in state (4), reckon descent in the male line, and

+possess, not _four_, but _eight_ matrimonial classes.

+

+This institution of eight classes is developing in the Arunta "nation,"

+the people of the precise centre of Australia, who march with, and

+intermarry with, the Urabunna; at least the names for the second set of

+four matrimonial classes, making eight in all, are reaching the Arunta

+from the northern tribes. All the way further north to the Gulf of

+Carpentaria, male descent and eight classes prevail, with subincision,

+prolonged and complex ceremonials, the belief in reincarnation of

+primal semi-human, semi-bestial ancestors, and the absence (except

+in the Kaitish tribe, next the Arunta) of any known belief in what

+Mr. Howitt calls the "All Father." Totemic magic also is prevalent,

+dwindling as you approach the north-east coast. In consequence of

+reckoning in the male line (which necessarily causes most of the

+dwellers in a group to be of the same totem), _local_ organisation is

+more advanced in these tribes than in the south and east.

+

+We next speak of social organisation (5), namely, that of the Arunta

+and Kaitish tribes, which is without example in any other known totemic

+society all over the world. The Arunta and Kaitish not only believe,

+like most northern and western tribes, in the perpetual reincarnation

+of ancestral spirits, but they, and they alone, hold that each such

+spirit, during discarnate intervals, resides in, or is mainly attached

+to, a decorated kind of stone amulet, called _churinga nanja_. These

+objects, with this myth, are not recorded as existing among other

+"nations." When a child is born, its friends hunt for its ancestral

+stone amulet in the place where its mother thinks that she conceived

+it, and around the nearest _rendezvous_ of discarnate _local_ totemic

+souls, all of one totem only. The amulet and the _local_ totemic

+centre, with its haunted _nanja_ rock or tree, determine the totem

+of the child. Thus, unlike all other totemists, the Arunta do not

+inherit their totems either from father or mother, or both. Totems are

+determined by _local_ accident. Not being hereditary, they are not

+exogamous: here, and here alone, they do not regulate marriage. Men

+may, and do, marry women of their own totem, and their child's totem

+may neither be that of its father nor of its mother. The members of

+totem groups are really members of societies, which co-operatively

+work magic for the good of the totems. The question arises, Is this

+the primitive form of totemism? We shall later discuss that question

+(Chapter IV.).

+

+Meanwhile we conceive the various types of social organisation to

+begin with the south-eastern phratries, totems, and female reckoning

+of descent (1) to advance to these _plus_ male descent (2a), and to

+these with female descent and four matrimonial classes (2b). Next

+we place (3) that four-class system with male descent; next (4) the

+north-western system of male descent with _eight_ matrimonial classes,

+and last (as anomalous in some respects), (5) the Arunta-Kaitish system

+of male descent, eight classes, and non-hereditary non-exogamous totems.

+

+As regards ceremonial and belief, we place (1) the tribes south

+and east of the Dieri. (2) The Dieri. (3) The Urabunna, and north,

+central, and western tribes. (4) The Arunta. The Dieri and Urabunna we

+regard (at least the Dieri) as pristine in social organisation, with

+peculiarities all their own, but in ceremonial and belief more closely

+attached to the central, north, and west than to the south-eastern

+tribes. As concerns the bloody rites, Mr. Howitt inclines to the belief

+(corroborated by legends, whatever their value) that "a northern origin

+must ultimately be assigned to these ceremonies."[19] It is natural to

+assume that the more cruel initiatory rites are the more archaic, and

+that the tribes which practise them are the more pristine. But this is

+not our opinion nor that of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The older rite

+is the mere knocking out of front teeth (also used by the Masai of East

+Central Africa). This rite, in Central Australia, "has lost its old

+meaning, its place has been taken by other rites."[20] ... Increased

+cruelty accompanies social advance in this instance. In another matter

+innovation comes from the north. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are of the

+opinion that "changes in totemic matters have been slowly passing down

+from north to south." The eight classes, in place of four classes, are

+known as a matter of fact to have actually "reached the Arunta from the

+north, and at the present moment are spreading south-wards."[21]

+

+Again, a feebler form of the reincarnation belief, namely, that

+souls of the young who die uninitiated are reincarnated, occurs in

+the Euahlayi tribe of north-western New South Wales.[22] Whether the

+Euahlayi belief came from the north, in a limited way, or whether it

+is the germinal state of the northern belief, is uncertain. It is

+plain that if bloody rites and eight classes may come down from the

+north, totemic magic and the faith in reincarnation may also have

+done so, and thus modified the rites and "religious" opinions of

+the Dieri and Urabunna, who are said still to be, socially, in the

+most pristine state, that of phratries and female descent, without

+matrimonial classes.[23] It is also obvious that if the Kaitish faith

+in a sky-dweller (rare in northern tribes) be a "sport," and if the

+Arunta _churinga nanja, plus_ non-hereditary and non-exogamous

+totems, be a "sport," the Dieri and Urabunna custom, too, of solemnly

+allotted _permanent_ paramours may be a thing of isolated and special

+development, not a survival of an age of "group marriage."

+

+

+[1] Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 41. 1904.

+

+[2] Cf. for example Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central

+Australia_, p. 26. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.

+88, 89.

+

+[3] Howitt, _ut supra_, pp. 511, 513.

+

+[4] Hale, _U.S. Exploring Expedition_, p. 410. 1846.

+

+[5] Howitt, _ut supra_, p. 89.

+

+[6] Op. cit., p. 89.

+

+[7] There are exceptions, or at least one exception is known to the

+rule of animal names for phratries, a point to which we shall return.

+Dr. Roth (_N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56) suggests that

+the phratry names Wutaru and Pakuta mean One and Two (cf. p. 26).

+For Wutaru and Yungaru, however, interpretations indicating names

+of animals are given, diversely, by Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Chatfield,

+_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 40, 41.

+

+[8] That reckoning descent in the female line, _among totemists_,

+is earlier than reckoning in the male line, Mr. Howitt, Mr. Tylor,

+Dr. Durkheim, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, with Mr. J. G. Frazer,

+till recently, are agreed. Starcke says "usually the female line only

+appears in connection with the Kobong (totem) groups," and he holds the

+eccentric opinion that totems are relatively late, and that the tribes

+with none are the more primitive! (_The Primitive Family_, p. 26,

+1896.) This writer calls Mr. Howitt "a missionary."

+

+[9] That this is the case will be proved later; the fact has hitherto

+escaped observation.

+

+[10] Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 6l. Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 90, 94

+_et seq_.

+

+[11] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_. Macmillan, 1904.

+

+[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 640. For examples, pp.

+528-535.

+

+[13] Ibid., p. 487.

+

+[14] That is, on our present information. It is very unusual for

+orthodox adhesion to one set of myths to prevail.

+

+[15] Sometimes members of one totem are said to be restricted to

+marriage with members of only one other totem.

+

+[16] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 284, citing

+Mr. J. G. Frazer.

+

+[17] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899. _Northern Tribes of

+Central Australia_, 1904. Macmillan.

+

+[18] Cf. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 188-189.

+_Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 60.

+

+[19] Howitt, _op. cit_., p. 676, _N.T._, p. 20.

+

+[20] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 214. The same opinion is

+stated as very probable in _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

+329.

+

+[21] _N. T._, p. 20.

+

+[22] Mrs. Langloh Parker's M.S.

+

+[23] I am uncertain as to this point among the Urabunna, as will appear

+later.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II

+

+METHOD OF INQUIRY

+

+

+      Method of inquiry--Errors to be avoided--Origin of

+      totemism not to be looked for among the "sports" of

+      socially advanced tribes--Nor among tribes of male

+      reckoning of descent--Nor in the myths explanatory

+      of origin of totemism--Myths of origin of heraldic

+      bearings compared--Tribes in state of ancestor-worship:

+      their totemic myths cannot be true--Case of Bantu

+      myths (African)--Their myth implies ancestor-worship

+      --Another African myth derives _tribal_ totems from

+      tribal nicknames--No totemic myths are of any historic

+      value--The use of conjecture--Every theory must start

+      from conjecture--Two possible conjectures as to earliest

+      men gregarious (the horde), or lonely sire, female mates,

+      and off-spring--Five possible conjectures as to the

+      animal names of kinships in relation to early society and

+      exogamy--Theory of the author; of Professor Spencer; of

+      Dr. Durkheim; of Mr. Hill-Tout; of Mr. Howitt--Note on

+      McLennan's theory of exogamy.

+

+

+We have now given the essential facts in the problem of early society

+as it exists in various forms among the most isolated and pristine

+peoples extant. It has been shown that the sets of seniority (classes),

+the exogamous moieties (phratries), and the kinships in each tribe bear

+names which, when translated, are usually found to denote animals.

+Especially the names of the totem kindreds, and of the totems, are

+commonly names of animals or plants. If we can discover why this is

+so, we are near the discovery of the origin of totemism. Meanwhile we

+offer some remarks as to the method to be pursued in the search for a

+theory which will colligate all the facts in the case, and explain the

+origin of totemic society. In the first place certain needful warnings

+must be given, certain reefs which usually wreck efforts to construct

+a satisfactory hypothesis must be marked.

+

+First, it will be vain to look for the origin of totemism either

+among advanced and therefore non-pristine Australian types of tribal

+organisation, or among peoples not Australian, who are infinitely more

+forward than the Australians in the arts of life, and in the possession

+of property. Such progressive peoples may present many interesting

+social phenomena, but, as regards pure _primitive_ totemism, they dwell

+on "fragments of a broken world." The totemic fragments, among them,

+are twisted and shattered strata, with fantastic features which cannot

+be primordial, but are metamorphic. Accounts of these societies are

+often puzzling, and the strange confused terms used by the reporters,

+especially in America, frequently make them unintelligible.

+

+The learned, who are curious in these matters, would have saved

+themselves much time and labour had they kept two conspicuous facts

+before their eyes.

+

+(1) It is useless to look for the _origins_ of totemism among the

+peculiarities and "sports" which always attend the decadence of

+totemism, consequent on the change from female to male lineage, as Mr.

+Howitt, our leader in these researches, has always insisted. To search

+for the beginnings among late and abnormal phenomena, things isolated,

+done in a corner, and not found among the tribal organisations of the

+earliest types, is to follow a trail sure to be misleading.

+

+(2) The second warning is to be inferred from the first. It is waste

+of time to seek for the origin of totemism in anything--an animal

+name, a sacred animal, a paternal soul tenanting an animal--which is

+inherited from its first owner, he being an individual ancestor male.

+Such inheritance implies the existence of reckoning descent in the male

+line, and totemism conspicuously began in, and is least contaminated

+in, tribes who reckon descent in the female line.

+

+Another stone of stumbling comes from the same logical formation.

+The error is, to look for origins in myths about origins, told among

+advanced or early societies. If a people has advanced far in material

+culture, if it is agricultural, breeds cattle, and works the metals,

+of course it cannot be primitive. However, it may retain vestiges of

+totemism, and, if it does, it will explain them by a story, a myth of

+its own, just as modern families, and even cities, have their myths to

+account for the origin, now forgotten, of their armorial bearings, or

+crests--the dagger in the city shield, the skene of the Skenes, the

+sawn tree of the Hamiltons, the lyon of the Stuarts.

+

+Now an agricultural, metallurgic people, with male descent, in the

+middle barbarism, will explain its survivals of totemism by a myth

+natural in its intellectual and social condition; but not natural

+in the condition of the homeless nomad hunters, among whom totemism

+arose. For example, we have no reason to suspect that when totemism

+began men had a highly developed religion of ancestor-worship. Such a

+religion has not yet been evolved in Australia, where the names of the

+dead are usually tabooed, where there is hardly a trace of prayers,

+hardly a trace of offerings to the dead, and none of offerings to

+animals.[1] The more pristine Australians, therefore, do not explain

+their totems as containing the souls of ancestral spirits. On the

+other hand, when the Bantu tribes of Southern Africa--agricultural,

+with settled villages, with kings, and with many of the crafts, such

+as metallurgy--explain the origin of their _tribal_ names derived

+from animals on the lines of their religion--ancestor-worship--their

+explanation may be neglected as far as our present purpose is

+concerned. It is only their theory, only the myth which, in their

+intellectual and religious condition, they are bound to tell, and it

+can throw no light on the origin of sacred animals.

+

+The Bantu local _tribes_, according to Mr. M'Call Theal, have _Siboko_,

+that is, name-giving animals. The tribesmen will not kill, or eat, or

+touch, "or in any way come into contact with" their _Siboko_, if they

+can avoid doing so. A man, asked "What do you dance?" replies by giving

+the name of his _Siboko_, which is, or once was, honoured in mystic or

+magical dances.

+

+"When a division of a tribe took place, each section retained the same

+ancestral animal," and men thus trace dispersed segments of their

+tribe, or they thus account for the existence of other tribes of the

+same Siboko as themselves.

+

+Things being in this condition, an ancestor-worshipping people has to

+explain the circumstances by a myth. Being an ancestor-worshipping

+people, the Bantu explain the circumstance, as they were certain to do,

+by a myth of ancestral spirits. "Each tribe regarded some particular

+animal as the one selected by the ghosts of its kindred, and therefore

+looked upon it as sacred."

+

+It should be superfluous to say that the Bantu myth cannot possibly

+throw any tight on the real origin of totemism. The Bantu,

+ancestor-worshippers of great piety, find themselves saddled with

+sacred tribal _Siboko_; why, they know not. So they naturally invent

+the fable that the _Siboko_, which are sacred, are sacred because they

+are the shrines of what to them are really sacred, namely, ancestral

+spirits.[2] But they also cherish another totally different myth to

+explain their _Siboko_.

+

+We now give this South African myth, which explains tribal _Siboko_,

+and their origin, not on the lines of ancestor-worship, but, rather to

+my annoyance, on the lines of my own theory of the Origin of Totems!

+

+On December 9, 1879, the Rev. Roger Price, of Mole-pole, in the

+northern Bakuena country, wrote as follows to Mr. W. G. Stow,

+Geological Survey, South Africa. He gives the myth which is told to

+account for the _Siboko_ or tribal sacred and name-giving animal of the

+Bahurutshe--Baboons. (These animal names in this part of Africa denote

+_local tribes_, not totem kins within a local tribe.)

+

+"Tradition says that about the time the separation took place between

+the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena, _Baboons_ entered the gardens of

+the Bahurutshe and ate their pumpkins, before the proper time for

+commencing to eat the fruits of the new year. The Bahurutshe were

+unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken off and

+nibbled should be wasted, and ate them accordingly. This act is said to

+have led to the Bahurutshe being called Buchwene, Baboon people--which"

+(namely, the Baboon) "is their _Siboko_ to this day--and their having

+the precedence ever afterwards in the matter of taking the first bite

+of the new year's fruits. If this be the true explanation," adds Mr.

+Price, "it is evident that what is now used as a term of honour was

+once a term of reproach. The Bakuena, too, are said to owe their

+_Siboko_ (the Crocodile) to the fact that their people once ate an ox

+which had been killed by a crocodile."

+

+Mr. Price, therefore, is strongly inclined to think "that the _Siboko_

+of all the tribes was originally a kind of nickname or term of

+reproach, but," he adds, "there is a good deal of mystery about the

+whole thing."

+

+On this point Mr. Stow, to whom Mr. Price wrote the letter just cited,

+remarks in his MS.: "From the foregoing facts it would seem possible

+that the origin of the _Siboko_ among these tribes arose from some

+sobriquet that had been given to them, and that, in course of time,

+as their superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed,

+these tribal symbols became objects of veneration and superstitious

+awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign influence

+averted...."[3]

+

+Here it will be seen that these South African tribes account for their

+_Siboko_ now by the myth deriving the sacredness of the tribal animal

+from ancestor-worship, as reported by Mr. Theal, and again by nicknames

+given to the tribes on account of certain undignified incidents.

+

+This latter theory is very like my own as stated in _Social Origins_,

+and to be set forth and reinforced later in this work. But the theory,

+as held by the Bahurutsche and Bakuena, does not help to confirm mine

+in the slightest degree. Among these very advanced African tribes,

+the _Siboko_ or _tribal_ sacred animal, is the animal of the local

+_tribe_, not, as in pure totemism, of the scattered exogamous kin. It

+is probably a lingering remnant of totemism. The totem of the most

+powerful _local_ group in a tribe having descent through males,

+appears to have become the _Siboko_ of the whole tribe, while the other

+totems have died out. It is not probable that a nickname of remembered

+origin, given in recent times to a tribe of relatively advanced

+civilisation, should, as the myth asserts, not only have become a name

+of honour, but should have founded tribal animal-worship.

+

+It was in a low state of culture no longer found on earth, that I

+conceive the animal names of groups not yet totemic, names of origin no

+longer remembered, to have arisen and become the germ of totemism.

+

+Myths of the origin of totemism, in short, are of absolutely no

+historic value. _Siboko_ no longer arise in the manner postulated by

+these African myths; these myths are not based on experience any more

+than is the Tsimshian myth of the Bear Totem, to be criticised later

+in a chapter on American Totemism. We are to be on our guard, then,

+against looking for the origins of totemism among the myths of peoples

+of relatively advanced culture, such as the village-dwelling Indians

+of the north-west coast of America. We must not look for origins among

+tribes, even if otherwise pristine, who reckon by male descent. We must

+look on all savage myths of origins merely as savage hypotheses, which,

+in fact, usually agree with one or other of our scientific modern

+hypotheses, but yield them no corroboration.

+

+On the common fallacy of regarding the tribe of to-day, with its

+relative powers, as primitive, we have spoken in Chapter I.

+

+By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far beyond

+our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we must have

+recourse as regards this matter to conjecture.

+

+Here a word might be said as to the method of conjecture about

+institutions of which the origins are concealed "in the dark backward

+and abysm of time."

+

+There are conjectures and conjectures! None is capable in every detail

+of historical demonstration, but one guess may explain all the known

+facts, and others may explain few or none. We are dealing with human

+affairs--they whose groups first answered to animal group-names were

+men as much as we are. They had reason; they had human language, spoken

+or by gesture, and human passions. That conjecture, therefore, which

+deals with the first totemists as men, men with plenty of human nature,

+is better than any rival guess which runs contrary to human nature as

+known in our experience of man, savage, barbaric, or civilised.

+

+Once more, a set of guesses which are consistent with themselves is

+better than a set of guesses which can be shown to be even ludicrously

+self-contradictory. If any guess, again, colligates all the known

+facts, if any conjectural system will "march," will meet every known

+circumstance in the face, manifestly it is a better system than one

+which stumbles, breaks down, evades giving an answer to the problems,

+says that they are insoluble, is in contradiction with itself, and does

+not even try to colligate all the known facts. A consistent system,

+unmarred by self-contradictions; in accordance with known human nature;

+in accordance, too, with recognised rules of evolution, and of logic;

+and co-ordinating all known facts, if it is tried on them, cannot be

+dismissed with the remark that "there are plenty of other possible

+guesses."

+

+Our method must be--having already stated the facts as they present

+themselves in the most primitive organisation of the most archaic

+society extant--to enumerate all the possible conjectures which have

+been logically (or even illogically) made as to the origin of the

+institutions before us.

+

+All theories as to how these institutions arose, must rest, primarily,

+on a basis of conjecture as to the original social character of man.

+Nowhere do we see absolutely _primitive_ man, and a totemic system in

+the making. The processes of evolution must have been very gradually

+developed in the course of distant ages, but our conjecture as to the

+nature, in each case, of the processes must be in accordance with what

+is known of human nature. Conjecture, too, has its logical limitations.

+

+We must first make our choice, therefore, between the guess that the

+earliest human beings lived in very small groups (as, in everyday life,

+the natives of Australia are in many cases still compelled to do by the

+precarious nature of their food supplies), or the guess that earliest

+man was gregarious, and dwelt in a promiscuous horde with no sort of

+restraint. One or other view must be correct.

+

+On the former guess (men originally lived in very small groups), the

+probable mutual hostility of group to rival group, the authority of the

+strongest male in each group, and the passions of jealousy, love, and

+hate, must inevitably have produced _some_ rudimentary restrictions on

+absolute archaic freedom. Some people would be prevented from doing

+some things, they must have been checked by the hand of the stronger;

+and from the habit of restraint customary rules would arise. The

+advocates of the alternative conjecture--that man was gregarious, and

+utterly promiscuous--take it for granted (it seems to me) that the

+older and stronger males established no rudimentary restrictions on

+the freedom of the affections, but allowed the young males to share

+with them the females in the horde, and that they permitted both

+sexes to go entirely as they pleased, till, for some unknown reason

+and by some unknown authority, the horde was bisected into exogamous

+moieties (phratries), and after somehow developing totem kins (unless

+animal-named magical groups had been previously developed, on purpose

+to work magic), became a tribe with two phratries.

+

+It is not even necessary for us to deny that the ancestors of man were

+_originally_ communal and gregarious. What we deem to be impossible is

+that, till man had developed into something more like himself, as we

+know him, than an animal without jealousy, and ignorant of anything

+prejudicial to any one's interests in promiscuous unions, he could

+begin to evolve his actual tribal institutions. This is also the

+opinion of Mr. Howitt, as we shall see later.

+

+Thus whoever tries to disengage the evolutionary processes which

+produced the existing society of Australia must commence by making his

+choice between the two conjectures--early man gregarious, promiscuous,

+and anarchist; or early man unsociable, fierce, bullying, and jealous.

+A _via media_ is attempted, however, by Mr. Howitt, to which we shall

+return.

+

+Next, it is clear and certain that some human beliefs about the

+animals which give their names, in known cases, to the two large

+exogamous divisions of the tribe (phratries), and about the other

+animals which give names to the totem kins, and, in one or two cases,

+to the matrimonial classes, must be, in some way, connected with the

+prohibitions to marry, first within the phratries, then, perhaps,

+within the totem kins, then within the Classes (or within the same

+generation).

+

+Thus there are here five courses which conjecture can logically take.

+

+(a) Members of certain recognised human groups already married

+habitually out of their group into other groups, _before_ the animal

+names (now totem names) were given to the groups. The names came later

+and merely marked, at first, and then sanctioned, the limits within

+which marriage had already been forbidden while the groups were still

+nameless.

+

+Or (b) the animal names of the phratries and totem kins existed

+(perhaps as denoting groups which worked magic for the behoof of each

+animal) _before_ marriage was forbidden within their limits. Later, for

+some reason, prohibitions were enacted.

+

+Or (c) at one time there were no marriage regulations at all, but

+these arose when, apparently for some religious reason, a hitherto

+undivided communal horde split into two sections, each of which revered

+a different name-giving animal as their "god" (totem), claimed descent

+from it, and, out of respect to their "god," did not marry any of

+those who professed its faith, and were called by its name, but always

+married persons of _another_ name and "god."

+

+Or (d) men were at first in groups, intermarrying within the group.

+These groups received names from animals and other objects, because

+individual men adopted animal "familiars," as Bear, Elk, Duck, Potato,

+Pine-tree. The sisters of the men next adopted these animal or

+vegetable "familiars," or protective creatures, from their brothers,

+and bequeathed them, by female descent, to their children. These

+children became groups bearing such names as Bear, Potato, Duck, and

+so on. These groups made treaties of marriage with each other, for

+political reasons of acquiring strength by union. The treaties declared

+that Duck should never marry Duck, but always Elk, and _vice versa_.

+This was exogamy, instituted for political purposes, to use the word

+"political" proleptically.

+

+Or (e) men were at first in a promiscuous incestuous horde, but,

+perceiving the evils of this condition (whatever these evils might be

+taken to be), they divided it into two halves, of which one must never

+marry within itself, but always in the other. To these divisions animal

+names were given; they are the phratries. They threw off colonies, or

+accepted other groups, which took new animal names, and are now the

+totem kins.

+

+Finally, in (f) conjectures (a) and (c) may be combined thus: groups

+of men, still nameless as groups, had for certain reasons the habit of

+not marrying within themselves; but, after receiving animal names, they

+developed an idea that the animal of each group was its kinsman, and

+that, for a certain superstitious reason, it was even more wrong than

+it had been before, to marry "within the blood" of the animal, as, for

+Emu to marry Emu. Or (f2) the small groups did marry within themselves

+till, _after_ receiving animal names, they evolved the superstition

+that such marriage was a sin against the animals, and so became

+exogamous.

+

+On the point of the original state of society conjecture seems to be

+limited to this field of possible choices. At least I am acquainted

+with no theory hitherto propounded, which does not set out from one

+or other of these conjectural bases. We must not attack each other's

+ideas merely because they start from conjectures: they can start in

+no other way. Our method must be to discover which conjecture, as it

+is developed, most consistently and successfully colligates all the

+ascertained facts and best endures the touchstone of logic.

+

+Of the hypotheses enumerated above, the system to be advocated here is

+that marked (f 1 and 2). Men, whatever their brutal ancestors may have

+done, when they became men indeed, lived originally in small anonymous

+local groups, and had, for a reason to be given, the habit of selecting

+female mates from groups _not_ their own. Or, if they had not this

+habit they developed the rule, after the previously anonymous local

+groups had received animal names, and after the name-giving animals

+came to receive the measure of respect at present given to them as

+totems.

+

+The second hypothesis (b) (that the animal names of the groups were

+originally those of societies which worked magic, each for an animal,

+and that the prohibition on marriage was _later_ introduced) has been

+suggested by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and is

+accepted by Mr. Howitt.

+

+The third conjecture (c) (man originally promiscuous, but ceasing to

+be so from religious respect for the totem, or "god") is that of Dr.

+Durkheim.

+

+The fourth theory (d) is that of Mr. Hill-Tout.[4]

+

+The fifth theory (e) was that of Mr. Howitt. He now adopts the similar

+theory of Mr. Spencer (b).

+

+

+[1] The Dieri tribe do pray to the Mura-Mura, or _mythical_ ancestors,

+but not, apparently, to the _remembered_ dead.

+

+[2] "Totemism, South Africa," J. G. Frazer, _Man_, 1901, No. III.

+Mr. Frazer does not, of course, adopt the Bantu myth as settling the

+question.

+

+[3] Stow, MSS., 820. I owe the extract to Miss C. G. Burne.

+

+[4] I have not included the theory of Dr. Westermarck, in the _History

+of Human Marriage_, because that work is written without any reference

+to totemism.

+

+

+NOTE

+

+      I have not included the theory of Mr. J. F. McLennan, the

+      founder of all research into totemism. In his opinion,

+      totemism, that is, the possession by different stocks of

+      different name-giving animals, "is older than exogamy in

+      all cases." That is, as Mr. Robertson Smith explains, "it

+      is easy to see that exogamy necessarily presupposes the

+      existence of a system of kinship which took no account

+      of degrees, but only of participation in a common stock.

+      Such an idea as this could not be conceived by savages

+      in an abstract form; it must necessarily have had a

+      concrete expression, or rather must have been thought

+      under a concrete and tangible form, and that form seems

+      to have been always supplied by totemism." (_Kinship and

+      Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 189, 1885). This means

+      that, before they were exogamous, men existed in groups

+      of animal name, as Ravens, Wolves, Ants, and so on. When

+      they became conscious of kinship, and resolved to marry

+      out of the kin, or stock, they fixed the name, say Raven,

+      Wolf, or what not, as the limit within which there must

+      be no marriage. But Mr. McLennan's theory as to why they

+      determined to take no wives within the stock and name, has

+      never been accepted. (See Westermarck, _History of Human

+      Marriage_, pp. 311-314.)

+

+      Mr. McLennan supposed that female infanticide made women

+      scarce in each group, and that therefore they stole each

+      other's girls, and, finally, abstained from their own.

+      But the objections to this hypothesis are infinite and

+      obvious. At one time Mr. McLennan thought that tattooing

+      was the origin of totemism. Members of each group tattooed

+      the semblance of an animal on their flesh--but, as far as

+      I am aware, he did not ask why they adopted this practice.

+      Manifestly a sense of some special connection between the

+      animal and the group must have been prior to the marking

+      of the members of the group with the effigy of the animal.

+      What gave rise to this belief in the connection? (See

+      Chapter VI., criticism of Dr. Pikler). Mr, McLennan merely

+      mentioned to me, in conversation, this idea, which he

+      later abandoned. It had previously occurred to Garcilasso

+      de la Vega that the _germ_ of totemism was to be found in

+      the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which

+      is the theory to be urged later, the _names_ being the

+      instruments of differentiation.

+

+      Mr. A. K. Keane, as in Mr. McLennan's abandoned

+      conjecture, and as in the theory of Dr. Pikler, makes

+      totemism arise in "heraldic badges," "a mere device for

+      distinguishing one individual from another, one family or

+      clan group from another ... the personal or family name

+      precedes the totem, which grows out of it." (Ethnology,

+      pp. 9, II).

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III

+

+THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

+

+

+      Why did man, if once promiscuous, regulate the relations

+      of the sexes?--Theory of Professor Spencer--Animal-named

+      magical societies were prior to regulation of

+      marriage--Theory of Mr. Howitt--Regulations introduced by

+      inspired medicine man--His motives unknown--The theory

+      postulates the pristine existence of the organised tribe

+      of to-day, and of belief in the All Father--Reasons

+      for holding that men were originally promiscuous: (1)

+      So-called survival of so-called "group marriage"; (2)

+      Inclusive names of human relationships--Betrothals

+      not denied--A form of marriage--Mitigated by

+      _Pirauru_--Allotment of paramours at feasts--Is

+      _Pirauru_ a survival of group marriage?--Or a rare case

+      of limitation of custom of feasts of license--Examples

+      of such saturnalia--Fiji, Arunta, Urabunna,

+      Dieri--Degrees of license--Argument against the author's

+      opinion--Laws of incest older than marriage--Names of

+      relationships--Indicate tribal status, not degrees of

+      consanguinity--Fallacy exposed--Starcke _versus_ Morgan's

+      theory of primal promiscuity--Dr. Durkheim on Choctaw

+      names of relationships--A man cannot regard his second

+      cousin as his mother--Dr. Fison on anomalous terms of

+      relationship--Grandfathers and grandsons call each other

+      "brothers"--_Noa_ denotes a man's wife and also all

+      women whom he might legally wed--Proof that terms of

+      relationship do not denote consanguinity--The _Pirrauru_

+      custom implies previous marriage, and is not logically

+      thinkable without it--Descriptions of _Pirrauru_--The

+      _Kandri_ ceremony merely modifies pre-existing

+      marriage--_Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage"--Is found

+      only in tribes of the Matteri Kiraru phratries--Not found

+      in south-eastern tribes--Mr. Howitt's "survivals" do not

+      mean "group marriage."

+

+

+In the theories which postulate that man began in a communal horde,

+with no idea of regulating sexual unions at all--because, having no

+notion of consanguinity, or of harm in consanguine marriages, he saw

+nothing to regulate--the initial difficulty is, how did he ever come

+to change his nature and to see that a rule must be made, as made it

+has been? Mr. Howitt endeavours (if I grasp his meaning) to show

+how man did at last see it, and therefore bisected the horde into

+intermarrying phratries. Mr. Spencer has only asserted that, while man

+saw nothing to regulate in marriages, he evolved an organisation, that

+of the phratries and classes, which did come, somehow, to regulate

+them. Dr. Durkheim takes it, that man if he was originally promiscuous,

+later regulated marriages out of respect to his totems, which were his

+gods. Mr. Hill-Tout supposes that the exogamous rules were made for

+"political" reasons.

+

+The theories of Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer differed from each other,

+originally, only in so far as that Mr. Spencer supposes animal-named

+_magical societies_ (now totemic) to have arisen _before_ man regulated

+marriage in any way; whereas this conception of animal-named groups

+not bound by totemic restrictions on marriage had not occurred to Mr.

+Howitt or any other inquirer, except Mr. J. G. Frazer, who evolved

+it independently. Mr. Spencer's theory in this matter rests entirely

+on his discovery, among the Arunta, in Central Australia, of totems

+marking magical societies, but not regulating marriage, and on his

+inference that, in the beginning, animal-named groups were everywhere

+mere magical societies. To work co-operative magic was their primary

+function. To that opinion Mr. Howitt has now come in, and he adds that

+"the division of the tribe" (into the two primary exogamous moieties

+or phratries, or "classes") "was made with intent to regulate the

+relations of the sexes."[1] On one point, we repeat, namely, _why_

+division was made, Mr. Spencer utters no certain sound, nor does Mr.

+Howitt explicitly tell us for what reason sexual relations, hitherto

+unregulated, were supposed to need regulation. He conceives that there

+is "a widespread belief in the supernatural origin of the practice,"

+but that explains nothing.[2]

+

+Thus Mr. Howitt postulates the existence of a "tribe," divided

+into animal-named magical societies, and promiscuous. The tribe

+has "medicine men" who see visions. One of these men, conceiving,

+no one knows why, that it would be an excellent thing to regulate

+the relations of the sexes, announces to his fellow-men that he has

+received from a supernatural being a command to do so. If they approve,

+they declare the supernatural message "to the assembled headmen at one

+of the ceremonial meetings," the tribe obeys, and divides itself into

+the two primary exogamous moieties or phratries.[3] Mr. Howitt thus

+postulates the existence of the organised tribe, with its prophets, its

+"All Father" (such as Daramulun), its magical societies, its recognised

+headmen, and its public meetings for ceremonial and legislation, all in

+full swing, before the relations of the sexes are in any way regulated.

+

+On reflection, Mr. Howitt may find difficulties in this postulate.

+Meanwhile, we ask what made the very original medicine man, the Moses

+of the tribe, think of the new and drastic command which he brought

+down from the local Sinai? Why did this thinker suppose that the

+relations of the sexes ought to be regulated? Perhaps the idea was the

+inspiration of a dream. Mr. Spencer, acquainted chiefly with tribes who

+have no All Father, has not advanced this theory.

+

+The reasons given for supposing that the "tribe" was originally

+promiscuous are partly based (a) on the actual condition as regards

+individual marriage of some Australian tribes, mainly Dieri and

+Urabunna, with their congeners. These tribes, it is argued, are now

+no longer absolutely promiscuous, but men and women are divided into

+intermarriageable sets, so that all women of a certain status in Emu

+phratry are, or their predecessors have been, actual wives of all

+men of the corresponding status in Kangaroo phratry. The only bar

+to absolute promiscuity is that of the phratries (established by

+legislation on this theory), and of certain by-laws, of relatively

+recent institution. The names for human relationships (father, mother,

+son, daughter, brother, sister), again, (b) are, it is argued, such as

+"group marriage," and "group marriage" alone, would inevitably produce.

+All women of a certain status are my "mothers," all men of a certain

+status are my "fathers," all women of another status are my "sisters,"

+all of another are my "wives," and so on. Thus Mr. Spencer is able

+to say that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in

+practice in the Urabunna tribe" at the present day.[4]

+

+This, however, does not mean that among many such tribes a man is not

+betrothed to a special woman, and does not marry that woman, with

+certain filthy initiatory "rites," contravening the usual rules of

+intercourse.[5] Nor is it denied that such man and wife habitually

+cohabit, and that the man, by hunting and fishing, provides for the

+wife and all her children, and recognises them as his own.

+

+It is meant that each man has only a certain set of nubile women

+open to him (_Nupa_, or _Noa_, or _Unawa_), and that out of these,

+in addition to his allotted bride, an uncertain number of women are

+assigned to him and to others, mainly at tribal festivals, as paramours

+(_Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_), by their elder brothers, or the heads of

+totem kins, or the seniors of the Urabunna tribe. "This relationship

+is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe

+are gathered together to perform important ceremonies."[6] One woman

+may, on different occasions, be allotted as _Piraungaru_ to different

+men, one man to different women. Occasionally, though rarely, the

+regular husband (he who marries the wife by filthy "rites") resists the

+allotting of his wife to another man, and then "there is a fight."

+

+The question is, does this Urabunna custom of _Piraungaru_ (the

+existence of which in some tribes is not denied) represent a survival

+of a primary stage in which all men of a certain social and phratriac

+status were all alike husbands to all women of the corresponding status

+(group, or rather _status_, marriage); and was _that_, in turn, a

+survival of the anarchy of the horde, in which there were no grades at

+all, but anarchic promiscuity?

+

+That is the opinion of believers in "the primary undivided horde," and

+in "group marriage," or rather "status marriage."

+

+Or is this _Piraungaru_ custom, as we think more probable, an organised

+and circumscribed and isolated legalisation, among a few tribes, of

+the utterly unbridled license practised by many savages on festive

+occasions corresponding to the Persian feast of the Sacaea, and to the

+Roman Saturnalia?[7]

+

+The _Piraungaru_ allotments are made, as a rule, at great licentious

+meetings, but among the Urabunna, though they break the rules

+of individual marriage, they do not break the tribal rules of

+incest. By these rules the _Piraungaru_ men and women must be legal

+intermarriageable persons (_Nupa_); their regulated paramourship is

+not, by tribal law, what we, or the natives, deem "incestuous." On the

+other hand, at Fijian seasons of license, even the relationship of

+brother and sister--the most sacred of all to a savage--is purposely

+profaned. Brothers and sisters are "intentionally coupled" at the feast

+of license called _Nanga_. The object is to have "a regular burst,"

+and deliberately violate every law. Men and women "publicly practised

+unmentionable abominations."[8]

+

+The Fijians are infinitely above the Urabunna in civilisation, being an

+agricultural people. Their Nanga feast is also called Mbaki--"harvest"

+Yet the Fijians, though more civilised, far exceed the license of

+the _Piraungaru_ custom of the Urabunna, not only permitting, but

+enjoining, the extremest form of incest.

+

+The Arunta, again, neighbours of the Urabunna, though said to have

+more of "individual marriage" than they, in seasons of license go

+much beyond the Urabunna, though not so far as the Fijians. Women, at

+certain large meetings, "are told off ... and with the exception of

+men who stand in the relation of actual Uther, brother, or sons, they

+are, for the time being, common property to _all_ the men present on

+the corroboree ground." Women are thus handed over to men "whom, under

+ordinary circumstances, they may not even speak to or go near."[9]

+Every known rule, except that which forbids the closest incest as

+understood by ourselves, is deliberately and purposely reversed[10]

+by the Arunta on certain occasions. Another example will be produced

+later, that of the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna.

+

+We suggest, then, that these three grades of license--the Urabunna,

+adulterous, but more or less permanent, and limited by rules and

+by tribal and modern laws of incest; the Arunta, not permanent,

+adulterous, and tribally incestuous, limited only by our own ideas of

+the worst kinds of incest; and the Fijian, not permanent, adulterous,

+and of an incestuous character not only unlimited by laws, but rather

+limited by the desire to break the most sacred laws--are all of the

+same kind. They are not, we suggest, survivals of "group marriage," or

+of a period of perfect promiscuity in everyday life, though that they

+commemorate such a fancied period is the Arunta myth, just as the Roman

+myth averred that the Saturnalia commemorated the anarchy of the Golden

+Age.

+

+                  "In Saturn's time

+Such mixture was not held a crime."

+

+The Golden Age of promiscuity is, of course, reported, not in an

+historical tradition recording a fact, but in a myth invented to

+explain the feasts of license. Men find that they have institutions,

+they argue that they must once have been without institutions, they

+make myths about ancestors or gods who introduced institutions, they

+invent the Golden Age, when there were none, and, on occasion, revert

+for a day or a week to that happy ideal. The periods of license cannot

+be true commemorative functions, continued in pious memory of a time of

+anarchy since institutions began.

+

+But of the three types, Urabunna, Arunta, Fijian, the Urabunna, except

+in its degree of permanence, is the least licentious, least invades

+law, and it is a curious question why incest increases at these feasts

+as culture advances, up to a certain point. The law invaded by the

+Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom is not the tribal law of incest, nor

+the modern law of incest, but the law of the sanctity of individual

+marriage. It may therefore be argued (as against my own opinion) that

+the sanctity of individual marriage is still merely a nascent idea

+among the Urabunna, an idea which is recent, and so can be set aside

+easily; whereas the tribal laws of incest are strong with the strength

+of immemorial antiquity, and therefore must have already existed in a

+past age when there was no individual marriage at all. On this showing

+we have, first, the communal undivided horde; next, the horde bisected

+into groups which must not marry within each other (phratries), though

+_why_ this arrangement was made and submitted to nobody can guess with

+any plausibility. By this time all females of phratry A might not only

+marry any man of phratry B, but were, according to the hypothesis, by

+theory and by practice, _all_ wives of _all_ men of phratry B. Next, as

+to-day, a man of B married a woman of A, with or without the existing

+offensive rites, but his tenure of her is still so insecure and recent

+that it is set aside, to a great extent, by the _Piraungaru_ or

+_Pirauru_ custom, itself a proof and survival of "group marriage," and

+of communal promiscuity in the past. Such is the argument for "group

+marriage," which may be advanced against my opinion, or thus, if I did

+not hold my opinion, I would state the argument.

+

+This licentious custom, whether called _Piraungaru_ or by other names,

+is, with the tribal names for human relationships, the only basis of

+the belief in the primal promiscuous horde. Now, as to these names of

+relationships, we may repeat the adverse arguments already advanced by

+us in _Social Origins_, pp. 99-103. "Whatever the original sense of

+the names, they all now denote seniority and customary legal status in

+the tribe, with the reciprocal duties, rights, and avoidances.... The

+friends of group and communal marriage keep unconsciously forgetting,

+at this point of their argument, that _our_ ideas of sister, brother,

+father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at

+certain other points of their argument) with the native terms,

+which _include_, indeed, but do not _denote_ these relationships as

+understood by us.... We cannot say 'our word "son" must not be thought

+of when we try to understand the native term of relationship which

+includes sons--in _our_ sense,' and next aver that 'sons, in _our_

+sense, are regarded [or spoken of] as real sons of the group, not of

+the individual, because of a past [or present] stage of promiscuity

+which made real paternity undiscoverable.'"

+

+Manifestly there lurks a fallacy in alternately using "sons," for

+example, in our sense, and then in the tribal sense, which includes

+both fatherhood, or sonship, in our sense, and also tribal status and

+duties. "The terms, in addition to their usual and generally accepted

+signification of relationship by blood, express a class or group

+relation quite independent of it."[11]

+

+Thus the tribal names may result from an expanded use of earlier names

+of blood relationship, or names of tribal status may now be applied

+to include persons who are within degrees of blood relationship. In

+the latter case, how do we know that a tribe with its degrees of

+status is primitive? Starcke thinks that Mr. Morgan's use of terms of

+relationship as proof of "communal marriage" is "a wild dream, if not

+the delirium of fever." "The nomenclature was in every respect the

+faithful reflection of the juridical relations which arose between

+the nearest kinsfolk of each tribe. Individuals who were, according

+to the legal point of view, on the same level with the speaker,

+received the same designation. The other categories of kinship were

+formally developed out of this standpoint." The system of names for

+relationships "affords no warrant" for Mr. Morgan's theory of primitive

+promiscuity.[12]

+

+Similar arguments against inferring collective marriage in the

+past from existing tribal terms of relationship are urged by Dr.

+Durkheim.[13] He writes, taking an American case of names of

+relationship, as against Professor Kohler: "We see that the (Choctaw)

+word _Inoha_ (mother) applies indifferently to all the women of my

+mother's group, from the oldest to the youngest. The term thus defines

+its own meaning: it applies to all the women of the family (or clan?)

+into which my father has married. Doubtless it is rather hard to

+understand how the same term can apply to so many different people.

+But certain it is, that the word cannot awake, in men's minds, any

+idea of _descent_, in the usual sense of the word. For a man cannot

+seriously regard his second cousin as his mother, even virtual. _The

+vocabulary of relationships must therefore express something other

+than relations of consanguinity, properly so-called...._ Relationship

+and consanguinity are very different things ... relationship being

+essentially constituted by certain legal and moral obligations, which

+society imposes on certain individuals."[14]

+

+The whole passage should be read, but its sense is that which I have

+already tried to express; and Dr. Durkheim says, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than an _ultima ratio_" (a last

+resource), "intended to enable us to envisage these strange customs;

+but it is impossible to overlook all the difficulties which it raises."

+

+An analogous explanation of the wide use of certain terms of

+relationship has been given by Dr. Fison, of whom Mr. Howitt writes,

+"Much of what I have done is equally his."[15] Dr. Fison says, "All

+men of the same generation who bear the same totem are tribally

+brothers, though they may belong to different and widely separated

+tribes. Here we find an explanation of certain apparently anomalous

+terms of relationship. Thus, in some tribes the paternal grandson

+and his grandfather call one another 'elder brother' and 'younger

+brother' respectively. These persons are of the same totem."[16] "Many

+other designations" in Mr. Morgan's Tables of Terms of Relationship

+"admit of a similar solution."[17] The terms do not denote degrees of

+blood relationship, but of brotherhood in the totem (or phratry, or

+matrimonial class). It is so, too, with the Choctaw term for Mother.

+Every one knows who his mother, in our sense, is: the Choctaw term

+denotes a tribal status.

+

+If it be said that, because a man calls his wife his _Noa_, and also

+calls all women whom he might have married his _Noa_, therefore all

+these women, in past times, would have been his wives; it might as

+well be said that all the women whom he calls "mother" would, in times

+past, have collaborated in giving birth to him. As far as these terms

+indicate relationship, "a man is the younger brother of his maternal

+grandmother," and the maternal grandfather of his second cousin![18]

+The terms do not denote relationship in blood, clearly, but something

+quite different.

+

+The custom of _Piraungaru_, or _Pirrauru_, and cases of license at

+festivals, and the names for tribal relations, are, we repeat, the

+only arguments in favour of the theory of the communal horde.[19] We

+have shown that the terms of relationship do not necessarily help the

+theory. That theory, again, is invalidated by its inability to account

+for the origin of the rules forbidding marriage between persons of the

+same phratry (for it does not tell us _why_ the original medicine man

+conceived the idea of regulations), or even to account for the origin

+of the phratriac divisions.

+

+But why, on our system, can the _Piraungaru_ custom break the rule of

+individual marriage more easily than the law prohibiting incest? Why it

+can do so on the theory of pristine promiscuity we have explained (p.

+41, _supra_).

+

+We reply that individual marriage has not, among savages, any

+"religious" sanction; it is protected by no form of the phratry or

+totem tabu; by no god, such as Hymen; but rests, as from the first it

+rested, on the character and strength of the possessor of the woman or

+women, and falls into abeyance if he does not choose to exert it. If

+the males of the Urabunna have so far departed from the natural animal

+instincts as usually (with exceptions) to prefer to relax their tenure

+of women, being tempted by the bribe of a legalised change of partners

+all round, they exhibit, not a primitive, but a rather advanced type of

+human nature. The moral poet sings:--

+

+"Of _Whist_ or _Cribbage_ mark the amusing Game,

+The _Partners_ changing, but the _Sport_ the same,

+Then see one Man with one unceasing Wife,

+Play the long Rubber of connubial Life."[20]

+

+This is the "platform" of the Urabunna and Dieri, as it is of the

+old Cicisbeism in Italy, and of a section of modern "smart society,"

+especially at the end of the _ancien régime_ in France. Man may fall

+into this way of thinking, just as, in Greece, he actually legalised

+unnatural passions by a ceremony of union. "That one practice, in many

+countries, became systematised," as Mr. J. F. McLennan wrote to Mr.

+Darwin.[21]

+

+This is not the only example of a legalised aberration from nature,

+or from second nature. Abhorrence of incest has become a law of

+second nature, among savage as among civilised men. But Dr. Durkheim

+publishes a long list of legalised aberrations from the laws of incest

+among Hebrews, Arabs, Phœnicians, Greeks, Slavonic peoples, Medes,

+Persians, Egyptians, Cambodians, and Peruvians.[22] If these things,

+these monstrous aberrations, can be legalised "in the green tree," why

+should not jealousy fall into a kind of legalised abeyance among the

+Urabunna, under the law of partner-shifting? The _Piraungaru_ custom

+does not prove that earliest man was not ferociously jealous; it merely

+shows that certain tribes have reached a stage in which jealousy is, at

+present, more or less suppressed in favour of legalised license.

+

+We catch the Urabunna and Dieri at a moment of development in which

+the abandonment of strict possession of a wife is compensated for by

+a legalised system of changing partners, enduring after the feast of

+license is over. But even so, a man is responsible, as father, for the

+children of his actual wife, not for the children of his _Piraungaru_

+paramours. For these their actual husbands (_Tippa Malku_) are

+responsible.

+

+Mr. Howitt says, in his earlier account of this institution, that among

+the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna, the men and women who are made

+_Pirauru_ are not consulted. The heads of the tribe do not ask whether

+they fancy each other or not. "The time is one of festivity, feasting,

+and amusement," only too obviously! "Dancing is carried on." "A man

+can always exercise marital rights towards his _Pirauru_, if they

+meet when her _Noa_ (real husband) is absent, but he cannot take her

+away from him unless by his consent," except at the feasts. But the

+husband usually consents. "In spite of all this arrangement, most of

+the quarrels among the Dieri arise out of this _Pirauru_ practice....

+"A son or daughter regards the real husband (_Noa_) of his mother as

+his _Apiri Muria_, or "real father"; his mother's _Pirauru_ is only his

+_Apiri Waka_, or "little father." At certain feasts of license, such

+as intertribal marriages, "no jealous feeling is allowed under penalty

+of strangling, but it crops up afterwards, and occasions many bloody

+affrays."[23] Thus jealousy is not easily kept in abeyance by customary

+law.

+

+The idea of such a change of partners is human, not animal, and the

+more of a brute the ancestor of man was the less could he dream, in

+times truly primitive, of _Piraungaru_ as a permanent arrangement. Men,

+in a few tribes, declined into it, and are capable of passing out of

+it, like the Urabunna or Dieri man, who either retains so much of the

+animal, or is rising so far towards the Homeric standard, as to fight

+rather than let his wife be allotted to another man, or at least to

+thump that other man afterwards.

+

+The Dieri case of the feast of license, just mentioned, is notable.

+"The various _Piraurus_ (paramours) are allotted to each other by

+the great council of the tribe, after which their names are formally

+announced to the assembled people on the evening of the ceremony of

+circumcision, during which there is for a time a general license

+permitted between all those who have been thus allotted to each other."

+But persons of the same totem among the Dieri may not be _Piraurus_

+to each other, nor may near relations as we reckon kinship, including

+cousins on both sides.

+

+In this arrangement Mr. Howitt sees "a form of group marriage," while

+I see tribe-regulated license, certainly much less lawless than that

+of the more advanced Fijians or the Arunta. Mr. Howitt did not state

+that the _Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_ unions are preceded (as marriage is)

+by any ceremony, unless the reading the banns, so to speak, by public

+proclamation among the Dieri is a ceremony.[24] Now he has discovered a

+ceremony as symbolic as our wedding ring (1904).

+

+Little light, if any, is thrown on these customs of legalised license

+by philology. Mr. Howitt thought that _Pirauru_ may be derived from

+_Pira_, "the moon," and _Uru_, "circular." The tribal feasts of

+license are held at the full moon, but I am not aware that, by the

+natives, people are deemed peculiarly "moonstruck," or lunatic, at

+that season. If Urabunna _Piraungaru_ is linguistically connected with

+Dieri _Pirauru_, then both _Piraungaru_ and _Pirauru_ may mean "Full

+Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to

+me!"[25]

+

+Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes the _Noa_ of a man most frequently by

+being betrothed to him when she is a mere infant.... In certain cases

+she is given by the Great Council, as a reward for some meritorious

+act on his part." "None but the brave deserve the fair," and this is

+"individual marriage," though the woman who is wedded to one man may be

+legally allotted as Full Mooner, or _Pirauru_, to several. "The right

+of the _Noa_ overrides that of the _Pirauru_. Thus a man cannot claim

+a woman who is _Pirauru_ to him when her _Noa_ is present in the camp,

+excepting by his consent." The husband generally yields, he shares

+equivalent privileges. "Such cases, however, are the frequent causes of

+jealousies and fights."[26]

+

+This evidence does not seem, on the whole, to force upon us the

+conclusion that the Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom, or any of these

+customs, any more than the custom of polyandry, or of legalised

+incest in higher societies, is a survival of "group marriage"--all

+men of certain social grades being actual husbands of all women of

+the corresponding grades--while again that is a survival of gradeless

+promiscuity. We shall disprove that theory. Rather, the _Piraungaru_

+custom appears to be a limited concession to the taste, certainly a

+human taste, for partner-changing--_which can only manifest itself

+where regular partnerships already exist_. Jealousy among these tribes

+is in a state of modified abeyance: like nature herself, and second

+nature, where, among civilised peoples, things unnatural, or contrary

+to the horror of incest, have been systematically legalised.

+

+I have so far given Mr. Howitt's account of _Pirrauru_ (the name is now

+so written by him) among the Dieri, as it appeared in his works, prior

+to 1904. In that year he published his _Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia_, which contains additional details of essential importance

+(pp. 179-187). A woman becomes _Tippa Malku_,[27] or affianced,[28]

+to one man only, _before_ she becomes _Pirrauru_, or what Mr. Howitt

+calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She

+is never the _Pirrauru_ of all the men who are _Noa_ to her, that is,

+intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a

+symbolic ceremony, as a _Pirrauru_ to one or more men, who are _Noa_

+to her. At first, while a child, or at least while a maiden, she is

+betrothed (there are varieties of modes) to one individual male. She

+may ask her husband to let her take on another man as _Pirrauru_;

+"should he refuse to do this she must put up with it." If he consents,

+other men make two adjacent ridges of sand, and level them into one

+larger ridge, while a man, usually the selected lover, pours sand from

+the ridge over the upper part of his thighs, "buries the _Pirrauru_ in

+the sand." (The phrase does not suggest that _Pirrauru_ means "Full

+Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop

+wives (exchange their _Noa_ as _Pirraurus_), and also when "the whole

+of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already

+_Pirrauru_, are _reallotted_," a term which suggests the temporary

+character of the unions.

+

+I am ready to allow that the _Kandri_ ceremony, a symbol of recognised

+union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian

+_Ghandarva_ rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified

+union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which

+is arranged subsequent to the _Tippa Malku_ ceremony of permanent

+betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt,

+subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one

+woman to one man in the _Tippa Malku_ arrangement. That arrangement

+is demonstrably more primitive than _Pirrauru_, for _Pirrauru_ is

+unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of

+_Tippa Malku_.

+

+This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage"

+(I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All

+persons legally intermarriageable (_Noa_), under phratry law, were

+originally, he holds, _ipso facto_, married. Consequently the _Kandri_

+custom could not make them _more_ married than they then actually were.

+In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial

+comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not

+_Noa_, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the _Kandri_

+ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons

+who are already _Tippa Malku_ (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal

+paramours in certain other wedded or _Tippa Malku_ women, and in men

+either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification

+of individual _Tippa Malku_, _Pirrauru_ is impossible, and its

+existence is unthinkable.[29]

+

+_Pirrauru_ is a modification of marriage (_Tippa Malku_), _Tippa

+Malku_ is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a

+_Tippa Malku_ husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to

+himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his

+intended _fiancée_.[30] The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his

+_Pirrauru_ woman away from her _Tippa Malku_ husband "unless by his

+consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times"--feasts, in fact, of

+license. _Pirrauru_ secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the

+seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless

+and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these _Pirrauru_ "in

+commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property

+and social influence. What do the _Tippa Malku_ husbands say to this

+arrangement?

+

+As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group

+marries another group, the _Pirrauru_ literally heap hot coals on

+each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the

+"group" as _Pirrauru_. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled

+(_Nulina_). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri,

+praises _Pirrauru_ for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One

+does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's

+wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy,

+checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying,

+but _Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is

+involved. _Pirrauru may_ (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live

+together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote

+from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.

+

+You may call _Pirrauru_ a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a

+later modification of a prior _Tippa Malku_ wedlock, it cannot be cited

+as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all

+female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is

+called "group marriage."[31]

+

+If _Pirrauru_ were primitive, it might be looked for among these

+southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social

+organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent

+institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the

+All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or,

+at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri

+belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, _Pirrauru_ is

+no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta

+and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri,

+Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, _Pirrauru_ cannot

+claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to

+"individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain,

+prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln

+and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and

+Urabunna phratry names, _Matteri_ and _Kararu_, exist.[32] Having

+identical phratry names (or one phratry name identical, as among the

+Kunandaburi), whether by borrowing or by original community of language

+and institutions: all these tribes southward to the sea from Lake Eyre

+may possess, or may have possessed, _Pirrauru_.

+

+Among the most pristine of all tribes, in the south by east, however,

+_Pirrauru_ is not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the

+Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find no _Pirrauru_.

+But Mr. Howitt notes other practices which are taken by him to be mere

+rudimentary survivals of "group marriage." They are (i.) exchange of

+wives at feasts of marriage, or in view of impending misfortune, as

+when shipwrecked mariners break into the stores, and are "working at

+the rum and the gin." These are feasts of license, not survivals of

+"group marriage" nor of _Pirrauru_. (ii.) The _jus primae noctis_,

+enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all,

+nor is it a survival of _Pirrauru_. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia,"

+"almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost

+promiscuous and very rare) nor _Pirrauru_. (iv.) Seven brothers have

+one wife. This is adelphic polyandry, Mr. Howitt calls it "group

+marriage." (v.) "A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife

+of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by the

+clan." If this is "group marriage" (there is no "group" concerned)

+there was group marriage in ancient Rome.[33] This, I think, is all

+that Mr. Howitt has to show for "group marriage" and _Pirrauru_ among

+the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.

+

+The manner in which _Tippa Malku_ betrothals are arranged deserves

+attention. They who "give this woman away," and they who give away her

+bride-groom also, are the brothers of the mothers of the pair, or the

+mothers themselves may arrange the matter.[34]

+

+Mr. Howitt, on this point, observes that, if the past can be judged of

+by the present, "I should say that the practice of betrothal, which

+is universal in Australia, must have produced a feeling of individual

+proprietary right over the women so promised." Manifestly Mr. Howitt

+is putting the plough before the oxen. It is because certain kinsfolk

+have an acknowledged "proprietary right" over the woman that they can

+betroth her to a man: it is not because they can betroth her to a man

+that they have "a feeling of individual proprietary right over her."

+I give my coppers away to a crossing-sweeper, or exchange them for

+commodities, because I have an individual proprietary right over these

+coins. I have not acquired the feeling of individual proprietary right

+over the pence by dint of observing that I do give them away or buy

+things with them.

+

+The proprietary rights of mothers, maternal uncles, or any other

+kinsfolk over girls must, of course, have been existing and generally

+acknowledged before these kinsfolk could exercise the said rights of

+giving away. But, in a promiscuous horde, before marriage existed, how

+could anybody know what persons had proprietary rights over what other

+persons?[35]

+

+Mr. Howitt here adds that the "practice of betrothal ..." (or perhaps

+he means that "the feeling of individual proprietary right"?) "when

+accentuated by the _Tippa Malku_ marriage, must also tend to overthrow

+the _Pirrauru_ marriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have

+proved, that if there were no _Tippa Malku_ marriage there could be no

+_Pirrauru_ to overthrow.

+

+As to the _Pirrauru_ or _Piraungaru_ custom, moreover, Mr. Howitt

+has himself candidly observed that, on his theory, it "ought rather

+to have been perpetuated than abandoned" (so it _is_ abandoned)

+"under conditions of environment" (such as more abundant food) "which

+permitted the _Pirrauru_ group to remain together on one spot,

+instead of being compelled by the exigencies of existence to separate

+into lesser groups having the Noa" (or regular) "marriage."[36] So

+_Pirrauru_ don't live in "groups"!

+

+As a fact, the more that supplies, in some regions, as on the south

+coast, permit relatively large groups to coexist, the less is their

+marital license; while, on the other hand, the less favourable the

+conditions of supply (as in the Barkinji region), the less do we hear

+of _Pirrauru_, or anything of the kind, except among tribes of the

+Kiraru and Matteri phratries. For these reasons, _Pirrauru_ unions

+appear to mark an isolated moment in culture, not to be a survival of

+universal pristine promiscuity. They are almost always associated,

+in their inception, with seasons of frolic and lust, and with large

+assemblages, rather than with the usual course of everyday existence.

+

+For the reasons here stated, it does not seem that Australian

+institutions yield any evidence for primitive promiscuity.

+

+

+

+[1] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 89.

+

+[2] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 90.

+

+[3] _Loc. cit._ Mr. Howitt says "classes," but we adhere to the term

+"phratries."

+

+[4] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

+

+[5] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 92-98.

+

+[6] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

+

+[7] For a large account of these customs see _The Golden Bough_, second

+edition.

+

+[8] Fison, J.A.I., xiv. p. 28.

+

+[9] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 97.

+

+[10] Ibid., p. 111.

+

+[11] Roth, _N.W.C. Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56.

+

+[12] Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, p. 207.

+

+[13] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. pp. 313-316.

+

+[14] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 315.

+

+[15] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, xiv.

+

+[16] Can Dr. Fison mean of the same matrimonial class?

+

+[17] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 166, 167.

+

+[18] _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 163. Pointed out by Mr.

+N. W. Thomas.

+

+[19] The participation of many men in the _jus primae noctis_ is open

+to various explanations.

+

+[20] _Poetry of the Antijacobin._

+

+[21] _Studies in Ancient History_, ii. p. 52.

+

+[22] _L'Année Sociologique_, i., pp.38, 39, 62.

+

+[23] _J. A. I._, pp. 56-60, August 1890.

+

+[24] Howitt, _J. A. I._, August 1890, pp. 55-58.

+

+[25] What the Dieri call _Pirauru_ (legalised paramour) the adjacent

+Kunan-daburi tribe call _Dilpa Mali_. In this tribe the individual

+husband or individual wife (that is, the real wife or husband) is

+styled _Nubaia_, in Dieri _Noa_, in Urabunna _Nupa_. Husband's brother,

+sister's husband, wife's sister, and brother's wife are all _Nubaia

+Kodimali_ in Kunandabori, and are all _Noa_ in Dieri. What _Dilpa

+Mali_ (legalised paramour, or "accessory wife or husband") means in

+Kunandabori Mr. Howitt does not know. But he learns that _Kodi Mali_

+(applied to _Pirauru_) means "_not_ Nubaia," that is, "_not_ legal

+individual husband or wife." If we knew what Dilpa means in Dilpa Mali

+(legalised paramour of either sex), we should know more than we are apt

+to do in the present state of Australian philology.

+

+At Port Lincoln a man calls his own wife _Yung Ara_, that of his

+brother _Karteti_ (_Trans. Phil. Soc. Vic._, v. 180). What do these

+words mean?--_Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, pp.

+804-806.

+

+[26] _Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, p. 807.

+

+[27] _Tippa_, in one tongue, _Malku_ in another, denote the tassel

+which is a man's full dress suit.

+

+[28] Mr. Howitt says that the pair are _Tippa Malku_ "for the time

+being" (p. 179), though the association seems to be permanent. May

+girls Tippa Malku--"sealed" to a man--have relations with other men

+before their actual marriage, and with what men? We are not told, but a

+girl cannot be a _Pirrauru_ before she is _Tippa Malku_. If _Pirrauru_

+"arises through the exchange by brothers of their _wives_" (p. 181),

+how can an unmarried man who has no wife become a _Pirrauru_? He

+does. When _Pirrauru_ people are "re-allotted" (p. 182), does the old

+connection persist, or is it broken, or is it merely in being for the

+festive occasion? How does the jealousy of the _Pirrauru_, which is

+great, like the change? These questions, and many more, are asked by

+Mr. N. W. Thomas.

+

+[29] Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual husbands

+and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and _Pirrauru_

+were devised to limit Tom, Dick, and Harry, &c., to Jane, Mary, and

+Susan, &c., all these men being _Pirrauru_ to all these women, and

+_vice versa_. Next, Tippa Malku was devised, limiting Jane to Tom,

+but _Pirrauru_ was retained, to modify that limitation. Anybody is

+welcome to this mode of making _Pirrauru_ logically thinkable, without

+prior _Tippa Malku_: if he thinks that the arrangement is logically

+thinkable, which I do not.

+

+[30] Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could not possess

+the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised, which, before

+marriage existed, it could not be.

+

+[31] I have here had the advantage of using a MS. note by Mr. N. W.

+Thomas.

+

+[32] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 191.

+

+[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 195, 217, 219, 224,

+260.

+

+[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 177, 178.

+

+[35] Ibid., p. 283.

+

+[36] _J. A. I._, xiii. p. 34.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV

+

+THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

+

+

+      How could man, if promiscuous, cease to be so?--Opinion

+      of Mr. Howitt--Ethical training in groups very small, by

+      reason of economic conditions--Likes and dislikes--Love

+      and jealousy--Distinctions and restrictions--Origin of

+      restrictions not explained by Professor Spencer--His

+      account of the Arunta--Among them the totem does not

+      regulate marriage, is not exogamous, denotes a magical

+      society--Causes of this unique state of things--Male

+      descent: doctrine of reincarnation, belief in

+      spirit-haunted stone _churinga nanja_--Mr. Spencer thinks

+      Arunta totemism pristine--This opinion contested--How

+      Arunta totemism ceased to regulate marriage--Result

+      of isolated belief in _churinga nanja_--Contradictory

+      Arunta myths--Arunta totemism impossible in tribes

+      with female descent--Case of the Urabunna--Origin of

+      _churinga nanja_ belief--Sacred stone objects in New

+      South Wales--Present Arunta belief perhaps based on myths

+      explanatory of stone amulets of unknown meaning--Proof

+      that the more northern tribes never held the Arunta belief

+      in _churinga nanja_--Traces of Arunta ideas among the

+      Euahlayi--Possible traces of a belief in a sky-dwelling

+      being among southern Arunta--Mr. Gillen's "great Ulthaana

+      of the heavens"--How arose the magic-working animal-named

+      Arunta societies?--Not found in the south-east--Mr.

+      Spencer's theory that they do survive--Criticism of his

+      evidence--Recapitulation--Arunta totemism not primitive

+      but modified.

+

+

+Next we have to ask how, granting the hypothesis of the promiscuous

+horde, man ceased to be promiscuous. It will be seen that, on a theory

+of Mr. Howitt's, man was, in fact, far on the way of ceasing to be

+promiscuous or a "horde's man," before he introduced the moral reform

+of bisecting his horde into phratries, for the purpose of preventing

+brother with sister marriages. Till unions were permanent, and kin

+recognised, things impossible in a state of promiscuity, nobody could

+dream of forbidding brother and sister marriage, because nobody could

+know who was brother or sister to whom. Now, Mr. Howitt does indicate

+a way in which man might cease to be promiscuous, before any sage

+invented the system of exogamous phratries.

+

+He writes,[1] "I start ... from the assumption that there was once an

+undivided commune ... I do not desire to be understood as maintaining

+that it implies necessarily the assumption of complete communism

+between the sexes. Assuming that the former physical conditions of the

+Australian continent were much as they are now, complete communism

+always existing would, I think, be an impossibility. The character of

+the country, the necessity of hunting for food, and of removing from

+one spot to another in search of game and of vegetable food, would

+necessarily cause any undivided commune, _when it assumed dimensions of

+more than that of a few members, to break up_, under the necessities

+of existence, into two or more communes of similar constitution to

+itself. In addition to this it has become evident to me, after a long

+acquaintance with the Australian savage, that, in the past as now,

+individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, although

+there was the admitted common right between certain groups of the

+commune, in practice these rights would either not be exercised by

+reason of various causes, or would remain in abeyance, so far as the

+separated but allied undivided communes were concerned, until on great

+ceremonial occasions, or where certain periodical gatherings for

+food purposes reunited temporarily all the segments of the original

+community. In short, so far as the evidence goes at present, I am

+inclined to regard the probable condition of the undivided commune as

+being well represented now by what occurs when on certain occasions the

+modified divided communes reunite."[2]

+

+What occurs in these festive assemblies among certain central and

+northern tribes, as we have seen, is a legalised and restricted change

+of wives all round, with disregard, in some cases, of some of the

+tribal rules against incest. On Mr. Howitt's theory the undivided

+communal horde must always have been, as I have urged, dividing itself,

+owing to lack of supplies. It would be a very small group, continually

+broken up, and intercourse of the sexes even in that group, must

+have been restrained by jealousy, based on the asserted existence of

+individual "likes" and "dislikes." These restrictions, again, must have

+led to some idea that the man usually associated with, and responsible

+for feeding, and protecting, and correcting the woman and her children,

+was just the man who "liked" her, the man whom she "liked," and the man

+who "disliked" other men if they wooed her.

+

+But that state of things is not an undivided communal horde at all! It

+is much more akin to the state of things in which I take marriage rules

+to have arisen.

+

+We may suppose, then, that early moral distinctions and restrictions

+grew up among the practically "family" groups of everyday life, as

+described by Mr. Howitt, and we need not discuss again the question

+whether, at this very early period, there existed a community exactly

+like the local tribe of to-day in every respect--except that marriage

+was utterly unregulated, till an inspired medicine man promulgated the

+law of exogamy, his own invention.

+

+Mr. Howitt began his long and invaluable studies of these problems as

+a disciple of Mr. Lewis Morgan. That scholar was a warm partisan of

+the primeval horde, of group marriage, and (at times) of a reformatory

+movement. These ideas, first admitted to Mr. Howitt's mind, have

+remained with him, but he has seen clearly that the whole theory needed

+at least that essential modification which his practical knowledge of

+savage life has enabled him to make. He does not seem to me to hold

+that the promiscuous horde suddenly, for no reason, reformed itself:

+his reformers had previous ethical training in a state of daily life

+which is not that of the hypothetical horde. But he still clings to the

+horde, tiny as it must have been, as the source of a tradition of a

+brief-lived period of promiscuity. This faith is but the "after-image"

+left in his mental processes by the glow of Mr. Morgan's theory, but

+the faith is confirmed by his view of the terms of relationship, and of

+the _Piraungaru_, _Pirrauru_, and similar customs. We have shown, in

+the last chapter, that the terms and the customs are not necessarily

+proofs of promiscuity in the past, but may be otherwise interpreted

+with logical consistency, and in conformity with human nature.

+

+The statement of Mr. Howitt shows how the communal horde of the

+hypothesis might come to see that it needed moral reformation. In

+daily life, by Mr. Howitt's theory, it had practically ceased to be a

+communal horde before the medicine man was inspired to reform it. The

+hypothesis of Professor Baldwin Spencer resembles that of Mr. Howitt,

+but, unlike his (as it used to stand), accounts for the existence

+of animal-named sets of people within the phratries. Mr. Spencer,

+starting from the present social condition of the Arunta "nation" or

+group of tribes (Arunta, Kaitish, Ilpirra, Unmatjera), supposes that

+these tribes retain pristine traits, once universal, but now confined

+to them. The peculiar pristine traits, by the theory, are (1) the

+existence of animal-named local societies for magical purposes. The

+members of each local group worked magic for their name-giving animal

+or plant, but any one might marry a woman of his own group name, Eagle

+Hawk, Cockatoo, and the like, while these names were not inherited,

+either from father or mother, and did not denote a bond of kinship.

+Mr. Spencer, then, supposes the horde to have been composed of such

+magical societies, at a very remote date, before sexual relations were

+regulated by any law. Later, in some fashion, and for some reason

+which Mr. Spencer does not profess to explain, "there was felt the

+need of some form of organisation, and this gradually resulted in the

+development of exogamous groups."[3] These "exogamous groups," among

+the Arunta, are now the four or eight "matrimonial classes," as among

+other tribes of northern Australia. These tribes, as a rule, have

+phratries, but the Arunta have lost even the phratry names.

+

+Mr. Spencer's theory thus explains the existence of animal-named

+groups--as co-operative magical societies, for breeding the animals or

+plants--but does not explain how exogamy arose, or why, everywhere,

+except among the Arunta, all the animal or plant named sets of people

+are kinships, and are exogamous, while they are neither the one or

+the other among the Arunta. Either the Arunta groups have once been

+exogamous totem kinships, and have ceased to be so, becoming magical

+societies; or such animal-named sets of people have, everywhere, first

+been magical societies, and later become exogamous totem kinships. Mr.

+Spencer holds the latter view, we hold the former, believing that the

+Arunta have once been in the universal state of totemic exogamy, and

+that, by a perfectly intelligible process, their animal-named groups

+have become magical societies, no longer exogamous kinships. We can

+show how the old exogamous totem kinship, among the Arunta, became

+a magical society, not regulating sexual relations; but we cannot

+imagine how all totemic mankind, if they began with magical societies

+in an unregulated horde, should have everywhere, except among the

+Arunta, conspired to convert these magical societies into kinships

+with exogamy. If the social organisation of the Arunta were peculiarly

+primitive, if their beliefs and ceremonials were of the most archaic

+type, there might be some ground for Mr. Spencer's opinion. But Mr.

+Hartland justly says that all the beliefs and institutions of the

+Arunta "point in the same direction, namely, that the Arunta are the

+most advanced and not the most primitive of the Central Australian

+tribes."[4]

+

+The Arunta, a tribe so advanced that it has forgotten its phratry

+names, has male kinship, eight matrimonial classes, and _local_ totem

+groups, with Headmen hereditary in the male line, and so cannot

+possibly be called "primitive," as regards organisation. If, then,

+the tribe possesses a peculiar institution, contravening what is

+universally practised, the natural inference is that the Arunta

+institution, being absolutely isolated and unique, as far as its

+non-exogamy goes, in an advanced tribe, is a local freak or "sport,"

+like many others which exist. This inference seems to be corroborated

+when we discover, as we do at a glance, the peculiar conditions without

+which the Arunta organisation is physically impossible. These essential

+and indispensable conditions are admitted by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+to be:--

+

+1. Male reckoning of descent--which is found in very many tribes where

+totems are exogamous--as everywhere.

+

+2. Local totem groups, which are a result of male reckoning of descent.

+These also are found in many other tribes where, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous.

+

+3. The belief that the spirits of the primal ancestors of the

+"Dream-Time" (_Alcheringa_)--creatures evolved out of various animal

+shapes into human form--are constantly reincarnated in new-born

+children. This belief is found in all the northern tribes with male

+descent; and among the Urabunna, who have female descent--but among all

+these tribes totems are exogamous, as everywhere.

+

+4. The Arunta and Kaitish, with two or three minor neighbouring tribes,

+believe that spirits desiring incarnation, all of one totem in each

+case, reside "at certain definite spots." So do the Urabunna believe,

+but at each of these spots, in Urabunna land, there may be spirits _of

+several different totems._[5] Among the Urabunna, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous. None of these four conditions, nor all of them, can

+produce the Arunta totemic non-exogamy.

+

+Finally (5) the Arunta and Kaitish, and they alone, believe not only

+that the spirits desiring reincarnation reside at certain definite

+spots, and not only that the spirits there are, in each case, _all

+of one totem_ (which is essential), but also that these spirits are

+most closely associated with objects of stone, inscribed with archaic

+markings (_churinga nanja_), which the spirits have dropped in these

+places--the scenes where the ancestors died (_Oknanikilla_). These

+stone objects, and this belief in their connection with ancestral

+spirits, are found in the Arunta region alone, and are the determining

+cause, or inseparable accident at least, of the non-exogamy of Arunta

+totemism, as will be fully explained later.

+

+Not one of these five conditions is reported by Mr. Howitt among

+the primitive south-eastern tribes, and the fifth is found only in

+Aruntadom. Yet Mr. Spencer regards as the earliest form of totemism

+extant that Arunta form, which requires four conditions, not found in

+the tribes of primitive organisation, and a fifth, which is peculiar to

+the Arunta "nation" alone.

+

+That the Arunta tribe, whether shut off from all others or not (as

+a matter of fact it is not), should alone (while advanced in all

+respects, including marriage and ceremonials) have retained a belief

+which, though called primitive, is unknown among primitive tribes,

+seems a singularly paradoxical hypothesis. Meanwhile the cause of the

+Arunta peculiarity--non-exogamous totems--is recognised by Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen, who also declare that the cause is isolated. They

+say "it is the idea of spirit individuals associated with _churinga_"

+(manufactured objects of stone), "and resident in certain definite

+spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the

+Arunta tribe."[6]

+

+Again, they inform us that the _churinga_ belief, and the existence of

+stone _churinga_, are things isolated. "In the Worgaia tribe, which

+inhabits the country to the north-east of the Kaitish" (neighbours of

+the Arunta), "we meet, so far as we have been able to discover, with

+the last traces of the _churinga_--that is, of the _churinga_ with its

+meaning and significance, as known to us in the true central tribes,

+as associated with the spirits of _Alcheringa_ ancestors" (mythical

+beings, supposed to be constantly reincarnated).[7] Thus, "the present

+totemic system of the Arunta tribe,"--in which, contrary to universal

+rule, persons of the same totem may inter-marry--reposes on a belief

+associated with certain manufactured articles of stone, and neither the

+belief nor the stone objects are discovered beyond a certain limited

+region. It is proper to add that the regretted Mr. David Carnegie

+found, at Family Wells, in the desert of Central Australia, two stone

+objects, one plain, the other rudely marked with concentric circles,

+which resemble _churinga nanja_. He mentions two others found and

+thrown away by Colonel Warburton. The meaning or use of these objects

+was not ascertained.[8]

+

+We differ from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they think that

+this peculiar and isolated belief, held by four or five tribes of

+confessedly advanced social organisation and ceremonials (a belief only

+possible under advanced social organisation), is the pristine form of

+totemism, out of which all totemists, however primitive, have found

+their way except the Arunta "nation" alone. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+write: "... the only conclusion which it seems possible to arrive at

+is that in the more northern tribes" (which have no churinga nanja,

+no _stone_ churinga), "the churinga represent the surviving relics of

+a time when the beliefs among those tribes were similar to those which

+now exist among the Arunta. It is more easy to imagine a change which

+shall lead from the present Arunta or Kaitish belief to that which

+exists among the Warramunga, than it is to imagine one which shall

+lead from the Warramunga to the Arunta."[9] Now among the Warramunga,

+as everywhere, the division of the totems between the two (exogamous)

+moieties is complete, "and, with very few exceptions indeed, the

+children follow the father."[10] (These exceptions are not explained.)

+Among the Kaitish the same totems occur among both exogamous moieties,

+so persons of the same totem _can_ intermarry, but "it is a very rare

+thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself."[11]

+

+The obvious conclusion is the reverse of that which our authors think

+"alone possible." The Kaitish have adopted the Arunta _churinga nanja_

+usage which introduces the same totem into both exogamous moieties,

+but, unlike the Arunta, they have not yet discarded the old universal

+rule, "No marriage within the totem." It is not absolutely forbidden,

+but it scarcely ever occurs. The Kaitish, as regards exogamy and

+religion, are a link between the primitive south-eastern tribes and the

+Arunta.

+

+We go on to show in detail how Arunta totems alone ceased to be

+exogamous, and to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+been, and never can have been, in the present Arunta condition. Among

+the Arunta, in the classes, none of them his own, into which alone a

+man may marry, there are plenty of women of his own totem. Thus, in

+marrying a woman of his totem, but not of his set of classes, a man

+does not break the law of Arunta exogamy. Now how does it happen that a

+totem may be in both sets of exogamous classes among the Arunta alone

+of mankind? Was this always the case from the beginning?

+

+It is, naturally, our opinion that among the Arunta, as everywhere

+else, matters were originally, or not much later, so arranged that

+the same totem never appeared in both phratries, or, afterwards, when

+phratries were lost, in both opposed sets of two or four exogamous

+matrimonial classes. The only objection to this theory is that

+the Arunta themselves believe it, and mention the circumstance in

+their myths. These myths cannot be historical reminiscences of the

+"Dream-Time," which never existed. But even a myth may deviate into

+truth, especially as the Arunta must know that in other tribes the same

+totem never occurs in both phratries, and are clever enough to see that

+their method needs explanation as being an exception to general rule;

+and that, even now, "the great majority of any one totem belong to one

+moiety of the tribe." So they say that originally all Witchetty Grubs,

+for instance, were in the Bulthara-Panunga moiety (as most Grubs still

+are to this day), while all Emus were in the opposite exogamous moiety

+(Purula-Kumura). But, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "owing to the

+system according to which totem names are" (_now_) "acquired, it is

+always possible for a man to be, say, a Purula or a Kumura, and yet a

+Witchetty; or, on the other hand, a Bulthara or a Panunga, and yet an

+Emu."[12] The present system of acquiring totem names has transferred

+the totems into both exogamous moieties, and so has made it possible

+to marry within the totem name.

+

+This suggests that, in native opinion or conjecture, Arunta totems,

+like all others, were once exogamous; no totem ever occurred originally

+in both exogamous moieties. It also indicates that, in the opinion

+of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, they only ceased to be exogamous when

+the present method of acquiring totem names, an unique method, was

+introduced. Happily, to prove the historical worthlessness of Arunta

+legendary myth, the tribe has a contradictory legend. The same totem,

+according to this fable, occurred in both exogamous moieties, even

+in the mythic Dream-Time (_Alcheringa_); by this fable the natives

+explain (what needs explaining) how the same totem does occur in _both_

+exogamous moieties to-day, and so is not exogamous.[13]

+

+This is nonsense, just as the other contradictory myth was conjecture.

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have themselves explained why the same totem

+may _now_ occur in both moieties, and so be non-exogamous. The unique

+phenomenon is due to the actual and unique method of acquiring totem

+names.[14] Thus the modern method is not primitive. These passages are

+very instructive.

+

+The Arunta have been so long in the relatively advanced state of

+_local_ totemism that their myths do not look behind it. A group,

+whether stationary or migratory, in the myths of the Dream-Time (the

+_Alcheringa_) always consists of persons of the same totem, with

+occasional visitors of other totems. The myths, we repeat, reflect the

+present state of local totem groups back on the past.

+

+The myths allege (here the isolated superstition comes in) that

+the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_ died, or "went into the

+ground" at certain now haunted spots, marked by rocks or trees, which

+may be called "mortuary local totem-centres"--in native speech,

+_Oknanikilla_[15] Trees or rocks arose to mark the spot where the

+ancestors, all of one totem in each case, went into the ground. These

+trees or rocks are called _Nanja_. Thereabouts the dying ancestors

+deposited possessions peculiar to Aruntadom, their stone amulets, or

+_churinga nanja_, with what are now read as totemic incised marks.

+Their spirits, all of one totem in each case, haunt the _Nanja_ rock or

+tree, and are especially attached to these stone amulets,[16] called

+_churinga nanja_. The spirits discarnate await a chance of entering

+into women, and being reborn. When a child comes to the birth, the

+mother, whatever her own or her husband's totem may be, names the

+spot where she supposes that she conceived the child, and the child's

+_Nanja_ tree or rock is that in the _Oknanikilla_, or mortuary local

+totem-centre nearest to the place where the child was conceived. Its

+male kin hunt for the _churinga_, or stone amulet, there deposited

+by the dying _Alcheringa_ ancestor; if they find it, it becomes the

+child's _churinga_, for he is merely the ancestor spirit reborn. He

+(or she) "comes into his own"; his _Nanja_ tree or rock, his _churinga

+nanja_, and his original totem, which may be, and often is, neither

+that of his father or mother.

+

+Thus inheriting his own old _Nanja_ tree and _churinga_, and totem,

+_the child is not necessarily of his father's or mothers but is of

+his own old original totem_, say Grub, or Hakea Flower, or Kangaroo,

+or Frog. His totem is thus not inherited, we repeat, as elsewhere,

+from either parent, but is derived, by the accident of his place of

+conception, from the _local_ totem, from the totemic ghosts (all

+of one totem) haunting the particular mortuary totem centre, or

+_Oknanikilla_, where he was conceived. His totem may thus be in _both_

+of the exogamous moieties, and for that reason alone is not exogamous.

+To take an example. A woman, by totem Cat, has a husband by totem

+Iguana. She conceives a child, and believes that she conceived it in a

+certain district. The local totem of that district is the Grub, Grub

+ghosts haunt the region; the child, therefore, is a Grub. He inherits

+his exogamous class, say Bukhara, from his father, and he must marry

+a woman of Class Kumara. But she may also be a Grub, for her totem,

+like his, has been acquired (like his, not by inheritance, but) by the

+accident that her mother conceived her in a Grub district. Thus, and

+thus only, are totems not exogamous among the Arunta. They are not

+inherited from either parent.

+

+It is probable that, after male descent came in, the Arunta and Kaitish

+at first inherited their totems from their fathers, as among all other

+tribes with male descent. This appears to be proved by the fact that

+they still do inherit, from their fathers, totemic rites, and the power

+of doing totemic mummeries for their fathers' totems, even when, by

+the accident of their places of conception, they do not inherit their

+fathers' totems. When they did inherit the paternal totem, they were,

+doubtless, totemically exogamous, like all other tribes with either

+male or female descent.

+

+One simple argument upsets the claim of Arunta totems to be primitive.

+In no tribe with female descent can a district have its _local_ totem,

+as among the Arunta. A district can only have a local totem if the

+majority of the living people, and of the haunting ghosts of the

+dead, are of one totem only. But this (setting aside the occasional

+results of an isolated Urabunna superstition) can only occur under male

+reckoning of descent, which confessedly is not primitive. In a region

+where reckoning in the female line exists a woman could not say, "I

+conceived my child in Grub district, the country of totem Grub"--for

+such a country there is not and cannot be. Consequently, among the

+Urabunna as everywhere with reckoning of descent in the female line,

+every child is of its mother's totem.

+

+Let us examine other tribes who, like the Arunta, have the theory of

+reincarnation, but whose totems are, as elsewhere, exogamous, unlike

+those of the Arunta. The Urabunna have female descent, and their myth

+about the origin of totemic ancestors approximates to that of the

+Arunta, but, unlike the Arunta fable, does not produce, or account

+for, non-exogamy in totems. Things began, say the Urabunna, by the

+appearance of a few creatures half human, half bestial or vegetable.

+They had miraculous powers, and dropped spirits which tenanted lizards,

+snakes, and so on, all over the district. These spirits later became

+incarnated in human beings of the Lizard, Snake, or other totem, and

+are constantly being reincarnated. The two Urabunna phratries were

+originally a green and a brown snake: the Green Snake said to the

+Brown Snake, "I am Kirarawa, you are Matthurie"--the phratry names.

+It does not appear that these names now mean Green Snake and Brown

+Snake, though they may once have had these significations. The spirits

+left about by these snakes, like all the other such spirits (_mai

+aurli_) keep on being incarnated, and, when incarnated, the children

+bear the totem name of their mothers in each case. A Green Snake

+woman is entered by a spirit, which she bears as a Green Snake child.

+The accident of the locality in which the child was conceived does

+not affect his totem, so Urabunna totems remain in their own proper

+phratries, and therefore, by phratry law, are exogamous, as everywhere,

+except among the Arunta.[17]

+

+This arrangement is merely the usual arrangement, with female descent A

+woman's child is of the woman's totem. Believing in reincarnation, the

+Urabunna merely adapt that belief to the facts. With female descent an

+Emu woman's child is Emu. If a tribe has male descent, an Emu father's

+child is Emu. With female descent, a spirit has entered an Emu woman

+and been born Emu: with male descent, a spirit has entered the wife of

+an Emu man, and, by inheritance from his father, is Emu. Yet Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen think that the Arunta and Kaitish rule--demanding

+the non-primitive male descent, local groups, local ghosts all of one

+totem, and _churinga_ stones of the mark of that totem (all of which

+are indispensable), "is probably the simplest and most primitive."[18]

+

+Most primitive, by our author's own statement, the Arunta method cannot

+be, for, as they show, it demands male descent, local totemism, and the

+peculiar belief about manufactured stone _churinga_. But they think it

+"most simple," because the Urabunna have a complicated myth, which,

+however, in no way affects the result, namely, that each child takes

+its mother's totem. Each spirit, according to the myth, changes its

+phratry and sex, and, necessarily, its totem, at each reincarnation,

+but that does not affect the result. Each child, as in all tribes with

+female descent, is still of its mother's totem.[19] No _churinga nanja_

+cause an anomaly among the Urabunna, for the _churinga nanja_, and the

+belief about them, among the Urabunna do not exist.

+

+The Urabunna myth, adapted to male descent, occurs in all the northern

+tribes, from the northern bounds of the Kaitish to the sea, which have

+no stone _churinga nanja_; and in all of them totems are exogamous,

+because they never occur in both phratries, being uninfluenced by the

+Arunta _churinga_ belief. They cannot, for they are duly inherited

+from the father, and they are so inherited because the tribes have not

+the exceptional _Churinga Nanja_ creed, attaching the spirit to the

+amulet of a local totem group, which fixes--by the accident of place of

+conception--the totem of each child.

+

+The Arunta non-exogamous totems, in Australia, as we saw, are only

+found where _stone churinga nanja_ are in use; these amulets being

+peculiarly the residence of the spirits of totemic ancestors.

+

+The origin of that belief is obscure. It could not arise in the

+present condition of Arunta or Kaitish affairs, for, now, every stone

+_churinga_ in the tribe has already its recognised legal owner, and,

+on the death of an owner, or the extinction of a local totem group,

+the _churinga_ are not left lying about to be found on or in the

+earth, but pass by a definite rule of inheritance; and they are all

+carefully warded and frequently examined, in Ertnatu-lunga, or sacred

+storehouses.[20] Thus stone _churinga nanja_, to-day, are not left

+lying about on the surface, or buried in graves, like those which, on

+the birth of each Arunta child, are sought for, and sometimes found, at

+the local totem-centre, and near the _Nanja_ tree or rock, where the

+child was conceived. There _churinga nanja_ must have been _buried_,

+of old, if our authors correctly say that the mythical ancestors "went

+into the ground, each carrying his _churinga_ with him."[21] Again we

+read, "Many of the _churinga_ were placed _in_ the ground, some natural

+object again marking the spot." The spot was always marked by some

+natural object, such as a tree or rock.[22]

+

+Though our authors tell us that they know Arunta natives who, on the

+birth of a child, have sought for and found his _churinga nanja_ near

+the _Nanja_ rock or tree next to the place where he was conceived, they

+do not say that the _churinga_ are found by digging.[23] If they are,

+or if the _Oknanikilla_ really are ancient burying-places (about which

+we are told nothing), the association of the _churinga nanja_ with the

+ghost of the man in whose grave it is buried would be easily explained.

+But the impression left is that the stone _churinga nanja_ found after

+search are discovered on the surface, dropped there by the spirit when

+about to be reincarnated.[24]

+

+Here a curious fact may be filed for reference. Stone amulets,

+fashioned and decorated by man, are not known to be in use south of

+the Arunta region. But a cousin of my own, Mr. William Lang, found a

+stone object not unlike one figured by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,

+on his station near Cooma, New South Wales. The decoration was of

+the rectilineal type prevalent in that region. Mr. Lang knew nothing

+of the Arunta _churinga_ till I drew his attention to the subject.

+He then visited the Sydney Museum, and found several stone objects,

+"banana-shaped," exactly like the specimen (wooden?), one out of five

+known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and published by them in their

+first work (p. 150). The New South Wales ornament, however, was always

+rectilineal. The articles appear to be obsolete among the tribes of

+New South Wales. It is said that they were erected of old round graves

+of the dead. Whites call them "grave stones." Careful articles on

+these decorated stone objects of New South Wales have been written by

+Mr. W. R. Harper and Mr. Graham Officer.[25] As a rule, they are not

+banana-shaped or crescentine, but are in the form of enormous stone

+cigars. They used to be placed, twelve or thirteen of them, on graves,

+and their weight, averaging about 3 lbs. to 4 lbs., makes them less

+portable than most of the _churinga_ of the Arunta. It does not seem

+at all probable that Arunta stone _churinga_ were ever erected round

+graves, but excavations at _Oknanikilla_, if they could be executed

+without a shock to Arunta sentiment, might throw some light on the

+subject.

+

+In my opinion, the _churinga_ found at _Oknanikilla_ by the Arunta may

+have had no such original significance as is now attached to them. The

+belief may be a mere myth, explaining the sense of objects found and

+not understood--relics, as the myth itself avers, of an earlier race,

+the _Alcheringa_ folk. The only information about those New South Wales

+decorated cigar-shaped and banana-shaped stone objects which could be

+got out of a local black was: "All same as bloody brand." He meant,

+conceivably, that the incised markings were totem marks, I think, and

+in that sense the marks on Arunta stone _churinga_ are now interpreted.

+

+It would not be surprising if the Arunta--supposing that they possessed

+the belief in "spirit trees," and the belief in reincarnation, and then

+found, near the _Nanja_ trees or rocks, the stone amulets or "grave

+stones" of some earlier occupants of the region--evolved the myth that

+ancestral souls, connected with the spirit trees, abode especially

+in these decorated stones, common enough in American and European

+neolithic sites.

+

+This is, of course, a mere conjecture. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+agree with us when they say: "It is this idea of spirit individuals

+associated with _churinga_, and resident in certain definite spots,

+that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta

+tribes."[26]

+

+Three facts are now apparent. The Arunta (i) must have reckoned in

+the male line for a very long time, otherwise their myths would not

+take local totem-centres for granted as a primeval fact, since such

+centres can only occur and exist under male reckoning of descent; in

+cases where the husbands do not go to the wives' region of abode. (2)

+The myth that totemic _local_ ghosts are reincarnated cannot be older

+than _local_ totem-centres, for it is their old local totem-centres

+that the totemic ghosts do haunt. The spots are strewn with their old

+totem-marked _churinga_. The myths make the wandering groups of fabled

+ancestors all of one totem, because, by male reckoning, they could be

+little else till the _churinga_ superstition arose and scattered totems

+about at random in the population.

+

+Again, (3) even local totemism, _plus_ the belief in the reincarnation

+of primary ancestral spirits, did not produce the non-exogamy of

+totems, till it was reinforced by the unique Arunta belief in the stone

+_churinga nanja._

+

+The totemism of the Arunta, then, was originally like that of their

+neighbours, exogamous, till the stone _churinga nanja_ became the

+centre of a myth which introduces the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties among the Arunta, where it has broken down the old exogamous

+totemic rule. Among the Kaitish, as we saw, the rule is still surviving

+in general practice.

+

+We now proceed to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+passed through the present Arunta state of belief and customary law.

+

+Suppose that the Arunta to-day dropped their _churinga nanja_ belief,

+and allowed the totem name to be inherited through the father, as

+the right to work the ceremonies of the totem still is inherited by

+sons who do not inherit the totem itself. What would follow? Why,

+totems among the Arunta would still be non-exogamous, for the existing

+_churinga nanja_ belief has brought the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties, and there they would remain, after they came to be inherited

+in the male line. In the same way, if the northern tribes had once

+been in the Arunta state of belief, their totems would still be in

+both exogamous moieties, and would not regulate marriage. But this is

+not the case. These tribes, therefore, have never been in the present

+Arunta condition. _Q.E.D_.

+

+The Arunta belief is, obviously, an elaboration of the belief in

+reincarnation, not held, as far as is known, by the Dieri, but held by

+the Urabunna, and by all tribes from the Urabunna northwards to the

+sea. Mr. Howitt does not mention the belief among the south-eastern

+tribes. But there is a kind of tendency towards it among the Euahlayi

+of north-west New South Wales, reported on by Mrs. Langloh Parker

+(MS.). This tribe reckons in the female line, has phratries, and uses

+the class names (four), but not the phratry names of the Kamilaroi.

+Each individual has a _Minngah tree_ haunted by spirits unattached.

+Medicine men have _Minngah_ rocks. These answer to the Arunta _Nanja_

+(Warramunga, _Mungai_) trees and rocks in mortuary local totem-centres.

+But the _Minngah_-tree spirits do not seek reincarnation. Only spirits

+of persons dying young, before initiation, are reincarnated. Fresh

+souls for new bodies are made by the Crow and the Moon. These spirits,

+when "made," hang in the boughs of the _coolabah_ tree only, not round

+_Minngah_ trees or rocks.

+

+I think it possible, or even probable, that ideas like those of the

+Euahlayi exist among the southern Arunta and elsewhere. Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen give a Kaitish myth of two men "who arose from _churinga_,"

+and heard Atnatu (the Kaitish sky-dwelling being, the father of some

+men) making, in the sky, a noise with his _churinga_ (the wooden bull

+roarer).[27] Now, I have seen the statement, on which I lay no stress,

+that in extreme south-west Aruntadom a sky-dwelling Emu-footed being

+lost two stone _churinga_. Out of one sprang a man, out of the other a

+woman. They had offspring, "but not by begetting."

+

+Among the tribes with the reincarnation belief connubial relations

+are supposed only to "prepare the mother for the reception and birth

+also of an already formed spirit child."[28] This apparent ignorance

+of physical facts, not found among the south-eastern tribes, is a

+corollary from the reincarnation belief, or from the other belief that

+spirit children are "made" by some non-human being. (Cf. Chapter XI.)

+

+To continue with the statement as to the southern Arunta, the

+sky-dwelling being "has laid germs of the little boys in the mistletoe

+branches, germs of little girls among the split stones ... such a germ

+of a child enters a woman by the hip." Now among the Euahlayi, when the

+spirit children made by the Crow and the Moon are weary of waiting to

+be reincarnated, they are changed into mistletoe branches.

+

+I do not insist on the alleged sky-dwelling being of these Arunta, for

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (in their two books) have not found him,

+and Mr. Howitt thinks that his name arises from a misunderstanding.

+Kempe, a missionary of 1883, speaks of "Altjira, 'god,' who gives the

+children."[29] Altjira, "god," may be a mistake, based on the root of

+_Alcheringa_ or _Altjiringa_, "dream." On the other hand, Mr. Gillen

+himself credits the Arunta with a belief in a sky-dwelling being, and

+with a creed incompatible with the faith in reincarnation, as, in tins

+Anunta myth, human souls are not reincarnated. This information we

+quote.

+

+"ULTHAANA

+

+"The sky is said to be inhabited by three persons, a gigantic man with

+an immense foot shaped like that of an emu, a woman, and a child who

+never develops beyond childhood. The man is called Ulthaana, meaning

+'spirit.' When a native dies his spirit is said to ascend to the

+home of the great Ulthaana, where it remains for a short time; the

+Ulthaana then throws it into the Saltwater (sea) [these natives have

+no personal knowledge of the sea], from whence it is rescued by two

+benevolent but lesser Ulthaana who perpetually reside on the seashore,

+apparently merely for the purpose of rescuing spirits who have been

+subject to the inhospitable treatment of the great Ulthaana of the

+heavens (alkirra). Henceforth the spirit of the dead man lives with the

+lesser Ulthaana."[30] Is it possible that Mr. Gillen's "Great Ulthaana

+of the Heavens, alkirra," is Kempe's Altjira? Or can he be a native

+modification of Kempe's own theology? Probably not.

+

+In any case the Arunta of Mr. Gillen who do not believe in

+reincarnation cannot possibly, it would seem, possess the Arunta form

+of totemism. It is only natural that varieties of myth and belief

+should exist, and it is asserted that there is a myth among the Arunta

+of the extreme south-west section about a sky-dwelling being, who,

+like the Crow and the Moon of Euahlayi belief, makes spirit children,

+and places them in the mistletoe boughs. The story that the first man

+and woman sprang from two of this being's lost _churinga_, again, is

+matched by the Kaitish story of two men who rose from _churinga_. The

+Arunta described by Mr. Gillen, they whose souls dwell with "the lesser

+Ulthaana," no more believe in reincarnation than do the south-eastern

+tribes. These variants in belief and myth usually occur among savages.

+

+The Arunta add to the reincarnation myth, the peculiarity of mortuary

+local totem-centres, and of the attachment of the spirit to a stone

+_churinga_ inscribed with the marks of that totem, and from these

+peculiar ideas--as much isolated as the peculiar ideas of the Urabunna

+or the Euahlayi--arises the non-exogamous character of Arunta totemism.

+No _one_, out of such varying freaks of belief, can be regarded as

+primitive, more than another, but the Arunta variant, for the reason

+repeatedly given, cannot possibly be primitive.

+

+The Arunta totems are not only non-exogamous: their actual _raison

+d'être_, to-day, is to exist as the objects of magical co-operative

+societies, fostering the totem plants and animals as articles of tribal

+food supply. Mr. Spencer thinks this the primary purpose of totem

+societies, everywhere. Now we have not, as yet, been told _why_ each

+society took to doing magic for this or that animal or other thing in

+nature. They cannot have been "charged with" this duty, except by some

+central authority. As there did not yet exist, by the hypothesis, so

+much as a tribe with phratries, what can this central authority have

+been? If it existed, on what principle did it select, out of the horde,

+groups to become magical societies? Were they groups of kin, or groups

+of associates by contiguity? On what principle could the choice of

+departments of nature to be controlled by each group, be determined

+by the central authority? Had the groups already distinguishing

+names--Emu, Eagle Hawk, Opossum, &c.--how did these names arise, and

+did these names determine the department of nature for which each

+group was allotted to do magic? Or did authority give to each group a

+magical department, and did the nature of that department determine the

+group-name, such as Frogs, Grubs, Hakea Trees?

+

+Or was there no formal distribution, no sudden organisation, no central

+authority? Did a casual knot of men, or a firm of wizards, say, "Let

+_us_ do magic for the Kangaroo, and get more Kangaroos to eat"? Was

+their success so great and enviable that other casual knots of men or

+firms of wizards followed their example? And, in this case, why do

+Arunta totemists not eat their totems freely? Is it because they think

+that to do so would frighten the totems, and make them recalcitrant

+to their magic? But that cannot be the case if their success, while

+they worked their magic on their own account, was great, enviable, and

+generally imitated. And, if it was not, why was it imitated? Next,

+how, among the magical societies, was exogamy introduced? Mr. Spencer

+writes: "Our knowledge of the natives leads us to the opinion that

+this really took place; that the exogamic groups were deliberately

+introduced _so as to regulate marital regulations_." This was, then, a

+Marriage Reform Act. However, Mr. Spencer hastens to add that he cannot

+conceive a motive for the Marriage Reform Act. "We do not mean that

+the regulations had anything whatever to do with the idea of incest,

+or of any harm accruing from the union of individuals who were regarded

+as too nearly related."[31]

+

+We have shown that no such ideas could occur to the supposed

+promiscuous horde, who knew not that there is such a thing as

+procreation, but supposed that, like the stars in Caliban's philosophy,

+children "came otherwise." Yet the "exogamic system" does nothing

+but prohibit certain marriages, and "it is quite possible that the

+exogamic groups were deliberately introduced so as to regulate marital

+relations."[32]

+

+Mr. Spencer's theory is, then, that there was a horde with magical

+totemic societies, how evolved we cannot guess. Across that came the

+arrangement of classes to regulate marriage, as it does, but the

+ancestors who possibly introduced it had, he says, no idea that there

+was any moral or material harm in unregulated marriages. Then why did

+they regulate them?

+

+The hypothetical horde of the kind which we have described had no

+_marriage_ relations, and had no possible reason for regulating

+intersexual relations.

+

+It is true that reformatory movements in marriage law are actually

+being purposefully introduced, among tribes which, possessing

+already such laws, of unknown origin, to reform, have deduced from

+these laws themselves that there is a right and wrong in matters of

+sex. Certainly, too, much of savage marriage law is of ancient and

+purposeful institution. But the question is, not how moral laws, once

+developed, might be improved; but how a tabu law against sexual

+relations between near kin could even be so much as dreamed of by

+members of a communal horde, who bad do idea of kin, and could not

+possibly tell who was akin to whom. _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui

+coûte!_ We must account for _le premier pas_.

+

+Again, the _Intichiuma_, or co-operative totemic magic, of the

+Arunta, regarded by our authors as "primary," is nowhere reported of

+the tribes of the south and east. Mr. Howitt asserts its absence.

+The lack of record, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "is no proof

+that these ceremonies did not exist" If they did, bow could they

+escape the knowledge of Mr. Howitt, an initiated man?[33] As a fact,

+when you leave the centre, and reach the _north_ sea-coast, totemic

+magic dwindles, and nearly disappears. Among the coast tribes of

+the north, the _Intichiuma_ magic is "very slightly developed." Its

+faint existence is "doubtless to be associated with the fact that

+they inhabit country where the food supply and general conditions of

+life are more favourable than in the central area of the continent

+which is the home of these ceremonies." But surely the regions of

+the south and east, where there is no _Intichiuma_, are also better

+in supply and general conditions than the centre. Why then should

+the apparent absence of _Intichiuma_ in the south and east be due to

+want of observation and record, while the "very slight development"

+of _Intichiuma_ on the north coast is otherwise explained, namely, by

+conditions--which also exist in the south!

+

+Moreover, co-operative and totemic magic is most elaborately organised

+among the Sioux, Dakotah, Omaha, and other American tribes, where

+supplies are infinitely better than in any part of Australia,[34]

+and agriculture has there, as in Europe, a copious magic. Magic, as

+a well-known fact, is most and best organised in the most advanced

+non-scientific societies. In Australia it is most organised in the

+centre, and dwindles as you move either north, south, or east. This

+implies that, socially, the centre is in this respect most advanced and

+least primitive; while magic, partly totemic, is highly organised in

+the much more prosperous islands of the Torres Straits, and in America.

+

+It is true that Collins (1798), a very early observer, saw east-coast

+natives performing ceremonies connected with Kangaroos, in one of which

+a Kangaroo hunt was imitated. Collins believed that this was imitative

+magic of a familiar kind, done to secure success in the chase. In

+_Magic and Religion_, p. 100, I express the same opinion. But Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen write, as to the magic observed by Collins, "There

+can be little doubt but that these ceremonies, so closely similar

+in their nature to those now performed by the central natives, were

+totemic in their origin"--they may be regarded as "clear evidence of

+the existence of these totemic ceremonies ... in a tribe living right

+on the eastern coast."[35]

+

+Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe

+(i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of

+grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of _totemic_

+ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance,

+not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the

+number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and

+to do _that_ is the aim of the _Intichiuma_.[36] The hunt dances

+seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation

+ceremony.[37] In the Emu _Intichiuma_ of the Arunta the Emus are

+represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed

+to see the imitators of the fowls.[38] The ceremonies reported by

+Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course

+were not allowed to see."[39]

+

+Apparently we have _not_ "clear evidence" that Collins saw

+_Intichiuma_, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr.

+Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.

+

+It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to

+believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain

+animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact,

+we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes

+outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice

+most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America

+and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of

+supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development

+of _Intichiuma_ on the north coast of Australia.

+

+I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of

+the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The

+country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many

+ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months,

+while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting

+which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and

+bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does

+Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names,

+deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the

+belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names

+had a special _rapport_ with the name-giving animals or plants. This

+_rapport_ was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and

+for the good of the tribe, which is singularly _solidaire_.

+

+We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions

+cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism

+of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat

+our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly

+_late_ system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other

+northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and

+nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties,

+denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing

+to the isolated belief in reincarnation of _local_ ghosts, attached

+to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere,

+by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because

+of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem,

+does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites.

+Totemism is thus _en pleine décadence_ among the Arunta, from whom,

+consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.

+

+

+NOTE

+

+      The Arunta legends of the _Alcheringa_ usually describe

+      the various wandering groups, all, in each case, of one

+      totem, as living exclusively for long periods on their own

+      totems, plants, or animals. This cannot be historically

+      true; many plants, and such animals as grubs, are in

+      season for but a brief time. On the other hand, we meet a

+      legend of women of the Quail totem who lived exclusively,

+      not on quails, but on grass seeds.[40] Again, in only one

+      case are men of the _Achilpa_, or Wild Cat totem, said

+      to have eaten anything, and what they ate was the Hakea

+      flower. Later they became Plum men, _Ulpmerka_, but are

+      not said to have eaten plums. In a note (Note I, p. 219)

+      Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that "Wild Cat men are

+      represented constantly as feeding on plums." They are

+      never said to have eaten their own totem, the Wild Cat,

+      which is forbidden to all Arunta, though old men may

+      eat a little of it Reasons, not totemic, are given for

+      the avoidance.[41] We are not told anything about the

+      _Intichiuma_ or magical rites for the increase of the Wild

+      Cat, which is not eaten. Are they performed by men of the

+      Wild Cat totem? The old men of the totem might eat very

+      sparingly of the Wild Cat, at their _Intichiuma_, but

+      certainly the members of other totems who were present

+      would not eat at all. The use of a Wild Cat _Intichiuma_

+      is not obvious: there is no desire to propagate the animal

+      as an article of food.

+

+[1] _J. A. I._, xii. p. 497. Cf. Native Tribes of South-East Australia,

+PP. 173, 174.

+

+[2] I neglected to observe this important passage when reviewing Mr.

+Howitt's ideas in _Social Origins_.

+

+[3] _J. A. I._, N.S., i. pp. 284, 285.

+

+[4] _Folk Lore_, December 1904, p. 473. For Mr. Spencer's assertion

+that the Aninta social type is advanced, see _Central Tribes_; cf. p.

+211. For the probable advanced and relatively recent character of their

+initiatory ceremonies, see _Central Tribes_, p. 217; _Northern Tribes_,

+p. 329.

+

+[5] _Northern Tribes_, p. 147.

+

+[6] _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[7] _Northern Tribes_, p. 274.

+

+[8] _J. A. I._, August 1898, pp. 20, 21.

+

+[9] _Northern Tribes_, p. 281.

+

+[10] Ibid., p. 175.

+

+[11] Ibid.

+

+[12] _Central Tribes_, pp. 125, 126.

+

+[13] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 151, 152.

+

+[14] _Central Tribes_, pp. 125, 126.

+

+[15] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[16] Ibid., p. 150. Figures of the objects are given.

+

+[17] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 145-148.

+

+[18] Ibid., p. 174.

+

+[19] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 146, 149.

+

+[20] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, pp. 153-155.

+

+[21] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[22] _Op. cit_., p. 124.

+

+[23] _Op. cit_., p. 132.

+

+[24] The _churinga_ here spoken of are a kind of stone amulets, of very

+various shapes, marked with such archaic patterns of cups, concentric

+circles or half circles, and other devices as are found on rock

+surfaces in our islands, in India, and generally all over the world,

+as in New Caledonia. The same marks occur on small plaques of slate or

+schist, in Portuguese neolithic sites, in palæolithic sites, and in

+Scotland, where Dr. Munro regards them as not of genuine antiquity.

+See _Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia_, Gongora y Martinez,

+Madrid, 1868, p. 109; _Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve_, vol. ii.

+pp. 429-462, Estacio da Veiga, Lisbon, 1887; _Portugalia_, i. Part IV.,

+Severo and Brenha, 1903; _Magic and Religion_ (A. L.), pp. 246-256,

+1901. For a palæolithic bone object, exactly like an Arunta _churinga_,

+see Hoernes, _Der Diluviale Mensch in Europa_, p. 138, 1903. It does

+not follow, of course, that these objects in Europe were ever connected

+with a belief like that of the Arunta. The things were probably

+talismans of one sort or another.

+

+[25] _Proceedings_, Linnaean Society of New South Wales, 1898, vol.

+xxiii. part 3, and vol. xxvi. p. 238.

+

+[26] _Op. cit_., p. 123.

+

+[27] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 272, 373.

+

+[28] _Central Tribes_, p. 265.

+

+[29] Geographical Society of Halle, _Proceedings_, 1883, p. 53.

+

+[30] Notes on Some Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the

+_McDonnell Ranges_, belonging to the _Arunta Tribe_. Gillen, _Horn

+Expedition_, iv. p. 183.

+

+[31] _J. A. I._, N.S., p. 278.

+

+[32] Ibid., i. pp. 284, 285. Dr. Roth has conjectured that phratries

+were introduced "by a process of natural selection" to regulate the

+food supply. But how did they come to regulate marriage? (_Aborigines

+of North-West Central Queensland_, pp. 69, 70.)

+

+[33] See _Northern Tribes_, pp. xiii, xiv, 173.

+

+[34] Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology. Siouan Cults. Bureau of Ethnology_,

+1881-1882, pp. 238, 239; 1889-1890, p. 537. Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 24.

+For Torres Islands, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. pp. 5-17.

+

+[35] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 224, 225.

+

+[36] Spencer and Gillen, p. 169.

+

+[37] _Natives of South-East Australia_, p. 545.

+

+[38] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 182, 183.

+

+[39] _Northern Tribes_, p. 225.

+

+[40] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 417.

+

+[41] Ibid., p. 168.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V

+

+THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

+

+

+      Theories of Dr. Durkheim--Was man originally

+      promiscuous?--Difficulty of ascertaining Dr. Durkheim's

+      opinion--Apparent contradictions--Origin of totemism--A

+      horde, which did not prohibit incest, splits into two

+      "primary clans"--These are hostile--Each has an animal

+      god, and its members are of the blood of the god,

+      consubstantial with him--Therefore may not intermarry

+      within his blood--Hence exogamy--These gods, or totems,

+      "cannot be changed at will"--Questions as to how these

+      beliefs arise--Why does the united horde choose different

+      gods?--Why only two such gods?--Uncertainty as to whether

+      Dr. Durkheim believes in the incestuous horde--Theory of

+      "collective marriage," a "last resource"--The "primary

+      clans" said to have "no territorial basis"--Later it

+      is assumed that they do have territorial bases--Which

+      they overpopulate--Colonies sent forth--These take new

+      totems--Proof that an exogamous "clan" has no territorial

+      basis--And cannot send out "clan" colonies--Colonies

+      can only be _tribal_--No proof that a "clan" ever

+      does change its totem--Dr. Durkheim's defence of

+      one of his apparent inconsistencies--Reply to his

+      defence--Mr. Frazer's theory (1887) that a totemic "clan"

+      throws off other clans of new totems, and becomes a

+      phratry--Objections to this theory--The facts are opposed

+      to it--Examples--Recapitulation--Eight objections to Dr.

+      Durkheim's theory.

+

+

+Dr. Durkheim, Professor of Sociology in the University of Bordeaux,

+has displayed much acuteness in his destructive analysis of the Arunta

+claims to possess a primitive form of totemism.[1] He has also given

+the fullest and most original explanation of the reason why, granting

+that groups of early men had each a special regard for a particular

+animal or plant, whose name they bore, they tabooed marriage within

+that name.[2]

+

+With these and other merits the system of Dr. Durkheim, as unfolded at

+intervals in his periodical (_L'Année Sociologique_, 1898-1904), has,

+I shall try to show, certain drawbacks, at least as we possess it at

+present, for it has not yet appeared in the form of a book. As to the

+point which in this discussion we have taken first, throughout, it is

+not easy to be certain about the Professor's exact opinion. What was

+the condition of human society _before_ totemic exogamy was evolved?

+Dr. Durkheim writes, "Many facts tend to prove that, at the beginning

+of societies of men, incest was not forbidden. Nothing authorises us

+to suppose that incest was prohibited before each horde (_peuplade_)

+divided itself into two primitive 'clans,' at least" (namely, what we

+now call "phratries"), "for the first form of the prohibition known to

+us, exogamy, everywhere appears as correlative to this organisation,

+and certainly this is not primitive. Society must have formed a compact

+and undivided mass before bisecting itself into two distinct groups,

+and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature" (of relationships)

+"confirm this hypothesis."[3]

+

+So far this is the ordinary theory. An undivided promiscuous horde,

+for reasons of moral reformation, or any other reason, splits itself

+into two exogamous "clans," or germs of the phratries. These, when they

+cease to be hostile (as they were on Dr. Durkheim's but not on Mr.

+Howitt's theory), peacefully intermarry, and become the phratries in a

+local tribe.

+

+Why did the supposed compact horde thus divide itself into two distinct

+hostile "clans," each, on Dr. Durkheim's theory, claiming descent from

+a different animal, the totem of each "clan"? Why were two bodies in

+the same horde claiming two different animal ancestors? Why were the

+two divisions in a common horde mutually hostile? That they _were_

+originally hostile appears when our author says that, at a given stage

+of advance, "the different totemic groups were _no longer_ strangers or

+enemies, one of the other."[4] Marriages, at this early period, must

+necessarily have been made by warlike capture, for the two groups were

+hostile, were exogamous, and, being hostile, would not barter brides

+peacefully. Women, therefore, we take it, could only be obtained for

+each group by acts of war. "Ages passed before the exchange of women

+became peaceful and regular. What vendettas, what bloodshed, what

+laborious negotiations were for long the result of this _régime_!"[5]

+

+But why were they exogamous, these two primary groups formed by the

+bisection of a previously undivided incestuous horde? Why could not

+each of the two groups marry its own women? There must have been a time

+when they were not exogamous, and could marry their own women, for

+they were only exogamous, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, because they were

+totemic, and they did not begin by being totemic. The totem, says Dr.

+Durkheim, in explanation of exogamy, is a "god" who is in each member

+of his group while they are in him. He is blood of their blood and soul

+of their soul.[6] This being so--as it is wrong to shed the blood of

+our kindred--a man of totem Emu, say, may not marry a maid of, say,

+totem Emu; he must seek a bride from the only other group apparently

+at this stage accessible, that is a maid of, say, totem Kangaroo.

+Presently all Kangaroos of a generation must have been Emus by female

+descent; all Emus, Kangaroos; for the names were inherited through

+women. The clans were thus inextricably blended, and neither had a

+separate territory, a point to be remembered.

+

+Manifestly the strange superstitious metaphysics of totemism must have

+occupied a long time in evolution. The sacredness of the totem is the

+result of a primitive "religiosity," Dr. Durkheim says, which existed

+before gods or other mythological personages had been developed. There

+is supposed by early man (according to our author) to be a kind of

+universal element of power, dreadful and divine, which attaches to

+some things more than to others, to some men more than to others, and

+to all women in their relations with men.[7] This mystic something

+(rather like the _Mana_ of the Maories, and the _Wakan_ of many North

+American tribes) is believed by each group (if I correctly understand

+Dr. Durkheim) to concentrate itself in their name-giving animal, their

+totem.[8] All tabu, all blood tabu, has in the totem animal its centre

+and shrine, in the opinion of each group. Human kinship, of Emu man to

+Emu woman, is, if I understand rightly, a corollary from their common

+kinship with the Emu bird; or rather the _sacredness_ of their kinship,

+not to be violated by marriage, is thus derived; an opinion which I

+share.

+

+How all this came to be so; _why_ each of two "clans" in one horde

+chose, or acquired, a given animal as the centre of the mysterious

+sacred atmosphere, Dr. Durkheim has not, so far, told us. Yet surely

+there must have been a reason for selecting two special animals, one

+for each of the two "clans," as _the_ tabu, _the_ totem, _the_ god.

+Moreover, as such a strange belief cannot be an innate idea of the

+human mind, and as this belief, with its corollaries, is, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory, the sole origin of exogamy, there must have been

+a time when men, not having the belief, were not exogamous, and when

+their sexual relations were wholly unregulated. They only came under

+regulation after two "clans" of people, in a horde, took to revering

+two different sacred animals, according to Dr. Durkheim.

+

+The totem, he says, is not only the god, but the ancestor of the

+"clan," and this ancestor, says Dr. Durkheim, is not a species--animal

+or vegetable--but is such or such an individual Emu or Kangaroo. This

+individual Emu or Kangaroo, however, is not alive, he is a creature of

+fancy; he is a "mythical being, whence came forth at once all the human

+members of the 'clan,' and the plants or animals of the totem species.

+Within him exist, potentially, the animal species and the human 'clan'

+of the same name."[9]

+

+"Thus," Dr. Durkheim goes on, "the totemic being is immanent in the

+clan, he is incarnate in each individual member of the clan, and dwells

+in their blood. He is himself that blood. But, while he is an ancestor,

+he is also a god, he is the object of a veritable cult; he is the

+centre of the clan's religion.... Therefore there is a god in each

+individual member of the clan (for the entire god is in each), and, as

+he lives in the blood, the blood is divine. When the blood flows, the

+god is shed" (_le dieu se répand_).

+

+All this, of course, was the belief (if ever it was the belief) when

+totemism was in its early bloom and vigour, for to-day a black will

+shoot his totem, but not sitting; and will eat it if he can get nothing

+else, and Mr. Howitt mentions cases in which he will eat his totem

+if another man bags it.[10] The Euahlayi, with female kin, eat their

+totems, after a ceremony in which the tabu is removed.[11] Totemism

+is thus decadent to-day. But "a totem is not a thing which men think

+they can dispose of at their will, at least so long as totemic beliefs

+are still in vigour.... A totem, in short, is not a mere name, but

+before all and above all, he is a religious principle, which is one and

+consubstantial with the person in whom it has its dwelling-place; it

+makes part of his personality. One can no more change one's totem than

+one can change one's soul...."[12] He is speaking of Arunta society on

+the eve of a change from female to male reckoning of descent.

+

+So far, the theory of Dr. Durkheim is that in a compact communal

+horde, where incest was not prohibited, one "clan" or division took to

+adoring, say, the Eagle Hawk, another set the Crow; to claiming descent

+each from their bird; to regarding his blood as tabu; to seizing

+wives only from the other "clan"; and, finally, to making peaceful

+intermarriages, each, exclusively, only from the other set, Eagle Hawk

+from Crow, Crow from Eagle Hawk. We do not learn why half the horde

+adored one, and the other half another animal. If the disruption of the

+horde produced two such "clans," "at least," there may have been other

+"clans," sets equally primal, as Lizard, Ant, Wallaby, Grub. About

+these we hear nothing more in the theory; the two "primary clans" alone

+are here spoken of as original, and are obviously the result of a mere

+conjecture, to explain the two phratries of animal name, familiar in

+our experience.

+

+No attempt is made to explain either why members of the _same_ horde

+chose _separate_ animal gods; or why--unless because of consequent

+religious differences--the two "clans," previously united, were now

+hostile; or why there were at first only two such religious hostile

+"clans"; or, if there were more, what became of the others.

+

+Meanwhile, we are not even sure that Dr. Durkheim does believe in a

+primary incestuous horde, when "Society must have formed a compact

+undivided mass ... before splitting into two distinct groups, and some

+of Morgan's tables of nomenclature corroborate this hypothesis."[13]

+It is true that Dr. Durkheim makes this assertion. But, in the same

+volume (i. p. 332), Dr. Durkheim tells us that Mr. Morgan's theory of

+obligatory promiscuity (a theory based, as we saw in Chapter II., on

+the terms of relationship) "seems to us to be definitely refuted."

+Again, Mr. Morgan, like Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer, regarded the

+savage terms for relationships as one proof of "group marriage,"

+or "collective marriage," including unions of the nearest of kin.

+(Compare our Chapter III.) But Dr. Durkheim writes, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than a last resource, intended

+to enable us to envisage these strange customs: but it is impossible

+to overlook all the difficulties which it raises ... this improbable

+conception."[14]

+

+Is it possible that, after many times reading the learned Professor's

+work, I misunderstand him? With profound regret I gather that he does

+not believe in the theory of "obligatory promiscuity" in an undivided

+horde, which I have supposed to be the basis of his system; a horde

+"in which there is nothing to show that incest was forbidden." That

+incest, in Mr. Morgan's theory, was "obligatory," I cannot suppose,

+because, if nobody knew who was akin to whom, nothing could compel a

+man to marry his own sister or daughter. I am obliged to fear that I

+do not understand what is meant. For Dr. Durkheim made society begin

+in a united solid _peuplade_, in which "there is no reason to suppose

+that incest was forbidden," and as proof he cited some of Mr. Morgan's

+tables of relationships. He then gave his theory of how exogamy was

+introduced into the "compact undivided mass." He next appears to reject

+this "mass," and Morgan's argument for its existence. Is there an

+inconsistency, or do I merely fail to understand Dr. Durkheim?

+

+Let us, however, take Dr. Durkheim's theory of a horde with

+"permissive" incest, split, for some reason, into two distinct hostile

+"clans" worshipping each its own "god," an animal; each occupying

+a different territory; reckoning by female kin; exogamous, and

+intermarrying. Such communities, exogamous, intermarrying, and with

+female descent, Dr. Durkheim uniformly styles "primary clans," or

+"elementary totemic groups."[15] It is obvious that they constitute,

+when once thoroughly amalgamated by exogamy and peaceful intermarriage,

+_a local tribe_, with a definite joint territory, and without _clan_

+territory. At every hearth, through the whole tribal domain, both

+clans are present; the male mates are, say, Eagle Hawks, the women and

+children are Crows, or _vice versa_. Neither "clan" as such "has any

+longer a territorial basis." "The clan," says Dr. Durkheim, "has no

+territorial basis." "The clan is an amorphous group, a floating mass,

+with no very defined individuality; its contours, especially, have no

+material marks on the soil."[16] This is as true as it is obvious.

+The clans, when once thoroughly intermixed, and with members of each

+clan present, as father, mother, and children, by every hearth, can,

+as clans, have no local limits, no territorial boundaries, and Dr.

+Durkheim maintains this fact Indeed, he distinguishes the clan from the

+tribe as being _non-territorial_.[17]

+

+Yet though he thus asserts what every one must see to be true, his

+whole theory of the origin of the totem kins ("secondary clans")

+within the phratries, and his theory (as we shall show later) of the

+matrimonial classes, rests on the contradictory of his averment. He

+then takes the line that the exogamous clans with female descent do, or

+did, possess definite separate territorial bases, which seems contrary

+to the passage where he says that they do not![18] He has reversed his

+position.

+

+We first gave Dr. Durkheim's statement as to how the totem kins (which

+he calls "secondary clans") came to exist within the phratries.

+

+"When a clan increases beyond a certain measure, its population cannot

+exist within the same space: it therefore throws off colonies, which,

+as they no longer occupy the same habitat with, nor share the interests

+of the original group from which they emerged, end by taking a totem

+which is all their own: thenceforth they constitute new clans."[19]

+Again, "the phratry is a primary clan, which, as it develops, has been

+led to segment itself into a certain number of secondary clans, which

+retain their sentiment of community and of solidarity."[20]

+

+All this is (as far as I can see), by Dr. Durkheim's own previous

+statement, impossible. A totemic clan, exogamous, with female descent,

+cannot, as a clan, overflow its limits of "space," for, as a clan,

+he tells us, it "has no territorial basis," no material assigned

+frontier, marked on the soil.[21] "One cannot say at what precise point

+of space it begins, or where it ends." The members of one "clan" are

+indissolubly blended with the members of the other "clan," in the local

+tribe. This point, always overlooked by the partisans of a theory that

+the various totem kins are segments of "a primary clan," can be made

+plain. By the hypothesis there are two "clans" before us, of which

+Eagle Hawk (male) always marries Crow (female), their children being

+Crows, and Crow (male) always marries Eagle Hawk (female), the children

+being Eagle Hawks. The _tribal_ territory is over-populated (the _clan_

+has no territory). A _tribal_ decree is therefore passed, that clan

+Eagle Hawk must "segment itself," and go to new lands. This decree

+means that a portion of clan Eagle Hawk must emigrate. Let, then,

+Eagle Hawk men, women, and children, to the amount of half of the clan,

+be selected to emigrate. They go forth to seek new abodes. In doing so

+the Eagle Hawk men leave their Crow wives at home; the Eagle Hawk women

+leave their Crow children, and Crow husbands; the Eagle Hawk children

+leave their Crow fathers. Not a man or woman in the segmented portion

+of clan Eagle Hawk can now have a wife or a husband, for they can only

+marry Crows. They all die out! Such is the result of segmenting clan

+Eagle Hawk.

+

+Yet the thing can be managed in no other way, for, if the emigrant

+Eagle Hawk men take with them their Crow wives and children, they

+cannot marry (unless men marry their daughters, Crows) when they

+become widowers, and unless Crow brothers marry Crow sisters, which is

+forbidden. Moreover, _this_ plan necessitates a segmentation, not of

+_clan_ Eagle Hawk, but of the _tribe_, which is composed of both Crows

+and Eagle Hawks. These conspicuous facts demolish the whole theory of

+the segmentation of a "clan" into a new clan which takes a new totem,

+though it would need two.

+

+Moreover, why should a tribal colony of two blended clans take, as

+would be absolutely necessary, two new totem names at all? We know not

+one example of change of totem name in Australia.[22] Their old totems

+were their gods, their flesh, their blood, their vital energies, by

+Dr. Durkheim's own definition. "The members of a clan literally deem

+themselves of one flesh, of one blood, and the blood is that of the

+mythic being" (the totem) "from which they are all descended."[23]

+How and _why_ then, should emigrants from "clans," say Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, change their gods, their blood, their flesh, their souls? To

+imagine that totems or even the descent of totems can be changed, by

+legislation, from the female to the male line, is, says Dr. Durkheim,

+"to forget that the totem is not a thing which men think they can

+dispose of at will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."[24]

+

+Our author goes on: "A totem, in fact, is not a mere name, it is, above

+all and before all, a religious principle, one with the individual in

+whom it dwells; and part of his personality. One can no more change his

+totem, than he can change his soul...."

+

+In that case, how did the supposed colonies thrown off by a segmented

+clan, manage to change their totems, as they did, on Dr. Durkheim's

+theory?[25] They lived in the early vigour of totemic beliefs, and

+during that blooming age of totemism, says Dr. Durkheim, "the totem is

+not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will," and yet, on

+his theory, they did dispose of it, they took new totems.[26]

+

+The supposed process seems to me doubly impossible by Dr. Durkheim's

+premises. A "clan," exogamous, with female kin, cannot overflow its

+territory, for it has confessedly, as a "clan," no delimitations of

+territory. Consequently a clan cannot throw off a colony (only a

+tribe can do that); therefore, as there can be no "clan" colony, the

+tribal colony cannot change its one totem, _for it has two_. Moreover,

+Dr. Durkheim says that there can be no such cavalier treatment of the

+totem: "Tant du moins que les croyances totémiques sont encore en

+vigueur." Yet he also says that the totems were thus cavalierly treated

+when totemic beliefs were in vigour.

+

+Dr. Durkheim, however, might reply: "A tribe with two 'clans' can throw

+off colonies, each colony necessarily consisting of members of both

+clans, and these can change their two totems." That might pass, if he

+had not said that, while totemic beliefs are in vigour, men cannot

+dispose of the totem, "a part of their personalities," at their will.

+

+One argument, based on certain facts, has been advanced to show

+that the totem kins in the phratries are really the result of the

+segmentation of a "clan" into new clans with new totems. This argument,

+however, breaks down on a careful examination of the facts on which it

+is based, though I did not see that when I wrote _Social Origins_, p.

+59, Note 1. The chief circumstance appealed to is this. The Mohegans

+in America have three phratries: (1) WOLF, with totem kins Wolf, Bear,

+Dog, Opossum; (2) TURKEY, with totem kins Turkey, Crane, Chicken;

+(3) TURTLE, with totem kins Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle,

+Yellow Eel. "Here we are almost forced to conclude," wrote Mr. Frazer

+in 1887, "that the Turtle phratry was originally a Turtle clan which

+subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a

+particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clan may have been a

+later subdivision."[27]

+

+Mr. Frazer has apparently abandoned this position, but it seems to

+have escaped his observation, and the observation of Dr. Durkheim, who

+follows him here, that in several cases given by himself the various

+species of totem animals are _not_ grouped (as they ought to be on the

+hypothesis of subdivision) under the headship of one totem of their own

+kind--like the three sorts of Turtle in the Mohegan Turtle phratry--but

+quite the reverse. They are found in the opposite phratry, under an

+animal not of their species.

+

+Thus Mr. Dawson, cited by Mr. Frazer, gives for a Western Victoria

+tribe, now I believe extinct:--

+

+      _Phratry A_.

+  Totem kins:

+    _Long-billed Cockatoo_.

+    Pelican.

+

+      _Phratry B_.

+  Totem kins:

+    _Banksian Cockatoo_.

+    Boa Snake.

+    Quail.

+

+The two cockatoos are, we see, in _opposite phratries_, not in the

+same, as they should be by Mr. Frazer's theory.[28]

+

+This is a curious case, and is explained by a myth. Mr. Dawson, the

+recorder of the case (1881) was a scrupulous inquirer, and remarks

+that it is of the utmost importance to be able to converse with the

+natives in their own language. His daughter, who made the inquiries,

+was intimately acquainted with the dialects of the tribes in the Port

+Fairy district. The natives collaborated "with the most scrupulous

+honesty." The tribes had an otiose great Being, Pirmeheeal, or Mam

+Yungraak, called also Peep Ghnatnaen, that is, "Father Ours." He is

+a gigantic kindly man, living above the clouds. Thunder is his voice.

+"He is seldom mentioned, but always with respect."[29] This Being,

+however, did not institute exogamy. The mortal ancestor of the race

+"was by descent a Kuurokeetch, or Long-billed Cockatoo." His wife was a

+female Kappatch (Kappaheear), or Banksian Cockatoo. These two birds now

+head opposite phratries. Their children could not intermarry, so they

+brought in "strange flesh"--alien wives--whence, by female descent,

+came from abroad the other totem kins, Pelican, Boa Snake, and Quail.

+Pelican appears to be in Long-billed Cockatoo phratry; Boa Snake in

+Banksian Cockatoo phratry. At least these pairs may not intermarry.

+Quail, as if both a phratry and a totem kin by itself, may intermarry

+with any of the other four, while only three kins are open to each

+of the other four.[30] In this instance a Cockatoo phratry has not

+subdivided into Cockatoo totem kins, but two species of Cockatoos head

+opposite phratries, and are also totem kins in their own phratries.

+

+In the same way, in the now extinct Mount Gambier tribe, the phratries

+are Kumi and Kroki. Black Cockatoo (Wila) is in Kroki; in Kumi is Black

+Crestless Cockatoo (Karaal).[31] By Mr. Frazer's theory, which he

+probably no longer holds, a Cockatoo primary totem kin would throw off

+other kins, named after various other species of Cockatoo, and become a

+Cockatoo phratry, with several Cockatoo totem kins. The reverse is the

+fact: the two Cockatoos are in opposite phratries.

+

+Again, among the Ta-ta-thi tribe, two species of Eagle Hawk occur as

+totems. One is in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), the other is in Crow

+phratry (_Kilpara_). This could not have occurred through Eagle Hawk

+"clan" splitting into other clans, named after other species of Eagle

+Hawk.[32]

+

+In the Kamilaroi phratries two species of Kangaroos occur as totem

+kins, but the two Kangaroo totem kins are in opposite phratries.[33]

+

+If Mr. Frazer's old view were correct, both species of Kangaroo would

+be in the same phratry, like the various kinds of Turtle in the Mohegan

+Turtle phratry. Again, in the Wakelbura tribe, in Queensland, there are

+Large Bee and Small or Black Bee _in opposite phratries_.[34]

+

+On Mr. Frazer's old theory, we saw, a phratry is a totem kin which

+split into more kins, having for totems the various species of the

+original totem animal. These, as the two sorts of Bees, Cockatoos,

+Kangaroos, and so on, would on this theory always be in the same

+phratry, like the various kinds of Mohegan Turtles. But Mr. Frazer

+himself has collected and published evidence to prove that this is far

+from being usually the case; the reverse is often the case. Thus the

+argument derived from the Mohegan instance of the Turtle phratry is

+invalidated by the opposite and more numerous facts. The case of the

+Mohegan Turtle phratry, with various species of Turtles for totem kins

+within it, is again countered in America, by the case of the Wyandot

+Indians. They have four phratries. If these have names, the names are

+not given. But the first phratry contains _Striped Turtle_, Bear, and

+Deer. The second contains _Highland Turtle, Black Turtle_, and _Smooth

+Large Turtle_. If this phratry was formed by the splitting of Highland

+Turtle into Black and Smooth Turtles, why is Striped Turtle in the

+opposite phratry?[35] The Wyandots, in Ohio, were village dwellers,

+with female reckoning of lineage and exogamy. If they married out of

+the tribe, the alien was adopted into a totem kin of the other tribe,

+apparently changing his totem, though this is not distinctly stated.[36]

+

+Thus Dr. Durkheim's theory of the segmentation of a primary totem

+"clan" into other "clans" of other totems is not aided by the facts

+of the Mohegan case, which are unusual. We more frequently find

+that animals of different species of the same genus are in opposite

+phratries than in the same phratry. Again, a totem kin (with female

+descent) cannot, we repeat, overpopulate its territory, for, as Dr.

+Durkheim says, an exogamous clan with female descent has no territorial

+basis. Nor can it segment itself without also segmenting its linked

+totem kin or kins, which merely means segmenting the local tribe. If

+that were done, there is no reason why the members of the two old

+"clans" in the new colony should change their totems. Moreover, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory that cannot be done "while totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."

+

+To recapitulate our objections to Dr. Durkheim's theory, we say

+(i.) that it represents human society as in a perpetual state of

+segmentation and resegmentation, like the Scottish Kirk in the many

+secessions of bodies which again split up into new seceding bodies.

+First, we have a _peuplade_, or horde, apparently (though I am not

+quite sure of the Doctor's meaning) permitted to be promiscuous in

+matters of sex. (ii.) That horde, for no obvious reason, splits into

+at least two "clans"--we never hear in this affair of more than the

+two. These two new segments select each a certain animal as the focus

+of a mysterious impersonal power. On what grounds the selection was

+made, and why, if they wanted an animal "god," the whole horde could

+not have fixed on the same animal, we are not informed. The animals

+were their "ancestors"--half the horde believed in one ancestor, half

+in another. The two halves of the one horde now became hostile to each

+other, whether because of their divergence of opinion about ancestry or

+for some other reason, (iii.) Their ideas about their animal god made

+it impossible for members of the same half-horde to intermarry, (iv.)

+Being hostile, they had to take wives from each other by acts of war.

+(v.) Each half-horde was now an exogamous totem kin, a "primary clan,"

+reckoning descent on the female side. As thus constituted, "no clan has

+a territorial basis": it is an amorphous group, a floating mass. As

+such, no clan can overflow its territorial limits, for it has none.

+

+(vi.) But here a fresh process of segmentation occurs. The clan _does_

+overflow its territory, though it has none, and, going into new lands,

+takes a new totem, though this has been declared impossible; "the

+totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will, at

+least while totemic beliefs are in vigour." Thus the old "clans" have

+overflowed their territorial limits, though "clans" have none, and

+segments have wandered away and changed their totems, though, in the

+vigour of totemic ideas, men do not think that they can dispose of

+their totems at will, (vii.) In changing their totems, they, of course,

+change their blood, but, strange to say, they still recognise their

+relationship to persons not of their blood, men of totems not theirs,

+namely, the two primary clans from which they seceded. Therefore they

+cannot marry with members of their old primary clans, though these are

+of other totems, therefore, _ex hypothesi_, of different blood from

+themselves, (viii.) The primary clans, as relations all round grow

+pacific, become the phratries of a tribe, and the various colonies

+which had split off from a primary clan become totem kins in phratries.

+But such colonies of a "clan" with exogamy and female descent are

+impossible.

+

+If these arguments are held to prove the inadequacy of Dr. Durkheim's

+hypothesis, we may bring forward our own.[37]

+

+

+[1] _L'Année Sociologique_ v. pp. 82-141.

+

+[2] Ibid., i. pp. 35-57.

+

+[3] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. pp. 62, 63.

+

+[4] Dr. Durkheim here introduces a theory of Arunta totemic magic.

+As he justly says, the co-operative principle--each group in a tribe

+doing magic for the good of all the other groups--cannot be primitive.

+The object of the magic, he thinks, was to maintain in good condition

+the totems, which are the gods, of the groups, and, indeed, "the

+condition of their existence." Later, ideas altered, ancestral souls,

+reincarnated, were the source of life, but the totemic magic survived

+with a new purpose, as Magical Co-operative Stores. But why have the

+more primitive tribes no totem magic? (_L'Année Sociologique_, v. pp.

+117, 118, 119.)

+

+[5] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 64.

+

+[6] Ibid., pp. 51, 52.

+

+[7] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. pp. 38-57.

+

+[8] Ibid., i. pp. 38-53; v. pp. 87, 88. "Le caractère sacré est d'abord

+diffus dans les choses avant de se concrétiser sous la forme des

+personalités déterminés."

+

+[9] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 51, and Note I.

+

+[10] For other rules see Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, pp.

+320-328.

+

+[11] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[12] _L'Année Sociologique_, v. pp. 110, 111.

+

+[13] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 63.

+

+[14] i. _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 318.

+

+[15] _L'Année Sociologique_, v. pp. 91, 92.

+

+[16] Ibid., i. p. 20.

+

+[17] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[18] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[19] L'Année Sociologique, i. p. 6.

+

+[20] Ibid., v. p. 91.

+

+[21] Ibid., i. p. 20. The thing would only be possible if the two

+"clans" were not yet exogamous and intermarrying; but then they would

+not be "clans," by the definition!

+

+[22] In _Natives of South-East Australia_, pp. 215, 216, we hear on

+the evidence of "Wonghi informants" that members of the totems are

+allowed to change totems, "to meet marriage difficulties," and because

+in different ports of the tribal territory different animals, which

+act as totems, are scarce. The tribe, haring matrimonial classes, is

+not pristine, and, if the report be accurate, totemic ideas, from Dr.

+Durkheim's point of view, cannot be "still in their vigour."

+

+[23] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 51.

+

+[24] Ibid., V. p. 110.

+

+[25] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[26] In _Folk Lore_, March 1904, I criticised what I regard as an

+inconsistency in this part of Dr. Durkheim's theory. I here cite his

+reply textually, from _Folk Lore_, June 1904, pp. 215-216.

+

+RÉPONSE A M. LANG.

+

+"Dans le _Folk Lore_ de Mars, M. Lang, sous prétexte de se défendre

+contre mes critiques, m'attaque directement. Je suis donc obligé,

+à mon grand regret, de demander l'hospitalité du _Folk Lore_ pour

+les quelques observations qui suivent. Afin d'abréger le débat, je

+n'examinerai pas si M. Lang s'est justifié ou non de mes critiques, et

+me borne à répondre à celle qu'il m'a adressée.

+

+"M. Lang me reproche d'avoir renié ma propre théorie sur la nature du

+totem. J'aurais (L'Année Sociologique, i. pp. 6 et 52) dit qu'un clan

+peut changer de totem et, dans la même périodique (v. pp. 110, 111),

+j'aurais établi qu'un tel changement est impossible. En réalité, la

+seconde opinion qui m'est ainsi attribuée n'est pas la mienne et je ne

+l'ai pas exprimée.

+

+"En effet, je n'ai pas dit que groupes et individus ne pouvaient

+jamais changer de totem, mail, ce qui est tout autre chose, que _le

+principe de filiation totémique, la manière dont le totem est réputé

+se transmettre des parents aux enfants ne pouvait être modifiée par

+mesure legislative, par simple convention_. Je cite les expressions que

+j'ai employées et que tait M. Lang: "Tant que, d'après les croyances

+regnantes, le totem de l'enfant était regardé comme une emanation

+du totem de la mère, il n'y avait pas de mesure legislative qui pût

+faire qu'il en fut autrement." Et plus bas ("Les croyances totémiques)

+ne permettaient pas que _le mode_ de transmission du totem pût être

+modifié d'un coup, par un acte de la volonté collective." Il est

+clair, en effet, que si l'on croit fermement que l'esprit totémique

+de l'enfant est déterminé par la fait de la conception, il n'y a pas

+de legislation qui puisse décider qu'à partir d'un certain moment il

+aura lieu de telle façon et non de telle autre. Mais mon assertion

+ne porte que sur ce cas particulier. Et des changements de totems

+restent possibles dans d'autres conditions comme celles dont il est

+question dans le Tome I. de _L'Année Sociologique_. J'ajoute que même

+ces changements n'ont jamais lieu, à mon sens, par mesure legislative.

+J'ai, il est vrai, comparé un changement de totem à un changement

+d'âme. Mais ces changements d'âmes n'ont rien d'impossible (pour

+l'homme primitif) dans les conditions déterminées. Seulement, ils ne

+sauraient avoir lieu par décret; or, c'est tout ce que signifiaient

+les quatre ou cinq mots incriminés par M. Lang. Leur sens est très

+clairement déterminé par tout le contexte comme je viens de le montrer.

+En tout cas, après les explications qui précèdent, appuyées sur des

+textes, il ne saurait y avoir de doute sur ma pensée, et je considère

+par suite le débat comme clos. E. DURKHEIM."

+

+It distresses me that I am unable to understand Dr. Durkheim's defence.

+He does say (_L'An. Soc._ i. p. 6) that the colonies of "clans" too

+populous "to exist within their space" "end by taking a totem which

+is all their own, and thenceforth constitute new clans." He also does

+say that "the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of

+at their will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in vigour"

+(_L'An. Soc._ v. p. 110). But his hypothetical colonies _did_ "dispose

+of" their old totems "at their will," and took new totems "all their

+own," and that while "totemic beliefs were in their vigour." I was

+saying nothing about _le principe de filiation totémique_, nor was Dr.

+Durkheim when he spoke of clan colonies changing their totems. I print

+Dr. Durkheim's defence as others, more acute than myself, may find it

+satisfactory.]

+

+[27] Totemism, p. 62, 1887.

+

+[28] Totemism, p. 65, citing Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 26 _et

+seq_.

+

+[29] Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 49.

+

+[30] Ibid., pp. 26, 27.

+

+[31] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 168. Totemism, p. 85.

+

+[32] _J. A. I._, xiv. p. 349. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,

+p. 100. I do not know certainly whether Mr. Howitt now translates

+_Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_ as Eagle Hawk and Crow.

+

+[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 104.

+

+[34] Totemism, p. 85. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,

+p. 112.

+

+[35] Powell, Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, p. 60.

+

+[36] Op. cit., p. 68.

+

+[37] I have excised a criticism of Dr. Durkheim's theory of the modus

+by which "primary clans" segmented into secondary clans (_L'Année

+Sociologique_, vi. pp. 7-34), because, since a clan, exogamous and

+with female reckoning of descent, cannot conceivably segment itself,

+as we have proved, my other arguments are as superfluous as they are

+numerous.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI

+

+THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

+

+

+      Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social

+      condition--Either men lived in male communities, each

+      with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living

+      alone with his female mates and children--His adolescent

+      sons he drove away--The latter view accepted--It

+      involves practical exogamy--Misunderstood by M. Salomon

+      Reinach--Same results would follow as soon as totems were

+      evolved--Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men,

+      of _the names_ of natural objects--Mr. Howitt states this

+      opinion--Savage belief in magical _rapport_ between men

+      and things of the same name--Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys

+      died for this fact--Theory of Dr. Pikler--Totemism arises

+      in the need of names to be represented in pictographs--But

+      the pictograph is later than the name--Examples of magic

+      of names--Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin

+      between themselves and objects of the same names--These

+      objects regarded with reverence--Hence totemic exogamy

+      merely one aspect of the general totem name--Group

+      names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members

+      of other local groups--Proof that such names may be

+      accepted and gloried in--Cases of _tribal_ names given

+      from without and accepted--Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of

+      names--His objection to our theory answered--Mr. Howitt's

+      objections answered--American and Celtic cases of derisive

+      nicknames accepted--Two Australian totem names certainly

+      sobriquets--Religious aspect of totemism--Results from a

+      divine decree--Other myths--Recapitulation.

+

+

+The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of

+kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and

+for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the

+kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be.

+Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two

+"phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No

+system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in

+the preceding critical chapters.

+

+In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have

+been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis

+as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career.

+Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's

+knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves

+that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt

+inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting

+methods must have forced men to live in _small_ separate groups. The

+members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and

+dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the

+associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for

+and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons,

+and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups

+necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could

+be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal

+horde of theory.

+

+Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his

+opinion as to their social condition.

+

+He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy

+of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of

+Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the

+stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now

+exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in

+small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful,

+with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b)

+he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several

+wives, like the Gorilla--for all the natives agree that bat one adult

+male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes

+place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the

+others, establishes himself as head of the community.

+

+"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at

+last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding

+within the limits of the same family."[1]

+

+There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and

+the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all

+_compelled_ to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the

+case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own

+daughters.

+

+Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second

+hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so

+very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his

+women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.

+

+There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of

+male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),[2]

+and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to

+the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community

+would end in his second--given the jealousy and brutality and animal

+passions of early man, as postulated by him.

+

+On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small

+"family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose

+harem contains _all_ the young females in the group, would be

+necessarily exogamous in practice--for the younger male members. The

+sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and

+such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could,

+similar communities.

+

+With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now

+_conscious_, would become, "No marriage within this group of

+contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various

+"family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives,

+and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other

+similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was

+obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr.

+Atkinson, in his _Primal Law_.)[3]

+

+If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal

+state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional

+conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., _supra_), would still

+keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed

+communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the

+jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by

+preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This

+would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual

+separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can

+have no certainty.[4] Young males would thus be obliged to win mates,

+probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were

+so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as

+the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy,"

+No marriage within the totem name and blood."

+

+The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been

+sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group

+possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one

+blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr.

+Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred

+totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there

+must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us)

+that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that,

+or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek

+for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with

+animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the

+various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer

+remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of

+particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem

+possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed _the

+names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of

+totemism?_"[5] The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer

+which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for

+instance, need not have yet been developed.

+

+In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show

+that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal,

+unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly

+intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or

+early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief

+in a specially close and mystical _rapport_ between the totem animal or

+plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in

+that _rapport_ arise?

+

+Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the

+_name_ of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that

+name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief

+in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu,

+and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism

+begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.

+

+It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this--that the

+community of name, if it existed, _and if its origin were unknown_,

+would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection

+between all who bore it, men or beasts--can have escaped the notice of

+any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with

+its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted

+forty-two pages of his _Golden Bough_[6] to the record of examples of

+this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to

+the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time,

+not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that

+part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever

+you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on

+Welsh Fairies.[7] This opinion rests on philological analysis of the

+Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.[8] But, if

+the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul,

+then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There

+we have the _rapport_ between man and totemic animal for which we are

+seeking.

+

+Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage

+belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and

+things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same

+thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same

+name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That

+is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed

+when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets

+of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.

+

+This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the

+names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.[9] Men, says

+Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender

+schriftlich fixierbarer _Name_ von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They

+wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these

+communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the

+pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect,

+on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian

+villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.

+

+This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Müller.[10] Mr. Max Müller

+wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, _then_ (ii.) a clan name, then

+(iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name

+of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's

+theory.[11]

+

+It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use

+_before_, not as Mr. Max Müller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems

+to think, _after_ its pictorial representation, "the clan mark."

+A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used

+the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late

+institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting

+up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart,"

+or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the

+scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He

+does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the

+signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must

+have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch,

+or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to

+understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture

+language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism

+certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die _Folge_ der Schriftart,

+der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."[12]

+

+The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before

+the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this

+advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of

+pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without

+writing, a _tribal_ name, such at least as are the _tribal_ names of

+the men who say _Wonghi_ or _Kamil_ when they mean "No," or of other

+tribes when they mean "What?"

+

+Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the _naming_," and here

+we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the

+naming is a consequence of the primitive _schriftteknik_," a result of

+the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known

+by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear,

+before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint,

+as [symbol], or of the Rain-cloud, as [symbol] or of the

+Bear's-foot, as [symbol] [13]

+

+So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; _naming is_ indeed the

+original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs

+which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not

+possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and

+accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,[14] in ages of

+philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a

+material connection between things and their names," and, in the same

+way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was

+an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving

+animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the

+name-giving animal.[15]

+

+Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion,

+but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for

+discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably,

+in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.[16]

+

+Thus, given a set of local groups[17] known by the names of Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were

+intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was,

+in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed

+mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name,

+is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical

+properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader

+has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already

+cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.

+

+In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, _Aritna

+Churinga_, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never

+to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group."

+To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as

+the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."[18]

+

+These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all

+students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in _Social

+Origins_. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather,

+for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for

+granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat

+that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in

+a mystic and transcendental connection of _rapport_. Other Australian

+examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically

+injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough

+Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this

+superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names

+to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the

+groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition

+about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would

+be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge

+of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have

+carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few

+American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but

+every one knows the real names.

+

+He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge

+to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known

+to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the

+full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal

+the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private

+essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all

+groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr.

+Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"[19] that is,

+with injurious intentions towards the person.

+

+Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally

+the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close

+must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides

+the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr.

+Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what

+beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of

+injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was

+"haunted by the impression that I had met examples."[20] Mr. Howitt,

+we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But

+it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only

+punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an

+enemy's totem.

+

+An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep _his_

+intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city

+of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course

+his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance,

+because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally

+known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some

+enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner--in other

+words, use it as an incantation."[21]

+

+Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic _rapport_

+between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be

+familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his

+secret name.

+

+This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as

+groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how

+they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was

+quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves,

+"What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals

+whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most

+important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the

+savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this

+assertion?

+

+Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and

+their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious

+acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such

+speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths,

+they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise

+nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving

+animals, the connection indicated by the name.

+

+Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably

+unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother

+and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may

+not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the

+Arunta are said not to understand them),[22] but the facts of blood

+connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape

+no human beings.[23] As savages undeniably do not draw the line between

+beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do,

+it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group

+name, and therefore _solidaire_ with the group, was united with it, as

+the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by

+the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother,

+or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and

+regard for the animal.

+

+Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally

+diffused beliefs about the _wakan_ or _mana_, or mystically sacred

+quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various

+totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its

+blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry

+a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any

+blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon

+clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So

+strong is the intertotemic avoidance.[24] The belief grew to the pitch

+that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (χρῆσθαι γυναίκι),

+and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was

+established.[25]

+

+Unessential to my system is the question, _how_ the groups got animal

+names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got

+them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking,

+indicated an essential and mystic _rapport_ between each group and

+its name-giving animal. No more than these three things--a group

+animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection

+between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in

+the blood superstitions--was needed to give rise to all the totemic

+creeds and practices, including exogamy.

+

+Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups

+is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various

+myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would

+not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name

+denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between

+themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.

+

+In _Social Origins_ I ventured a guess as to how the group names first

+arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.[26] I showed

+that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and

+I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as

+in France--Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney--Starlings,

+Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names

+of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as

+Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyænas,

+Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural

+England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be

+totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that

+animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "_not_ Eaters of"

+this or that.[27] I thus established the prevalence in human nature,

+among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In

+Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the

+inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or

+another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once

+attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will

+be discovered.

+

+I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the

+existence in the European class least modified by education of the

+tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle

+even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among

+individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not

+alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull,

+and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot,

+of course, _prove_ that their group animal-names were given thus from

+without, but the process is undeniably a _vera causa_, and does operate

+as we show.

+

+As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne

+by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."[28]

+Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory

+on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the

+difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for

+themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but

+why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one

+group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name

+for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks,"

+"barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders,

+and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We"

+are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men"--in

+their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not

+"we"), and we are something else to them; _we_ are not _they_; we all

+need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders,

+differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity

+felt in everyday life.

+

+That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and

+even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated

+in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from

+without), and in _Les Gueux, Huguenots,_ Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers,

+Cameronians ("_that nickname_," cries Patrick Walker (1720),

+"why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a

+nickname?")[29] I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland

+clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive

+nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given,

+accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.

+

+Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations,"

+that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the

+Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for

+"No," such as _Kamil_ (Kamilaroi), _Wira_ (Wirajuri), _Wonghi_ (Wonghi

+tribe), _Kabi_ (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were

+given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted

+from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi

+tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It

+is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to

+them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the

+tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."[30]

+There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do

+the French call themselves _Oui Oui_? Not much I but the natives of New

+Caledonia call them _Oui Oui_.[31]

+

+Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no

+reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without.

+Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and

+_wakan_, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among

+savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names

+were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood

+by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among

+the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in

+or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the

+savage ideas about animals.

+

+Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr.

+Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on

+"Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of

+mine. He says, "To adopt or _receive_ the name of an animal or plant,

+or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with

+the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to

+become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is

+exactly my own opinion. The very early groups _received_ animal names,

+I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed

+themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under

+the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a

+very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give

+many examples of the process from America.[32]

+

+It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely,

+that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But

+he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory.

+His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I

+prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I

+do _not_ prove that the villagers--styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows,

+and so on--accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice

+in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the

+modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very

+much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were

+cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names

+survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them

+gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are

+not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names

+and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to

+savages.

+

+A native of Dingley Dell may call all natives of Muggleton

+"Potato-grubs," and the Muggleton people, from time immemorial, may

+have called the Dingley Dell folk "Rooks." But, not being savages, they

+do not think--as Mr. Hill-Tout's savages do--that "to receive the name

+of an animal is to be under its protection, to become one with it in

+a very special and mysterious sense," and they do not, like savages,

+think nobly of grubs and rooks. The distinction is obvious, except to

+critics. Mr. Hill-Tout thus accepts my premises as regards savages

+and their ideas about names, but rejects my conclusion, because modern

+villagers do not reason like savages! As to villagers, my evidence

+was only meant to show the wide diffusion, from ancient Israel to the

+Orkneys, of the habit of giving animal names to village groups. For

+evidence of the effect which that habit would have on savages, I have

+now cited Mr. Hill-Tout himself. He has merely misunderstood a very

+plain argument,[33] which he advanced as representing his own opinion

+(pp. 64-66). But then Mr. Hill-Tout has a counter theory.

+

+Is my argument intelligible? A modern villager resents the bawling out

+of "Mouse" as he passes, Mouse being the collective nickname of his

+village, because he does not think nobly of Mice. The savage does think

+nobly of all animals, and so has no reason for resenting, but rather

+for glorying in, his totem name, whether Mouse or Lion. These facts

+were plainly asserted in _Social Origins_, p. 169, to no avail.

+

+Mr. Howitt, in his turn, does not approve of my idea, thus stated by

+him, that "the plant and animal names would be impressed upon each

+group from without, and some of them would stick, would be stereotyped,

+and each group would come to answer to its nickname." He replies--

+

+"To me, judging of the possible feelings of the ancestors of the

+Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most

+improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have

+given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which

+such names have been adopted."[34] Mr. Howitt, of course, could not

+possibly find kinships now adopting animal and other such names given

+from without, because all kinships where totemism exists have got such

+names already, and with the names a sacred body of customs. But does he

+suppose that the many local tribes calling themselves by their word for

+"No" (as _Kabi, Kamil, Wonghi,_ and so on), originally gave these names

+to themselves, saying, "We are the people who, when we mean 'No,' say

+'Wonghi'"? That seems to me hardly credible! Much more probably tribes

+who used Kamil or Kabi for "No" gave the name of _Wonghi_ to a tribe

+who used _Wonghi_ in place of their _Kamil_ or _Kabi_. In that case the

+tribes, as tribes, have adopted names given from without.

+

+Again, I consider that the feelings of that noble savage, the Red

+Indian, are at least as sensitive to insult as those of Mr. Howitt's

+blacks. Now it so happens that the Blackfoot Indians of North America,

+who apparently have passed out of totemism, have "_gentes_, a _gens_

+being a body of consanguineal kinsmen in the male line," writes Mr. G.

+B. Grinnell.[35] These clans, no longer totemic, needed names, and some

+of their names, at least, are most insulting nicknames. Thus we have

+Naked Dogs, Skunks, They Don't Laugh, Buffalo Dung, All Crazy Dogs,

+Fat Roasters, and--Liars! No men ever gave such names to their own

+community. In a diagram of the arrangement of these clans in camp, made

+about 1850, we find the _gentes_ of the Pi-kun'-I under such pretty

+titles as we have given.[36]

+

+To return from America to Australia, the Narrinyeri tribe, like the

+Sioux and Blackfeet, have reckoning of descent in the male line,

+and, like the Sioux, have local settlements (called "clans" by Mr.

+Howitt), and these local settlements have names. Does Mr. Howitt think

+it likely that one such "clan" called itself "Where shall we go?" and

+another called itself "Gone over there"?[37] These look to me like

+names given by other groups. Tribes, local groups ("clans"), and totem

+kins having names already, I cannot expect to show Mr. Howitt the names

+of such sets of people in the act of being given from without and

+accepted. But, as regards individuals, they "often have what may be

+called a nickname, arising from some strongly marked feature in their

+figures, or from fancied resemblance to some animal or plant."[38] The

+individuals "answer to" such nicknames, I suppose, but they cannot

+evolve, in a lifetime, respect for the plant or animal that yields the

+nickname, because they cannot forget how they come to bear it.

+

+Obvious at a glance as such replies to such objections are, it seems

+that they have not occurred to the objectors.

+

+If we want to discover clans adopting and glorying in names which are

+certainly, in origin, derisive nicknames, we find Clan Diarmaid, whose

+name, Campbell, means "Wry Mouth,"[38] and Clan Cameron, whose name

+means "Crooked Nose."[39] Moreover, South African tribes believe that

+tribal _siboko_, as Baboon and Alligator, may, and did, arise out of

+nicknames; for, as we have seen, their myths assert that nicknames are

+the origin of such tribal and now honourable names. I cannot prove, of

+course, that the process of adopting a name given from without occurred

+among prehistoric men, but I have demonstrated that, among all sorts

+and conditions of men in our experience, the process is a _vera causa_.

+

+Dismissing my theory, Mr. Howitt, in place of it, "could more easily

+imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed

+the idea of relationship with animals, or even with plants."[40] They

+might; a man, as in the case given, might dream of a lace lizard, and

+believe that he was one. He might even be named, as an individual,

+"Lace Lizard," but that does not help us. Totem names, as Mr. Fison

+insists, are, and always were, group names. But Mr. Howitt "gets no

+forrarder," if he means that the children of his Lace Lizard become a

+totem kin of Lace Lizards, for under a system of female descent the

+man's children would not be Lace Lizards. Does Mr. Howitt know of a

+single instance in a tribe with female kin where the children of a man

+who, on dream evidence, believed himself to be a Kangaroo, were styled

+Kangaroos? He must adopt the line of saying that, while totemism was

+being evolved, women did the dreaming of being Hakea flowers, Witchetty

+Grubs, Kangaroos, Emus, and so forth, and bequeathed the names to their

+children. But he will not find that process going on in any known

+instance, I fear.

+

+The processes of my hypothesis, though necessarily conjectural, are

+at least _veræ causæ_, are in human nature, as we know it. A curious

+new example of totems, certainly based on sobriquets not derived from

+animals, occurs among the Warramanga tribe of Central Australia.

+One totem kin is merely called "The Men" (_Kati_), the name which,

+in dozens of cases, a tribe gives to itself. Another totem kin is

+called "The Laughing Boys" (_Thaballa_), a name which is obviously

+a nickname, and not given from within. The _Thaballa_ have found it

+necessary to evolve a myth about descent from a giggling boy and his

+giggling playmates, and to practise magic for their behoof, as they are

+supposed not to be dead. All this has clearly been done by the Laughing

+Boy totem kin merely to keep themselves in line with other totem kins

+named from lower animal form.[41] _This_ totem name can have been

+nothing but a group nickname.[42]

+

+I have next to explain the nature of the superstitious regard paid by

+totemists to their name-giving animals.

+

+My guess, says Dr. Durkheim, is "difficult for those who know the

+religious character of the totem, the cult of which it is our object to

+explain. How could a sobriquet become the centre of a regular religious

+system?"

+

+Dr. Durkheim calls the system "religious," and adds that I "leave on

+one side this religious aspect of totemism: but to do so is to leave on

+one side the essential factor in the phenomenon to be explained."

+

+Now, as a matter of fact, I left no element of Australian totemism "on

+one side." I mentioned every totemic tabu and magical practice that

+was known to me. But I do not (it is really a mere question of words)

+describe the beliefs as "religious." Dr. Durkheim does; he describes

+them, as we saw, almost in the terms of the Creed of St. Athanasius.

+But I find, in Australia, no case of such religious usages as praying

+to, or feeding, or burying, the totem. Such really "religious" rites

+are performed, in Samoa, for example, where an animal, once probably a

+totem, is now regarded as the shrine or vehicle of an ancestral spirit,

+who has become a kind of god,[43] and, in Egypt, the animal gods had

+once, it seems all but certain, been totems. In Australia, to be sure,

+two totems, Eagle Hawk and Crow, were creators, in some myths. So far,

+totemic conceptions may be called "religious" conceptions, more or

+less, and if Dr. Durkheim likes to call totems "gods," as he does, he

+has a right to do so. The difference here, then, is one of terminology.

+

+We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really

+religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr.

+Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the

+aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that

+is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after

+animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed,

+nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these

+divisions _and the assumption of the animal names_, were in consequence

+of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil,

+given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."[44] "Any tradition

+of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes

+it to a supernatural agency."[45] Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence

+(always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious"

+character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the

+decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees

+given by Zeus to Minos.

+

+Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in

+_Social Origins_, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being

+or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby

+giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction.

+Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained

+the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a

+veritable religious system."[46]

+

+As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal

+institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the

+Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales.

+Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away,

+but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word

+Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few

+words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I

+think, a previous community of language.

+

+Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution

+of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back

+here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was

+a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about

+Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of

+his body--even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had

+a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he

+gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every

+one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men

+and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must

+never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far

+apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further

+confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the

+totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual

+totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the _wirreenuns_

+(sorcerers or medicine men), called his _yunbeai_, any hurt to which

+injures him, and which he may never eat--his hereditary totem he may."

+

+In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.

+

+Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the

+decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite

+other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the

+effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate

+marriage.[47] Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "_in the plural form_

+Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."[48] In fact, in

+the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the _Alcheringa_ men

+of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine,

+partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many

+mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual

+to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind

+of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.[49]

+

+Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the

+sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that _he_

+(Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in

+question.

+

+Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely

+decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or _Alcheringa_ female

+Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in

+an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up

+and went away as human beings in every direction."[50]

+

+Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes

+exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only

+be imagined by men living under exogamy already.

+

+In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth

+of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth

+is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul

+is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes

+hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The

+Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the

+souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children.

+As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor

+of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was

+evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they

+have a cult, obtain,... more or less religious. All these facts are

+universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess

+that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection

+between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually

+were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr.

+Frazer's _Totemism_.

+

+In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural

+cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so

+called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small

+fish, and a very small opossum." _These are but two out of seven kins,

+in one Australian tribe_. In the other five cases the totem kins,

+according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of

+course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.[51]

+

+_Enfin_, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic

+tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it

+matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They

+certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to

+explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term,

+"religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of

+totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving

+animals of groups, we next turn.

+

+So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of

+distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These

+became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten.

+The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between

+animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature

+of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men

+and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, _with

+animals_, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From

+these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.

+

+The nature and origin of the supposed connection or _rapport_ between

+each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way

+consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and

+with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern

+times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert

+Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that

+the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and

+Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or

+Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded

+a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay

+family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the

+MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat,

+in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the

+conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic,

+from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The

+Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, _the

+badge of a group, not of an individual_.... And even if it were first

+given to an individual, his family, _i.e._ his children, could not

+inherit it from him."[52] These are words of gold.

+

+

+[1] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, it pp. 361-363. 1871.

+

+[2] I do not extend conjecture to a period when "our human or

+half-human ancestors" may hare had a rutting season, like stags. Cf.

+Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, pp. 27, 28.

+

+[3] Here I cannot but remark on the almost insuperable difficulty of

+getting savants to understand an unfamiliar idea. M. Salomon Reinach

+writes, "Another theory (Atkinson, Letourneau) explains exogamy as

+the result of the sexual jealousy of the male, chief of the primitive

+group. (Cf. _L'Année Sociologique_, 1904, pp. 407, 434.) He is supposed

+to have tabooed all the women of the clan, reserving them for himself.

+This conception of a chief not only polygamous but _omnigamous_"

+(_pasigamous_ must be meant!) "is founded on no known ethnological

+fact." (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 161, Note I, 1905.) Mr.

+Atkinson does not speak of a "clan" at all. The "clan," in French,

+American, and some English anthropologists' terminology, is a totem

+kin with exogamy and female reckoning of descent. Mr. Atkinson speaks,

+in the first instance, of "family groups," "the cyclopean family," and

+a sire with his female mates and children. Such a sire is no more and

+no less "omnigamous" than a Turk in his harem, except that, as his

+condition is "semi-brutish," his daughters (as in Panama, in 1699) are

+not tabooed to him. Ethnology cannot now find this state of things of

+course; it is a theory of Mr. Darwin's, based on the known habits of

+the higher mammals.

+

+[4] See Mr. Crawley's "_The Mystic Rose_" for this theory of sexual

+taboo.

+

+[5] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 153.

+

+[6] _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 404-446.

+

+[7] _Nineteenth Century_, xxx. p. 566 sq.

+

+[8] See examples in "Cupid and Psyche," in my _Custom and Myth_, and

+Mr. Clodd's _Tom Tid Tot_, pp. 91-93.

+

+[9] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_. Von Dr. Julius Pikler, Professor der

+Rechtsphilosophie an der Universität Budapest. K. Koffmann, Berlin,

+_s.a._ Apparently of 1900. This tract, "The Origin of Totemism,"

+written in 1899, did not come to my knowledge till after this chapter

+was drafted.

+

+[10] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, i. p. 201.

+

+[11] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 141, 142.

+

+[12] _Ursprung des Totemismus_, p. 7.

+

+[13] See Colonel Mallery on Pictographs, _Report of Bureau of

+Ethnology_, 1888-1889, pp. 56-61.

+

+[14] "From two inscriptions found at Elensis it appears that the names

+of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea, probably they

+were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, and thrown into deep water

+in the Gulf of Salamis. ... A clearer illustration of the confusion

+between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its

+material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of

+civilised Greece." (_Golden Bough_, 2, i p. 441.) Cf. Budge, _Egyptian

+Magic_, pp. 160-162, 1901. "The Egyptians regarded the creation as the

+result of the utterance of the name of the god Neb-er-tcher by himself

+Isis could not do her will on him till she learned the _name_ of the

+god Ra." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the great sky-dwelling

+Being of the Kaitish tribe "made himself and gave himself his name." He

+made himself very inadequately, according to the myth, which may rest

+on a false etymology, and the meaning of his name is not pretty, but

+it would not surprise one if, by uttering his name, he made himself.

+(_Northern Tribes_, p. 498.)

+

+[15] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_, pp. 10, 11.

+

+[16] _Social Origins_, p. 138.

+

+[17] I am sure to be told that in Chapter III. I declared _local_

+totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line, and not

+primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named group

+local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of _totem_

+groups, but of _local groups bearing animal names_, a very different

+thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved

+totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem. No

+group that was _not_ local could get a name to itself, at this early

+stage of the proceedings. The "local habitation" precedes the "name."

+

+[18] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 139.

+

+[19] _J. A. I._, p. 53, August 1888.

+

+[20] _Social Origins_, pp. 145, 146, and Note 1.

+

+[21] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 51. _South-Eastern Tribes_, p. 736.

+

+[22] Other tribes decidedly do understand. Can the _Churinga nanja_

+and reincarnation beliefs have set up nescience of obvious facts among

+the Arunta? "The children originate solely from the male parent, and

+only owe their infantine nurture to the mother," according to certain

+Australian tribes _with female descent_. (Howitt, _J. A. I._, 1882, p.

+502. _South-Eastern Tribes_, pp. 283, 284. So, too, the Euahlayi. Mrs.

+Langloh Parker's MS.)

+

+[23] Cf. _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 360-362.

+

+[24] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 254.

+

+[25] On this point of the blood tabu see Dr. Durkheim, _L'Année

+Sociologique_, i. pp. 47-57. Also M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, vol.

+x. p. 65. The point was laid before me long ago by Mr. Arthur Platt,

+when he was editing the papers of Mr. J. F. McLennan. Dr. Durkheim

+charges me (_Folk Lore_, December 1903) with treating these tabus

+"vaguely" in _Social Origins_. I merely referred the reader more than

+once, as in _Social Origins_, p. 57, Note I, to Dr. Durkheim's own

+exposition, also to M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, x. p. 65. The theory

+of the sacredness of the blood is not absolutely necessary. The totem

+tabu often excludes all contact with the totem by the totemist.

+

+[26] The passage will be found in _Social Origins_, pp. 166-175.

+

+[27] _Social Origins_, pp. 295-301.

+

+[28] _Folk Lore_, December 1903, p. 423.

+

+[29] _Vindication of Cameron's Name_. "Saints of the Covenant," i. p.

+251.

+

+[30] _Northern Tribes_, p. 10, Note 2.

+

+[31] J. J. Atkinson. The natives call _us_ "White Men." We do not call

+ourselves "God dams," but Jeanne d'Arc did.

+

+[32] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, vol. ix., vii. pp. 64, 66.

+

+[33] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ut supra, pp. 96, 97.

+

+[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.

+

+[35] _Blackfoot Lodge Tales_, p. 208, 1893.

+

+[36] _Op. cit._, p. 225.

+

+[37] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 131.

+

+[38] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 638.

+

+[39] Macbain, _Gaelic Etymological Dictionary_.

+

+[40] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.

+

+[41] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 207-210.

+

+[42] I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he knows

+no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning Mr.

+Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special variety

+of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that analogous

+names obtain now in certain tribes, _e.g._ the Yum." (_Op. cit._, p.

+154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were sobriquets

+given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does know such cases

+after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating of Yuin names,

+unless names of individuals derived from their skill in catching or

+spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These exist among

+the more elderly Kunaï. (_Op. cit._, p. 738.) But Mr. Haddon was not

+thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of group names. On

+his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because wolves and ravens

+were their chief articles of diet.

+

+[43] See Turner's _Samoa_, and Mr. Tylor, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. p. 142.

+

+[44] _J. A. I._, August 1888, pp. 53, 54. Also volume xiii. p. 498.

+Cf., too _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 89, 488, 498.

+

+[45] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 67.

+

+[46] _Bureau of Ethnology Report_, 1892, 1893, Part I. pp. 22, 23.

+Howitt, _Organisation of Australian Tribes_, p. 134 Information from

+Mrs. Langloh Parker. These sources give Menomini, Dieri, Murring,

+Woeworung, and Euahlayi myths, attributing totemic rules and names to

+divine institution.

+

+[47] Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 25.

+

+[48] _J. A. I._, 1888, p. 498. Cf. _Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia_, pp. 482-484. Mura-Mura, till further notice, are mythical

+ancestors, not reincarnated.

+

+[49] _Making of Religion_, p. 232, 1898.

+

+[50] _Assoc. Adv. Science_, p. 531, and Note 30, 1902. For other

+discrepant myths, cf. _Native Tribes of S.E. Australia_, pp. 475, 482.

+

+[51] Grey, _Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia_.

+That only two of seven totems in one tribe were explained is usually

+overlooked.

+

+[52] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 165, 1880.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII

+

+RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

+

+

+      How phratries and totem kins were developed--Local

+      animal-named groups would be exogamous--Children in these

+      will bear the group names of their mothers--Influence of

+      tattooing--Emu _local_ group thus full of persons who

+      are Snipes, Lizards, &c--_by maternal descent_--Members

+      are Emus _by local group name_: Snipes, Lizards, &c,

+      by _name of descent_--No marriage, however, within

+      local group--Reason, survival of old tabu--Reply to

+      Dr. Durkheim--The names bring about peaceful relations

+      between members of the different local groups--Tendency

+      to peaceful betrothals between men and women of the

+      various local groups--Probable leadership of two strong

+      local groups in this arrangement--Say they are groups

+      Eagle Hawk and Crow--More than two such groups sometimes

+      prominent--Probable that the dual alliance was widely

+      Imitated--The two chief allied local groups become the

+      phratries--Tendency of phratries to die out--Often

+      superseded by matrimonial classes--Meaning of surviving

+      phratry names often lost, and why--Their meaning known

+      in other tribes--Members, _by descent_, of various animal

+      names, within the old local groups (now phratries),

+      become the totem kins of to-day--Advantages of this

+      theory--Difficulties which it avoids.

+

+

+We have perhaps succeeded in showing how totemism my have become a

+belief and a source of institutions: we have shown, at least, that

+granting savage methods of thought, totemism might very naturally have

+come in this way.

+

+Totemism certainly arose in an age when, if descent reckoned, and,

+if names were inherited, it was on the spindle side. "_All abnormal

+instances,_" writes Mr. Howitt, "_I have found to be connected with

+changes in the line of descent_. The primitive and complete forms" (of

+totemism) "have uterine descent, and it is in cases where descent

+is counted in the male line that I find the most abnormal forms to

+occur."[1]

+

+As few scholars seriously dispute this opinion of Mr. Howitt, based

+on a very wide experience, and fortified by the almost universal view

+that descent was reckoned, when totemism began, in the female line,

+and as the point is accepted by every author whose ideas I have been

+discussing, we need not criticise hypotheses which assume that totemism

+arose when descent was reckoned in the male line, or that totems arose

+out of personal manitus of males, transferred to the female line.

+

+Now, granting that our system so far may afford a basis of argument, we

+have to show how the phratries and the totem kins within them might be

+logically and naturally developed.

+

+If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of

+Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a

+_sacred_ sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical

+rule would be that of the jealous Sire, "No males to touch the females

+in my camp," with expulsion of adolescent sons. In efflux of time

+that rule, become habitual, would be, "No marriage within the local

+group." Next, let the local groups receive names, such as Emus, Crows,

+Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, "No marriage within the local

+group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe." But, if the primal

+groups were not exogamous, they would become so, as soon as totemic

+myths and tabus were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other

+names of small local groups.

+

+The natural result will be that all the wives among the _local_ groups

+called Snipes will come to bear names other than Snipe, will come

+to be known by the names of the _local_ groups from which they have

+been acquired. These names they will retain, I suggest, in local group

+Snipe, by way of distinction--as the Emu woman, the Opossum woman, and

+so forth. The Emus know the names of the groups from which they have

+taken women, and it seems probable enough that the women may even have

+borne tattoo marks denoting their original groups, as is now in some

+places the Australian practice. "It probably has been universal," says

+Mr. Haddon.[2]

+

+If, then, the stranger women among the Emus are known, in that local

+group, as the Opossum woman, the Snipe woman, the Lizard woman; their

+children in the group might very naturally speak of each other as "the

+Snipe woman's, the Lizard woman's children," or more briefly as "the

+little Snipes," "the young Lizards," and so on. I say "might speak,"

+for though totem names have the advantage of being easily indicated,

+and in practice are often indicated by gesture language, I take it that

+by this time man had evolved language.[3]

+

+In course of time, by this process (which certainly did occur, though

+at how early a stage it came first into being we cannot say), each

+_local_ group becomes heterogeneous. Emu _local_ group is now full of

+members of Snipe, Lizard, and other animal-named members _by maternal

+descent_. There are thus what Mr. Howitt has called "Major totems"

+(name-giving animals of local groups), and "Minor totems" (various

+animal names of male and female members within, for example, _local_

+group Emu, these various animal names being acquired _by female

+descent_). Each member of a local Emu group is now Emu by local group;

+but is Snipe, Lizard, Opossum, Kangaroo, or what not, by _name of

+maternal descent_.

+

+This theory is no original idea, it is Mr. McLennan's mode of

+accounting for the heterogeneity of the local group. They are not all

+Wolves, for example, where descent is reckoned in the female line, and

+exogamy is the rule. In the local group Wolf are Ravens, Doves, Dogs,

+Cats, what you will, names derived by the children from mothers of

+these names. I do not pretend that I can demonstrate the existence of

+the process, but it accounts for the facts and is not out of harmony

+with human nature. Can any other hypothesis be suggested?

+

+When things have reached this pitch, each local group, _if it

+understood the situation as it is now understood among most savages_,

+might find wives peacefully in its own circle. Lizard man, in _local_

+group Emu, might marry Snipe woman also in _local_ group Emu, _as far

+as extant totem law now goes_. They were both, in fact, members of a

+small local _tribe_ of animal name, with many kins of animal names,

+by female descent, within that tribe. Why then might not Snipe (by

+descent) in Emu _local_ group marry a woman, by descent Lizard, in

+the same Emu _local_ group? Many critics have asked this question,

+including Dr. Durkheim.[4] I had given my answer to the question before

+it was asked,[5] backing my opinion by a statement of Dr. Durkheim

+himself. People of different totems in the same _local_ group (say Emu)

+_might_ have married; but then, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another

+case, "the old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs,

+survives."[6] "Now the old prohibition in this case was that a man of

+the Emu (_local_) group was not to marry a woman of the Emu (_local_)

+group. That rule endures, even though the Emu group now contains men

+and women of several distinct and different totem kins," that is to

+say, of different animal-named kins _by descent_.

+

+I may add that, as soon as speculation about the animal names led to

+the belief in the mystic _rapport_ between the animals and their human

+namesakes, and so led to tabu on the intermarriage of persons of the

+same animal name, the tabu would attach as much to the name-giving

+animal of the _local_ group as to the animals of the kins _by descent_

+within that _local_ group.

+

+Thus Lizard man, in Emu local group, cannot marry Snipe woman in the

+same. Both are also, by _local_ group name, Emus. He is Emu-Lizard, she

+is Emu-Snipe.

+

+If it be replied that now no regard is paid by the members of a phratry

+to their phratriac animal (where it is known), I answer that the

+necessary _poojah_ is done, by the members of the totem kin of that

+animal, within his phratry, while all do him the grace of not marrying

+within his name.[7] A Lizard man and a Snipe woman in Emu _local_ group

+could not, therefore, yet marry. The members of the local group, though

+of different animal names _of descent_, had still to ravish brides from

+other hostile _local_ groups.

+

+Each _local_ group was now full of men and women who, _by maternal

+descent_, bore the same animal names as many members of the other

+_local_ groups. A belief in a mystic _rapport_ between the bearers of

+the animal names and the animals themselves now being developed, Snipe

+and Lizard and Opossum _by descent_, in Emu _local_ group, must already

+have felt that they were not really strangers and enemies to men of

+the same names _by descent_, Snipe, Lizard, and Opossum, and of the

+same connection with the same name-giving animals, in Kangaroo _local_

+group, or any other adjacent _local_ group.

+

+This obvious idea--human beings who are somehow connected with the

+same animals are also connected with each other--was necessarily an

+influence in favour of peace between the local groups. In whatever

+_local_ group a Snipe by descent might be, he would come to notice a

+connection between himself and Snipes _by descent_ in all other _local_

+groups. Consequently men at last arranged, I take it, to exchange

+brides on amicable terms, instead of Snipe _by descent_ risking the

+shedding of kindred blood, that of another Snipe _by descent_, in the

+mellay of a raid to lift women from another _local_ group.

+

+If two strong local groups, say Emu and Kangaroo, or Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, took the lead in this treaty of alliance and _connubium_, and if

+the other local groups gradually came into it under their leadership

+(for union would make Eagle Hawk and Crow powerful), or if several

+local groups chose two such groups to head them in a peaceful exchange

+of brides, we have, in these two now united and intermarrying local

+groups of animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, the primal forms of the

+actual phratries of to-day.

+

+But why do we find in a tribe only two phratries? I have asked myself

+and been asked by others. In the first place, in America, we note

+examples of three or more phratries in the same tribe. Again, in

+Australia, we seem to myself to find probable traces of more than two

+phratries in a tribe, traces of what Mr. Frazer styles "sub-phratries,"

+what one may call "submerged phratries" (see Chapter X.). Further, dual

+alliances are the most usual form of such combinations: two strong

+groups, allied and setting the example, would attract the neighbouring

+groups into their circle. Finally, if I am right in thinking that the

+phratriac arrangement arose in a given centre, and was propagated

+by emigrants, and was borrowed by distant tribes (which is a point

+elsewhere discussed), the original model of a dual alliance would

+spread almost universally, while, as has been said, traces of more

+numerous combinations appear to occur.

+

+Except as parties of old to a peaceful arrangement, the phratries, as

+they at present exist (where they exist), have often now no reason for

+existence. Where totems are exogamous, or where totems and matrimonial

+classes exist, the phratry is now an empty survival; having done its

+work it does no more work, and often vanishes. If members of _local_

+animal-named groups, become fully totemic, had at once understood their

+own position as under the now existing totem law, they could have taken

+wives of different totems _of descent_ each in their own group, without

+any phratries at all. People manage their affairs thus in all totemic

+parts of the world where there are no phratries, though, for what we

+know, phratries may have existed, and vanished, in these places, when

+their task was ended.

+

+Again, phratries die out, we repeat, even in America and Australia. In

+some regions of Australia their place has been taken by the opposed

+matrimonial classes, prohibiting marriage between mothers' and

+sons', fathers' and daughters' generations. That arrangement, as it

+is not found in the most primitive Australian tribes, which have only

+phratries and totems, must be later than phratries and totems. It was

+a later enactment, within the phratry, and, as among the Arunta and

+Wiraidjuri, it has now superseded the phratry. The matrimonial classes,

+originally introduced within each pre-existing phratry, now regulate

+marriage, among Arunta and Wiraidjuri, and the phratry has dropped off,

+its name being unknown, like the flower which has borne its fruit.

+

+Again, in Australia, as has been said, we shall try to show that

+phratries, in many tribes, are perhaps a _borrowed_ institution, not

+an institution independently evolved everywhere. That is rendered

+probable because, among many tribes, the phratry names survive but are

+now meaningless, yet these same phratry names possess, or have recently

+possessed, a meaning in the language of other tribes, from whom the

+institution may apparently (though not necessarily) have been borrowed

+with the foreign names of each phratry.

+

+For all these reasons, phratries seem, in some regions, to be a

+device adopted, by some tribe, or tribes, at a given moment, for a

+given purpose (peace), and borrowed from them by some other tribes,

+or propagated by emigrants into new lands. Men might borrow the

+_names_ of the phratries, or might use other names which were already

+current designations of their own local groups. The purpose of the

+phratry organisation, I argue, may have been the securing of peace

+and alliance, and the movement may have been originated, somewhere in

+Australia, by two powerful local groups of animal name; in one vast

+region known as Eagle Hawk and Crow, Mukwara and Kilpara, and by

+other names of the same meaning. Such I take to have been the mode

+in which phratries arose, out of the alliance and _connubium_ of two

+local groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow; or of more than two groups. Mr.

+Frazer says that the Moquis of Arizona have ten phratries (quoting

+Bourke, _Snake Dance_, p. 336) and the Wyandots have four; the Mohegans

+have three.[8] These, or other groups, took the lead in recognising

+the situation, namely, that brides might be peacefully exchanged among

+_local_ groups becoming conscious of common kinship in their totems _by

+descent_.

+

+Meanwhile, in the various otherwise animal-named members of _local_

+groups Eagle Hawk and Crow--in the men and women within _local_ groups

+Eagle Hawk and Crow who were Snipes, Lizards, Opossums, and so on, _by

+maternal descent_--we have the forerunners of the totem kins within the

+phratries of to-day. In the same way, members of all other adjacent

+_local_ groups could also come into Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries by

+merely dropping their _local_ group-names, keeping their names by

+_descent_.

+

+We have not, on this system, to imagine that there were but two

+totem groups in each district, at the beginning (a thing unlikely to

+happen anywhere, still less always and everywhere), and that many of

+their members, hiving off, took new totem names. Our scheme gives us,

+naturally, and on Mr. Darwin's lines, first, many small local groups,

+perhaps in practice exogamous; then these local groups invested with

+animal names; then, the animals become totems, sanctioning exogamy;

+then by exogamy and female descent, each animal-named _local_ group

+becomes full of members of other animal names _by descent_; then an

+approach to peace among all the groups naturally arises; then pacific

+_connubium_ between them all, at first captained by two leading local

+groups, say Crow and Eagle Hawk (though there is no reason why there

+should not have been more of such alliances in a tribe, and there are

+traces of them),[9] and, lastly, the allies prevailing, the inhabitants

+of a district became an harmonious tribe, with two phratries (late

+_local_ groups), say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and with the other old

+local group-names represented in what are now the totem kins within

+the phratries. This arrangement, in course of time, is perhaps even

+borrowed, foreign phratry names and all, by distant groups hitherto not

+thus organised.

+

+This scheme, it will be observed, is in harmony with what Mr.

+Howitt's knowledge of native life shows him to have occurred. From

+the beginning, in the physical conditions of Australia, no horde or

+communal mob could keep together, for lack of supplies. No assemblage

+"could assume dimensions more than that of a few members," before it

+was broken up by economic causes.[10] There were thus, in a district,

+many small groups, not, as on Dr. Durkheim's theory, just two groups,

+broken out of a larger horde by their unexplained religious devotion

+each to its own god, an animal, say Eagle Hawk for one group, Crow

+for the other. On the other hand, there was now an indefinite number

+of small _local_ groups, each of animal name, each containing members

+of as many names _of descent_ as the local groups from which each

+local group had taken wives. Such groups would now be larger than mere

+hearth-circles, in proportion as improved skill in fishing, net-making,

+spearing, and trapping animals, and in selecting and cooking edible

+vegetables and roots, with improved implements, enabled larger groups

+to subsist in their territorial area. This scheme is manifestly

+consistent with the probable economic and social conditions, while

+the animal group-names are explained by the necessity under which the

+groups lay to differentiate each other by names. The regard later paid

+to the name-giving animals as totems is explained, on the ground of the

+savage theory of the mystical quality of names of unknown origin, names

+also borne by animals, powerful, wise, mysterious creatures.

+

+These processes must have occupied long ages in evolution.

+

+This hypothesis escapes the difficulty as to how an incestuous horde,

+guided by an inspired medicine man, could ever come to see that there

+was such a thing as incest, and that such a thing ought not to be

+tolerated. We also escape Dr. Durkheim's difficulty--How did two

+hostile sects of animal worshippers arise in the "compact mass" of the

+horde; and how could they, though of one blood, claim separate origins?

+We also see how totem kins could occur within the phratries, without

+needing to urge alternately that such kins both do and do not possess

+a territorial basis. Again, we have not to decide, what we can never

+know, whether man was _originally_ gregarious and promiscuous or not.

+We see that circumstances forced him to live in groups so small that

+the jealous will of the Sire or Sires could enforce exogamy on the

+young members of the camp, a prohibition which the natural conservatism

+of the savage might later extend to the members of the animal-named

+local group, even when heterogeneous. However heterogeneous by descent,

+all members of the local group were, by habitat, of one animal name,

+and when tabus arose in deference to the sacred animal, these tabus

+forbade marriage whether in the animal-named local group, or in the

+animal name of descent.

+

+So far, the theory "marches," and meets all facts known to us, in

+pristine tribes with female descent, phratries, and totem kins, but

+without "matrimonial classes," four or eight. The theory also meets

+facts which have not, till now, been recognised in Australia, and which

+we proceed to state.

+

+

+

+[1] _Rep. Reg. Smithsonian Institute_, p. 801, 1883.

+

+[2] _Evolution in Art_, pp. 252-257.

+

+[3] "This question, Minna Murdu?" ("What totem?") "can be put by

+gesture language, to which, in the same way, a suitable reply can be

+made." (Mr. Howitt, on the Dieri. _Rep. Reg. Smith. Institute_, p. 804,

+Note I, 1883.)

+

+[4] _Folk Lore_, December 1903.

+

+[5] _Social Origins_, p. 56, Note 1.

+

+[6] _L'Année Sociologique_, v. p. 106, Note I.

+

+[7] The Kamilaroi are said to offer exceptions to this rule.

+

+[8] _Totemism_, pp. 60-62. We must remember that American writers use

+the word "phratry" in several quite different senses; we cannot always

+tell what they mean when they use it.

+

+[9] If the Urabunna rules are correctly reported on, they may have

+several "sub-phratries."

+

+[10] _J. A. I._, xii. p. 497.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII

+

+A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

+

+

+      On our theory, in each phratry there should be a totem kin

+      of the phratry name--If not, fatal to Dr. Durkheim's and

+      Mr. Frazer's theories, as well as to ours--The fact occurs

+      in America: why not in Australia?--Questions asked by Mr.

+      Thomas--The fact, totem kins of phratriac names within

+      the phratries, _does_ occur in Australia--The fact not

+      hitherto observed--Why not observed--Three causes--The

+      author's conjecture--Evidence proving the conjecture

+      successful--Myth favouring Mr. Fraser's theory--Another

+      myth states the author's theory--_Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_

+      remain, as phratry names, among many tribes which give

+      other names to Eagle Hawks and Crows--The Eagle Hawk,

+      under another name, is totem in _Mukwara_ (Eagle Hawk)

+      phratry--The Crow, under another name, is a totem

+      _Kilpara_ (Crow) phratry--Thus the position is the same as

+      in America--List of examples in proof--Barinji, Barkinji.

+      Ta-ta-thi, Keramin, Wiraudjuri, and other instances--Where

+      phratry names are lost--Eagle Hawk and Crow totems are

+      still in _opposite_ phratries--Five examples--Examples of

+      Cockatoo-named phratries, each containing its own Cockatoo

+      totem--Often under new names--Bee phratries with Bee

+      matrimonial classes--Cases of borrowed phratry and class

+      names--Success of our conjectures--Practical difficulty

+      caused by clash of old and new laws--Two totem kins cannot

+      legally marry--Difficulty evaded--These kins change their

+      phratries--Shock to tender consciences--Change takes the

+      line of least resistance--Example of a change to be given.

+

+

+On the theory propounded in the last chapter, the lead in making

+peaceful alliance and _connubium_ between exogamous groups previously

+hostile, was probably taken, and the example was set, or the allies

+were captained, by two or in some cases more of the exogamous

+animal-named local groups themselves. Such leading groups, by our

+theory, in time became the two phratries of the tribe. If this were the

+case, these two kins, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, or, among the Thlinkets

+in America, Wolf and Raven, should be found to-day among the totem

+kins, should exist not only as names of phratries, but as names of

+totem kins _in_ the phratries. If they are not so found, it will prove

+a serious objection, not only to our hypothesis, but to that of Dr.

+Durkheim, and (at one time at least) of Mr. J. G. Frazer. Their theory

+being that two primary totem kins sent off colonies which took new

+totem names, and that the primary kins later became phratries, in the

+existing phratries we should discover totem kins of the phratry names,

+say, totem kin Raven in Raven phratry, and totem kin Wolf in Wolf

+phratry. This phenomenon has been noted in America, but only faintly

+remarked on, or not at all observed, in Australia.

+

+Why should there be this difference, if it does exist, in the savage

+institutions of the two continents? The facts which, on either

+theory--Dr. Durkheim's or my own--were to be expected, are observed in

+America; in Australia they have only been noticed in two or three lines

+by Mr. Howitt, which have escaped comment by theorists. When once we

+recognise the importance of Mr. Howitt's remark, that in some phratries

+the animals of phratry names "are also totems," we open a new and

+curious chapter in the history of early institutions.

+

+As to America, both Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim observe that "among the

+Thlinkets and Mohegans, each phratry bears a name which is also the

+name of one of the clans," thus the Thlinkets have a Wolf totem kin

+in Wolf phratry; a Raven totem kin in Raven phratry. Mr. Frazer adds,

+"It seems probable that the names of the Raven and Wolf were the two

+original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards, by subdivision,

+became phratries."[1]

+

+We have seen the objections to this theory of subdivision (Chapter V.

+_supra_), in discussing the system of Dr. Durkheim, who, by the way,

+gives two entirely different accounts of the Thlinket organisation in

+three successive pages; one version from Mr. Morgan, the other more

+recent, and correct, from Mr. Frazer.[2] Wolf and Raven do not appear

+in Mr. Morgan's version.[3]

+

+If Mr. Frazer's view in 1887 and Dr. Durkheim's are right, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow phratries, say, are in Australia examples of the primary

+original totem kins, and as totem kins they ought to remain (as Raven

+and Wolf do among the Thlinkets), after they become heads of phratries.

+Again, if I am right, the names of the two leading local groups, after

+becoming phratries, should still exist to this day in the phratries, as

+names of totem kins. This is quite obvious, yet except in the Thlinket

+case, the Haida case, and that of the Mohegans, we never (apparently)

+have found--what we ought always to find--within the phratries two

+totem kins bearing the same animal names as the phratries bear. Why

+is this? What has become of the two original, or the two leading local

+animal-named groups and totem kins? Nobody seems to have asked this

+very necessary question till quite recently.[4]

+

+What has become of the two lost totem kins?

+

+Mr. Thomas's objection to an earlier theory of mine, in which the two

+original totem kins were left in the vague, ought to be given in his

+own words: "Mr. Lang assumes" (in _Social Origins_) "that the animals

+of the original connubial groups" (phratries) "did not become totems,

+and, consequently, that there were no totem kins corresponding to

+the original groups. This can only have taken place if a rule were

+developed that men of Emu" (local) "group might not marry women of the

+Emu kin, and _vice versa_. This would involve, however, a new rule

+of exogamy distinct from both group (local) and kin (totem) bars to

+marriage. This must have come about either (a) because the Emu kin

+were regarded as potentially members of the Emu group (an extension of

+group exogamy, the existence of which it would be hard to prove), or

+(b) because the Emu group or Emu kin were (legally) kindred, and as

+such debarred from marrying. ... In either case, on Mr. Lang's theory,

+two whole kins were debarred from marriage or compelled to change

+their totems" (when phratries arose). "I do not know which is less

+improbable."

+

+Certainly the two kins could not change their totems, and certainly

+they would not remain celibate.

+

+Meanwhile the _apparent_ disappearance in Australia of the two

+original, or leading, totem kins, of the same names as the phratries,

+is as great a difficulty to Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old theory

+as to my own, only they did not observe the circumstance.

+

+How vanished the totem kins of the same names as the phratries? I

+answer that they did not vanish at all, and I go on to prove it.

+The main facts are very simple, the totem kins of phratry names in

+Australia are often in their phratries. But at a first glance this is

+not obvious. The facts escape observation for the following reasons:--

+

+(1) In most totemic communities, except in Australia and in some

+American cases, there are no phratries, and consequently there is no

+possible proof that totem kins of the phratriac names exist, for we do

+not know the names of the lost phratries.

+

+(2) In many Australian cases, such as those of the Wiraidjuri and

+Arunta, the phratries have now no names, and really, as phratries, no

+existence. Dual divisions of the tribes exist, but are known to us by

+the names of the four or eight "matrimonial classes" (a relatively late

+development)[5] into which they are parcelled, as, among the Arunta,

+Panunga, Bukhara, Purula, Kumara.[6]

+

+We cannot therefore say in such cases, that the totem kins of phratriac

+names have vanished, because we do not know how the phratries were

+named; they may have had the names of two extant totem kins, but their

+names are lost.

+

+(3) Again, there are Australian cases, as of the Urabunna and Dieri of

+Central Australia, in which the phratries have names--Matthurie and

+Kirarawa (Urabunna), or Matteri and Kararu (Dieri)--but these phratry

+names cannot be, or are not translated. Manifestly, then, the meaning

+of the names may be identical with names of extant totem kins in these

+phratries, may be names of obsolete or almost obsolete sacred meaning,

+originally denoting totems now recognised by other names in the

+everyday language of the tribe.

+

+Confronted by the problem of the two apparently lost totem kins, those

+of the same names as the phratries, I conjectured that phratry names,

+now meaningless in the speech of the tribes where they appear, might

+be really identical in meaning with other names now denoting totem

+animals in the phratries. This conjecture proved to be correct, and I

+proceed to show how my conclusion was reached. The evidence, happily,

+is earlier than scientific discussion of the subject, and is therefore

+unbiassed.

+

+So long ago as 1852 or 1853, Mr. C. G. N. Lockhart, in his Annual

+Report to the Government of New South Wales, recorded a myth of the

+natives on the Lower Darling River, which flows from the north into the

+Murray River, the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria.[7]

+The tribes had the phratries named by Mr. Lockhart _Mookwara_ and

+_Keelpara_, usually written _Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_. These were the

+usual intermarrying exogamous phratries. According to the natives,

+Mukwara and Kilpara were the two wives of a prehistoric black fellow,

+"the Eves of the Adam of the Darling," Mr. Lockhart says--like the

+Hebrew Lilith and Eve, wives of Adam, _Lilith being a Serpent woman_.

+(If Rachael and Leah are really animal names, they may be old phratry

+names, though I think it highly improbable.)

+

+The children of wife Mukwara married those of wife Kilpara, and _vice

+versa_, the children taking the mother's name. Next, says the myth, as

+in the theories of Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Frazer, the two stocks, Mukwara

+and Kilpara, subdivided into totem kins, as Kilpara into Emu, Duck,

+&c., Mukwara into Kangaroo, Opossum, &c. (There is perhaps no modern

+theory of the origin of totemism, including my own, which has not been

+somewhere, and to some extent, anticipated by the mythical guesses of

+savages. The Port Fairy tribes, in their myth, take my view, and make

+the phratries arise in the male ancestor and his wife, two Cockatoos

+of various species; the totem kins were brought in by the sons of

+the two Cockatoos marrying women from a distance, of other animal

+parentage, their children keeping the maternal names, as Duck, Snipe,

+and so on. This myth is well inspired, for once!) In the passage of Mr.

+Lockhart, as cited by Mr. Curr, he does not give the translation of the

+names Mukwara and Kilpara. But in Mr. Brough Smyth's _Aborigines of

+Victoria_, a compilation of evidence published in 1878, we find another

+myth. "The natives of the northern parts of Victoria" believe that the

+makers of the world were "two beings that had severally the forms of

+the Crow and the Eagle Hawk." The Eagle Hawk was _Mak-quarra_; the Crow

+is _Kil-parra_.[8]

+

+Again, Mr. Bulmer writes: "The blacks of the Murray"--the river

+severing northern Victoria from New South Wales--"are divided into

+two classes" (phratries), "the Mak-quarra, or Eagle, and the Kilparra,

+or Crow. If the man be Mak-quarra, the woman must be Kil-parra," by

+phratry.[9]

+

+One myth (1852-53) explains Mukwara and Kilpara as wives of one man,

+and mothers of the phratries. The other (1878) says that Mukwara was a

+cosmic Eagle Hawk, Kilpara a cosmic Crow. They were on hostile terms,

+like Ormuzd and Ahriman; like the Thlinket phratry-founders, Raven and

+Wolf; and like the name-giving founders of phratries in New Britain, Te

+Kabinana, the author of good, and Te Kovuvura, the author of evil.[10]

+Eagle Hawk and Crow, Kilpara and Mukwara, in one of the myths, made

+peace, one condition being that "the Murray blacks should be divided

+into two classes" (phratries) called Mukwara and Kilpara, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow.[11]

+

+Crow and Eagle Hawk, then, were apparently names of hostile groups,

+which, making _connubium_, became allied phratries.

+

+The evidence thus is that Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk, that Kilpara meant

+Crow, in the language of some tribe which, so far, I have not been able

+to identify in glossaries. Probably the tribe is now extinct. But these

+two names for Eagle Hawk and Crow now denote two phratries in many

+widely separated tribes, which, in common use, _employ various quite

+different names for Eagle Hawk and Crow_.

+

+Now the point is that, in Mukwara phratry (Eagle Hawk), we almost

+always find, _under another name_, Eagle Hawk as a totem kin; and in

+Kilpara, Crow, we find, _under another name_, Crow as a totem kin.

+In many other cases, we cannot translate the phratry names, but, by

+a fortunate chance, the meanings of Kilpara and Mukwara have been

+preserved, and we see that, as in America, so also in Australia,

+phratries contain totem kins representing the phratry animal-name

+givers.

+

+We proceed to give instances.

+

+On the Paroo River, for example, are the Barinji; they call the Eagle

+Hawk "Biliari," or Billiara; their name for Crow is not given[12] But

+among the Barinji, Biliari, the Eagle Hawk, is a totem in the phratry

+called Mukwara, which means Eagle Hawk; Crow is not given, we saw,

+but here at least is the totem kin Eagle Hawk--Biliari--in the Eagle

+Hawk phratry, called by the foreign, and, to the Barinji, probably

+meaningless name, "Mukwara" (Mak-quarra).[13] This applies to four

+other tribes.

+

+The Barkinji have the same phratry names, Mukwara and Kilpara, as the

+Barinji. Their totem names are on the same system as those of the

+Ta-ta-thi Among the Ta-ta-thi the light Eagle Hawk is _Waip-illi_, he

+comes in Mukwarra, that is, in Eagle Hawk, phratry; and _Walakili_

+(the Crow), among the Ta-ta-thi, comes in Crow (Kilpara) phratry. The

+Wiimbaio, too, have totem Eagle Hawk in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) and totem

+Crow in Kilpara (Crow).

+

+The Keramin tribe live four hundred miles away from the Barinji. They

+have not the same name, Biliari, for the Eagle Hawk. Their name for

+Eagle Hawk is Mundhill. This totem, Eagle Hawk, among the Keramin,

+appears in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara). The Keramin name for Crow is

+Wak. He occurs in Kilpara (Crow) phratry. All is as by my theory it

+ought to be.[14]

+

+None of these tribes has "matrimonial classes," a relatively late

+device, or no such classes are assigned to them by our authorities.

+These tribes are of a type so archaic, that Mr. Howitt has called the

+primitive type, _par excellence_, "Barkinji."

+

+All this set of tribes have their own names, in their own various

+tongues, for "Eagle Hawk" and "Craw," but all call their phratries by

+the foreign or obsolete names for "Eagle Hawk" and "Crow," namely,

+Mukwara and Kilpara. Occasionally either Crow totem is not given by

+our informants, or Eagle Hawk totem is not given, but Eagle Hawk, when

+given, is always in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), and Crow, when given,

+is always in Crow phratry (Kilpara). Where both Eagle Hawk and Crow

+totems are given, they invariably occur, Eagle Hawk totem in Mukwara

+(Eagle Hawk) phratry, and Crow totem in Kilpara (Crow) phratry.

+

+In the Ngarigo tribe, the phratries are Eagle Hawk and Crow (Merung and

+Yukambruk), but neither fowl is given in the lists of totems, which,

+usually, are not exhaustive. The same fact meets us in the Wolgal

+tribe; the phratries are Malian and Umbe (Eagle Hawk and Crow), but

+neither bird is given as a totem.[15] Mr. Spencer, in a letter to me,

+gives, for a tribe adjacent to the Wolgal, the phratries Multu (Eagle

+Hawk), and Umbe (Crow); the totems I do not know. Among the Wiraidjuri

+tribe, Mr. Howitt does not know the phratry names, but the tribe

+have the Kamilaroi class names, and Eagle Hawk and Crow, as usual, in

+the opposite unnamed phratries. Among a sept of the Wiraidjuri on the

+Lachlan River, the phratry names are Mukula and Budthurung. The meaning

+of Mukula is not given, but Budthurung means "Black Duck" and Black

+Duck totem is in Black Duck phratry, Budthurung in Budthurung, as it

+ought to be.[16] Mr. Howitt writes that there is "no explanation" of

+why Budthurung is both a phratry name and a totem name. The fact, we

+see, is usual.

+

+In several cases, where phratry names are lost, or are of unknown

+meaning, Eagle Hawk and Crow occur in _opposite_ exogamous moieties,

+which once had phratry names, or now have phratry names of unknown

+significance. The evidence, then, is that Eagle Hawk and Crow totems,

+over a vast extent of country, have been in Eagle Hawk and Crow

+phratries, while, when they occur in phratries whose names are lost,

+the lost names or untranslatable names _may_ have meant Eagle Hawk and

+Crow. Unluckily the names of the phratries of the central tribes about

+Lake Eyre and south-west--Kararu and Matteri--are of unknown meaning:

+such tribes are the Dieri, Urabunna, and their neighbours. We do indeed

+find Kuraru, meaning Eagle Hawk, in a tribe where the phratry name is

+Kararu; and Karawora is also a frequent name for Eagle Hawk in these

+tribes. But then Kurara means Rain, in a cognate tribe; and we must not

+be led into conjectural translations of names, based merely on apparent

+similarities of sound.

+

+At all events, in the Kararu-Matteri phratries, we find Eagle Hawk

+and Crow opposed, appearing in opposite phratries in five cases, just

+as they do in tribes far south.[17] Again, in the Kulin "nation," now

+extinct, we learn that their phratries were Bunjil (Eagle Hawk) and

+Waa (Crow), while of the totems nothing is known.[18] It is obvious

+that several phratry names, capable of being translated, mean these two

+animals, Eagle Hawk and Crow, while two other widespread phratry names,

+Yungaru and Wutaru, appear to be connected with other animals. "The

+symbol of the Yungaru division," says Mr. Bridgman, "is the Alligator,

+and of the Wutaru, the Kangaroo."[19] Mr. Chatfield, however, gives Emu

+or Carpet Snake for Wutaru, and Opossum for Yungaru.[20]

+

+More certain animal names for phratries are Kroki-Kumite;

+Krokitch-Gamutch; Krokitch-Kuputch; Ku-urokeetch-Kappatch;

+Krokage-Kubitch; all of which denote two separate species of cockatoo;

+while these birds, _sometimes under other names_, are totems in

+the phratries named after them. The tribe may not know the meaning

+of its phratry names. Thus, in tribes east of the Gournditch Mara,

+Kuurokeetch means Long-billed Cockatoo, and Kappatch means Banksian

+Cockatoo, as I understand.[21] But, within the phratries of all the

+Kuurokeetch-Kappatch forms of names, the two Cockatoos also occur

+_under other names_, as totem kins: such names are Karaal, Wila,

+Wurant, and Garchuka.[22]

+

+In the Annan River tribe, Mr. Howitt gives the phratries as Walar (a

+Bee), and Marla (a Bee), doubtless two Bees of different species.[23]

+In this case two names of matrimonial classes, Walar and Jorro, also

+mean Bee. Other cases of conjectural interpretation of phratry names

+might be given, but where the phratry names can be certainly translated

+they are names of animals, in all Australian cases known to me except

+one. When the phratry names cannot be translated, the reason may be

+that they were originally foreign names, borrowed, with the phratriac

+institution itself, by one tribe from another. Thus if tribes with

+totems Eagle Hawk and Crow (Biliara and Waa, let us say) borrowed the

+phratriac institution from a Mukwara-Kilpara tribe, they might take

+over Mukwara and Kilpara as phratry names, while not knowing, or at

+last forgetting, their meaning.

+

+Borrowing of songs and of religious dances is known to be common in

+the tribes, and it is certain that the Arunta are borrowing four class

+names from the north. Again, several tribes have the Kamilaroi _class_

+names (Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi), but have not the Kamilaroi _phratry_

+names, Kupathin and Dilbi. Thus the Wiraidjuri, with Kamilaroi _class_

+names, have not Kamilaroi _phratries_, but have Mukula (untranslated),

+and Budthurung (Black Duck). The Wonghibon, with Kamilaroi _class_

+names, have _phratries_ Ngielbumurra and Mukumurra. On the other

+hand the Kaiabara tribe, far north in Queensland, have the Kamilaroi

+_phratry_ names Dilebi and Kubatine (= Dilbi and Kupathin), but their

+class names are not those of the Kamilaroi.[24]

+

+It may be that some tribes, which had already _phratries_ not of

+the Kamilaroi names, borrowed the Kamilaroi _classes_, while other

+tribes having the Kamilaroi _phratries_ evolved, or elsewhere borrowed

+_classes_ of names not those of the Kamilaroi.

+

+Again, when the four or eight class system has taken firm hold, doing

+the work of the phratries, tribes often forget the meaning of the

+phratry names, or forget the names themselves. Once more, the phratry

+names may once have designated animals, whose names were changed for

+others, in the course of daily life, or by reason of some taboo. All

+these causes, with the very feeble condition of Australian linguistic

+studies, hamper us in our interpretations of phratry and class names.

+Often the tribes in whose language they originally occurred may be

+extinct. But we have shown that many phratry names are names of

+animals, and that the animals which give names to phratries often

+occur, in Australia as in America, as totems within their own phratries.

+

+We have thus discovered the two lost totem kins!

+

+Thus, if only for once, conjectures made on the strength of a theory

+are proved to be correct by facts later observed. We guessed (i.)

+that in the phratries should be totem-kin animals identical with the

+phratriac animals. We guessed (ii.) that the phratriac names of unknown

+sense might be identical in meaning with the actual everyday names of

+the totem animals. And we guessed (iii.) for reasons of early marriage

+law (as conjectured in our system) that the totem kins of the same

+names as the phratries would be found each in the phratry of its own

+name--if discovered in Australia at all.

+

+All three conjectures are proved to be correct. The third was implied

+in Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old hypothesis, that there were two

+original groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and that the totem kins were

+segmented out of them, so that each original animal-named group would

+necessarily head its own totemic colonies. But this, in many cases, as

+we have seen, is what it does not do, and another animal of its genus

+heads the opposite phratry.

+

+Not accepting Mr. Frazer's old theory, I anticipated the discovery of

+Eagle Hawk totem kin _in_ Eagle Hawk phratry, and of Crow _in_ Crow

+phratry, for reasons less simple and conspicuous. It has been shown,

+and is obvious that, by exogamy and female descent, each local group of

+animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, would come to contain members of

+every group name _except its own_. When the men of Crow _local_ group

+had for generations never married a woman of Crow name, and when the

+wives, of other names, within Crow _local_ group had bequeathed these

+other names to their children, there could be, in Crow local group,

+no Crow _by descent_, nor any Eagle Hawk _by descent_ in Eagle Hawk

+_local_ group.

+

+Suppose that these two local groups, each full of members of other

+animal names derived from other groups by maternal descent, made

+_connubium_, and became phratries containing totem kins. _What, then,

+would be the marriageable status of the two kins which bare the phratry

+names?_ All Crows would be, as we saw, by my system, in Eagle Hawk

+phratry; all Eagle Hawks would be Crow phratry (or other phratries, or

+"sub-phratries," if these existed). They could not marry, of course,

+within their own phratries, that was utterly out of the question. _But,

+also, they could not marry into the opposite phratries, lately local

+groups, because these bore their own old sacred local group names_. For

+the the law of the local group had been, "_No marriage within the name

+of the local group_," "No Crow to marry into local group Crow." Yet

+here is Crow who, by phratry law, cannot marry into his own phratry,

+Eagle Hawk; while, if he marries into phratry Crow, he contravenes

+the old law of "No marriage within the local group of your own name."

+That group, to be sure, is now an element in a new organisation, the

+phratry organisation, but, as Dr. Durkheim says in another case, "The

+old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."[25]

+

+This quandary would necessarily occur, under the new conditions, and in

+the new legal situation created by the erection of the two animal-named

+local groups into phratries.

+

+Two whole totem kins, say Wolf and Raven, or Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+were, in the new conditions, _plus_ the old legal survival, cut off

+from marriage. If they died celibate, their disappearance needs no

+further explanation. But they do not disappear. If they changed their

+totems their descendants are lost under new totem names; but, if

+totems were now fully-blown entities, they could not change their

+totems. They could, however, desert their local tribe, which has no

+_tribal_ "religion" (it sometimes, however, has an animal name), and

+join another set of local groups (as Urabunna and Arunta do constantly

+naturalise themselves among each other, to-day), or, _they could simply

+change their phratries_ (late their local groups). Eagle Hawk totem

+kin, by going into Eagle Hawk phratry, could marry into Crow phratry;

+and Crow totem kin, by going into Crow phratry, could marry into Eagle

+Hawk phratry. This, I suggest, was what they did.

+

+This would entail a shock to tender consciences, as each kin is now

+marrying into the very phratry which had been forbidden to it. But, if

+totems were now full blown, anything, however desperate, was better

+than to change your totem; and after all, Eagle Hawk and Crow were only

+returning each into the new phratry which represented their old local

+group by maternal descent. Thus in America we do find Wolf totem kin,

+among the Thlinkets, in Wolf phratry, and Raven in Raven phratry; with

+Eagle Hawk in Eagle Hawk, Crow in Crow phratries, Cockatoo and Bee

+in Cockatoo and Bee phratries, Black Duck in Black Duck phratry, in

+Australia.

+

+The difficulty, that Crow and Eagle Hawk were now marrying precisely

+where they had been forbidden to marry when phratry law first was

+sketched out, has been brought to my notice. But the weakest must go to

+the wall, and, as soon as the totem became (as Mr. Howitt assures us

+that it has become) nearer, dearer, more intimately a man's own than

+the phratry animal, to the wall, under pressure of circumstances, went

+attachment to the phratry. _Il faut se marier_, and marriage could

+only be achieved, for totem kins of the phratry names; by a change of

+phratry.

+

+But is the process of totem kins changing their local groups (now

+become phratries) a possible process? Under the new _régime_ of fully

+developed totemism it was possible; more, it was certainly done, in the

+remote past, by individuals, as I proceed to demonstrate.

+

+

+

+[1] _Totemism_, p. 62. Cf. McLennan, _Studies_, Series II. pp. 369-371.

+

+[2] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. pp. 5-7.

+

+[3] It is not plain what Mr. Frazer meant when he wrote (_Totemism_,

+p. 63). "Clearly split totems might readily arise from single families

+separating from the clan and expanding into new clans." Thus a male of

+"clan" Pelican has the personal name "Pouch of a Pelican." But, under

+female descent, he could not possibly leave the Pelican totem kin,

+and set up a clan named "Pelican's Pouch." His wife, of course, would

+be of another "clan," say Turtle, his children would be Turtles; they

+could not inherit their father's personal name, "Pouch of a Pelican,"

+and set up a Pelican's Pouch clan. The thing is unthinkable. "A single

+family separating from the clan" of female descent, would inevitably

+possess at least (with monogamy) two totem names, those of the father

+and mother, among its members. The event might occur with male descent,

+if the names of individuals ever became hereditary exogamous totems,

+but not otherwise. And we have no evidence that the personal name of an

+individual ever became a hereditary totem name of an exogamous clan or

+kin.

+

+[4] It was first put to me by Mr. N. W. Thomas, in _Man_, January 1904,

+No. 2.

+

+[5] Mr. Howitt affirms that the relative lateness of these classes, as

+sub-divisions of the phratries, is "now positively ascertained." (_J.

+A. I._, p. 143, Note. 1885.)

+

+[6] Spencer and Gillen, _passim_.

+

+[7] Curr, _The Australian Race_, ii. p. 165. Trubner, London, 1886.

+

+[8] Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423-424. Mr. Howitt renders Kilpara, "Crow,"

+among the Wiimbaio, citing Mr. Bulmer, (_Native Tribes of S. E.

+Australia_, p. 429.)

+

+[9] Brough Smyth. i p. 86.

+

+[10] Danks, _J. A. I._, xviii. 3, pp. 281-282.

+

+[11] Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423, 424.

+

+[12] Cameron, _J. A. I._, xiv. p. 348. _Native Tribes of S-E.

+Australia_, p. 99.

+

+[13] _Biliarinthu_ is a class name in the Worgaia tribe of Central

+Australia. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 747.)

+

+[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 98-100.

+

+[15] Ibid., p. 102.

+

+[16] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 107.

+

+[17] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 91-94.

+

+[18] Ibid., p. 126.

+

+[19] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 40. 1880.

+

+[20] Ibid., p. 41.

+

+[21] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 125.

+

+[22] Ibid., pp. 121-124.

+

+[23] Ibid., p. 118.

+

+[24] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.

+

+[25] _L'Année Sociologique_, v. p. 106, Note. _Social Origins_, p. 56,

+Note.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX

+

+TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

+

+

+      The totemic redistribution--The same totem is never

+      in both phratries--This cannot be the result of

+      accident--Yet, originally, the same totems must have

+      existed in _both_ phratries, on any theory of the origin

+      of phratries--The present state of affairs is the result

+      of legislation--To avoid clash of phratry law and totem

+      law, the totems were redistributed--No totem in both

+      phratries--Recapitulation--Whole course of totemic

+      evolution has been surveyed--Our theory colligates every

+      known fact--Absence of conjecture in our theory--All the

+      causes are _veræ causæ_--Protest against use of such terms

+      as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems,"

+      "sub-totems"--The true totem is hereditary, and marks the

+      exogamous limit--No other is genuine.

+

+

+That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was

+necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial

+problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed

+conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an

+arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of

+laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members

+of totem kins.

+

+That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had

+become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in

+all the primitive types of tribal organisation: _The same totem never

+exists in both phratries_.[1] This in no way increases, as things

+stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in

+the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more

+recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem

+kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never

+in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.[2]

+Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in

+both of the _local_ groups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus

+if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives

+from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women

+would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle

+Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries,

+representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both

+of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe,

+Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the

+other.

+

+This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the

+first establishment of phratry law, or later.

+

+If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the

+two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it

+remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow

+group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by

+Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose

+new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.

+

+It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of

+the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least,

+in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, by

+_phratry_ law, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his

+own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. By _totem_ law, however, he may

+not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was

+fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged

+so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it

+necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes,

+say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes

+in Crow phratry, or _vice versa_. They obviously could not change

+their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry,

+the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to

+override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the

+course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many

+phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class

+names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America,

+and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among

+totemists--(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).

+

+But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have

+decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated

+by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy

+still.

+

+Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as

+we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been

+demonstrated by actual fact, by that _re_distribution of totem kins in

+the phratries--never the same totem in both phratries--which cannot be

+due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that

+nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf.

+Chapter IV.)

+

+It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition

+to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the

+rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem

+being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that

+became a phratry name, including several totem kins.

+

+Now that this feeling--to which the totem of the kin was far nearer

+and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its

+name--is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr.

+Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory--his

+own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our

+terminology, the phratry name) "is _general_, the totem name is in

+one sense _individual_, for it is certainly nearer to the individual

+than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he

+belongs."[3] Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to

+be much _nearer_ to the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than

+the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.[4]

+

+As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose

+men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and

+we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never

+the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their

+phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on

+my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed

+us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate

+marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.

+

+It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not

+account for the fact that phratriac names--say Eagle Hawk, Crow--are

+commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that

+Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."[5]

+

+We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that

+the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing,

+from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk;

+and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions

+very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no

+everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with

+the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other

+names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.

+

+Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole

+course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves

+but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven,

+by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he

+had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons

+and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and

+milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing,

+of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal

+names, which I show to be usual as group _sobriquets_ in ancient Israel

+and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for

+silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be

+signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs,

+whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is

+no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner

+naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring,

+as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this

+day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long

+been forgotten.

+

+It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate

+a mystical _rapport_, and transcendental connection, between the name

+and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that this _rapport_

+is exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that

+myths have been invented to explain the _rapport_ which must, it is

+held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases.

+It is no conjecture that the myths explain the _rapport_, usually,

+as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is

+no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood,

+and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood

+of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas,

+if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an

+inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an

+animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection

+between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one

+animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?

+

+We have thus reached _totemism_, and we trace its varying forms in

+the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution--under

+changing conditions--of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrably

+_veræ causæ_, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the

+hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.

+

+The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt

+justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning

+of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names

+lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or

+are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic

+anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent,

+become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names

+(names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among

+the isolated Kurnai.

+

+In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members

+of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error

+of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters

+by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or

+individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an

+associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under

+some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron

+animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after

+a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem

+kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one

+totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are

+not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems,"

+"Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying

+totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or

+to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised

+and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later

+devised.

+

+

+[1] The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.

+

+[2] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 55--57, in which the author fails to

+discover any mode by which the distribution could occur accidentally or

+automatically.

+

+[3] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 40.

+

+[4] Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.

+

+[5] N. W. Thomas, _Man_, January 1904, No. 2.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X

+

+MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

+

+

+      Matrimonial classes--Their working described--Prevent

+      persons of successive generations from

+      intermarrying--Child and parent unions forbidden in

+      tribes without matrimonial classes--Obscurity caused by

+      ignorance of philology--Meanings of names of classes

+      usually unknown--Mystic names for common objects--Cases in

+      which meaning of class names is known--They are names of

+      animals--Variations in evidence--Names of classes from the

+      centre to Gulf of Carpentaria--They appear to be Cloud,

+      Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat--Uncertainty of these

+      etymologies--One totem to one totem marriages--Obscurity

+      of evidence--Perhaps the so-called "totems" are

+      matrimonial classes--Meaning of names forgotten--Or

+      names tabued--The classes a deliberately framed

+      institution--Unlike phratries and totem kins--Theory of

+      Herr Cunow--Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.

+

+

+The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been

+explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi,

+who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to

+a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer

+has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our

+term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into

+its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's

+"sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of

+these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in

+its mother's phratry, which is _not_ its mother's. That a man of class

+Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin

+phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem,

+belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which is _not_ hers, that is,

+belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of

+the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally

+differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally

+forbid their intermarriage.

+

+But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom,

+among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning

+of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among

+the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his

+phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the

+Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes,

+while retaining one result of that organisation--no parent and child

+marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the

+centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous

+and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in

+the north.

+

+One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of

+their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their

+names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention

+no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia

+could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.

+

+In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names

+of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative

+philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and

+Sanskrit divine names, say, Athênê, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon,

+comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found

+an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was

+disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or

+two, remained impenetrably obscure.

+

+If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a

+copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the

+weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy

+to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of

+Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have

+manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these

+laws have been codified by no Grimm.

+

+As a science, Australian philology does not exist. In 1880 Mr. Fison

+wrote, "It is simply impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of these

+words" (changes of name and grade conferred at secret ceremonies),

+"without a very full knowledge of the native dialects," and without

+strong personal influence with the blacks.... "In all probability

+there are not half-a-dozen men so qualified in the whole Australian

+continent."[1]

+

+The habit of using, in the case of the initiate, mystic terms even for

+the everyday names of animals, greatly complicates the problem. It

+does not appear that most of the recorders of the facts know even one

+native dialect as Dr. Walter Roth knows some dialects of North-West

+Central Queensland. In the south-east, Kamilaroi was seriously

+studied, long ago, by Mr. Threlkeld and Mr. Ridley, who wrote tracts

+in that language. Sir George Grey and Mr. Matthews, with many others,

+have compiled vocabularies, the result of studies of their own, and

+Mr. Curr collected brief glossaries of very many tribes, by aid of

+correspondents without linguistic training.

+

+Into this ignorance as to the meanings of the names of matrimonial

+classes, Mr. Howitt brings a faint little gleam of light In a few

+cases, he thinks, the meaning of class and "sub-class" names is

+ascertained. Among the Kuinmurbura tribe, between Broad Sound and Shoal

+water Bay, the "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes") "were totems."

+By this Mr. Howitt obviously means that the classes bore animal names.

+They meant (i.) the Barrimundi, (ii.) a Hawk, (iii.) Good Water, and

+(iv.) Iguana.[2] For the Annan River tribe, he gives "sub-classes"

+(our "matrimonial classes"), (i.) Eagle Hawk, (ii.) Bee, (iii.)

+Salt-Water-Eagle Hawk, (iv.) Bee.[3] This is not very satisfactory. In

+previous works he gave so many animal names for his "sub-classes," Mr.

+Frazer's "sub-phratries" (our "matrimonial classes"), that Mr. Frazer

+wrote, "It seems to follow that the sub-phratries of the Kamilaroi

+(Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have, or once had, totems also," that is,

+had names derived from animals or other objects.[4]

+

+Mr. Howitt himself at one time appeared to hold that the names of the

+matrimonial classes are often animal names. His phraseology here is

+not very lucid. "The main sections themselves are frequently, probably

+always, distinguished by totems." Here he certainly means that the

+phratries have usually animal names, though we are not told that the

+phratries, as such, treat their name-giving animal, even when they know

+the meaning of its name, "with the decencies of a totem." Mr. Howitt

+goes on, "The probability is that they are all" (that all the classes

+are) "totems."[5] By this Mr. Howitt perhaps intends to say that all

+the "classes" (both the phratries and the matrimonial classes) probably

+have animal or other such names.

+

+Again, the class names of the Kiabara tribe were said to denote four

+animals--Turtle, Bat, Carpet Snake, Cat.[6] But now (1904) the Kiabara

+class names are given without translation, and the four animals are

+thrown into the list of totems, with Flood Water and Lightning totems

+(which names were previously given as translations of Kubatine and

+Dilebi, the phratry names).[7] Doubtless Mr. Howitt has received

+more recent information, but, if we accept what he now gives us, the

+meanings of his "sub-class" names are only ascertained in the cases of

+two tribes, and then are names of animals.

+

+I spent some labour in examining the class names of the tribes studied

+by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, from the Arunta in the centre to the

+Tingilli at Powell's Creek, after which point our authors no longer

+marched due north, but turned east, at a right angle, reaching the

+sea, and the Binbinga, the Mara, and Anula coast tribes, on or near

+the MacArthur River. The class names of these coastal tribes did not

+resemble those of the central tribes. But if Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+had held north by west, in place of turning due east from Newcastle

+Waters, they would have found, as far as the sea at Nichol Bay, four

+classes whose names closely resemble the class names of the central

+tribes, and are reported as Paljarie, or Paliali, or Palyeery (clearly

+the Umbaia and Binbinga Paliarinji), Kimera or Kymurra, (obviously

+Kumara), Banigher, or Bunaka, or Panaka (Panunga, cf. Dieri Kanunka =

+Bush Wallaby),[8] and Boorungo, or Paronga.[9]

+

+It thus appears scarcely doubtful that, from the Arunta in the centre,

+to the furthest north, several of the class names are of the same

+linguistic origin, and--whether by original community of speech, or by

+dint of borrowing--had once the same significance. Now we can show that

+some of these names, in the dialects of one tribe or another, denote

+objects in nature. Thus Warramunga Tj-_upila'_ (Tj being an affix) at

+least suggests the Dieri totem, _Upala_, "Cloud." _Biliarinthu_, in the

+same way, suggests the _Barinji Biliari_, "Eagle Hawk," or the Umbaia

+Paliarinji. _Ungalla_, or _Thungalla_, is Arunta _Ungilla_, "Crow,"

+the Ungōla, or Ungăla, "Crow" of the Yaroinga and Undekerabina of

+North-West Queensland,[10] while _Panunga, Banaka, Panaka,_ resembles

+Dieri _Kanunka_--"Bush Wallaby," or _Kanunga_, "Kangaroo Rat."

+

+The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to

+class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may

+seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other,

+or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical

+change are obvious. We lay no stress on the "equations" given above,

+but merely offer the suggestion that class names have often been animal

+names, and hint that inquiry should keep this idea in mind.

+

+I do not, then, offer my "equations" as more than guesses in a field

+peculiarly perilous. The word which means "fire" in one tribe, means

+"snake" in another. "What fools these fellows are, they call 'fire'

+'snakes,'" say the tribesmen. However, if we guess right, we find Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Cloud, and Kangaroo Rat, as class names, over an enormous

+extent of Central and Northern Australia.[11]

+

+About the deliberate purpose of the classes there can be no doubt. They

+were introduced to bar marriages, not between parents and children, for

+these are forbidden in primitive tribes, but between persons of the

+parental and filial generations. Or the names were given to stereotype

+classes, already existing, but hitherto anonymous, within which

+marriage was already prohibited. To make the distinction permanent,

+it was only necessary to have a linked pair of classes of different

+names in each phratry, the child never taking the maternal class name,

+but always that of the linked class in her phratry (under a system of

+female descent). The names Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, would have served

+the turn as well as any others. If a tribe had two words for young, and

+two for old, these would have served the turn; as

+

+Phratry { Jeune. _Dilbi_ { Old.

+

+Phratry

+

+_Kupatkin_ { Vieux. { Young.

+

+

+Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with

+assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we

+guess that this may have been so more generally.

+

+According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say,

+of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or

+rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other

+class" (phratry).[12] But neither in their first nor second volume do

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure

+point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the

+northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another

+special totem."[13] This would seem _prima facie_ to be an almost

+impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among

+tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot

+be obtained.

+

+Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage

+is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial

+classes.[14] Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry

+names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the

+phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain

+many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin

+with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense,

+and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry

+called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but

+"sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several

+totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements

+as were accessible in 1887.[15] There might conceivably be, in some

+tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal

+names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins.

+With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might

+be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many

+tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry

+names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.

+

+Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem

+names--two for each phratry--might be tabued or reserved, and made to

+act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the

+actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem

+kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other

+cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that,

+among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each

+of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition

+exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a

+stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is

+"Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to

+orange or monkey _in everyday life_. It is an archaic word of the same

+significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving

+object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes

+appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as

+we have shown that some phratry names also are.

+

+For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different

+class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries

+and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal

+and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such

+names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare

+not go, in the present state of our information.

+

+The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed

+institution.

+

+In this respect they seem to differ from the phratry and totem names,

+which, as we have tried to show, are things of long and unconscious

+evolution. But conscious purpose is evident in the institution of

+matrimonial classes. We tentatively suggest that, if their names turn

+out to be usually names of animals and other objects, this occurs

+because animal-named sub-phratries once existed, and were converted

+into the mechanism of the classes; or because the pre-existing

+totemic system of nomenclature was preserved in the development of

+a new institution. Herr Cunow's theory that the class names mean

+"Young," "Old," "Big," "Little" (_Kubbi = Kubbura_, "young"; _Kunibo =

+Kombia_, _Kumbia, Gumboka_, "great or old"), needs a wide and assured

+etymological basis.[16] Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis appears to assume

+that "clans," exogamous, with female descent, are territorial, which

+(see Chapter V.) is not possible.

+

+Whatever their names may mean, the matrimonial classes were instituted

+to prevent marriage between persons of parental and filial generations.

+

+

+[1] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 59, 60.

+

+[2] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. III.

+

+[3] Ibid., p. 118.

+

+[4] _Totemism_, p. 84. Cf. _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 41.

+

+[5] _J. A. I._, 1885, p. 143. Cf. Note 4.

+

+[6] _J. A. I._, xiii. pp. 336, 341.

+

+[7] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.

+

+[8] _J. A. I._, August 1890, p. 38.

+

+[9] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 36. _J. A. I._, ix. pp. 356, 357. Curr,

+i. p. 298. _Austral. Assoc. Adv. Science_, ii. pp. 653. 654. _Journal

+Roy. Soc. N.S.W._ vol. xxxii. p. 86. R. H. Matthews.

+

+[10] Roth, p. 50.

+

+[11] Mr. N. W. Thomas helped the chase of these names, without claiming

+any certainty for the "equations."

+

+[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 176. Citing Spencer

+end Gillen, p. 60.

+

+[13] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 71, Note 2.

+

+[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 189-194.

+

+[15] _Totemism_, pp. 64-67.

+

+[16] _Die Verwandschafts Organisationen der Australneger_. Stuttgart,

+1894.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XI

+

+MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+      Mr. Frazer's latest theory--Closely akin to that of

+      Professor Spencer--Arunta totemism the most archaic--Proof

+      of Arunta primitiveness--Their ignorance of the facts

+      of procreation--But the more primitive south-eastern

+      tribes are not ignorant of the facts--Proof from Mr.

+      Howitt--Yet south-eastern tribes are subject to Mr.

+      Frazer's supposed causes of ignorance--Mr. Frazer's new

+      theory cited--No account taken of primitive tribes of

+      the southern interior--Similar oversight by Mr. Howitt

+      as regards religion--Examples of this oversight--Social

+      advance does not explain the religion of tribes which have

+      not made the social advance--Theory of borrowing needed by

+      Mr. Howitt--Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+      exogamy--Objections to the suggestion.

+

+

+Throughout these chapters, when there was occasion to mention the

+totemic theories of Mr. J. G. Frazer, we have spoken of them with

+reserve, as the theory of this or that date. Fortunately his article,

+"The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian

+Aborigines," in the _Fortnightly Review_ (September 1905), enables us

+to report Mr. Frazer's latest, perhaps final, hypothesis. "After years

+of sounding," he says, "our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

+

+In essence Mr. Frazer's latest hypothesis is that of Professor Baldwin

+Spencer. He accepts _Pirrauru_ as "group marriage," and holds that the

+Arunta retain the most archaic form of totemism now known to exist.

+In Chapter III. we believe ourselves to have proved that _Pirrauru_

+is not "group marriage"; and that the "classificatory names for

+relationships "do not demonstrate the existence of "group marriage" in

+the relatively near, or of promiscuity in the very distant past.

+

+In Chapter IV. we show that, by Professor Spencer's statement,

+the Arunta are in a highly advanced social state for Australians.

+Inheritance of local office (Alatunjaship) and of the paternal totemic

+ritual goes in the male, not in the female line of descent, which is

+confessedly the more archaic. (Mr. Frazer, however, now thinks this

+point open to doubt.) The institutions are of a _local_ character; and

+the ceremonials are of what Professor Spencer considers the later and

+much more complex type. Arunta totemism, Mr. Spencer shows, depends

+on the idea of ancestral spirits attached to stone _churinga nanja_,

+amulets of various forms usually inscribed with archaic patterns, and

+these _churinga nanja_, with this belief about them, are not found

+outside of the Arunta region. Without them, the Arunta system of

+totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer

+says nothing. For these and many other reasons, most of which have been

+urged by Dr. Durkheim, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Marett, and other students, we

+have explained the Arunta system as a late, isolated, and apparently

+unique institution. As the Arunta ceremonials and institutions, with

+inheritance in the male line and local magistracies hereditable in

+the male line, are at the opposite pole from the primitive, while the

+Arunta totemic system reposes on an isolated superstition connected

+with manufactured stone objects, and not elsewhere found in Australia,

+it has seemed vain to regard Arunta totemism as the most archaic.

+

+This, however, is the present hypothesis of Mr. Frazer, as of Mr.

+Spencer, and he adduces a proof of Arunta primitiveness concerning

+which too little was said in our Chapter IV. The Arunta system

+"ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of

+offspring; and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as

+well as the paternal side."[1] The theory "denies implicitly, and the

+natives themselves deny explicitly, that children are the fruit of the

+commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance of natural causation

+cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote."[2]

+

+Now when the Arunta "ignore the tie of blood on the maternal side,"

+they prove too much. They ignore that of which they are not ignorant.

+Not being idiots, they are well aware of the maternal tie of blood;

+but they do not permit it to affect the descent of the totem, which is

+regulated by their isolated superstition, the doctrine of reincarnation

+combined with the _churinga nanja_ belief. Nor do they ignore

+fatherhood, as we saw, in affairs of inheritance of local office and

+totemic rites.

+

+But they _do_ deny that the intercourse of the sexes is the cause of

+birth of children. Here the interesting point is that tribes much more

+primitive, the south-eastern tribes, with female reckoning of descent,

+inheritance in the female line, and no hereditary local moderatorships,

+are perfectly well aware of all that the more advanced Arunta do

+not know. Yet they, quite as much as the Arunta, are subject to the

+causes which, according to Mr. Frazer, produce the Arunta nescience

+of the facts of procreation. That nescience, says Mr. Frazer, "may

+be explained easily enough from the habits and modes of thought of

+savage men." Thus, "first, the sexual act precedes the first symptoms

+of pregnancy by a considerable interval." _Je n'en vois pas la

+nécessité._ Secondly, savage tribes "allow unrestricted licence of

+intercourse between the sexes under puberty," and thus "familiarise

+him" (the savage) "with sexual unions that are necessarily sterile;

+from which he may not unnaturally conclude that the intercourse of

+the sexes has nothing to do with the birth of offspring." The savage,

+therefore, explains the arrival of children (at least the Arunta does)

+by the entrance of a discarnate ancestral spirit into the woman.

+

+The conspicuous and closing objection to this theory is, that savages

+who are at least as familiar as the Arunta with (1) the alleged

+remoteness in time of the sexual act from the appearance of the first

+symptoms of pregnancy (among them, such an act and the symptoms may

+be synchronous), and (2) with licence before puberty, are not in

+the Arunta state of ignorance. They are under no illusions on these

+interesting points.

+

+The tribes of social organisation much more primitive than that of

+the Arunta, the south-eastern tribes, as a rule, know all about the

+matter. Mr. Howitt says, "these" (south-eastern) "aborigines, even

+while counting descent--that is, counting the class names--through the

+mother, never for a moment feel any doubt, according to my experience,

+that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe

+their infantine nurture to their mother."[3] Mr. Howitt also quotes

+"the remark made to me in several cases, that a woman is only a nurse

+who takes care of a man's children for him."[4]

+

+Here, then, we have very low savages among whom the causes of savage

+ignorance of procreation, as explained by Mr. Frazer, are present,

+but who, far from being ignorant, take the line of Athene in the

+_Eumenides_ of Æschylus. I give Mr. Raley's translation of the

+passage:--

+

+"The parent of that which is called her child is not really the

+_mother_ of it, she is but the _nurse_ of the newly conceived fœtus. It

+is the male who is the author of its being, while she, as a stranger

+for a stranger (_i.e._ no _blood relation_), preserves the young

+plant...."--_Eumenides_, 628-631.

+

+These south-eastern tribes, far more primitive than the Arunta in their

+ceremonials, and in their social organisation, do not entertain that

+dominant factor in Aruntadom, the belief in the perpetual reincarnation

+of the souls of the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_. That

+belief is a philosophy far from primitive. As each child is, in Arunta

+opinion, a being who has existed from the beginning of things, he is

+not, he cannot be, a creature of man's begetting. Sexual acts, say

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, only, at most, "prepare" a woman for the

+reception of a child--who is as old as the world! If the Arunta were

+experimental philosophers, and locked a girl up in Danae's tower, so

+that she was never "prepared," they would, perhaps, be surprised if she

+gave birth to a child.

+

+However that may be, the Arunta nescience about reproduction is not

+caused by the facts which, according to Mr. Frazer, are common to them

+with other savages. These facts produce no nescience among the more

+primitive tribes with female descent, simply because these primitive

+tribes do not share the far from primitive Arunta philosophy of eternal

+reincarnation. If the Arunta deny the fact of procreation among the

+lower animals, that is because "the man and his totem are practically

+indistinguishable," as Mr. Frazer says. What is sauce for the goose is

+sauce for the gander.

+

+The proof of Arunta primitiveness, the only proof, has been their

+nescience of the facts of generation. But we have demonstrated that,

+where Mr. Frazer's alleged causes of that nescience are present,

+among the south-eastern tribes, they do not produce it; while among

+the Arunta, it is caused by their system of philosophy, which the

+south-eastern tribes do not possess.

+

+Mr. Frazer next applies his idea to the evolution of a new theory of

+the Origin of Totemism. Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has

+its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem

+for each region. These centres, _Oknanikilla_, are, in myth, and for

+all that I know, in fact, burial-places of the primal ancestors, and in

+each is one, or there may be more, _Nanja_ trees or rocks, permanently

+haunted by ancestral spirits, all of the same totem, whose stone

+amulets, _churinga nanja_, are lying in or on the ground. When a woman

+feels a living child's part in her being, she knows that it is a spirit

+of an ancestor of the local totem, haunting the _Nanja_, and that totem

+is allotted to the child when born.

+

+Mr. Frazer from these known facts, deduces thus his new theory of the

+Origin of Totemism. It is best to give it in his own words:[5]--

+

+      "Naturally enough, when she is first aware of the

+      mysterious movement within her, the mother fancies that

+      something has that very moment passed into her body, and

+      it is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain

+      what the thing is she should fix upon some object that

+      happened to be near her and to engage her attention at the

+      critical moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be

+      watching a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or

+      bathing in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might

+      imagine that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed,

+      of water, or of a gum-tree, had passed into her, and

+      accordingly, that when her child was born, it was really

+      a kangaroo, a grass-seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to

+      the bodily eye it presented the outward form of a human

+      being. Amongst the objects on which her fancy might pitch

+      as the cause of her pregnancy we may suppose that the

+      last food she had eaten would often be one. If she had

+      recently partaken of emu flesh or yams she might suppose

+      that the emu or yam, which she had unquestionably taken

+      into her body, had, so to say, struck root and grown up in

+      her. This last, as perhaps the most natural, might be the

+      commonest explanation of pregnancy; and if that was so, we

+      can understand why, among the Central Australian tribes,

+      if not among totemic tribes all over the world, the great

+      majority of totems are edible objects, whether animals or

+      plants.[6] Now, too, we can fully comprehend why people

+      should identify themselves, as totemic tribes commonly

+      do, with their totems, to such an extent as to regard

+      the man and his totem as practically indistinguishable.

+      A man of the emu totem, for example, might say, 'An emu

+      entered into my mother at such and such a place and time;

+      it grew up in her, and came forth from her. I am that

+      emu, therefore I am an emu man. I am practically the same

+      as the bird, though to you, perhaps, I may not look like

+      it.' And so with all the other totems. On such a view

+      it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one

+      of his totem species, should regard it with respect and

+      affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed

+      of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess,

+      to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances,

+      for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice

+      of _Intichiuma_, that is, magical ceremonies, performed

+      by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would

+      be a natural development of the original germ or stock

+      of totemism.[7] That germ or stock, if my conjecture is

+      right, is, in its essence, nothing more or less than an

+      early theory of conception, which presented itself to

+      savage man at a time when he was still ignorant of the

+      true cause of the propagation of the species. This theory

+      of conception is, on the principles of savage thought,

+      so simple and obvious that it may well have occurred to

+      men independently in many parts of the world. Thus we

+      could understand the wide prevalence of totemism among

+      distant races without being forced to suppose that they

+      had borrowed it from each other. Further, the hypothesis

+      accounts for one of the most characteristic features of

+      totemism, namely, the intermingling in the same community

+      of men and women of many different totem stocks. For

+      each person's totem would be determined by what may be

+      called an accident, that is, by the place where his mother

+      happened to be, the occupation in which she was engaged,

+      or the last food she had eaten at the time when she first

+      felt the child in her womb; and such accidents (and with

+      them the totems) would vary considerably in individual

+      cases, though the range of variation would necessarily be

+      limited by the number of objects open to the observation,

+      or conceivable by the imagination, of the tribe. These

+      objects would be chiefly the natural features of the

+      district, and the kinds of food on which the community

+      subsisted; but they might quite well include artificial

+      and even imaginary objects, such as boomerangs and

+      mythical beasts. Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which

+      we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on

+      the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the

+      savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might

+      not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which

+      might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the

+      mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season.

+

+      "If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in

+      the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing,

+      based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole

+      history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first

+      place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta

+      and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception

+      with that of locality, could be derived from this

+      hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as

+      I shall point out immediately. And in the second place,

+      the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in

+      its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the

+      ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the

+      Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present.

+      Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and

+      simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the

+      evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of

+      sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

+

+How the totemic spirits became localised, is, Mr. Frazer says, "matter

+of conjecture," and he guesses that, after several women had felt the

+first recognised signs of maternity, "in the same place, and under the

+same circumstances "--for example, at the moment of seeing a Witchetty

+Grub, or a Laughing Boy--the site would become an _Oknanikilla_ haunted

+by spirits of the Laughing Boy or Grub totem.[8] The Arunta view is

+different; these places are burial-grounds of men all of this or

+that totem, who have left their _churinga nanja_ there. About these

+essential parts of the system, Mr. Frazer, as has been observed, says

+nothing. His theory I do not criticise, as I have already stated my

+objection to his premises. "The ultimate origin of exogamy ..." he

+says, "remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," but is a matter of

+deliberate institution. The tribes, already totemic, but not exogamous,

+were divided into the two exogamous phratries, and still later into the

+matrimonial classes, which the most pristine tribes do not possess,

+though they do know about procreation, while the more advanced Arunta,

+with classes and loss of phratry names, do not know. In the primitive

+tribes, with no churinga nanja, the totems became hereditary. Among

+the advanced Arunta, with _churinga nanja_, the totems did not (like

+all other things, including the right to work the paternal totemic

+ritual), become hereditary, though their rites did, which is curious.

+Consequently, Mr. Frazer suggests, the Arunta did not redistribute the

+totems so that one totem never occurs in both exogamous phratries; and

+totems in the region of _churinga nanja_ alone are not exogamous.

+

+Finally the tribes of Central Australia, which we prove to have the

+more advanced ceremonial, system of inheritance, local magistracies

+hereditary in the male line, and the matrimonial classes which

+Mr. Frazer proclaims to be later than the mere phratries of many

+south-eastern tribes--"are the more backward, and the coastal tribes

+the more progressive."[9]

+

+This is a very hard saying!

+

+It seems to rest either on Mr. Frazer's opinion that the south tribes

+of Queensland, and many on the Upper Murray, Paroo, and Barwan rivers

+are "coastal" ("which is absurd"), or on a failure to take them into

+account. For these tribes, the Barkinji, Ta-Ta-Thai, Barinji, and the

+rest, are the least progressive, and "coastal," of course, they are not.

+

+This apparent failure to take into account the most primitive of all

+the tribes, those on the Murray, Paroo, Darling, Barwan, and other

+rivers, and to overlook even the more advanced Kamilaroi, is exhibited

+by Mr. Howitt, whose example Mr. Frazer copies, in the question of

+Australian religious beliefs.

+

+I quote a passage from Mr. Howitt, which Mr. Frazer re-states in his

+own words. He defines "the part of Australia in which a belief exists

+in an anthropomorphic supernatural being, who lives in the sky, and

+who is supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the

+natives ... That part of Australia which I have indicated as the

+habitat of tribes having that belief" (namely, 'certainly the whole of

+Victoria and of New South Wales up to the eastern boundaries of the

+tribes of the Darling River') "is also the area where there has been

+the advance from group marriage to individual marriage, _from descent

+in the female line to that in the male line_; where the primitive

+organisation under the class system has been more or less replaced

+by an organisation based on locality--in fact, where those advances

+have been made to which I have more than once drawn attention in this

+work."[10]

+

+This is an unexpected remark!

+

+Mr. Howitt, in fact, has produced all his examples of tribes with

+descent in the female line, except the Dieri and Urabunna "nations,"

+from the district which he calls "the habitat of tribes in which there

+has been advance ... from descent in the female to that in the male

+line." Apparently all, and certainly most of the south-eastern tribes

+described by him who have not made that advance, cherish the belief in

+the sky-dwelling All Father.

+

+I give examples:--

+

+Narrinyeri          Male descent.        All Father.

+Wiimbaio            Female descent.          "

+Wotjobaluk              " "                  "

+Woeworung           Male descent.            "

+Kulin                   " "                  "

+Kurnai                  " "                  "

+Wiradjuri           Female descent.          "

+Wathi Wathi             " "                  "

+Ta-Ta-Thi               " "                  "

+Kamilaroi               " "                  "

+Yuin                Male descent.            "

+Ngarigo             Female descent.          "

+

+About other tribes Mr. Howitt's information is rather vague, but,

+thanks to Mrs. Langloh Parker, we can add:--

+

+_Euahlayi_     Female descent       All Father.

+

+Here, then, we have eight tribes with female descent and the All

+Father, against five tribes with male descent and the All Father, in

+the area to which Mr. Howitt assigns "the advance from descent in the

+female line to that in the male line." The tribes with female descent

+occupy much the greater part of the southern interior, not of the

+coastal line, of South-East Australia.

+

+Mr. Frazer puts the case thus, "it can hardly be an accidental

+coincidence that, as Dr. Howitt has well pointed out, the same regions

+in which the germs of religion begin to appear have also made some

+progress towards a higher form of social and family life."[11]

+

+But though Dr. Howitt has certainly "pointed it out," his statement

+seems in collision with his own evidence as to the facts. The tribes

+with female descent and the "germs of religion" occupy the greater part

+of the area in which he finds "the advance from descent in the female

+line to that in the male line." He does find that advance, with belief

+in the All Father, in some tribes, mainly coastal, of his area, but

+he also finds the belief in the All Father among "nations" and tribes

+which have not made the "advance"--in the interior. As the northern

+tribes who have made the "advance" are mainly credited with no All

+Father, it is clear that the "advance" in social and family life has

+no connection with the All Father belief. Mr. Howitt, in saying so,

+overlooks his own collection of evidence. Large tribes and nations, in

+the region described by him, are in that social organisation which he

+justly regards as the least advanced of all, yet they have the "germs

+of religion," which he explains as the results of a social progress

+which they have not made.

+

+In these circumstances Mr. Howitt might perhaps adopt a large theory

+of borrowing. The primitive south-east tribes have not borrowed from

+the remote coastal tribes the usage of male descent; they have not

+borrowed matrimonial classes from the Kamilaroi. But, nevertheless,

+they have borrowed, it may be said, their religion from remote coastal

+tribes. Of course, it is just as easy to guess that the coastal tribes

+have borrowed their Bunjil All Father from the Kamilaroi Baiame, or the

+Mulkari of Queensland.

+

+I have not commented on Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+exogamy. It was the result, he thinks, of a deliberate reformation,

+and its earliest form was the division of the tribe into the two

+phratries. "Exogamy was introduced ... at first to prevent the marriage

+of brothers with sisters, and afterwards" (in the matrimonial classes)

+"to prevent the marriage of parents with children."[12] The motive was

+probably a superstitious fear that such close unions would be harmful,

+in some way, "to the persons immediately concerned," according to "a

+savage superstition to which we have lost the clue." I made the same

+suggestion in _Custom and Myth_ (1884). I added, however, that totemic

+exogamy might be only one aspect of the general totem tabu on eating,

+killing, or touching, &c., an object of the totem name. We seem to

+have found the clue to that superstition, including the blood tabu,

+emphasised by Dr. Durkheim. But, on this showing, the animal patrons

+of phratries and totem kins, with their "religion," are among the

+causes of exogamy, while some unknown superstition, in Mr. Frazer's

+system, may have been the cause. As we have a known superstition, of

+origin already explained, it seems unnecessary to suppose an unknown

+superstition.

+

+Again, if the reformers knew who were brothers and sisters, how can

+they have been promiscuous? Further, the phratriac prohibition includes

+vast numbers of persons who are _not_ brothers and sisters, except

+in the phratry. Sires could prohibit unions of brothers and sisters,

+each in his own hearth circle; the phratriac prohibition is much more

+sweeping, so is the matrimonial class prohibition. Once more, parent

+with child unions do not occur among primitive tribes which have no

+matrimonial classes at all.

+

+For these reasons Mr. Frazer's system does not recommend itself at

+least to persons who cherish a different theory.

+

+He may, perhaps, explain the Kaitish usage, in which totems, though

+not hereditary but acquired in the Arunta manner, remain practically

+exogamous, by suggesting that the Kaitish are imitating the totemic

+exogamy of the rest of the savage world. But this hardly accounts for

+the fact that, among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate

+in one, and another set of totems in the other exogamous moiety of

+the tribe. These facts indicate that the Arunta system is relatively

+recent, and has not yet overcome among the Kaitish the old rule of

+totemic exogamy. Mr. Frazer, too, as has been said, does not touch on

+the concomitance of stone _churinga nanja_ with the Arunta system of

+acquiring totems.

+

+

+[1] _Fortnightly Review_, September 1905, p. 453.

+

+[2] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 455; cf. Spencer and Gillen, _N. T. C.

+A._, pp. 124 _seq._, p. 265.

+

+[3] _Journal Anthrop. Institute_, p. 502 (1882).

+

+[4] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 283, 284.

+

+[5] _Fortnightly Review_, pp. 455-458.

+

+[6] As to the Central Australian totems, see Spencer and Gillen,

+_Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, Appendix B, pp. 767-773.

+Amongst the two hundred and one sorts of totems here enumerated, no

+less than a hundred and sixty-nine or a hundred and seventy are eaten.

+

+[7] When some years ago these _Intichiuma_ ceremonies were first

+discovered on a great scale among the Central Australians, I was so

+struck by the importance of the discovery that I was inclined to see in

+these ceremonies the ultimate origin of totemism; and the discoverers

+themselves, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, were disposed to take the same

+view. See Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen, and J. G. Frazer, in _Journal

+of the Anthropological Institute_, xxviii. (1899), pp. 275-286; J. G.

+Frazer, "The Origin of Totemism," _Fortnightly Review_, April and May,

+1899. Further reflection has led me to the conclusion that magical

+ceremonies for the increase or diminution of the totems are likely to

+be a later, though still very early, outgrowth of totemism rather than

+its original root. At the present time these magical ceremonies seem to

+constitute the main function of totemism in Central Australia. But this

+does not prove that they have done so from the beginning.

+

+[8] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 458.

+

+[9] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 463.

+

+[10] Howitt, _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 500.

+

+[11] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 452.

+

+[12] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 6l.

+

+

+

+

+APPENDIX

+

+SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+With some American theories of the origin of totemism, I find it

+extremely difficult to deal. They ought not to be neglected, that were

+disrespectful to the valued labours of the school of the American

+"Bureau of Ethnology." But the expositions are scattered in numerous

+Reports, and are scarcely focussed with distinctness. Again, the

+terminology of American inquirers, the technical words which they use,

+differ from those which we employ. That fact would be unimportant if

+they employed their technical terms consistently. Unluckily this is not

+their practice. The terms "clan," "gens," and "phratry" are by them

+used with bewildering inconsistency, and are often interchangeable.

+When "clan" or _gens_, means, now (i) a collection of _gentes_, or (2)

+of families, or (3) of phratries, and again (4) "clan" means a totem

+kin with female descent; and again (5) a village community; while a

+phratry may be (1) an exogamous moiety of a tribe, or (2) a "family,"

+or (3) a magical society; and a _gens_ may be (1) a clan, or (2) a

+"family," or (3) an aggregate of families, or (4) a totem kin with

+male descent, or (5) a magical society, while "tribal" and "sub-tribal

+divisions" are vaguely spoken of--the European student is apt to be

+puzzled! All these varieties of terminology occur too frequently in

+the otherwise most praiseworthy works of some of the American School

+of Anthropologists. I had collected the examples, but to give them at

+length would occupy considerable space, and the facts are only too

+apparent to every reader.[1]

+

+Once more, and this point is of essential importance, the recent

+writers on totemism in America dwell mainly on the institution as

+found among the tribes of the north-west coast of the States and of

+British Columbia. These tribes are so advanced in material civilisation

+that they dwell in village settlements. They have a system of credit

+which looks like a satirical parody of the credit system of the

+civilised world. In some tribes there is a regular organisation by

+ranks, _noblesse_ depending on ancestral wealth.

+

+It seems sanguine to look for the origins of totemism among tribes so

+advanced in material culture. The origin of totemism lies far behind

+the lowest savagery of Australia. It is found in a more primitive

+form among the southern and eastern than in most of the north-western

+American tribes, but the north-western are chiefly studied, for

+example, by Mr. Hill-Tout, and by Dr. Boas. A new difficulty is caused

+by the alleged intermixture of tribes in very different states of

+social organisation. That intermixture, if I understand Mr. Hill-Tout,

+causes some borrowing of institutions among tribes of different

+languages, and different degrees of culture, in the west of British

+Columbia and the adjacent territories. We find, in the north, the

+primitive Australian type of organisation (Thlinket tribe), with

+phratries, totems, and descent in the female line. South of these are

+the Kwakiutl, with descent wavering in a curious fashion between the

+male and female systems. Further south are the Salish tribes, who have

+evolved something like the modern family, reckoning on both sides of

+the house. I, with Mr. McGee of the United States Bureau of Ethnology,

+suppose the Kwakiutl to be moving from the female to the male line

+of descent. In the opinions of Mr. Hill-Tout and Dr. Boas, they are

+moving from the advanced Salish to the primitive Thlinket system,

+under the influence of their primitive neighbours. It is not for me to

+decide this question. But it is unprecedented to find tribes with male

+reverting to female reckoning of descent

+

+Next, Mr. Hill-Tout employs "totem" in various senses. As totems he

+reckons (1) the sacred animals of the tribe; (2) of the religious or

+magical societies (containing persons of many totems of descent); (3)

+of the individual and (4) the hereditary totems of the kin. All these,

+our author says, are, by their original concept, Guardian Spirits. All

+such protective animals, plants, or other objects, which patronise

+and give names to individuals, or kins, or tribes, or societies, are

+"totems," in the opinion of the late Major Powell, and the "American

+School," and are essentially "guardian spirits." All are derived by the

+American theory[2] from the _manitu_, or guardian, of some individual

+to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired

+dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that

+man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning

+in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory), and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while

+men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society

+"totems" suggested by dreams. These communities may or may not be

+exogamous, they may even be endogamous. By the friends of this theory

+the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as

+"accidental," rather than essential.

+

+Using the word "totem" in this wide sense, or in these many senses,

+which are not ours, it is plain that a man and woman who chance to have

+the same "personal totem," (i) or belong to the same religious society

+with its "totem," (i) or to the same local tribe with its "totem,"

+(3) may marry, and, by this way of looking at the matter, "totems" do

+permit marriage within the totem, and are not exogamous. But we, for

+our part (like Mr. E. B. Tylor, and M. Van Gennep[3]), call none of

+these personal, tribal, or society sacred animals "totems." That term

+we reserve for the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin. Thus it is

+not easy, it is almost impossible, for us to argue with Mr. Hill-Tout,

+as we and he use the term "totem" in utterly different senses.

+

+On his theory there are all sorts of "totems," belonging to individuals

+and to various kinds of associations. The totems hereditary in the kins

+when they are exogamous, are exogamous (on Mr. Hill-Tout's theory)

+because the kins, in certain cases, made a treaty of alliance and

+intermarriage with other kins for purely political purposes. They

+might have made such treaties, and become exogamous, though they had

+no totems, no name-giving animals; and they might have had name-giving

+animals, and yet not made such treaties involving exogamy. Thus totemic

+exogamy is, on this theory, a mere accident: the totem has nothing to

+do with the exogamous rule.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "The totem groups are exogamous not because

+of their common totem, but because of blood relationship. It is

+the blood-tie[4] that bans marriage within the totem group, not the

+common totem. That exogamy and the totem group with female descent go

+together is accidental, and follows from the fact that the totem group

+is always, in Indian theory at least, blood related. Where I believe

+you err is in regarding exogamy as the essential feature of totemism.

+I cannot so regard it. To me it is secondary, and becomes the bar to

+marriage only because it marks kinship by blood, which is the real bar,

+however it may have arisen, and from whatever causes."

+

+Here I am obliged to differ from Mr. Hill-Tout. I know no instance

+in which a tribe with female kin (the most primitive confessedly),

+and with hereditary totems, is not exogamous. Exogamy, then, if an

+accident, must be called an inseparable accident of totemism, with

+female descent, till cases to the contrary are proved to exist. Mr.

+Hill-Tout cites the Arunta case: totems among the Arunta are not

+exogamous. But of that argument we have disposed (see Chapter IV.), and

+it need no longer trouble us.

+

+Again, it is not possible to agree with Mr. Hill-Tout when he writes,

+"It is the blood-tie that bars marriage within the totem group, not

+the common totem." The totem does not by its law prevent marriages of

+blood kin. A man, as far as totem law goes, may marry his daughter by

+blood, a brother may marry his sister on the father's side (with female

+descent), and a man may not marry a woman from a thousand miles away if

+she is of his totem, though she is not of his blood. It is not the real

+blood-tie itself, but the blood-tie as defined and sanctioned by the

+totem, that is not to be violated by marriage within it.

+

+To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal

+or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal

+form, that is _his_ "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his

+descendants, and then it is _their_ "totem"; or his sisters may adopt

+it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem

+of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it

+at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there

+must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals,

+but tribes in America have very few totems. If a man does transmit

+his animal protector, his descendants, lineal or collateral, may

+become exogamous, on the theory, by making other kins treaties of

+intermarriage to secure political alliances; or they may not, just

+as taste or chance direct. All the while, every "totem" of every

+sort, hereditary or not, is, on this theory, a guardian spirit.

+That spiritual entity is the essence of totemism, exogamy is an

+accident--according to Mr. Hill-Tout.

+

+Such is his theory. It is, perhaps, the result of studying the

+North-West American _Sulia_, or "personal totem" answering to the

+_nyarongs_ of Borneo, the _naguals_ of the Southern American tribes,

+the _yunbeai_ of the _Euahlayi_ of New South Wales, and the "Bush

+Souls" of West Africa. All of these are, as the Ibans of Borneo imply

+in the term _nyarong_, "spirit helpers," in animal or material form.

+Some tribes call genuine totems by one name, but call animal familiars

+of an individual by another name. _Budjan_, among the Wiradjuri, stands

+both for a man's totem, and for the animal familiar which, rduring

+apparently hypnotic suggestion," he receives on being initiated.[5]

+Among the Ibans (but not among the few Australian tribes which have

+_yunbeai_), the spirit helper may befriend the great-grandchildren of

+its original _protégé_.[6]

+

+But in no case recorded does this _nyarong_ become the hereditary totem

+of an exogamous kin.

+

+The "spirit helper" does not do that, nor am I aware, on the other

+hand, that the hereditary totem of an exogamous kin is ever, or

+anywhere, regarded as a "tutelary spirit." No such idea has ever

+been found in Australia. Again, if I understand Dr. Boas, among his

+north-western tribes, such as the Thlinket, who have female descent

+and hereditary exogamous totems, the totem is no more regarded as a

+tutelary spirit than it is among the Australians. Of the Kwakiutl

+he says, "The _manitu_" (that is, the individual's tutelary spirit)

+"was acquired by a mythical ancestor, and the connection has become

+so slight, in many cases, that the tutelary genius of the clan has

+degenerated into a crest."

+

+That the "crest" or totem mark was originally a "tutelary genius"

+among the Thlinket, seems to be merely the hypothesis of Dr. Boas.

+Even among the Kwakiutl, in their transitional state, the totem mark

+now is "in many cases a crest." "This degeneration" (from spirit to

+crest), our author writes, "I take to be due to the influence of the

+northern totemism," such as that of the Thlinket.[7] Thus the Thlinket,

+totemic on Australian primitive lines, do _not_ regard their hereditary

+exogamous totems as "tutelary spirits."[8] No more do the Australians,

+nor the many American totemists who claim descent from the animal which

+is their totem.[9]

+

+The tutelary spirit and the true totem, in my opinion, are utterly

+different things. The American theory that all things (their name is

+legion) called "totems" by the American School are, in origin and

+essence, tutelary spirits, is thus countered by the fact that the

+Australian tribes do not regard their hereditary totems as such; nor

+do many American tribes, even when they are familiar with the idea of

+the tutelary spirits of individuals. The Euahlayi, in Australia for

+instance, call tutelary spirits _yunbeai_; hereditary totems they call

+by a separate name, _Dhe_.[10]

+

+The theory that the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin is the

+"spirit helper" or "tutelary genius," acquired by and transmitted by an

+actual ancestor, cannot be proved, for many reasons. We know plenty of

+tribes in which the individual has a "spirit helper," we know none in

+which he bequeaths it _as the totem of an exogamous kin_.

+

+Again we find, (1) in Australia, tribes with hereditary totems, but

+with no "personal totems," as far as our knowledge goes. Whence, then,

+came Australian hereditary totems? Next, (2) we find tribes with both

+hereditary and "personal totems," but the "personal totems" are never

+hereditable. The "spirit helpers," where they do occur in Australia,

+are either the familiars of wizards (like the witch's cat or hare),

+or are given by wizards to others.[11] Next, (3) we find, in Africa

+and elsewhere, tribes with "personal totems," but with no hereditary

+totems. Why not? For these reasons, the theory that hereditary

+kin-totems are personal tutelary spirits become hereditary, seems a

+highly improbable conjecture. If it were right, genuine totemism, with

+exogamy, might arise in any savage society where "personal totems"

+flourish. But we never find totemism, with exogamy, just coming into

+existence.

+

+To sum up the discussion as far as it has gone, Mr. Hill-Tout had

+maintained (1) that the concept of a ghostly helper is the basis of

+all his varieties of so-called "totems." I have replied that the idea

+of a tutelary spirit makes no part of the Australian, or usually of

+the American "concepts" about the hereditary totems. This is matter of

+certainty.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout next argues that hereditary totems are only "personal

+totems" become hereditary, which may happen, he says, in almost any

+stage of savage society. I have replied, "not _plus_ the totemic law of

+exogamy," and he has answered (3) that the law is casual, and may or

+may not accompany a system of totemic kindred, instancing the Arunta,

+as a negative example. In answer, I have shown that the Arunta case is

+not to the point, that it is an isolated "sport."

+

+I have also remarked frequently, in previous works, that under the

+primitive method of reckoning descent in the female line, an individual

+male cannot bequeath his personal protective animal as a kin-name to

+his descendants, so that the hereditary totem of the kin cannot have

+originated in that way. Mr. Hill-Tout answers that it can, and does,

+originate in that way--a male founder of a family can, and does, found

+it by bequeathing his personal protective animal to the descendants of

+his sisters, so that it henceforth passes in the female line. I quote

+his reply to my contention that this is not found to occur.[12]

+

+"The main objection brought against this view of the matter by Mr.

+Andrew Lang and others is that the personal totem is not transmissible

+or hereditable. But is not this objection contrary to the facts of the

+case? We have abundant evidence to show that the personal totem _is_

+transmissible and hereditable. Even among tribes like the Thompson,

+where it was the custom for every one of both sexes to acquire a

+guardian spirit at the period of puberty, we find the totem is in

+some instances hereditable. Teit says, in his detailed account of the

+guardian spirits of the Thompson Indians, that 'the totems of the

+shamans[13] are sometimes inherited directly from the parents'; and

+among those tribes where individual totemism is not so prevalent, as,

+for instance, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, the personal

+totem of a chief or other prominent individual, more particularly if

+that totem has been acquired by means other than the usual dream or

+vision, such as a personal encounter with the object in the forest

+or in the mountains, is commonly inherited and owned by his or her

+posterity. It is but a few weeks ago that I made a special inquiry into

+this subject among some of the Halkomelem tribes of the Lower Fraser.

+'Dr. George,' a noted shaman[14] of the Tcil'Qe'Ek, related to me the

+manner in which his grandfather had acquired their family totem,[15]

+the Bear; and made it perfectly clear that the Bear had been ever since

+the totem of all his grandfather's descendants. The important totem of

+the Sqoiàqî[16] which has members in a dozen different tribes of the

+coast and Lower Fraser Salish, is another case in point. It matters

+little to us _how_ the first possessor of the totem acquired it. We may

+utterly disregard the account of its origin as given by the Indians

+themselves, the main fact for us is, that between a certain object or

+being and a body of people, certain mysterious relations have been

+established, identical with those existing between the individual and

+his personal totem; and _that these people trace their descent from and

+are the lineal descendants of the man or woman who first acquired the

+totem_. Here is evidence direct and ample of the hereditability of the

+individual totem, and American data abound in it."

+

+All these things occur under the system of male kinship. Even if the

+"personal totem" of a chief or shaman is adopted by his offspring, it

+does not affect my argument, nor are the bearers of the badge thus

+inherited said to constitute an exogamous kin.[17] If they do not, the

+affair is not, in my sense, "totemic" at all. We should be dealing not

+with totemism but with heraldry, as when a man of the name of Lion

+obtains a lion as his crest, and transmits it to his family. Meanwhile

+I do not see "evidence direct and ample," or a shred of evidence,

+_that a man's familiar animal is borrowed by his sisters, and handed on

+to their children_.

+

+Next, as to that point, Mr. Hill-Tout writes:[18]--

+

+"To return to Mr. Lang's primary objection, that the evolution of the

+group totem cannot proceed from the personal, individual totem because

+in the more primitive forms of society where totemism originated "male

+ancestors do not found houses or clan names," descent being on the

+female side. As Mr. Lang has laid so much stress upon this argument,

+and is able apart from it to appreciate the force of the evidence

+for the American point of view, if it can be clearly shown that his

+objection has no basis in fact, that his conception of the laws of

+inheritance under matriarchy is faulty, consistency must needs make him

+a convert to the American view. The singular error into which Mr. Lang

+has fallen is in overlooking the fact that male property and rights

+are as hereditable under mother-right as under father-right, the only

+difference being that in the latter case the transmission is _directly_

+from the father to his offspring, and in the former _indirectly_ from

+the maternal uncle to his sister's children. What is there to prevent

+a man of ability under matriarchy from 'founding a family,' that

+is, acquiring an individual totem which by his personal success and

+prosperity is looked upon as a _powerful helper_, and therefore worthy

+of regard and reverence? Under mother-right the _head_ of the clan is

+invariably a man, the elder male relative on the maternal side; and

+the clan name is not so much the property of the woman as of her elder

+brother or her conventional 'father,' that is, her maternal uncle. The

+'fathers' of the group, that is, the maternal uncles, are just as much

+the heads and I founders of houses' and clans in the matriarchal state

+as under the more advanced state of patriarchal rule. And that they

+_do_ found family and group totems the evidence from our northern coast

+tribes makes clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.

+

+"The oft-quoted case of the Bear totem among the Tsimshians is a case

+in point, and this is but one of scores that could be cited. The origin

+of this totem came about in the following manner: 'A man was out

+hunting and met a black bear who took him to his home and taught him

+many useful things. After a lengthy stay with the bear the man returned

+home. All the people became afraid of him, he looked and acted so like

+a bear. Some one took him in hand and rubbed him with magic herbs and

+he became a man again. Thereafter whenever he went hunting his friend

+the bear helped him. He _built a house and painted the bear on the

+front of it, and his sister made a dancing blanket, the design of which

+represented a bear. Thereafter the descendants of his sister used the

+bear for their crest, and were known as the Bear clan._'[19]

+

+"Who was the 'founder of the family' here, and the source of the clan

+totem? Clearly and indubitably the many and _so it invariably was,

+as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems plainly

+shows_.[20] It matters not, I may point out, that these myths may

+have been created since the formation of the clans to account for

+their origin, the point for us is that the man was regarded by the

+natives as the 'founder' of the family and clan. The founders of

+families and totem-crests are as invariably men under matriarchy

+as under patriarchy, the essential difference only between the two

+states in this regard being that under one the descent is through the

+'conventional father,' under the other through the 'real or ostensible

+father.' Such being the case, Mr. Lang's chief argument falls to the

+ground, and the position taken by American students as to the origin of

+group-totems is as sound as before."

+

+Now where, outside the region of myth, is there proof that Mr.

+Hill-Tout's processes ever do occur?

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout argues that the founder of the totem kin is "invariably

+the man, as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems

+plainly shows." But myths have no historical authority, and many of

+these myths show the very opposite: in them a beast or other creature

+_begets_ the "clan."[21] To be sure, Mr. Hill-Tout says nothing about

+_these_ myths, or about scores of familiar American myths[22] to the

+very same effect.

+

+Again, as mythical evidence is worthless, Mr. Hill-Tout argues that

+"the man was regarded by the natives themselves as the 'founder' of

+the family or clan." Yes, in some myths, but not in those which Mr.

+Hill-Tout overlooks.

+

+That the natives in some myths regard the man as founder of a totem

+kin under female descent proves nothing at all. Does the Tsimshian Bear

+myth prove that the natives themselves turn into Bears, and become men

+again? Does it even prove that such an occurrence, to-day, would now

+seem normal to them? Nothing is proved, except that _in myth-making_

+the natives think that this metamorphosis may have occurred in the

+past. In the same way--when myth-making--they think that a man might

+convey his badge to his sisters, to be hereditary in the female line.

+To prove his case, Mr. Hill-Tout must show that men actually do thus

+convey their personal protective animals and badges into the female

+line. To that evidence I shall bow.

+

+If I reasoned like our author, I might argue, "The South African tribes

+say that their totems (_siboko_) arose in nicknames given to them on

+account of known historical incidents, therefore my conjecture that

+totems thus arose, in group names given from without, is corroborated

+by the natives themselves, who testify thus to the actuality of that

+mode of getting tribal names and _siboko_."[23]

+

+But I, at least, cannot argue thus! The process (_my_ process) does

+not and cannot occur in South African conditions, where tribes of an

+advanced culture have sacred protective animals. The natives have

+merely hit on my own conjecture, as to the remote germ of totemic

+names, and applied it where the process never occurs. The Tsimshians,

+in the same way, are familiar with the adoption of protective animals

+by male individuals. They are also familiar with the descent of

+the kin-totem through females. Like the famous writer on Chinese

+Metaphysics, the Tsimshians "combine their information." A man, they

+say, became a bear, and became a man again. He took the Bear for his

+badge; and to account for the transmission of the badge through women,

+the Tsimshians add that his sister also took and transmitted the Bear

+cognisance, as a hereditary totem. They think this could be done,

+exactly as the Bakwena think that their tribal protective animal, the

+Crocodile, the Baboon, or another, could arise in a nickname, _given

+recently_. It could not do so, the process is no longer possible, the

+explanation in this case is false, and does not help my theory of the

+origin of totemism. In the same way the Bear myth does not help Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory, unless he can prove that sisters do actually take

+and transmit to their descendants, as exogamous totems, the _sulia_ or

+individual protective animal of their brothers. Of this process I do

+not observe that Mr. Hill-Tout gives a single verifiable example.

+

+As to this argument, Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "I cannot accept your

+criticism on the poor evidence of the Tsimshian accounts of the origin

+of their totem kins. You could not take such a view, I think, if you

+had personal, first-hand knowledge of the Indian mind. Your objections

+apply to 'classic myths,' but not to the accounts of tribes who are

+_still_ in the totemic stage."

+

+I fail to understand the distinction. It is now universally recognised

+that most myths, "classic" or savage (the classic being survivals of

+savage myths), are mere fanciful hypotheses framed to account for

+unexplained facts. Moreover, I am discussing and comparing the myths

+of various savage races, I am not speaking of "classic myths." Savages

+have anticipated us in every one of our hypotheses as to the origin of

+totemism, but, of course, they state their hypotheses in the shape of

+myths, of stories told to account for the facts. Some Australian myths

+favour Mr. Howitt's hypothesis, others favour that of Mr. Spencer, one

+flatters that of Dr. Haddon, one African myth is the fore-runner of

+my theory, and a myth of the Tsimshians anticipates the idea of Mr.

+Hill-Tout. But all these myths are equally valueless as historical

+evidence.

+

+As to heritage under female kin, which I am said not to understand,

+no man reckoning by female kin has hitherto been said to inherit his

+totem _from his maternal uncle_! A man inherits his totem from his

+mother only, and inherits it if he has no maternal uncles, and never

+had. If a man has a _manitu_, a _nagual_, a _yunbeai_, a _nyarong_, or

+"personal totem," his sister does not take it from him and hand it to

+her children, or, if this ever occurs, I say once more, we need proof

+of it. A man may inherit "property and rights" from his maternal uncles

+under female kin. But I speak of the totem name, which a man undeniably

+does not inherit from his maternal uncle, while there is no proof

+offered that a woman ever takes such a name from her brother, and hands

+it on to her children. So I repeat that, under the system of reckoning

+in the female line, "male ancestors do not found houses or clan names,"

+or are not proved to do so.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It is apparent, probably, that a theory of totemism derived in great

+part from the myths and customs of a few advanced tribes, dwelling in

+village communities, and sometimes in possession of the modern family,

+with male kin, is based on facts which are not germane to the matter.

+The origin of totemism must be sought in tribes of much more backward

+culture, and of the confessedly "more primitive" type of organisation

+with female descent To disprove Mr. Hill-Tout's theory is of course

+impossible. There may have been a time when "personal totems" were as

+common among the Australians as they are now rare. There may have been

+a time when an Australian man's sisters adopted, and transmitted, his

+"personal totem," though that is no longer done to our knowledge. It

+may have chanced that stocks, being provided, on Mr. Hill-Tout's plan,

+with tutelary spirits of animal names descending in the female line,

+made marriage treaties, and so became exogamous. Then we should have

+explained totemism, perhaps, but a considerable number of missing facts

+must be discovered and reported before this explanation can be accepted.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout's scheme, I presume, would work out thus: there are sets

+of human beings, A, B, C, D, E, F. In all of these every man acquires

+an animal, plant, or other friendly object. Their sisters adopt it as a

+name, and hand it on to their children. The stocks are now named after

+the familiar animals, as Grouse, Trout, Deer, Turtle, Buffalo, Salmon,

+and hundreds more. They have hitherto, I presume, married as they

+please, anyhow. But stocks Grouse and Deer think, "We shall be stronger

+if we give our women to each other, and never let a Grouse marry a

+Grouse, or a Deer a Deer." They make this pact, the other stocks,

+Salmon, Turtle, Buffalo, &c., come into it, ranging themselves under

+Deer or Grouse, and now Deer and Grouse are phratries in a tribe with

+the other animals as heads of totem kins in the phratries. The animals

+themselves go on being tutelary spirits, and are highly respected.

+

+This scheme (whether Mr. Hill-Tout would arrange it just thus or not)

+works perfectly well. It explains the origin of exogamy--not by an

+inexplicable _moral_ reform, and bisection of the horde, but as the

+result of a political alliance. It explains the origin of totemism by

+a theory of animal-shaped tutelary spirits taken on by sisters from

+brothers, and bequeathed by the sisters when they become mothers to

+their children. It explains the origin of phratries, and of totem

+kins in the phratries. It works out all along the line--if only one

+knew that very low savages deliberately made political alliances; and

+if all low savages had animal-shaped tutelary spirits; and if these

+were known to be adopted from brothers by sisters, and by sisters

+bequeathed, for an eternal possession, to their children; and if these

+transactions, once achieved, were never repeated in each line of female

+descent--no sister in the next generation taking on her brother's

+personal tutelary animal, and bequeathing it to her children for ever.

+Finally, if savages in general did regard their hereditary totems as

+tutelary spirits, the sketch which I make on Mr. Hill-Tout's lines

+would leave nothing to be desired. But we do not know any of these

+desirable facts.

+

+If I have stated Mr. Hill-Tout's ideas correctly, he agrees with me in

+regarding the tribe as formed by aggregation of many more primitive

+groups. He does not regard the phratries and totem kins as the result

+of the segmentation of a primordial indiscriminate mass or horde,

+split up at the injunction of an inspired medicine man, or by a tribal

+decree. Against our opinion, Mr. Howitt argues that only one writer

+who "has or had a personal acquaintance with the Australian blacks"

+accepts it, the Rev. John Matthew. It is accepted, however, as far as

+"sub-phratries" go (as an alternative hypothesis), by Mr. Hewitt's

+friend, Dr. Fison.[24] But I have given my reasons for not accepting

+Mr. Howitt's doctrine, and I await some reason for his rejection

+of mine. Even authors who have "a personal acquaintance with the

+Australian blacks" should, I venture to think, give their reasons for

+rejecting one and persisting in another theory of "the probabilities

+of the case."[25] I have shown why I think it improbable that a

+postulated prehistoric tribe split itself up, for no alleged reason,

+at the suggestion of a medicine man. Now I am anxious to know why my

+postulated groups should not make marriage alliance for the reason of

+securing peace--a very sufficient motive for betrothals.

+

+

+[1] Compare Mr. N. W. Thomas's criticisms of Mr. Hill-Tout, in _Man_,

+May, June, July 1904.

+

+[2] We must not suppose that all American scholars agree with the views

+of the "American School." Major Powell used "totem" in from ten to

+fourteen different meanings.

+

+[3] _Totémisme et Tabou à Madagascar_. 1904.

+

+[4] A perfectly fictitious blood-tie, when a man Crow is born in

+Victoria, and a woman Crow on the Gulf of Carpentaria.--A. L.

+

+[5] Howitt. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 144.

+

+[6] For full details see Messrs. McDougall and Hose, _J. A. I._, N.S.,

+xxxi pp. 199-201.

+

+[7] _Report of Nat. Mus._, U.S., 1895, p. 336.

+

+[8] Mr. Hill-Tout differs from my understanding of Dr. Boas's remarks.

+

+[9] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5. Dorman, pp. 231-234.

+

+[10] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[11] _J. A. I._, vol. xvi. pp. 44, 50, 350. Howitt, _Native Tribes of

+South-East Australia_, pp. 144, 387, 388. MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[12] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ix., xi. p. 72.

+

+[13] These are not totems, but "familiars," like the witch's cat or

+hare.--A. L.

+

+[14] The shaman's sons keep on the shaman business, with the paternal

+familiar. It is not, in my sense, a totem.--A. L.

+

+[15] My italics.

+

+[16] _Brit. Ass._, 1902. _Report of Ethnol. Survey of Canada_, pp.

+51-52, 57. A fairy tale about the origin of a society of healing and

+magical influence.--A. L.

+

+[17] Mr. Hill-Tout says elsewhere: "Shamans _only_ inherited their

+_sulia_" (he speaks of these personal totems or _sulia_) "from their

+fathers; other men had to acquire their own. But this applied only

+to the dream or vision totem or protective spirit." If a man "met

+his ghostly guardian in form of a bear," when hunting, he would take

+it as his "crest" and transmit it. This happened in the case of "Dr.

+George," who inherited his crest and guardian, the Bear, from his

+great-grandfather, who met a bear not in a dream but when hunting. (_J.

+A. I._, vol. xxxiv. pp. 326, 327.) Such inheritance, in an advanced

+American tribe of to-day, does not seem to me to corroborate the belief

+that totems among the many primitive tribes of Australia are the result

+of inheriting a personal crest or guardian spirit of a male ancestor.

+

+[18] _Transactions_, ix. p. 76.

+

+[19] _Fifth Report on the Physical Characteristics, &c., of the N.W.

+Tribes of Canada_, B.A.A.S., p. 24. London, 1889.

+

+[20] The myths, in fact, vary; the myth of descent from the totem also

+occurs even in these tribes. (Hartland, _Folk Lore_, xi. I, pp. 60-61.

+Boas, _Nat. Mus. Report_, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)--A. L.

+

+[21] Cf. Mr. Hartland in _Folk Lore_, ut supra.

+

+[22] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5.

+

+[23] For the full account of _Siboko_ see Chapter II., _supra_.

+

+[24] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 71, 72.

+

+[25] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 143, 144.

+

+

+

+

+

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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

+

+

+Title: The Secret of the Totem

+

+Author: Andrew Lang

+

+Release Date: April 11, 2014 [EBook #45363]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org

+(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

+

+

+

+

+

+THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

+

+BY

+

+ANDREW LANG

+

+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

+

+39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

+

+NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

+

+1905

+

+

+

+

+CONTENTS

+

+

+INTRODUCTION

+

+      I. ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

+     II. METHOD OF INQUIRY

+    III. THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

+     IV. THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

+      V. THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

+     VI. THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

+    VII. RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

+   VIII. A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

+     IX. TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

+      X. MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

+     XI. MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

+

+APPENDIX: AMERICAN THEORIES

+

+

+

+

+INTRODUCTION

+

+

+This book is the natural sequel of _Social Origins and Primal Law_,

+published three years ago. In _Primal Law_, Mr. J. J. Atkinson sought

+for the origin of marriage prohibitions in the social conditions of

+early man, as conceived of by Mr. Darwin. Man, in the opinion of the

+great naturalist, was a jealous animal; the sire, in each group,

+kept all his female mates to himself, expelling his adolescent male

+offspring. From this earliest and very drastic restriction, Mr.

+Atkinson, using the evidence of "avoidances" between kinsfolk in

+savage society, deduced the various prohibitions on sexual unions. His

+ingenious theory has been received with some favour, where it has been

+understood.

+

+Mr. Atkinson said little about totemism, and, in _Social Origins_,

+I offered a theory of the Origin of Totemism; an elaboration of the

+oldest of all scientific theories, that of Garcilasso de la Vega, an

+Inca on the maternal side, the author of the _History of the Incas_.

+Totems, he conceived, arose in the early efforts of human groups to

+differentiate each from the others. Mr. Max M�ller and Dr. Pikler

+set forth the same notion, independently. The "clans," or, as I

+say, "groups," needed differentiation by names, such as are still

+used as personal names by savages, and by names easily expressed in

+pictographs, and easily signalled in gesture language. The origin of

+the group names, or sobriquets, once forgotten, the names, as usual,

+suggested a relation between the various name-giving objects and the

+groups which bore them. That relation was explained by the various

+myths which make the name-giving animals, plants, and other objects,

+mystic kinsmen, patrons, or ancestors of the groups named after them.

+From reflection on this mystic _rapport_ between the objects and the

+human groups of the same names, arose the various superstitions and

+tabus, including that which prohibits unions between men and women of

+the same animal group-name, whether by locality or maternal descent.

+

+Critics objected that such a "trivial accident" as a name could not be

+the germ, or one of the germs of a great social system. But "the name

+goes before everything," as the Scots used to say; and in this book I

+have set forth the great importance of names in early society, a fact

+universally acknowledged by anthropologists.

+

+It was also objected that names given from without would never be

+accepted and gloried in, so I now prove that such names have often been

+accepted and gloried in, even when they are derisive; which, among

+savages, names derived from plants and animals are not; they are rather

+honourable appellations.

+

+So far, I have only fortified my position. But some acute criticisms

+offered in _Man_ by Mr. N. W. Thomas enabled me to detect a weak point

+in my system, as given in _Social Origins_, and so led on to what I

+venture to think not unimportant discoveries regarding the Australian

+social organisations. To Mr. Thomas's researches, which I trust he will

+publish in full, I am much indebted, and he kindly read part of this

+book in type-written MS.

+

+I also owe much to Mrs. Langloh Parker, who generously permitted me to

+read, in her MS., her valuable account of the Euahlayi tribe of New

+South Wales, which is to be published by Messrs. Archibald Constable.

+No student has been so intimately acquainted as this lady with the

+women of an Australian tribe; while the men, in a place where they

+could be certain that they were free from tribal _espionnage_, were

+singularly communicative. Within its limits, Mrs. Langloh Parker's

+book, I think, may be reckoned almost as valuable as those of Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen.

+

+By the irony of fortune, I had no sooner seen my book in print, than

+Mr. J. G. Frazer's chapter on "The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism

+among the Australian Aborigines" (_Fortnightly Review_, September 1905)

+came into my hands. I then discovered that, just when I thought myself

+to have disentangled the ravelled thread of totemism, Mr. Frazer also

+thought, using another metaphor, that his own "plummets had found

+bottom"--a very different bottom. I then wrote Chapter XI., stating my

+objections to his theories. Many of these, mainly objections to the

+hypothesis of the relative primitiveness of the Arunta "nation," had

+often been urged before by others. I was unaware that they had been

+answered, but they have obviously been deemed inadequate. Meanwhile the

+question as between two entirely different solutions of the old mystery

+remains open.

+

+Since critics of my _Social Origins_ often missed my meaning, I am

+forced to suppose that I may in like manner have misconstrued some of

+the opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to

+contest. I have done my best to understand, and shall deeply regret

+any failures of interpretation on my own part.

+

+Necessarily I was unaware that in Mr. Frazer's opinion, as set forth in

+his essay of September 1905, "the common assumption that inheritance

+of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it

+through the father need not hold good." I have throughout argued on

+that assumption, which I understood to be held by Mr. Frazer, as well

+as by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Howitt, and most authorities. If it be correct,

+as I still think it is, it cannot but be fatal to the Arunta claim to

+primitiveness. But Arunta society is, in many points, so obviously

+highly organised, and so confessedly advanced, that I am quite unable

+to accept this tribe as an example of the most archaic state of affairs

+extant. If I am wrong, much of my argument is shaken, and of this it

+is necessary to warn the reader. But a tribe really must be highly

+advanced in organisation, if it can afford to meet and devote four

+months to ceremonials, as it did, in a region said to be relatively

+deficient in natural supplies.

+

+In this book I have been able to use the copious materials of Mr.

+Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in their two recent works. It

+seems arrogant to differ from some of the speculative opinions of these

+distinguished observers, but "we must go where the logos leads us."

+

+I end by thanking Mr. H. J. Ford for his design of Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+heading the totems in their phratries, and betrothing two interesting

+young human members of these divisions.

+

+

+

+

+THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

+

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+      The making of the local tribe of savagery--Earliest known

+      stage of society--Result of complex processes--Elaborate

+      tribal rules--Laws altered deliberately: sometimes

+      borrowed--Existing legislative methods of savages not

+      primitive--The tribe a gradual conquest of culture--The

+      tribe a combination of small pre-tribal kinships--History

+      of progress towards the tribe traceable in surviving

+      institutions--From passion to Law--Rudeness of native

+      culture in Australia--Varieties of social organisation

+      there--I. Tribes with two phratries, totems, female

+      descent--Tribes of this organisation differ as to

+      ceremonies and beliefs--Some beliefs tend to polytheism:

+      others towards monotheism--Some tribes of pristine

+      organisation have totemic magic and _pirrauru_: others

+      have not--The more northern tribes of pristine

+      organisation share the ceremonies and beliefs of central

+      tribes: not so the south-eastern tribes--Second form (a)

+      of social organisation has male descent--Second form (b)

+      has female descent _plus_ "matrimonial classes"--Account

+      of these--Eight-class system--The Arunta nation--Their

+      peculiar form of belief in reincarnation--_Churinga

+      nanja_--Recapitulation--The Euahlayi tribe.

+

+

+The question of the origin of totemism has more than the merely curious

+or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In

+the course of the inquiry we may be able to discern and discriminate

+the relative contributions of unreflecting passion, on one hand, and

+of deliberate reason, on the other, to the structure of the earliest

+extant form of human society. That form is the savage local tribe, as

+known to us in America and in Australia.

+

+Men live in united local communities, relatively large, and carefully

+regimented, before they have learned to domesticate animals, or to obey

+chiefs, or to practise the rudest form of agriculture, or to fashion

+clay into pottery, or to build permanent hovels. Customary law is older

+than any of these things, and the most ancient law which we can observe

+unites a tribe by that system of marriages which expresses itself in

+totemism.

+

+It is plain that the processes of evolution which have resulted in

+the most backward societies known to us, must have been very complex.

+If we reflect that the society of the Australian aborigines presents

+the institution of local tribes, each living peacefully, except for

+occasional internal squabbles, in a large definite tract of country;

+cultivating, on the whole, friendly relations with similar and

+similarly organised tribes; while obeying a most elaborate system of

+rules, it is obvious that these social conditions must be very remote

+from the absolutely primitive.[1] The rules of these tribes regulate

+every detail of private life with a minuteness and a rigour that

+remind us of what the Scottish Cavalier (1652) protested against as

+"the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial Government."

+Yet the tribes have neither presbyters, nor priests, nor kings.

+Their body of customary law, so copious and complex that, to the

+European, it seems as puzzling as algebra is to the savage, has been

+evolved, after a certain early point, by the slow secular action of

+"collective wisdom." We shall find that on this point, early deliberate

+modification of law, there can be no doubt.

+

+The recent personal researches of Mr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen make it certain that tribal affairs, now, among many

+tribes at least, are discussed with the utmost deliberation, and that

+modifications of institutions may be canvassed, adopted, or rejected,

+on the initiative of seniors, local "Headmen," and medicine men.[2] It

+is also certain that tribe borrows from tribe, in the matter of songs,

+dances, and institutions, while members of one tribe are permitted to

+be present at the sacred ceremonials of others, especially when these

+tribes are on intermarrying terms.[3] In such cases, the ceremonials

+of one tribe may affect those of another, the Arunta may influence the

+Urabunna, who borrow their sacred objects or _churinga_ for use in

+their own rites. We even hear of cases in which native religious ideas

+have been propagated by missionaries sent from tribe to tribe.[4]

+

+Thus, conservative as is the savage by nature, he is distinctly capable

+of deliberate modification of his rites, ceremonies, and customary

+laws, and of interchanging ideas on these subjects with neighbouring

+tribes.

+

+All this is true, to-day, and doubtless has long been true.

+

+But at this point we must guard against what we consider a prevalent

+fallacy. The legislative action of the natives, the initiative of local

+Headmen, and Heads of Totems and of "Classes" (social divisions), and

+of medicine men inspired by "some supernatural being, such as Kutchi

+of the Dieri, Bunjil of the Wurunjerri, or Daramulun of the Coast

+Murring,"[5] is only rendered possible by the existence, to-day, of

+social conditions which cannot be primitive. To-day the Tribe, with

+its innumerable rules, and its common faith in Kutchi or Daramulun,

+with its recognised local or social Headmen, with its regulations for

+dealing with other tribes, and with its heralds or messengers, is an

+institution "in being." But, necessarily, this was not always so; the

+Tribe itself is a great "conquest of culture," and that conquest must

+have been made very slowly.

+

+The prevalent fallacy, then, is to take unconsciously for granted

+that the people was, from the beginning, regimented into tribes, or

+existed in "hordes" already as capable as actual tribes of deliberative

+assemblies and legislative action, and that, in these hordes, a certain

+law, "the universal basis of their social system, was brought about by

+intention," as Mr. Howitt believes.[6]

+

+The law in question, "the universal basis of their social system,"

+was nothing less than a rule compelling people who had hitherto been

+promiscuous in their unions, to array themselves into a pair of tribal

+divisions, in which no member might marry another member of the same

+division, but must marry a member of the opposite division. The mere

+idea of such an act of legislation, for which no motive is assigned

+(and no motive is conceivable) postulates the pre-existence of a

+community like the Tribe of to-day, with powers to legislate, and to

+secure obedience for its legislative acts. This postulate cannot be

+granted, it refracts the institutions of to-day on a past state of

+society which, in all probability, could possess no such institutions.

+The "chaotic horde" of the hypothesis could not allot to various human

+groups the duty of working magic (to take an instance) for the good of

+various articles of the common food supply, nor could it establish

+a new and drastic rule, suddenly regulating sexual unions which had

+previously been utterly unregulated.

+

+Human history does not show us a relatively large mass segregating

+itself into smaller communities. It shows us small communities

+aggregating into larger combinations, the village into the city, the

+European tribes into the kingdom, the kingdoms into the nation, the

+nation into the empire. The Tribe itself, in savage society, is a

+combination of small kins, or sets of persons of various degrees of

+status; these kins have not been legislatively segregated out of a

+pre-existing horde having powers of legislation. The idea of such a

+legislative primeval horde has been unconsciously borrowed from the

+actual Tribe of experience to-day.

+

+That tribe is not primitive, far from it, but is very old.

+

+Tribal collective wisdom, when once the tribe was evolved, has

+probably been at work, in unrecorded ages, over all the world, and in

+most places seems, up to a certain point, to have followed much the

+same strange course. The path does not march straight to any point

+predetermined by man, but loops, and zigzags, and retreats, and returns

+on itself, like the course of a river beset by rocks and shoals, and

+parcelled into wandering streams, and lagging in morasses. Yet the

+river reaches the sea, and the loops and links of the path, frayed by

+innumerable generations of early men, led at last to the haven of the

+civilised Family, and the Family Peace.

+

+The history of the progress must necessarily be written in the

+strange characters of savage institutions, and in these odd and

+elaborate regulations which alarm the incurious mind under the names

+of "Phratries," "Totems," "Matrimonial Classes," "Pirrauru," and

+"Piraungaru." In these, as in some Maya or Easter Island inscription,

+graven in bizarre signs, lies the early social history of Man. We pore

+over the characters, turning them this way and that, deciphering a mark

+here and there, but unable to agree on any coherent rendering of the

+whole, so that some scholars deem the problems insoluble--and most are

+at odds among themselves.

+

+Possibly we can at last present a coherent translation of the record

+which lies half concealed and half revealed in the savage institutions

+with their uncouth names, and can trace the course of an evolution

+which, beginning in natural passions, emotions, and superstitions,

+reached a rudimentary social law. That law, again, from a period far

+behind our historical knowledge, has been deliberately modified by men,

+much as a Bill in Parliament is modified by amendments and compromises

+into an Act. The industry of students who examine the customs of the

+remotest races has accumulated a body of evidence in which the various

+ways out of early totemic society towards the civilised conception of

+the family may be distinctly traced.

+

+Meanwhile we are concerned rather with the way into totemism out of a

+prior non-totemic social condition, and with the development of the

+various stages of totemic society in Australia. The natives of that

+country, when unspoiled by European influences, are almost on one

+level as to material culture. Some tribes have rather better and more

+permanent shelters than others; some have less inadequate canoes than

+the rest; some drape themselves against cold weather in the skins of

+beasts, while others go bare; but all are non-agricultural hunting

+wanderers, without domesticated animals, without priests, and without

+chiefs on the level of those of the old Highland clans. They are

+ignorant of pottery, a fact which marks the very lowest culture; they

+know not the bow and arrow; their implements of stone vary from the

+polished "neolithic" to the rough-hewn "pal�olithic" type: a man will

+use either sort as occasion serves.

+

+While everyday life and its implements are thus rude, there are great

+varieties of social organisation, of ceremonial institutions, and of

+what, among Europeans, would be called speculative and religious ideas,

+expressing themselves in myths and rites.

+

+Taking social organisation first, we begin with what all inquirers

+(except one or two who wrote before the recent great contributions to

+knowledge appeared) acknowledge to be the most pristine type extant

+Each tribe of this type is in two intermarrying divisions (which we

+call "exogamous moieties," or "phratries"), and each phratry bears

+a name which, when it can be translated, is, as a rule, that of an

+animal.[7] We shall show later why the meaning of the names has often

+been lost. Take the animal names of the phratries to be Emu and

+Kangaroo, no man of the Emu phratry may marry a woman of the same

+phratry, he must marry out of his phratry ("exogamy"); nor may a man

+of the Kangaroo phratry marry a woman of the same. Kangaroo phratry

+must marry into Emu, and Emu into Kangaroo. The phratry names in each

+case are, in the more primitive types of the organisation (which alone

+we are now considering) inherited from the mother.[8] A man of the Emu

+phratry marries a woman of the Kangaroo phratry, and to that phratry

+her children belong. Thus members of either phratry must be found in

+any casual knot or company of natives. Within each phratry there are,

+again, kinships also known by hereditary names of animals or plants.

+Thus, in Emu phratry, there may be kins called, say, Emu, Opossum,

+Wallaby, Grub, and others; in the Kangaroo phratry _different_ names

+prevail, such as Kangaroos, Lizards, Dingoes, Cockatoos, and others.

+The name-giving animals, in this case, are called by us "totems," and

+the human kins which bear their names are called "totem kins." No man

+or woman may marry a person of his or her own totem. But this, in fact,

+as matters stand in Australia, puts no fresh bar on marriage, because

+(except in four or five tribes of the Centre) if a man marries out

+of his phratry he must necessarily marry out of his totem kin, since

+there are no members of his totem name in the phratry into which he

+must marry. In America, in cases where there are no phratries, and

+universally, where totems exist without phratries, marriage between

+persons of the same totem is forbidden.

+

+The organisation of the more primitive tribes presents only the two

+exogamous moieties or phratries in each tribe and the totem kins in the

+phratries. We have Crow phratry and Eagle Hawk phratry, and, within

+Crow phratry, Crow totem kin,[9] with other totem kins; within Eagle

+Hawk phratry, Eagle Hawk totem kin, with other totem kins, which are

+never of the same names as those in Crow phratry.

+

+This we call the primitive type, all the other organisations are the

+result of advances on and modifications of this organisation. It also

+occurs in America,[10] where, however, the phratry is seldom extant,

+though it does exist occasionally, and is known to have existed among

+the Iroquois and to have decayed.

+

+On examining Mr. Howitt's map[11] it will be seen that this type of

+social organisation extends, or has extended, from Mount Gambier, by

+the sea, in the extreme south, past Lake Eyre, to some distance beyond

+Cooper's Creek or the Barcoo River, and even across the Diamantina

+River in Queensland. But it is far from being the case that all tribes

+with this pristine organisation possess identical ceremonies and ideas.

+On the other hand, from the southern borders of Lake Eyre, northwards,

+the tribes of this social organisation have peculiar ceremonies,

+unknown in the south and east, but usual further north and west. They

+initiate young men with the rites of circumcision or subincision (a

+cruel process unknown outside of Australia), or with both. In the

+south-east the knocking out of a front tooth takes the place of these

+bloody ordeals. The Lake Eyre tribes, again, do not, like those south

+and east of them, hold by, and inculcate at the rites, "the belief as

+to the existence of a great supernatural anthropomorphic Being, by

+whom the ceremonies were first instituted, and who still communicates

+with mankind through the medicine men, his servants."[12] Their myths

+rather repose on the idea of beings previous to man, "the prototypes

+of, but more powerful in magic than the native tribes. These beings, if

+they did not create man, at least perfected him from some unformed and

+scarcely human creatures."[13]

+

+Thus, the more northern tribes of primitive tribal organisation (say

+the Dieri and their congeners) have beliefs which might ripen into

+the Greek mythology of gods and Titans, while the faith of the tribes

+of the same social organisation, further south by east, might develop

+into a rude form of Hebrew monotheism, and the two myths may co-exist,

+and often do. The northern tribes about Lake Eyre, and the central and

+north tribes, work co-operative magic for the behoof of their totem

+animals, as part of the common food supply, a rite unknown to the south

+and east. They also practise a custom (_Pirrauru_) of allotting men

+and women, married or unmarried, as paramours to each other, after a

+symbolic ceremony. This arrangement also is unknown in the south and

+east, and even north by west, though almost everywhere there is sexual

+licence at certain ceremonial meetings. It is thus plain that the more

+northern tribes of the primitive organisation described, differ from

+their southern and eastern neighbours (i.) in their most important

+initiatory rites, (ii.) in some of their myths or beliefs,[14] (iii.)

+in their totemic magic, and (iv.) in their allotment of permanent

+paramours. In the first three points these northern tribes of primitive

+type resemble, not the south-eastern tribes of the same social

+type, but the more socially advanced central, western, and northern

+"nations," with whom some of them are in touch and even intermarry.

+It is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that all tribes of the primitive

+tribal organisation are _solidaires_ as to marriage, ceremonial rites,

+and beliefs.

+

+It is difficult to say which is the second type of tribal organisation.

+We have in Victoria, in a triangle with its apex on the Murray River,

+the organisation already described (1), but here descent is reckoned

+in the male, not in the female line. This implies some social advance:

+social institutions, with male descent of the totem name, are certain

+to become _local_, rather than totemistic. The Kangaroos, deriving the

+totem name from the father, are a local clan, in some cases, like the

+MacIans in Glencoe. The Kangaroo name prevails in the locality. This

+cannot occur, obviously, when the names are derived from mothers, and

+the women go to the husband's district. We may call the organisation

+thus described (2a), and as (2b) we should reckon the organisation

+which prevails, as a rule, on the east of Southern Australia, in

+Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern

+coast-line (with a gap in the centre of the coast-line), to the eastern

+limits of (1). Here we find (2b) a great set of tribes having female

+descent, but each individual belongs not only to one of two phratries,

+and to a totem, but also to a "Matrimonial Class." In each phratry

+there are two such classes. Among the Kamilaroi, in phratry Dilbi, are

+"classes" named Muri (male) and Kubi (male). In phratry Kupathin are

+Ipai (male) and Kumbo (male), while the women bear the feminine forms

+of these names. Their meaning is usually unknown, but in two or three

+tribes, where the meaning of the class names is known with certainty,

+they denote animals.

+

+The arrangement works thus, a man of phratry Dilbi, and of matrimonial

+class Muri, may not marry any woman that he chooses, in the other

+phratry, Kupathin. He can only marry a Kubatha, that is, a female of

+the class Kumbo. Their children, female descent prevailing, are of

+Kupathin _phratry_, and of the mother's totem, but do not belong to the

+_class_ either of father (Muri) or of mother (Kumbo). _They must belong

+to the other class within her phratry_, namely Ipai. This rule applies

+throughout; thus, if a man of phratry Dilbi, and of Kubi class, marries

+a woman of Ipai class in phratry Kupathin, their children are neither

+of class Kubi nor of class Ipai, but of class Kumbo, the linked or

+sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.

+

+Suppose for the sake of argument that the class names denote, or once

+denoted animals, so that, say--

+

+In phratry

+                { Muri = Turtle.

+   _Dilbi_ { Kubi = Bat.

+

+While in phratry

+                   { Ipai  = Carpet Snake.

+   _Kupathin_ { Kumbo = Native Cat.

+

+It is obvious that male Turtle would marry female Cat, and (with

+maternal descent) their children would, by class name, be Carpet

+Snakes. Bat would marry Carpet Snake, and their children would, by

+class name, be Cats. Persons of each generation would thus belong to

+classes of different animal names for ever, and no one might marry into

+either his or her own phratry, his or her own totem, or his or her own

+generation, that is, into his or her own class. It is exactly (where

+the classes bear animal names) as if two _generations_ had totems.

+The mothers of Muri class in Dilbi would have Turtle, the mothers in

+Kupathin (Ipai) would have Carpet Snake. Their children, in Kupathin,

+would have Cat. Not only the phratries and the totem kins, but each

+successive generation, would thus be delimited by bearing an animal

+name, and marriage would be forbidden between all persons not of

+different animal-named phratries, different animal-named totem kins,

+and different animal-named generations. In many cases, we repeat, the

+names of the phratries and of the classes have not yet been translated,

+and the meanings are unknown to the natives themselves. That the class

+names were originally animal names is a mere hypothesis, based on few

+examples.

+

+Say I am of phratry Crow, of totem Lizard, of generation and

+matrimonial class Turtle; then I must marry only a woman of phratry

+Eagle Hawk, of any totem in Eagle Hawk phratry,[15] and of generation

+and class name Cat. Our children, with female descent, will be of

+phratry Eagle Hawk, of totem the mother's, and of generation and class

+name Carpet Snake. _Their_ children will be of phratry Crow, of totem

+the mother's, and of generation and class name Cat again; and so on

+for ever. Each generation in a phratry has its class name, and may

+not marry within that name. The next generation has the other class

+name, and may not marry within that. Assuming that phratry names,

+totem names, and generation names are always names of animals (or of

+other objects in nature), the laws would amount, we repeat, simply to

+this: No person may marry another person who, by phratry, or totem,

+or generation, owns the same hereditary animal name or other name

+as himself or herself. Moreover no one may marry a person (where

+matrimonial classes exist) who bears the same class or generation name

+as his mother or father.

+

+In practice the rules are thus quite simple, mistake is

+impossible--complicated as the arrangements look on paper. Where

+totem and phratry names only exist, a man has merely to ask a woman,

+"What is your phratry name?" If it is his own, an amour is forbidden.

+Where phratry names are obsolete, and classes exist, he has only to

+ask, "What is your class name?" If it is that of either class in

+his own phratry of the tribe, to love is to break a sacred law. It

+is not necessary, as a rule, even to ask the totem name. What looks

+so perplexing is in essence, and in practical working, of extreme

+simplicity. But some tribes have deliberately modified the rules, to

+facilitate marriage.

+

+The conspicuous practical result of the Class arrangement (not

+primitive), is that just as totem law makes it impossible for a person

+to marry a sister or brother uterine, so Class law makes a marriage

+between father and daughter, mother and son, impossible.[16] But such

+marriages never occur in Australian tribes of pristine organisation

+(1) which have no class names, no collective names for successive

+generations. The origin of these class or generation names is a problem

+which will be discussed later.

+

+Such is the Class system where it exists in tribes with female descent.

+It has often led to the loss and disappearance of the phratry names,

+which are forgotten, since the two sets of opposed class names do the

+phratry work.

+

+We have next (3) the same arrangements with descent reckoned in the

+male line. This prevails on the south-east coast, from Hervey River to

+Warwick. In Gippsland, and in a section round Melbourne, there were

+"anomalous" arrangements which need not now detain us; the archaic

+systems tended to die out altogether.

+

+All these south central (Dieri), southern, and eastern tribes may

+be studied in Mr. Howitt's book, already cited, which contains the

+result of forty years' work, the information being collected partly by

+personal research and partly through many correspondents. Mr. Howitt

+has viewed the initiatory ceremonies of more than one tribe, and is

+familiar with their inmost secrets.

+

+For the tribes of the centre and north we must consult two books, the

+fruits of the personal researches of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, M.A., F.R.S.,

+Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne, and of Mr. F. J.

+Gillen, Sub-Protector of Aborigines, South Australia.[17] For many

+years Mr. Gillen has been in the confidence of the tribes, and he and

+Mr. Spencer have passed many months in the wilds, being admitted to

+view the most secret ceremonies, and being initiated into the myths of

+the people. Their photographs of natives are numerous and excellent.

+

+These observers begin in the south centre, where Mr. Howitt leaves off

+in his northerly researches, and go north. They start with the Urabunna

+tribe, north-east of Lake Eyre, congeners of Mr. Howitt's Dieri, and

+speaking a dialect akin to theirs, while the tribe intermarry marry

+with the Arunta (whose own dialect has points in common with theirs)

+of the centre of the continent These Urabunna are apparently in the

+form of social organisation which we style primitive (No. 1), but there

+are said, rather vaguely, to be more restrictions on marriage than is

+usual, people of one totem in Kiraru phratry being restricted to people

+of one totem in Matteri phratry.[18]

+

+They have phratries, totem kins, apparently no matrimonial classes

+(some of their rules are imperfectly ascertained), and they reckon

+descent in the female line. But, like the Dieri (and unlike the tribes

+of the south and east), they practise subincision; they have, or are

+said to have, no belief in "a supernatural anthropomorphic great

+Being"; they believe in "old semi-human ancestors," who scattered about

+spirits, which are perpetually reincarnated in new members of the

+tribe; they practise totemic magic; and they cultivate the Dieri custom

+of allotting paramours. Thus, by social organisation, they attach

+themselves to the south-eastern tribes (1), but, like the Dieri, and

+even more so (for, unlike the Dieri, they believe in reincarnation),

+they agree in ceremonies, and in the general idea of their totemic

+magic, rites, and mythical ideas, with tribes who, as regards social

+organisation, are in state (4), reckon descent in the male line, and

+possess, not _four_, but _eight_ matrimonial classes.

+

+This institution of eight classes is developing in the Arunta "nation,"

+the people of the precise centre of Australia, who march with, and

+intermarry with, the Urabunna; at least the names for the second set of

+four matrimonial classes, making eight in all, are reaching the Arunta

+from the northern tribes. All the way further north to the Gulf of

+Carpentaria, male descent and eight classes prevail, with subincision,

+prolonged and complex ceremonials, the belief in reincarnation of

+primal semi-human, semi-bestial ancestors, and the absence (except

+in the Kaitish tribe, next the Arunta) of any known belief in what

+Mr. Howitt calls the "All Father." Totemic magic also is prevalent,

+dwindling as you approach the north-east coast. In consequence of

+reckoning in the male line (which necessarily causes most of the

+dwellers in a group to be of the same totem), _local_ organisation is

+more advanced in these tribes than in the south and east.

+

+We next speak of social organisation (5), namely, that of the Arunta

+and Kaitish tribes, which is without example in any other known totemic

+society all over the world. The Arunta and Kaitish not only believe,

+like most northern and western tribes, in the perpetual reincarnation

+of ancestral spirits, but they, and they alone, hold that each such

+spirit, during discarnate intervals, resides in, or is mainly attached

+to, a decorated kind of stone amulet, called _churinga nanja_. These

+objects, with this myth, are not recorded as existing among other

+"nations." When a child is born, its friends hunt for its ancestral

+stone amulet in the place where its mother thinks that she conceived

+it, and around the nearest _rendezvous_ of discarnate _local_ totemic

+souls, all of one totem only. The amulet and the _local_ totemic

+centre, with its haunted _nanja_ rock or tree, determine the totem

+of the child. Thus, unlike all other totemists, the Arunta do not

+inherit their totems either from father or mother, or both. Totems are

+determined by _local_ accident. Not being hereditary, they are not

+exogamous: here, and here alone, they do not regulate marriage. Men

+may, and do, marry women of their own totem, and their child's totem

+may neither be that of its father nor of its mother. The members of

+totem groups are really members of societies, which co-operatively

+work magic for the good of the totems. The question arises, Is this

+the primitive form of totemism? We shall later discuss that question

+(Chapter IV.).

+

+Meanwhile we conceive the various types of social organisation to

+begin with the south-eastern phratries, totems, and female reckoning

+of descent (1) to advance to these _plus_ male descent (2a), and to

+these with female descent and four matrimonial classes (2b). Next

+we place (3) that four-class system with male descent; next (4) the

+north-western system of male descent with _eight_ matrimonial classes,

+and last (as anomalous in some respects), (5) the Arunta-Kaitish system

+of male descent, eight classes, and non-hereditary non-exogamous totems.

+

+As regards ceremonial and belief, we place (1) the tribes south

+and east of the Dieri. (2) The Dieri. (3) The Urabunna, and north,

+central, and western tribes. (4) The Arunta. The Dieri and Urabunna we

+regard (at least the Dieri) as pristine in social organisation, with

+peculiarities all their own, but in ceremonial and belief more closely

+attached to the central, north, and west than to the south-eastern

+tribes. As concerns the bloody rites, Mr. Howitt inclines to the belief

+(corroborated by legends, whatever their value) that "a northern origin

+must ultimately be assigned to these ceremonies."[19] It is natural to

+assume that the more cruel initiatory rites are the more archaic, and

+that the tribes which practise them are the more pristine. But this is

+not our opinion nor that of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The older rite

+is the mere knocking out of front teeth (also used by the Masai of East

+Central Africa). This rite, in Central Australia, "has lost its old

+meaning, its place has been taken by other rites."[20] ... Increased

+cruelty accompanies social advance in this instance. In another matter

+innovation comes from the north. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are of the

+opinion that "changes in totemic matters have been slowly passing down

+from north to south." The eight classes, in place of four classes, are

+known as a matter of fact to have actually "reached the Arunta from the

+north, and at the present moment are spreading south-wards."[21]

+

+Again, a feebler form of the reincarnation belief, namely, that

+souls of the young who die uninitiated are reincarnated, occurs in

+the Euahlayi tribe of north-western New South Wales.[22] Whether the

+Euahlayi belief came from the north, in a limited way, or whether it

+is the germinal state of the northern belief, is uncertain. It is

+plain that if bloody rites and eight classes may come down from the

+north, totemic magic and the faith in reincarnation may also have

+done so, and thus modified the rites and "religious" opinions of

+the Dieri and Urabunna, who are said still to be, socially, in the

+most pristine state, that of phratries and female descent, without

+matrimonial classes.[23] It is also obvious that if the Kaitish faith

+in a sky-dweller (rare in northern tribes) be a "sport," and if the

+Arunta _churinga nanja, plus_ non-hereditary and non-exogamous

+totems, be a "sport," the Dieri and Urabunna custom, too, of solemnly

+allotted _permanent_ paramours may be a thing of isolated and special

+development, not a survival of an age of "group marriage."

+

+

+[1] Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 41. 1904.

+

+[2] Cf. for example Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central

+Australia_, p. 26. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.

+88, 89.

+

+[3] Howitt, _ut supra_, pp. 511, 513.

+

+[4] Hale, _U.S. Exploring Expedition_, p. 410. 1846.

+

+[5] Howitt, _ut supra_, p. 89.

+

+[6] Op. cit., p. 89.

+

+[7] There are exceptions, or at least one exception is known to the

+rule of animal names for phratries, a point to which we shall return.

+Dr. Roth (_N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56) suggests that

+the phratry names Wutaru and Pakuta mean One and Two (cf. p. 26).

+For Wutaru and Yungaru, however, interpretations indicating names

+of animals are given, diversely, by Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Chatfield,

+_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 40, 41.

+

+[8] That reckoning descent in the female line, _among totemists_,

+is earlier than reckoning in the male line, Mr. Howitt, Mr. Tylor,

+Dr. Durkheim, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, with Mr. J. G. Frazer,

+till recently, are agreed. Starcke says "usually the female line only

+appears in connection with the Kobong (totem) groups," and he holds the

+eccentric opinion that totems are relatively late, and that the tribes

+with none are the more primitive! (_The Primitive Family_, p. 26,

+1896.) This writer calls Mr. Howitt "a missionary."

+

+[9] That this is the case will be proved later; the fact has hitherto

+escaped observation.

+

+[10] Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 6l. Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 90, 94

+_et seq_.

+

+[11] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_. Macmillan, 1904.

+

+[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 640. For examples, pp.

+528-535.

+

+[13] Ibid., p. 487.

+

+[14] That is, on our present information. It is very unusual for

+orthodox adhesion to one set of myths to prevail.

+

+[15] Sometimes members of one totem are said to be restricted to

+marriage with members of only one other totem.

+

+[16] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 284, citing

+Mr. J. G. Frazer.

+

+[17] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899. _Northern Tribes of

+Central Australia_, 1904. Macmillan.

+

+[18] Cf. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 188-189.

+_Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 60.

+

+[19] Howitt, _op. cit_., p. 676, _N.T._, p. 20.

+

+[20] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 214. The same opinion is

+stated as very probable in _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

+329.

+

+[21] _N. T._, p. 20.

+

+[22] Mrs. Langloh Parker's M.S.

+

+[23] I am uncertain as to this point among the Urabunna, as will appear

+later.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II

+

+METHOD OF INQUIRY

+

+

+      Method of inquiry--Errors to be avoided--Origin of

+      totemism not to be looked for among the "sports" of

+      socially advanced tribes--Nor among tribes of male

+      reckoning of descent--Nor in the myths explanatory

+      of origin of totemism--Myths of origin of heraldic

+      bearings compared--Tribes in state of ancestor-worship:

+      their totemic myths cannot be true--Case of Bantu

+      myths (African)--Their myth implies ancestor-worship

+      --Another African myth derives _tribal_ totems from

+      tribal nicknames--No totemic myths are of any historic

+      value--The use of conjecture--Every theory must start

+      from conjecture--Two possible conjectures as to earliest

+      men gregarious (the horde), or lonely sire, female mates,

+      and off-spring--Five possible conjectures as to the

+      animal names of kinships in relation to early society and

+      exogamy--Theory of the author; of Professor Spencer; of

+      Dr. Durkheim; of Mr. Hill-Tout; of Mr. Howitt--Note on

+      McLennan's theory of exogamy.

+

+

+We have now given the essential facts in the problem of early society

+as it exists in various forms among the most isolated and pristine

+peoples extant. It has been shown that the sets of seniority (classes),

+the exogamous moieties (phratries), and the kinships in each tribe bear

+names which, when translated, are usually found to denote animals.

+Especially the names of the totem kindreds, and of the totems, are

+commonly names of animals or plants. If we can discover why this is

+so, we are near the discovery of the origin of totemism. Meanwhile we

+offer some remarks as to the method to be pursued in the search for a

+theory which will colligate all the facts in the case, and explain the

+origin of totemic society. In the first place certain needful warnings

+must be given, certain reefs which usually wreck efforts to construct

+a satisfactory hypothesis must be marked.

+

+First, it will be vain to look for the origin of totemism either

+among advanced and therefore non-pristine Australian types of tribal

+organisation, or among peoples not Australian, who are infinitely more

+forward than the Australians in the arts of life, and in the possession

+of property. Such progressive peoples may present many interesting

+social phenomena, but, as regards pure _primitive_ totemism, they dwell

+on "fragments of a broken world." The totemic fragments, among them,

+are twisted and shattered strata, with fantastic features which cannot

+be primordial, but are metamorphic. Accounts of these societies are

+often puzzling, and the strange confused terms used by the reporters,

+especially in America, frequently make them unintelligible.

+

+The learned, who are curious in these matters, would have saved

+themselves much time and labour had they kept two conspicuous facts

+before their eyes.

+

+(1) It is useless to look for the _origins_ of totemism among the

+peculiarities and "sports" which always attend the decadence of

+totemism, consequent on the change from female to male lineage, as Mr.

+Howitt, our leader in these researches, has always insisted. To search

+for the beginnings among late and abnormal phenomena, things isolated,

+done in a corner, and not found among the tribal organisations of the

+earliest types, is to follow a trail sure to be misleading.

+

+(2) The second warning is to be inferred from the first. It is waste

+of time to seek for the origin of totemism in anything--an animal

+name, a sacred animal, a paternal soul tenanting an animal--which is

+inherited from its first owner, he being an individual ancestor male.

+Such inheritance implies the existence of reckoning descent in the male

+line, and totemism conspicuously began in, and is least contaminated

+in, tribes who reckon descent in the female line.

+

+Another stone of stumbling comes from the same logical formation.

+The error is, to look for origins in myths about origins, told among

+advanced or early societies. If a people has advanced far in material

+culture, if it is agricultural, breeds cattle, and works the metals,

+of course it cannot be primitive. However, it may retain vestiges of

+totemism, and, if it does, it will explain them by a story, a myth of

+its own, just as modern families, and even cities, have their myths to

+account for the origin, now forgotten, of their armorial bearings, or

+crests--the dagger in the city shield, the skene of the Skenes, the

+sawn tree of the Hamiltons, the lyon of the Stuarts.

+

+Now an agricultural, metallurgic people, with male descent, in the

+middle barbarism, will explain its survivals of totemism by a myth

+natural in its intellectual and social condition; but not natural

+in the condition of the homeless nomad hunters, among whom totemism

+arose. For example, we have no reason to suspect that when totemism

+began men had a highly developed religion of ancestor-worship. Such a

+religion has not yet been evolved in Australia, where the names of the

+dead are usually tabooed, where there is hardly a trace of prayers,

+hardly a trace of offerings to the dead, and none of offerings to

+animals.[1] The more pristine Australians, therefore, do not explain

+their totems as containing the souls of ancestral spirits. On the

+other hand, when the Bantu tribes of Southern Africa--agricultural,

+with settled villages, with kings, and with many of the crafts, such

+as metallurgy--explain the origin of their _tribal_ names derived

+from animals on the lines of their religion--ancestor-worship--their

+explanation may be neglected as far as our present purpose is

+concerned. It is only their theory, only the myth which, in their

+intellectual and religious condition, they are bound to tell, and it

+can throw no light on the origin of sacred animals.

+

+The Bantu local _tribes_, according to Mr. M'Call Theal, have _Siboko_,

+that is, name-giving animals. The tribesmen will not kill, or eat, or

+touch, "or in any way come into contact with" their _Siboko_, if they

+can avoid doing so. A man, asked "What do you dance?" replies by giving

+the name of his _Siboko_, which is, or once was, honoured in mystic or

+magical dances.

+

+"When a division of a tribe took place, each section retained the same

+ancestral animal," and men thus trace dispersed segments of their

+tribe, or they thus account for the existence of other tribes of the

+same Siboko as themselves.

+

+Things being in this condition, an ancestor-worshipping people has to

+explain the circumstances by a myth. Being an ancestor-worshipping

+people, the Bantu explain the circumstance, as they were certain to do,

+by a myth of ancestral spirits. "Each tribe regarded some particular

+animal as the one selected by the ghosts of its kindred, and therefore

+looked upon it as sacred."

+

+It should be superfluous to say that the Bantu myth cannot possibly

+throw any tight on the real origin of totemism. The Bantu,

+ancestor-worshippers of great piety, find themselves saddled with

+sacred tribal _Siboko_; why, they know not. So they naturally invent

+the fable that the _Siboko_, which are sacred, are sacred because they

+are the shrines of what to them are really sacred, namely, ancestral

+spirits.[2] But they also cherish another totally different myth to

+explain their _Siboko_.

+

+We now give this South African myth, which explains tribal _Siboko_,

+and their origin, not on the lines of ancestor-worship, but, rather to

+my annoyance, on the lines of my own theory of the Origin of Totems!

+

+On December 9, 1879, the Rev. Roger Price, of Mole-pole, in the

+northern Bakuena country, wrote as follows to Mr. W. G. Stow,

+Geological Survey, South Africa. He gives the myth which is told to

+account for the _Siboko_ or tribal sacred and name-giving animal of the

+Bahurutshe--Baboons. (These animal names in this part of Africa denote

+_local tribes_, not totem kins within a local tribe.)

+

+"Tradition says that about the time the separation took place between

+the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena, _Baboons_ entered the gardens of

+the Bahurutshe and ate their pumpkins, before the proper time for

+commencing to eat the fruits of the new year. The Bahurutshe were

+unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken off and

+nibbled should be wasted, and ate them accordingly. This act is said to

+have led to the Bahurutshe being called Buchwene, Baboon people--which"

+(namely, the Baboon) "is their _Siboko_ to this day--and their having

+the precedence ever afterwards in the matter of taking the first bite

+of the new year's fruits. If this be the true explanation," adds Mr.

+Price, "it is evident that what is now used as a term of honour was

+once a term of reproach. The Bakuena, too, are said to owe their

+_Siboko_ (the Crocodile) to the fact that their people once ate an ox

+which had been killed by a crocodile."

+

+Mr. Price, therefore, is strongly inclined to think "that the _Siboko_

+of all the tribes was originally a kind of nickname or term of

+reproach, but," he adds, "there is a good deal of mystery about the

+whole thing."

+

+On this point Mr. Stow, to whom Mr. Price wrote the letter just cited,

+remarks in his MS.: "From the foregoing facts it would seem possible

+that the origin of the _Siboko_ among these tribes arose from some

+sobriquet that had been given to them, and that, in course of time,

+as their superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed,

+these tribal symbols became objects of veneration and superstitious

+awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign influence

+averted...."[3]

+

+Here it will be seen that these South African tribes account for their

+_Siboko_ now by the myth deriving the sacredness of the tribal animal

+from ancestor-worship, as reported by Mr. Theal, and again by nicknames

+given to the tribes on account of certain undignified incidents.

+

+This latter theory is very like my own as stated in _Social Origins_,

+and to be set forth and reinforced later in this work. But the theory,

+as held by the Bahurutsche and Bakuena, does not help to confirm mine

+in the slightest degree. Among these very advanced African tribes,

+the _Siboko_ or _tribal_ sacred animal, is the animal of the local

+_tribe_, not, as in pure totemism, of the scattered exogamous kin. It

+is probably a lingering remnant of totemism. The totem of the most

+powerful _local_ group in a tribe having descent through males,

+appears to have become the _Siboko_ of the whole tribe, while the other

+totems have died out. It is not probable that a nickname of remembered

+origin, given in recent times to a tribe of relatively advanced

+civilisation, should, as the myth asserts, not only have become a name

+of honour, but should have founded tribal animal-worship.

+

+It was in a low state of culture no longer found on earth, that I

+conceive the animal names of groups not yet totemic, names of origin no

+longer remembered, to have arisen and become the germ of totemism.

+

+Myths of the origin of totemism, in short, are of absolutely no

+historic value. _Siboko_ no longer arise in the manner postulated by

+these African myths; these myths are not based on experience any more

+than is the Tsimshian myth of the Bear Totem, to be criticised later

+in a chapter on American Totemism. We are to be on our guard, then,

+against looking for the origins of totemism among the myths of peoples

+of relatively advanced culture, such as the village-dwelling Indians

+of the north-west coast of America. We must not look for origins among

+tribes, even if otherwise pristine, who reckon by male descent. We must

+look on all savage myths of origins merely as savage hypotheses, which,

+in fact, usually agree with one or other of our scientific modern

+hypotheses, but yield them no corroboration.

+

+On the common fallacy of regarding the tribe of to-day, with its

+relative powers, as primitive, we have spoken in Chapter I.

+

+By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far beyond

+our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we must have

+recourse as regards this matter to conjecture.

+

+Here a word might be said as to the method of conjecture about

+institutions of which the origins are concealed "in the dark backward

+and abysm of time."

+

+There are conjectures and conjectures! None is capable in every detail

+of historical demonstration, but one guess may explain all the known

+facts, and others may explain few or none. We are dealing with human

+affairs--they whose groups first answered to animal group-names were

+men as much as we are. They had reason; they had human language, spoken

+or by gesture, and human passions. That conjecture, therefore, which

+deals with the first totemists as men, men with plenty of human nature,

+is better than any rival guess which runs contrary to human nature as

+known in our experience of man, savage, barbaric, or civilised.

+

+Once more, a set of guesses which are consistent with themselves is

+better than a set of guesses which can be shown to be even ludicrously

+self-contradictory. If any guess, again, colligates all the known

+facts, if any conjectural system will "march," will meet every known

+circumstance in the face, manifestly it is a better system than one

+which stumbles, breaks down, evades giving an answer to the problems,

+says that they are insoluble, is in contradiction with itself, and does

+not even try to colligate all the known facts. A consistent system,

+unmarred by self-contradictions; in accordance with known human nature;

+in accordance, too, with recognised rules of evolution, and of logic;

+and co-ordinating all known facts, if it is tried on them, cannot be

+dismissed with the remark that "there are plenty of other possible

+guesses."

+

+Our method must be--having already stated the facts as they present

+themselves in the most primitive organisation of the most archaic

+society extant--to enumerate all the possible conjectures which have

+been logically (or even illogically) made as to the origin of the

+institutions before us.

+

+All theories as to how these institutions arose, must rest, primarily,

+on a basis of conjecture as to the original social character of man.

+Nowhere do we see absolutely _primitive_ man, and a totemic system in

+the making. The processes of evolution must have been very gradually

+developed in the course of distant ages, but our conjecture as to the

+nature, in each case, of the processes must be in accordance with what

+is known of human nature. Conjecture, too, has its logical limitations.

+

+We must first make our choice, therefore, between the guess that the

+earliest human beings lived in very small groups (as, in everyday life,

+the natives of Australia are in many cases still compelled to do by the

+precarious nature of their food supplies), or the guess that earliest

+man was gregarious, and dwelt in a promiscuous horde with no sort of

+restraint. One or other view must be correct.

+

+On the former guess (men originally lived in very small groups), the

+probable mutual hostility of group to rival group, the authority of the

+strongest male in each group, and the passions of jealousy, love, and

+hate, must inevitably have produced _some_ rudimentary restrictions on

+absolute archaic freedom. Some people would be prevented from doing

+some things, they must have been checked by the hand of the stronger;

+and from the habit of restraint customary rules would arise. The

+advocates of the alternative conjecture--that man was gregarious, and

+utterly promiscuous--take it for granted (it seems to me) that the

+older and stronger males established no rudimentary restrictions on

+the freedom of the affections, but allowed the young males to share

+with them the females in the horde, and that they permitted both

+sexes to go entirely as they pleased, till, for some unknown reason

+and by some unknown authority, the horde was bisected into exogamous

+moieties (phratries), and after somehow developing totem kins (unless

+animal-named magical groups had been previously developed, on purpose

+to work magic), became a tribe with two phratries.

+

+It is not even necessary for us to deny that the ancestors of man were

+_originally_ communal and gregarious. What we deem to be impossible is

+that, till man had developed into something more like himself, as we

+know him, than an animal without jealousy, and ignorant of anything

+prejudicial to any one's interests in promiscuous unions, he could

+begin to evolve his actual tribal institutions. This is also the

+opinion of Mr. Howitt, as we shall see later.

+

+Thus whoever tries to disengage the evolutionary processes which

+produced the existing society of Australia must commence by making his

+choice between the two conjectures--early man gregarious, promiscuous,

+and anarchist; or early man unsociable, fierce, bullying, and jealous.

+A _via media_ is attempted, however, by Mr. Howitt, to which we shall

+return.

+

+Next, it is clear and certain that some human beliefs about the

+animals which give their names, in known cases, to the two large

+exogamous divisions of the tribe (phratries), and about the other

+animals which give names to the totem kins, and, in one or two cases,

+to the matrimonial classes, must be, in some way, connected with the

+prohibitions to marry, first within the phratries, then, perhaps,

+within the totem kins, then within the Classes (or within the same

+generation).

+

+Thus there are here five courses which conjecture can logically take.

+

+(a) Members of certain recognised human groups already married

+habitually out of their group into other groups, _before_ the animal

+names (now totem names) were given to the groups. The names came later

+and merely marked, at first, and then sanctioned, the limits within

+which marriage had already been forbidden while the groups were still

+nameless.

+

+Or (b) the animal names of the phratries and totem kins existed

+(perhaps as denoting groups which worked magic for the behoof of each

+animal) _before_ marriage was forbidden within their limits. Later, for

+some reason, prohibitions were enacted.

+

+Or (c) at one time there were no marriage regulations at all, but

+these arose when, apparently for some religious reason, a hitherto

+undivided communal horde split into two sections, each of which revered

+a different name-giving animal as their "god" (totem), claimed descent

+from it, and, out of respect to their "god," did not marry any of

+those who professed its faith, and were called by its name, but always

+married persons of _another_ name and "god."

+

+Or (d) men were at first in groups, intermarrying within the group.

+These groups received names from animals and other objects, because

+individual men adopted animal "familiars," as Bear, Elk, Duck, Potato,

+Pine-tree. The sisters of the men next adopted these animal or

+vegetable "familiars," or protective creatures, from their brothers,

+and bequeathed them, by female descent, to their children. These

+children became groups bearing such names as Bear, Potato, Duck, and

+so on. These groups made treaties of marriage with each other, for

+political reasons of acquiring strength by union. The treaties declared

+that Duck should never marry Duck, but always Elk, and _vice versa_.

+This was exogamy, instituted for political purposes, to use the word

+"political" proleptically.

+

+Or (e) men were at first in a promiscuous incestuous horde, but,

+perceiving the evils of this condition (whatever these evils might be

+taken to be), they divided it into two halves, of which one must never

+marry within itself, but always in the other. To these divisions animal

+names were given; they are the phratries. They threw off colonies, or

+accepted other groups, which took new animal names, and are now the

+totem kins.

+

+Finally, in (f) conjectures (a) and (c) may be combined thus: groups

+of men, still nameless as groups, had for certain reasons the habit of

+not marrying within themselves; but, after receiving animal names, they

+developed an idea that the animal of each group was its kinsman, and

+that, for a certain superstitious reason, it was even more wrong than

+it had been before, to marry "within the blood" of the animal, as, for

+Emu to marry Emu. Or (f2) the small groups did marry within themselves

+till, _after_ receiving animal names, they evolved the superstition

+that such marriage was a sin against the animals, and so became

+exogamous.

+

+On the point of the original state of society conjecture seems to be

+limited to this field of possible choices. At least I am acquainted

+with no theory hitherto propounded, which does not set out from one

+or other of these conjectural bases. We must not attack each other's

+ideas merely because they start from conjectures: they can start in

+no other way. Our method must be to discover which conjecture, as it

+is developed, most consistently and successfully colligates all the

+ascertained facts and best endures the touchstone of logic.

+

+Of the hypotheses enumerated above, the system to be advocated here is

+that marked (f 1 and 2). Men, whatever their brutal ancestors may have

+done, when they became men indeed, lived originally in small anonymous

+local groups, and had, for a reason to be given, the habit of selecting

+female mates from groups _not_ their own. Or, if they had not this

+habit they developed the rule, after the previously anonymous local

+groups had received animal names, and after the name-giving animals

+came to receive the measure of respect at present given to them as

+totems.

+

+The second hypothesis (b) (that the animal names of the groups were

+originally those of societies which worked magic, each for an animal,

+and that the prohibition on marriage was _later_ introduced) has been

+suggested by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and is

+accepted by Mr. Howitt.

+

+The third conjecture (c) (man originally promiscuous, but ceasing to

+be so from religious respect for the totem, or "god") is that of Dr.

+Durkheim.

+

+The fourth theory (d) is that of Mr. Hill-Tout.[4]

+

+The fifth theory (e) was that of Mr. Howitt. He now adopts the similar

+theory of Mr. Spencer (b).

+

+

+[1] The Dieri tribe do pray to the Mura-Mura, or _mythical_ ancestors,

+but not, apparently, to the _remembered_ dead.

+

+[2] "Totemism, South Africa," J. G. Frazer, _Man_, 1901, No. III.

+Mr. Frazer does not, of course, adopt the Bantu myth as settling the

+question.

+

+[3] Stow, MSS., 820. I owe the extract to Miss C. G. Burne.

+

+[4] I have not included the theory of Dr. Westermarck, in the _History

+of Human Marriage_, because that work is written without any reference

+to totemism.

+

+

+NOTE

+

+      I have not included the theory of Mr. J. F. McLennan, the

+      founder of all research into totemism. In his opinion,

+      totemism, that is, the possession by different stocks of

+      different name-giving animals, "is older than exogamy in

+      all cases." That is, as Mr. Robertson Smith explains, "it

+      is easy to see that exogamy necessarily presupposes the

+      existence of a system of kinship which took no account

+      of degrees, but only of participation in a common stock.

+      Such an idea as this could not be conceived by savages

+      in an abstract form; it must necessarily have had a

+      concrete expression, or rather must have been thought

+      under a concrete and tangible form, and that form seems

+      to have been always supplied by totemism." (_Kinship and

+      Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 189, 1885). This means

+      that, before they were exogamous, men existed in groups

+      of animal name, as Ravens, Wolves, Ants, and so on. When

+      they became conscious of kinship, and resolved to marry

+      out of the kin, or stock, they fixed the name, say Raven,

+      Wolf, or what not, as the limit within which there must

+      be no marriage. But Mr. McLennan's theory as to why they

+      determined to take no wives within the stock and name, has

+      never been accepted. (See Westermarck, _History of Human

+      Marriage_, pp. 311-314.)

+

+      Mr. McLennan supposed that female infanticide made women

+      scarce in each group, and that therefore they stole each

+      other's girls, and, finally, abstained from their own.

+      But the objections to this hypothesis are infinite and

+      obvious. At one time Mr. McLennan thought that tattooing

+      was the origin of totemism. Members of each group tattooed

+      the semblance of an animal on their flesh--but, as far as

+      I am aware, he did not ask why they adopted this practice.

+      Manifestly a sense of some special connection between the

+      animal and the group must have been prior to the marking

+      of the members of the group with the effigy of the animal.

+      What gave rise to this belief in the connection? (See

+      Chapter VI., criticism of Dr. Pikler). Mr, McLennan merely

+      mentioned to me, in conversation, this idea, which he

+      later abandoned. It had previously occurred to Garcilasso

+      de la Vega that the _germ_ of totemism was to be found in

+      the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which

+      is the theory to be urged later, the _names_ being the

+      instruments of differentiation.

+

+      Mr. A. K. Keane, as in Mr. McLennan's abandoned

+      conjecture, and as in the theory of Dr. Pikler, makes

+      totemism arise in "heraldic badges," "a mere device for

+      distinguishing one individual from another, one family or

+      clan group from another ... the personal or family name

+      precedes the totem, which grows out of it." (Ethnology,

+      pp. 9, II).

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III

+

+THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

+

+

+      Why did man, if once promiscuous, regulate the relations

+      of the sexes?--Theory of Professor Spencer--Animal-named

+      magical societies were prior to regulation of

+      marriage--Theory of Mr. Howitt--Regulations introduced by

+      inspired medicine man--His motives unknown--The theory

+      postulates the pristine existence of the organised tribe

+      of to-day, and of belief in the All Father--Reasons

+      for holding that men were originally promiscuous: (1)

+      So-called survival of so-called "group marriage"; (2)

+      Inclusive names of human relationships--Betrothals

+      not denied--A form of marriage--Mitigated by

+      _Pirauru_--Allotment of paramours at feasts--Is

+      _Pirauru_ a survival of group marriage?--Or a rare case

+      of limitation of custom of feasts of license--Examples

+      of such saturnalia--Fiji, Arunta, Urabunna,

+      Dieri--Degrees of license--Argument against the author's

+      opinion--Laws of incest older than marriage--Names of

+      relationships--Indicate tribal status, not degrees of

+      consanguinity--Fallacy exposed--Starcke _versus_ Morgan's

+      theory of primal promiscuity--Dr. Durkheim on Choctaw

+      names of relationships--A man cannot regard his second

+      cousin as his mother--Dr. Fison on anomalous terms of

+      relationship--Grandfathers and grandsons call each other

+      "brothers"--_Noa_ denotes a man's wife and also all

+      women whom he might legally wed--Proof that terms of

+      relationship do not denote consanguinity--The _Pirrauru_

+      custom implies previous marriage, and is not logically

+      thinkable without it--Descriptions of _Pirrauru_--The

+      _Kandri_ ceremony merely modifies pre-existing

+      marriage--_Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage"--Is found

+      only in tribes of the Matteri Kiraru phratries--Not found

+      in south-eastern tribes--Mr. Howitt's "survivals" do not

+      mean "group marriage."

+

+

+In the theories which postulate that man began in a communal horde,

+with no idea of regulating sexual unions at all--because, having no

+notion of consanguinity, or of harm in consanguine marriages, he saw

+nothing to regulate--the initial difficulty is, how did he ever come

+to change his nature and to see that a rule must be made, as made it

+has been? Mr. Howitt endeavours (if I grasp his meaning) to show

+how man did at last see it, and therefore bisected the horde into

+intermarrying phratries. Mr. Spencer has only asserted that, while man

+saw nothing to regulate in marriages, he evolved an organisation, that

+of the phratries and classes, which did come, somehow, to regulate

+them. Dr. Durkheim takes it, that man if he was originally promiscuous,

+later regulated marriages out of respect to his totems, which were his

+gods. Mr. Hill-Tout supposes that the exogamous rules were made for

+"political" reasons.

+

+The theories of Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer differed from each other,

+originally, only in so far as that Mr. Spencer supposes animal-named

+_magical societies_ (now totemic) to have arisen _before_ man regulated

+marriage in any way; whereas this conception of animal-named groups

+not bound by totemic restrictions on marriage had not occurred to Mr.

+Howitt or any other inquirer, except Mr. J. G. Frazer, who evolved

+it independently. Mr. Spencer's theory in this matter rests entirely

+on his discovery, among the Arunta, in Central Australia, of totems

+marking magical societies, but not regulating marriage, and on his

+inference that, in the beginning, animal-named groups were everywhere

+mere magical societies. To work co-operative magic was their primary

+function. To that opinion Mr. Howitt has now come in, and he adds that

+"the division of the tribe" (into the two primary exogamous moieties

+or phratries, or "classes") "was made with intent to regulate the

+relations of the sexes."[1] On one point, we repeat, namely, _why_

+division was made, Mr. Spencer utters no certain sound, nor does Mr.

+Howitt explicitly tell us for what reason sexual relations, hitherto

+unregulated, were supposed to need regulation. He conceives that there

+is "a widespread belief in the supernatural origin of the practice,"

+but that explains nothing.[2]

+

+Thus Mr. Howitt postulates the existence of a "tribe," divided

+into animal-named magical societies, and promiscuous. The tribe

+has "medicine men" who see visions. One of these men, conceiving,

+no one knows why, that it would be an excellent thing to regulate

+the relations of the sexes, announces to his fellow-men that he has

+received from a supernatural being a command to do so. If they approve,

+they declare the supernatural message "to the assembled headmen at one

+of the ceremonial meetings," the tribe obeys, and divides itself into

+the two primary exogamous moieties or phratries.[3] Mr. Howitt thus

+postulates the existence of the organised tribe, with its prophets, its

+"All Father" (such as Daramulun), its magical societies, its recognised

+headmen, and its public meetings for ceremonial and legislation, all in

+full swing, before the relations of the sexes are in any way regulated.

+

+On reflection, Mr. Howitt may find difficulties in this postulate.

+Meanwhile, we ask what made the very original medicine man, the Moses

+of the tribe, think of the new and drastic command which he brought

+down from the local Sinai? Why did this thinker suppose that the

+relations of the sexes ought to be regulated? Perhaps the idea was the

+inspiration of a dream. Mr. Spencer, acquainted chiefly with tribes who

+have no All Father, has not advanced this theory.

+

+The reasons given for supposing that the "tribe" was originally

+promiscuous are partly based (a) on the actual condition as regards

+individual marriage of some Australian tribes, mainly Dieri and

+Urabunna, with their congeners. These tribes, it is argued, are now

+no longer absolutely promiscuous, but men and women are divided into

+intermarriageable sets, so that all women of a certain status in Emu

+phratry are, or their predecessors have been, actual wives of all

+men of the corresponding status in Kangaroo phratry. The only bar

+to absolute promiscuity is that of the phratries (established by

+legislation on this theory), and of certain by-laws, of relatively

+recent institution. The names for human relationships (father, mother,

+son, daughter, brother, sister), again, (b) are, it is argued, such as

+"group marriage," and "group marriage" alone, would inevitably produce.

+All women of a certain status are my "mothers," all men of a certain

+status are my "fathers," all women of another status are my "sisters,"

+all of another are my "wives," and so on. Thus Mr. Spencer is able

+to say that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in

+practice in the Urabunna tribe" at the present day.[4]

+

+This, however, does not mean that among many such tribes a man is not

+betrothed to a special woman, and does not marry that woman, with

+certain filthy initiatory "rites," contravening the usual rules of

+intercourse.[5] Nor is it denied that such man and wife habitually

+cohabit, and that the man, by hunting and fishing, provides for the

+wife and all her children, and recognises them as his own.

+

+It is meant that each man has only a certain set of nubile women

+open to him (_Nupa_, or _Noa_, or _Unawa_), and that out of these,

+in addition to his allotted bride, an uncertain number of women are

+assigned to him and to others, mainly at tribal festivals, as paramours

+(_Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_), by their elder brothers, or the heads of

+totem kins, or the seniors of the Urabunna tribe. "This relationship

+is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe

+are gathered together to perform important ceremonies."[6] One woman

+may, on different occasions, be allotted as _Piraungaru_ to different

+men, one man to different women. Occasionally, though rarely, the

+regular husband (he who marries the wife by filthy "rites") resists the

+allotting of his wife to another man, and then "there is a fight."

+

+The question is, does this Urabunna custom of _Piraungaru_ (the

+existence of which in some tribes is not denied) represent a survival

+of a primary stage in which all men of a certain social and phratriac

+status were all alike husbands to all women of the corresponding status

+(group, or rather _status_, marriage); and was _that_, in turn, a

+survival of the anarchy of the horde, in which there were no grades at

+all, but anarchic promiscuity?

+

+That is the opinion of believers in "the primary undivided horde," and

+in "group marriage," or rather "status marriage."

+

+Or is this _Piraungaru_ custom, as we think more probable, an organised

+and circumscribed and isolated legalisation, among a few tribes, of

+the utterly unbridled license practised by many savages on festive

+occasions corresponding to the Persian feast of the Sacaea, and to the

+Roman Saturnalia?[7]

+

+The _Piraungaru_ allotments are made, as a rule, at great licentious

+meetings, but among the Urabunna, though they break the rules

+of individual marriage, they do not break the tribal rules of

+incest. By these rules the _Piraungaru_ men and women must be legal

+intermarriageable persons (_Nupa_); their regulated paramourship is

+not, by tribal law, what we, or the natives, deem "incestuous." On the

+other hand, at Fijian seasons of license, even the relationship of

+brother and sister--the most sacred of all to a savage--is purposely

+profaned. Brothers and sisters are "intentionally coupled" at the feast

+of license called _Nanga_. The object is to have "a regular burst,"

+and deliberately violate every law. Men and women "publicly practised

+unmentionable abominations."[8]

+

+The Fijians are infinitely above the Urabunna in civilisation, being an

+agricultural people. Their Nanga feast is also called Mbaki--"harvest"

+Yet the Fijians, though more civilised, far exceed the license of

+the _Piraungaru_ custom of the Urabunna, not only permitting, but

+enjoining, the extremest form of incest.

+

+The Arunta, again, neighbours of the Urabunna, though said to have

+more of "individual marriage" than they, in seasons of license go

+much beyond the Urabunna, though not so far as the Fijians. Women, at

+certain large meetings, "are told off ... and with the exception of

+men who stand in the relation of actual Uther, brother, or sons, they

+are, for the time being, common property to _all_ the men present on

+the corroboree ground." Women are thus handed over to men "whom, under

+ordinary circumstances, they may not even speak to or go near."[9]

+Every known rule, except that which forbids the closest incest as

+understood by ourselves, is deliberately and purposely reversed[10]

+by the Arunta on certain occasions. Another example will be produced

+later, that of the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna.

+

+We suggest, then, that these three grades of license--the Urabunna,

+adulterous, but more or less permanent, and limited by rules and

+by tribal and modern laws of incest; the Arunta, not permanent,

+adulterous, and tribally incestuous, limited only by our own ideas of

+the worst kinds of incest; and the Fijian, not permanent, adulterous,

+and of an incestuous character not only unlimited by laws, but rather

+limited by the desire to break the most sacred laws--are all of the

+same kind. They are not, we suggest, survivals of "group marriage," or

+of a period of perfect promiscuity in everyday life, though that they

+commemorate such a fancied period is the Arunta myth, just as the Roman

+myth averred that the Saturnalia commemorated the anarchy of the Golden

+Age.

+

+                  "In Saturn's time

+Such mixture was not held a crime."

+

+The Golden Age of promiscuity is, of course, reported, not in an

+historical tradition recording a fact, but in a myth invented to

+explain the feasts of license. Men find that they have institutions,

+they argue that they must once have been without institutions, they

+make myths about ancestors or gods who introduced institutions, they

+invent the Golden Age, when there were none, and, on occasion, revert

+for a day or a week to that happy ideal. The periods of license cannot

+be true commemorative functions, continued in pious memory of a time of

+anarchy since institutions began.

+

+But of the three types, Urabunna, Arunta, Fijian, the Urabunna, except

+in its degree of permanence, is the least licentious, least invades

+law, and it is a curious question why incest increases at these feasts

+as culture advances, up to a certain point. The law invaded by the

+Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom is not the tribal law of incest, nor

+the modern law of incest, but the law of the sanctity of individual

+marriage. It may therefore be argued (as against my own opinion) that

+the sanctity of individual marriage is still merely a nascent idea

+among the Urabunna, an idea which is recent, and so can be set aside

+easily; whereas the tribal laws of incest are strong with the strength

+of immemorial antiquity, and therefore must have already existed in a

+past age when there was no individual marriage at all. On this showing

+we have, first, the communal undivided horde; next, the horde bisected

+into groups which must not marry within each other (phratries), though

+_why_ this arrangement was made and submitted to nobody can guess with

+any plausibility. By this time all females of phratry A might not only

+marry any man of phratry B, but were, according to the hypothesis, by

+theory and by practice, _all_ wives of _all_ men of phratry B. Next, as

+to-day, a man of B married a woman of A, with or without the existing

+offensive rites, but his tenure of her is still so insecure and recent

+that it is set aside, to a great extent, by the _Piraungaru_ or

+_Pirauru_ custom, itself a proof and survival of "group marriage," and

+of communal promiscuity in the past. Such is the argument for "group

+marriage," which may be advanced against my opinion, or thus, if I did

+not hold my opinion, I would state the argument.

+

+This licentious custom, whether called _Piraungaru_ or by other names,

+is, with the tribal names for human relationships, the only basis of

+the belief in the primal promiscuous horde. Now, as to these names of

+relationships, we may repeat the adverse arguments already advanced by

+us in _Social Origins_, pp. 99-103. "Whatever the original sense of

+the names, they all now denote seniority and customary legal status in

+the tribe, with the reciprocal duties, rights, and avoidances.... The

+friends of group and communal marriage keep unconsciously forgetting,

+at this point of their argument, that _our_ ideas of sister, brother,

+father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at

+certain other points of their argument) with the native terms,

+which _include_, indeed, but do not _denote_ these relationships as

+understood by us.... We cannot say 'our word "son" must not be thought

+of when we try to understand the native term of relationship which

+includes sons--in _our_ sense,' and next aver that 'sons, in _our_

+sense, are regarded [or spoken of] as real sons of the group, not of

+the individual, because of a past [or present] stage of promiscuity

+which made real paternity undiscoverable.'"

+

+Manifestly there lurks a fallacy in alternately using "sons," for

+example, in our sense, and then in the tribal sense, which includes

+both fatherhood, or sonship, in our sense, and also tribal status and

+duties. "The terms, in addition to their usual and generally accepted

+signification of relationship by blood, express a class or group

+relation quite independent of it."[11]

+

+Thus the tribal names may result from an expanded use of earlier names

+of blood relationship, or names of tribal status may now be applied

+to include persons who are within degrees of blood relationship. In

+the latter case, how do we know that a tribe with its degrees of

+status is primitive? Starcke thinks that Mr. Morgan's use of terms of

+relationship as proof of "communal marriage" is "a wild dream, if not

+the delirium of fever." "The nomenclature was in every respect the

+faithful reflection of the juridical relations which arose between

+the nearest kinsfolk of each tribe. Individuals who were, according

+to the legal point of view, on the same level with the speaker,

+received the same designation. The other categories of kinship were

+formally developed out of this standpoint." The system of names for

+relationships "affords no warrant" for Mr. Morgan's theory of primitive

+promiscuity.[12]

+

+Similar arguments against inferring collective marriage in the

+past from existing tribal terms of relationship are urged by Dr.

+Durkheim.[13] He writes, taking an American case of names of

+relationship, as against Professor Kohler: "We see that the (Choctaw)

+word _Inoha_ (mother) applies indifferently to all the women of my

+mother's group, from the oldest to the youngest. The term thus defines

+its own meaning: it applies to all the women of the family (or clan?)

+into which my father has married. Doubtless it is rather hard to

+understand how the same term can apply to so many different people.

+But certain it is, that the word cannot awake, in men's minds, any

+idea of _descent_, in the usual sense of the word. For a man cannot

+seriously regard his second cousin as his mother, even virtual. _The

+vocabulary of relationships must therefore express something other

+than relations of consanguinity, properly so-called...._ Relationship

+and consanguinity are very different things ... relationship being

+essentially constituted by certain legal and moral obligations, which

+society imposes on certain individuals."[14]

+

+The whole passage should be read, but its sense is that which I have

+already tried to express; and Dr. Durkheim says, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than an _ultima ratio_" (a last

+resource), "intended to enable us to envisage these strange customs;

+but it is impossible to overlook all the difficulties which it raises."

+

+An analogous explanation of the wide use of certain terms of

+relationship has been given by Dr. Fison, of whom Mr. Howitt writes,

+"Much of what I have done is equally his."[15] Dr. Fison says, "All

+men of the same generation who bear the same totem are tribally

+brothers, though they may belong to different and widely separated

+tribes. Here we find an explanation of certain apparently anomalous

+terms of relationship. Thus, in some tribes the paternal grandson

+and his grandfather call one another 'elder brother' and 'younger

+brother' respectively. These persons are of the same totem."[16] "Many

+other designations" in Mr. Morgan's Tables of Terms of Relationship

+"admit of a similar solution."[17] The terms do not denote degrees of

+blood relationship, but of brotherhood in the totem (or phratry, or

+matrimonial class). It is so, too, with the Choctaw term for Mother.

+Every one knows who his mother, in our sense, is: the Choctaw term

+denotes a tribal status.

+

+If it be said that, because a man calls his wife his _Noa_, and also

+calls all women whom he might have married his _Noa_, therefore all

+these women, in past times, would have been his wives; it might as

+well be said that all the women whom he calls "mother" would, in times

+past, have collaborated in giving birth to him. As far as these terms

+indicate relationship, "a man is the younger brother of his maternal

+grandmother," and the maternal grandfather of his second cousin![18]

+The terms do not denote relationship in blood, clearly, but something

+quite different.

+

+The custom of _Piraungaru_, or _Pirrauru_, and cases of license at

+festivals, and the names for tribal relations, are, we repeat, the

+only arguments in favour of the theory of the communal horde.[19] We

+have shown that the terms of relationship do not necessarily help the

+theory. That theory, again, is invalidated by its inability to account

+for the origin of the rules forbidding marriage between persons of the

+same phratry (for it does not tell us _why_ the original medicine man

+conceived the idea of regulations), or even to account for the origin

+of the phratriac divisions.

+

+But why, on our system, can the _Piraungaru_ custom break the rule of

+individual marriage more easily than the law prohibiting incest? Why it

+can do so on the theory of pristine promiscuity we have explained (p.

+41, _supra_).

+

+We reply that individual marriage has not, among savages, any

+"religious" sanction; it is protected by no form of the phratry or

+totem tabu; by no god, such as Hymen; but rests, as from the first it

+rested, on the character and strength of the possessor of the woman or

+women, and falls into abeyance if he does not choose to exert it. If

+the males of the Urabunna have so far departed from the natural animal

+instincts as usually (with exceptions) to prefer to relax their tenure

+of women, being tempted by the bribe of a legalised change of partners

+all round, they exhibit, not a primitive, but a rather advanced type of

+human nature. The moral poet sings:--

+

+"Of _Whist_ or _Cribbage_ mark the amusing Game,

+The _Partners_ changing, but the _Sport_ the same,

+Then see one Man with one unceasing Wife,

+Play the long Rubber of connubial Life."[20]

+

+This is the "platform" of the Urabunna and Dieri, as it is of the

+old Cicisbeism in Italy, and of a section of modern "smart society,"

+especially at the end of the _ancien r�gime_ in France. Man may fall

+into this way of thinking, just as, in Greece, he actually legalised

+unnatural passions by a ceremony of union. "That one practice, in many

+countries, became systematised," as Mr. J. F. McLennan wrote to Mr.

+Darwin.[21]

+

+This is not the only example of a legalised aberration from nature,

+or from second nature. Abhorrence of incest has become a law of

+second nature, among savage as among civilised men. But Dr. Durkheim

+publishes a long list of legalised aberrations from the laws of incest

+among Hebrews, Arabs, Phoenicians, Greeks, Slavonic peoples, Medes,

+Persians, Egyptians, Cambodians, and Peruvians.[22] If these things,

+these monstrous aberrations, can be legalised "in the green tree," why

+should not jealousy fall into a kind of legalised abeyance among the

+Urabunna, under the law of partner-shifting? The _Piraungaru_ custom

+does not prove that earliest man was not ferociously jealous; it merely

+shows that certain tribes have reached a stage in which jealousy is, at

+present, more or less suppressed in favour of legalised license.

+

+We catch the Urabunna and Dieri at a moment of development in which

+the abandonment of strict possession of a wife is compensated for by

+a legalised system of changing partners, enduring after the feast of

+license is over. But even so, a man is responsible, as father, for the

+children of his actual wife, not for the children of his _Piraungaru_

+paramours. For these their actual husbands (_Tippa Malku_) are

+responsible.

+

+Mr. Howitt says, in his earlier account of this institution, that among

+the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna, the men and women who are made

+_Pirauru_ are not consulted. The heads of the tribe do not ask whether

+they fancy each other or not. "The time is one of festivity, feasting,

+and amusement," only too obviously! "Dancing is carried on." "A man

+can always exercise marital rights towards his _Pirauru_, if they

+meet when her _Noa_ (real husband) is absent, but he cannot take her

+away from him unless by his consent," except at the feasts. But the

+husband usually consents. "In spite of all this arrangement, most of

+the quarrels among the Dieri arise out of this _Pirauru_ practice....

+"A son or daughter regards the real husband (_Noa_) of his mother as

+his _Apiri Muria_, or "real father"; his mother's _Pirauru_ is only his

+_Apiri Waka_, or "little father." At certain feasts of license, such

+as intertribal marriages, "no jealous feeling is allowed under penalty

+of strangling, but it crops up afterwards, and occasions many bloody

+affrays."[23] Thus jealousy is not easily kept in abeyance by customary

+law.

+

+The idea of such a change of partners is human, not animal, and the

+more of a brute the ancestor of man was the less could he dream, in

+times truly primitive, of _Piraungaru_ as a permanent arrangement. Men,

+in a few tribes, declined into it, and are capable of passing out of

+it, like the Urabunna or Dieri man, who either retains so much of the

+animal, or is rising so far towards the Homeric standard, as to fight

+rather than let his wife be allotted to another man, or at least to

+thump that other man afterwards.

+

+The Dieri case of the feast of license, just mentioned, is notable.

+"The various _Piraurus_ (paramours) are allotted to each other by

+the great council of the tribe, after which their names are formally

+announced to the assembled people on the evening of the ceremony of

+circumcision, during which there is for a time a general license

+permitted between all those who have been thus allotted to each other."

+But persons of the same totem among the Dieri may not be _Piraurus_

+to each other, nor may near relations as we reckon kinship, including

+cousins on both sides.

+

+In this arrangement Mr. Howitt sees "a form of group marriage," while

+I see tribe-regulated license, certainly much less lawless than that

+of the more advanced Fijians or the Arunta. Mr. Howitt did not state

+that the _Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_ unions are preceded (as marriage is)

+by any ceremony, unless the reading the banns, so to speak, by public

+proclamation among the Dieri is a ceremony.[24] Now he has discovered a

+ceremony as symbolic as our wedding ring (1904).

+

+Little light, if any, is thrown on these customs of legalised license

+by philology. Mr. Howitt thought that _Pirauru_ may be derived from

+_Pira_, "the moon," and _Uru_, "circular." The tribal feasts of

+license are held at the full moon, but I am not aware that, by the

+natives, people are deemed peculiarly "moonstruck," or lunatic, at

+that season. If Urabunna _Piraungaru_ is linguistically connected with

+Dieri _Pirauru_, then both _Piraungaru_ and _Pirauru_ may mean "Full

+Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to

+me!"[25]

+

+Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes the _Noa_ of a man most frequently by

+being betrothed to him when she is a mere infant.... In certain cases

+she is given by the Great Council, as a reward for some meritorious

+act on his part." "None but the brave deserve the fair," and this is

+"individual marriage," though the woman who is wedded to one man may be

+legally allotted as Full Mooner, or _Pirauru_, to several. "The right

+of the _Noa_ overrides that of the _Pirauru_. Thus a man cannot claim

+a woman who is _Pirauru_ to him when her _Noa_ is present in the camp,

+excepting by his consent." The husband generally yields, he shares

+equivalent privileges. "Such cases, however, are the frequent causes of

+jealousies and fights."[26]

+

+This evidence does not seem, on the whole, to force upon us the

+conclusion that the Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom, or any of these

+customs, any more than the custom of polyandry, or of legalised

+incest in higher societies, is a survival of "group marriage"--all

+men of certain social grades being actual husbands of all women of

+the corresponding grades--while again that is a survival of gradeless

+promiscuity. We shall disprove that theory. Rather, the _Piraungaru_

+custom appears to be a limited concession to the taste, certainly a

+human taste, for partner-changing--_which can only manifest itself

+where regular partnerships already exist_. Jealousy among these tribes

+is in a state of modified abeyance: like nature herself, and second

+nature, where, among civilised peoples, things unnatural, or contrary

+to the horror of incest, have been systematically legalised.

+

+I have so far given Mr. Howitt's account of _Pirrauru_ (the name is now

+so written by him) among the Dieri, as it appeared in his works, prior

+to 1904. In that year he published his _Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia_, which contains additional details of essential importance

+(pp. 179-187). A woman becomes _Tippa Malku_,[27] or affianced,[28]

+to one man only, _before_ she becomes _Pirrauru_, or what Mr. Howitt

+calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She

+is never the _Pirrauru_ of all the men who are _Noa_ to her, that is,

+intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a

+symbolic ceremony, as a _Pirrauru_ to one or more men, who are _Noa_

+to her. At first, while a child, or at least while a maiden, she is

+betrothed (there are varieties of modes) to one individual male. She

+may ask her husband to let her take on another man as _Pirrauru_;

+"should he refuse to do this she must put up with it." If he consents,

+other men make two adjacent ridges of sand, and level them into one

+larger ridge, while a man, usually the selected lover, pours sand from

+the ridge over the upper part of his thighs, "buries the _Pirrauru_ in

+the sand." (The phrase does not suggest that _Pirrauru_ means "Full

+Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop

+wives (exchange their _Noa_ as _Pirraurus_), and also when "the whole

+of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already

+_Pirrauru_, are _reallotted_," a term which suggests the temporary

+character of the unions.

+

+I am ready to allow that the _Kandri_ ceremony, a symbol of recognised

+union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian

+_Ghandarva_ rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified

+union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which

+is arranged subsequent to the _Tippa Malku_ ceremony of permanent

+betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt,

+subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one

+woman to one man in the _Tippa Malku_ arrangement. That arrangement

+is demonstrably more primitive than _Pirrauru_, for _Pirrauru_ is

+unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of

+_Tippa Malku_.

+

+This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage"

+(I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All

+persons legally intermarriageable (_Noa_), under phratry law, were

+originally, he holds, _ipso facto_, married. Consequently the _Kandri_

+custom could not make them _more_ married than they then actually were.

+In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial

+comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not

+_Noa_, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the _Kandri_

+ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons

+who are already _Tippa Malku_ (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal

+paramours in certain other wedded or _Tippa Malku_ women, and in men

+either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification

+of individual _Tippa Malku_, _Pirrauru_ is impossible, and its

+existence is unthinkable.[29]

+

+_Pirrauru_ is a modification of marriage (_Tippa Malku_), _Tippa

+Malku_ is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a

+_Tippa Malku_ husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to

+himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his

+intended _fianc�e_.[30] The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his

+_Pirrauru_ woman away from her _Tippa Malku_ husband "unless by his

+consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times"--feasts, in fact, of

+license. _Pirrauru_ secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the

+seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless

+and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these _Pirrauru_ "in

+commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property

+and social influence. What do the _Tippa Malku_ husbands say to this

+arrangement?

+

+As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group

+marries another group, the _Pirrauru_ literally heap hot coals on

+each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the

+"group" as _Pirrauru_. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled

+(_Nulina_). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri,

+praises _Pirrauru_ for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One

+does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's

+wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy,

+checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying,

+but _Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is

+involved. _Pirrauru may_ (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live

+together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote

+from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.

+

+You may call _Pirrauru_ a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a

+later modification of a prior _Tippa Malku_ wedlock, it cannot be cited

+as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all

+female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is

+called "group marriage."[31]

+

+If _Pirrauru_ were primitive, it might be looked for among these

+southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social

+organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent

+institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the

+All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or,

+at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri

+belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, _Pirrauru_ is

+no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta

+and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri,

+Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, _Pirrauru_ cannot

+claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to

+"individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain,

+prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln

+and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and

+Urabunna phratry names, _Matteri_ and _Kararu_, exist.[32] Having

+identical phratry names (or one phratry name identical, as among the

+Kunandaburi), whether by borrowing or by original community of language

+and institutions: all these tribes southward to the sea from Lake Eyre

+may possess, or may have possessed, _Pirrauru_.

+

+Among the most pristine of all tribes, in the south by east, however,

+_Pirrauru_ is not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the

+Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find no _Pirrauru_.

+But Mr. Howitt notes other practices which are taken by him to be mere

+rudimentary survivals of "group marriage." They are (i.) exchange of

+wives at feasts of marriage, or in view of impending misfortune, as

+when shipwrecked mariners break into the stores, and are "working at

+the rum and the gin." These are feasts of license, not survivals of

+"group marriage" nor of _Pirrauru_. (ii.) The _jus primae noctis_,

+enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all,

+nor is it a survival of _Pirrauru_. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia,"

+"almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost

+promiscuous and very rare) nor _Pirrauru_. (iv.) Seven brothers have

+one wife. This is adelphic polyandry, Mr. Howitt calls it "group

+marriage." (v.) "A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife

+of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by the

+clan." If this is "group marriage" (there is no "group" concerned)

+there was group marriage in ancient Rome.[33] This, I think, is all

+that Mr. Howitt has to show for "group marriage" and _Pirrauru_ among

+the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.

+

+The manner in which _Tippa Malku_ betrothals are arranged deserves

+attention. They who "give this woman away," and they who give away her

+bride-groom also, are the brothers of the mothers of the pair, or the

+mothers themselves may arrange the matter.[34]

+

+Mr. Howitt, on this point, observes that, if the past can be judged of

+by the present, "I should say that the practice of betrothal, which

+is universal in Australia, must have produced a feeling of individual

+proprietary right over the women so promised." Manifestly Mr. Howitt

+is putting the plough before the oxen. It is because certain kinsfolk

+have an acknowledged "proprietary right" over the woman that they can

+betroth her to a man: it is not because they can betroth her to a man

+that they have "a feeling of individual proprietary right over her."

+I give my coppers away to a crossing-sweeper, or exchange them for

+commodities, because I have an individual proprietary right over these

+coins. I have not acquired the feeling of individual proprietary right

+over the pence by dint of observing that I do give them away or buy

+things with them.

+

+The proprietary rights of mothers, maternal uncles, or any other

+kinsfolk over girls must, of course, have been existing and generally

+acknowledged before these kinsfolk could exercise the said rights of

+giving away. But, in a promiscuous horde, before marriage existed, how

+could anybody know what persons had proprietary rights over what other

+persons?[35]

+

+Mr. Howitt here adds that the "practice of betrothal ..." (or perhaps

+he means that "the feeling of individual proprietary right"?) "when

+accentuated by the _Tippa Malku_ marriage, must also tend to overthrow

+the _Pirrauru_ marriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have

+proved, that if there were no _Tippa Malku_ marriage there could be no

+_Pirrauru_ to overthrow.

+

+As to the _Pirrauru_ or _Piraungaru_ custom, moreover, Mr. Howitt

+has himself candidly observed that, on his theory, it "ought rather

+to have been perpetuated than abandoned" (so it _is_ abandoned)

+"under conditions of environment" (such as more abundant food) "which

+permitted the _Pirrauru_ group to remain together on one spot,

+instead of being compelled by the exigencies of existence to separate

+into lesser groups having the Noa" (or regular) "marriage."[36] So

+_Pirrauru_ don't live in "groups"!

+

+As a fact, the more that supplies, in some regions, as on the south

+coast, permit relatively large groups to coexist, the less is their

+marital license; while, on the other hand, the less favourable the

+conditions of supply (as in the Barkinji region), the less do we hear

+of _Pirrauru_, or anything of the kind, except among tribes of the

+Kiraru and Matteri phratries. For these reasons, _Pirrauru_ unions

+appear to mark an isolated moment in culture, not to be a survival of

+universal pristine promiscuity. They are almost always associated,

+in their inception, with seasons of frolic and lust, and with large

+assemblages, rather than with the usual course of everyday existence.

+

+For the reasons here stated, it does not seem that Australian

+institutions yield any evidence for primitive promiscuity.

+

+

+

+[1] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 89.

+

+[2] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 90.

+

+[3] _Loc. cit._ Mr. Howitt says "classes," but we adhere to the term

+"phratries."

+

+[4] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

+

+[5] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 92-98.

+

+[6] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

+

+[7] For a large account of these customs see _The Golden Bough_, second

+edition.

+

+[8] Fison, J.A.I., xiv. p. 28.

+

+[9] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 97.

+

+[10] Ibid., p. 111.

+

+[11] Roth, _N.W.C. Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56.

+

+[12] Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, p. 207.

+

+[13] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. pp. 313-316.

+

+[14] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. p. 315.

+

+[15] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, xiv.

+

+[16] Can Dr. Fison mean of the same matrimonial class?

+

+[17] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 166, 167.

+

+[18] _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 163. Pointed out by Mr.

+N. W. Thomas.

+

+[19] The participation of many men in the _jus primae noctis_ is open

+to various explanations.

+

+[20] _Poetry of the Antijacobin._

+

+[21] _Studies in Ancient History_, ii. p. 52.

+

+[22] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i., pp.38, 39, 62.

+

+[23] _J. A. I._, pp. 56-60, August 1890.

+

+[24] Howitt, _J. A. I._, August 1890, pp. 55-58.

+

+[25] What the Dieri call _Pirauru_ (legalised paramour) the adjacent

+Kunan-daburi tribe call _Dilpa Mali_. In this tribe the individual

+husband or individual wife (that is, the real wife or husband) is

+styled _Nubaia_, in Dieri _Noa_, in Urabunna _Nupa_. Husband's brother,

+sister's husband, wife's sister, and brother's wife are all _Nubaia

+Kodimali_ in Kunandabori, and are all _Noa_ in Dieri. What _Dilpa

+Mali_ (legalised paramour, or "accessory wife or husband") means in

+Kunandabori Mr. Howitt does not know. But he learns that _Kodi Mali_

+(applied to _Pirauru_) means "_not_ Nubaia," that is, "_not_ legal

+individual husband or wife." If we knew what Dilpa means in Dilpa Mali

+(legalised paramour of either sex), we should know more than we are apt

+to do in the present state of Australian philology.

+

+At Port Lincoln a man calls his own wife _Yung Ara_, that of his

+brother _Karteti_ (_Trans. Phil. Soc. Vic._, v. 180). What do these

+words mean?--_Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, pp.

+804-806.

+

+[26] _Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, p. 807.

+

+[27] _Tippa_, in one tongue, _Malku_ in another, denote the tassel

+which is a man's full dress suit.

+

+[28] Mr. Howitt says that the pair are _Tippa Malku_ "for the time

+being" (p. 179), though the association seems to be permanent. May

+girls Tippa Malku--"sealed" to a man--have relations with other men

+before their actual marriage, and with what men? We are not told, but a

+girl cannot be a _Pirrauru_ before she is _Tippa Malku_. If _Pirrauru_

+"arises through the exchange by brothers of their _wives_" (p. 181),

+how can an unmarried man who has no wife become a _Pirrauru_? He

+does. When _Pirrauru_ people are "re-allotted" (p. 182), does the old

+connection persist, or is it broken, or is it merely in being for the

+festive occasion? How does the jealousy of the _Pirrauru_, which is

+great, like the change? These questions, and many more, are asked by

+Mr. N. W. Thomas.

+

+[29] Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual husbands

+and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and _Pirrauru_

+were devised to limit Tom, Dick, and Harry, &c., to Jane, Mary, and

+Susan, &c., all these men being _Pirrauru_ to all these women, and

+_vice versa_. Next, Tippa Malku was devised, limiting Jane to Tom,

+but _Pirrauru_ was retained, to modify that limitation. Anybody is

+welcome to this mode of making _Pirrauru_ logically thinkable, without

+prior _Tippa Malku_: if he thinks that the arrangement is logically

+thinkable, which I do not.

+

+[30] Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could not possess

+the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised, which, before

+marriage existed, it could not be.

+

+[31] I have here had the advantage of using a MS. note by Mr. N. W.

+Thomas.

+

+[32] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 191.

+

+[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 195, 217, 219, 224,

+260.

+

+[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 177, 178.

+

+[35] Ibid., p. 283.

+

+[36] _J. A. I._, xiii. p. 34.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV

+

+THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

+

+

+      How could man, if promiscuous, cease to be so?--Opinion

+      of Mr. Howitt--Ethical training in groups very small, by

+      reason of economic conditions--Likes and dislikes--Love

+      and jealousy--Distinctions and restrictions--Origin of

+      restrictions not explained by Professor Spencer--His

+      account of the Arunta--Among them the totem does not

+      regulate marriage, is not exogamous, denotes a magical

+      society--Causes of this unique state of things--Male

+      descent: doctrine of reincarnation, belief in

+      spirit-haunted stone _churinga nanja_--Mr. Spencer thinks

+      Arunta totemism pristine--This opinion contested--How

+      Arunta totemism ceased to regulate marriage--Result

+      of isolated belief in _churinga nanja_--Contradictory

+      Arunta myths--Arunta totemism impossible in tribes

+      with female descent--Case of the Urabunna--Origin of

+      _churinga nanja_ belief--Sacred stone objects in New

+      South Wales--Present Arunta belief perhaps based on myths

+      explanatory of stone amulets of unknown meaning--Proof

+      that the more northern tribes never held the Arunta belief

+      in _churinga nanja_--Traces of Arunta ideas among the

+      Euahlayi--Possible traces of a belief in a sky-dwelling

+      being among southern Arunta--Mr. Gillen's "great Ulthaana

+      of the heavens"--How arose the magic-working animal-named

+      Arunta societies?--Not found in the south-east--Mr.

+      Spencer's theory that they do survive--Criticism of his

+      evidence--Recapitulation--Arunta totemism not primitive

+      but modified.

+

+

+Next we have to ask how, granting the hypothesis of the promiscuous

+horde, man ceased to be promiscuous. It will be seen that, on a theory

+of Mr. Howitt's, man was, in fact, far on the way of ceasing to be

+promiscuous or a "horde's man," before he introduced the moral reform

+of bisecting his horde into phratries, for the purpose of preventing

+brother with sister marriages. Till unions were permanent, and kin

+recognised, things impossible in a state of promiscuity, nobody could

+dream of forbidding brother and sister marriage, because nobody could

+know who was brother or sister to whom. Now, Mr. Howitt does indicate

+a way in which man might cease to be promiscuous, before any sage

+invented the system of exogamous phratries.

+

+He writes,[1] "I start ... from the assumption that there was once an

+undivided commune ... I do not desire to be understood as maintaining

+that it implies necessarily the assumption of complete communism

+between the sexes. Assuming that the former physical conditions of the

+Australian continent were much as they are now, complete communism

+always existing would, I think, be an impossibility. The character of

+the country, the necessity of hunting for food, and of removing from

+one spot to another in search of game and of vegetable food, would

+necessarily cause any undivided commune, _when it assumed dimensions of

+more than that of a few members, to break up_, under the necessities

+of existence, into two or more communes of similar constitution to

+itself. In addition to this it has become evident to me, after a long

+acquaintance with the Australian savage, that, in the past as now,

+individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, although

+there was the admitted common right between certain groups of the

+commune, in practice these rights would either not be exercised by

+reason of various causes, or would remain in abeyance, so far as the

+separated but allied undivided communes were concerned, until on great

+ceremonial occasions, or where certain periodical gatherings for

+food purposes reunited temporarily all the segments of the original

+community. In short, so far as the evidence goes at present, I am

+inclined to regard the probable condition of the undivided commune as

+being well represented now by what occurs when on certain occasions the

+modified divided communes reunite."[2]

+

+What occurs in these festive assemblies among certain central and

+northern tribes, as we have seen, is a legalised and restricted change

+of wives all round, with disregard, in some cases, of some of the

+tribal rules against incest. On Mr. Howitt's theory the undivided

+communal horde must always have been, as I have urged, dividing itself,

+owing to lack of supplies. It would be a very small group, continually

+broken up, and intercourse of the sexes even in that group, must

+have been restrained by jealousy, based on the asserted existence of

+individual "likes" and "dislikes." These restrictions, again, must have

+led to some idea that the man usually associated with, and responsible

+for feeding, and protecting, and correcting the woman and her children,

+was just the man who "liked" her, the man whom she "liked," and the man

+who "disliked" other men if they wooed her.

+

+But that state of things is not an undivided communal horde at all! It

+is much more akin to the state of things in which I take marriage rules

+to have arisen.

+

+We may suppose, then, that early moral distinctions and restrictions

+grew up among the practically "family" groups of everyday life, as

+described by Mr. Howitt, and we need not discuss again the question

+whether, at this very early period, there existed a community exactly

+like the local tribe of to-day in every respect--except that marriage

+was utterly unregulated, till an inspired medicine man promulgated the

+law of exogamy, his own invention.

+

+Mr. Howitt began his long and invaluable studies of these problems as

+a disciple of Mr. Lewis Morgan. That scholar was a warm partisan of

+the primeval horde, of group marriage, and (at times) of a reformatory

+movement. These ideas, first admitted to Mr. Howitt's mind, have

+remained with him, but he has seen clearly that the whole theory needed

+at least that essential modification which his practical knowledge of

+savage life has enabled him to make. He does not seem to me to hold

+that the promiscuous horde suddenly, for no reason, reformed itself:

+his reformers had previous ethical training in a state of daily life

+which is not that of the hypothetical horde. But he still clings to the

+horde, tiny as it must have been, as the source of a tradition of a

+brief-lived period of promiscuity. This faith is but the "after-image"

+left in his mental processes by the glow of Mr. Morgan's theory, but

+the faith is confirmed by his view of the terms of relationship, and of

+the _Piraungaru_, _Pirrauru_, and similar customs. We have shown, in

+the last chapter, that the terms and the customs are not necessarily

+proofs of promiscuity in the past, but may be otherwise interpreted

+with logical consistency, and in conformity with human nature.

+

+The statement of Mr. Howitt shows how the communal horde of the

+hypothesis might come to see that it needed moral reformation. In

+daily life, by Mr. Howitt's theory, it had practically ceased to be a

+communal horde before the medicine man was inspired to reform it. The

+hypothesis of Professor Baldwin Spencer resembles that of Mr. Howitt,

+but, unlike his (as it used to stand), accounts for the existence

+of animal-named sets of people within the phratries. Mr. Spencer,

+starting from the present social condition of the Arunta "nation" or

+group of tribes (Arunta, Kaitish, Ilpirra, Unmatjera), supposes that

+these tribes retain pristine traits, once universal, but now confined

+to them. The peculiar pristine traits, by the theory, are (1) the

+existence of animal-named local societies for magical purposes. The

+members of each local group worked magic for their name-giving animal

+or plant, but any one might marry a woman of his own group name, Eagle

+Hawk, Cockatoo, and the like, while these names were not inherited,

+either from father or mother, and did not denote a bond of kinship.

+Mr. Spencer, then, supposes the horde to have been composed of such

+magical societies, at a very remote date, before sexual relations were

+regulated by any law. Later, in some fashion, and for some reason

+which Mr. Spencer does not profess to explain, "there was felt the

+need of some form of organisation, and this gradually resulted in the

+development of exogamous groups."[3] These "exogamous groups," among

+the Arunta, are now the four or eight "matrimonial classes," as among

+other tribes of northern Australia. These tribes, as a rule, have

+phratries, but the Arunta have lost even the phratry names.

+

+Mr. Spencer's theory thus explains the existence of animal-named

+groups--as co-operative magical societies, for breeding the animals or

+plants--but does not explain how exogamy arose, or why, everywhere,

+except among the Arunta, all the animal or plant named sets of people

+are kinships, and are exogamous, while they are neither the one or

+the other among the Arunta. Either the Arunta groups have once been

+exogamous totem kinships, and have ceased to be so, becoming magical

+societies; or such animal-named sets of people have, everywhere, first

+been magical societies, and later become exogamous totem kinships. Mr.

+Spencer holds the latter view, we hold the former, believing that the

+Arunta have once been in the universal state of totemic exogamy, and

+that, by a perfectly intelligible process, their animal-named groups

+have become magical societies, no longer exogamous kinships. We can

+show how the old exogamous totem kinship, among the Arunta, became

+a magical society, not regulating sexual relations; but we cannot

+imagine how all totemic mankind, if they began with magical societies

+in an unregulated horde, should have everywhere, except among the

+Arunta, conspired to convert these magical societies into kinships

+with exogamy. If the social organisation of the Arunta were peculiarly

+primitive, if their beliefs and ceremonials were of the most archaic

+type, there might be some ground for Mr. Spencer's opinion. But Mr.

+Hartland justly says that all the beliefs and institutions of the

+Arunta "point in the same direction, namely, that the Arunta are the

+most advanced and not the most primitive of the Central Australian

+tribes."[4]

+

+The Arunta, a tribe so advanced that it has forgotten its phratry

+names, has male kinship, eight matrimonial classes, and _local_ totem

+groups, with Headmen hereditary in the male line, and so cannot

+possibly be called "primitive," as regards organisation. If, then,

+the tribe possesses a peculiar institution, contravening what is

+universally practised, the natural inference is that the Arunta

+institution, being absolutely isolated and unique, as far as its

+non-exogamy goes, in an advanced tribe, is a local freak or "sport,"

+like many others which exist. This inference seems to be corroborated

+when we discover, as we do at a glance, the peculiar conditions without

+which the Arunta organisation is physically impossible. These essential

+and indispensable conditions are admitted by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+to be:--

+

+1. Male reckoning of descent--which is found in very many tribes where

+totems are exogamous--as everywhere.

+

+2. Local totem groups, which are a result of male reckoning of descent.

+These also are found in many other tribes where, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous.

+

+3. The belief that the spirits of the primal ancestors of the

+"Dream-Time" (_Alcheringa_)--creatures evolved out of various animal

+shapes into human form--are constantly reincarnated in new-born

+children. This belief is found in all the northern tribes with male

+descent; and among the Urabunna, who have female descent--but among all

+these tribes totems are exogamous, as everywhere.

+

+4. The Arunta and Kaitish, with two or three minor neighbouring tribes,

+believe that spirits desiring incarnation, all of one totem in each

+case, reside "at certain definite spots." So do the Urabunna believe,

+but at each of these spots, in Urabunna land, there may be spirits _of

+several different totems._[5] Among the Urabunna, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous. None of these four conditions, nor all of them, can

+produce the Arunta totemic non-exogamy.

+

+Finally (5) the Arunta and Kaitish, and they alone, believe not only

+that the spirits desiring reincarnation reside at certain definite

+spots, and not only that the spirits there are, in each case, _all

+of one totem_ (which is essential), but also that these spirits are

+most closely associated with objects of stone, inscribed with archaic

+markings (_churinga nanja_), which the spirits have dropped in these

+places--the scenes where the ancestors died (_Oknanikilla_). These

+stone objects, and this belief in their connection with ancestral

+spirits, are found in the Arunta region alone, and are the determining

+cause, or inseparable accident at least, of the non-exogamy of Arunta

+totemism, as will be fully explained later.

+

+Not one of these five conditions is reported by Mr. Howitt among

+the primitive south-eastern tribes, and the fifth is found only in

+Aruntadom. Yet Mr. Spencer regards as the earliest form of totemism

+extant that Arunta form, which requires four conditions, not found in

+the tribes of primitive organisation, and a fifth, which is peculiar to

+the Arunta "nation" alone.

+

+That the Arunta tribe, whether shut off from all others or not (as

+a matter of fact it is not), should alone (while advanced in all

+respects, including marriage and ceremonials) have retained a belief

+which, though called primitive, is unknown among primitive tribes,

+seems a singularly paradoxical hypothesis. Meanwhile the cause of the

+Arunta peculiarity--non-exogamous totems--is recognised by Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen, who also declare that the cause is isolated. They

+say "it is the idea of spirit individuals associated with _churinga_"

+(manufactured objects of stone), "and resident in certain definite

+spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the

+Arunta tribe."[6]

+

+Again, they inform us that the _churinga_ belief, and the existence of

+stone _churinga_, are things isolated. "In the Worgaia tribe, which

+inhabits the country to the north-east of the Kaitish" (neighbours of

+the Arunta), "we meet, so far as we have been able to discover, with

+the last traces of the _churinga_--that is, of the _churinga_ with its

+meaning and significance, as known to us in the true central tribes,

+as associated with the spirits of _Alcheringa_ ancestors" (mythical

+beings, supposed to be constantly reincarnated).[7] Thus, "the present

+totemic system of the Arunta tribe,"--in which, contrary to universal

+rule, persons of the same totem may inter-marry--reposes on a belief

+associated with certain manufactured articles of stone, and neither the

+belief nor the stone objects are discovered beyond a certain limited

+region. It is proper to add that the regretted Mr. David Carnegie

+found, at Family Wells, in the desert of Central Australia, two stone

+objects, one plain, the other rudely marked with concentric circles,

+which resemble _churinga nanja_. He mentions two others found and

+thrown away by Colonel Warburton. The meaning or use of these objects

+was not ascertained.[8]

+

+We differ from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they think that

+this peculiar and isolated belief, held by four or five tribes of

+confessedly advanced social organisation and ceremonials (a belief only

+possible under advanced social organisation), is the pristine form of

+totemism, out of which all totemists, however primitive, have found

+their way except the Arunta "nation" alone. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+write: "... the only conclusion which it seems possible to arrive at

+is that in the more northern tribes" (which have no churinga nanja,

+no _stone_ churinga), "the churinga represent the surviving relics of

+a time when the beliefs among those tribes were similar to those which

+now exist among the Arunta. It is more easy to imagine a change which

+shall lead from the present Arunta or Kaitish belief to that which

+exists among the Warramunga, than it is to imagine one which shall

+lead from the Warramunga to the Arunta."[9] Now among the Warramunga,

+as everywhere, the division of the totems between the two (exogamous)

+moieties is complete, "and, with very few exceptions indeed, the

+children follow the father."[10] (These exceptions are not explained.)

+Among the Kaitish the same totems occur among both exogamous moieties,

+so persons of the same totem _can_ intermarry, but "it is a very rare

+thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself."[11]

+

+The obvious conclusion is the reverse of that which our authors think

+"alone possible." The Kaitish have adopted the Arunta _churinga nanja_

+usage which introduces the same totem into both exogamous moieties,

+but, unlike the Arunta, they have not yet discarded the old universal

+rule, "No marriage within the totem." It is not absolutely forbidden,

+but it scarcely ever occurs. The Kaitish, as regards exogamy and

+religion, are a link between the primitive south-eastern tribes and the

+Arunta.

+

+We go on to show in detail how Arunta totems alone ceased to be

+exogamous, and to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+been, and never can have been, in the present Arunta condition. Among

+the Arunta, in the classes, none of them his own, into which alone a

+man may marry, there are plenty of women of his own totem. Thus, in

+marrying a woman of his totem, but not of his set of classes, a man

+does not break the law of Arunta exogamy. Now how does it happen that a

+totem may be in both sets of exogamous classes among the Arunta alone

+of mankind? Was this always the case from the beginning?

+

+It is, naturally, our opinion that among the Arunta, as everywhere

+else, matters were originally, or not much later, so arranged that

+the same totem never appeared in both phratries, or, afterwards, when

+phratries were lost, in both opposed sets of two or four exogamous

+matrimonial classes. The only objection to this theory is that

+the Arunta themselves believe it, and mention the circumstance in

+their myths. These myths cannot be historical reminiscences of the

+"Dream-Time," which never existed. But even a myth may deviate into

+truth, especially as the Arunta must know that in other tribes the same

+totem never occurs in both phratries, and are clever enough to see that

+their method needs explanation as being an exception to general rule;

+and that, even now, "the great majority of any one totem belong to one

+moiety of the tribe." So they say that originally all Witchetty Grubs,

+for instance, were in the Bulthara-Panunga moiety (as most Grubs still

+are to this day), while all Emus were in the opposite exogamous moiety

+(Purula-Kumura). But, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "owing to the

+system according to which totem names are" (_now_) "acquired, it is

+always possible for a man to be, say, a Purula or a Kumura, and yet a

+Witchetty; or, on the other hand, a Bulthara or a Panunga, and yet an

+Emu."[12] The present system of acquiring totem names has transferred

+the totems into both exogamous moieties, and so has made it possible

+to marry within the totem name.

+

+This suggests that, in native opinion or conjecture, Arunta totems,

+like all others, were once exogamous; no totem ever occurred originally

+in both exogamous moieties. It also indicates that, in the opinion

+of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, they only ceased to be exogamous when

+the present method of acquiring totem names, an unique method, was

+introduced. Happily, to prove the historical worthlessness of Arunta

+legendary myth, the tribe has a contradictory legend. The same totem,

+according to this fable, occurred in both exogamous moieties, even

+in the mythic Dream-Time (_Alcheringa_); by this fable the natives

+explain (what needs explaining) how the same totem does occur in _both_

+exogamous moieties to-day, and so is not exogamous.[13]

+

+This is nonsense, just as the other contradictory myth was conjecture.

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have themselves explained why the same totem

+may _now_ occur in both moieties, and so be non-exogamous. The unique

+phenomenon is due to the actual and unique method of acquiring totem

+names.[14] Thus the modern method is not primitive. These passages are

+very instructive.

+

+The Arunta have been so long in the relatively advanced state of

+_local_ totemism that their myths do not look behind it. A group,

+whether stationary or migratory, in the myths of the Dream-Time (the

+_Alcheringa_) always consists of persons of the same totem, with

+occasional visitors of other totems. The myths, we repeat, reflect the

+present state of local totem groups back on the past.

+

+The myths allege (here the isolated superstition comes in) that

+the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_ died, or "went into the

+ground" at certain now haunted spots, marked by rocks or trees, which

+may be called "mortuary local totem-centres"--in native speech,

+_Oknanikilla_[15] Trees or rocks arose to mark the spot where the

+ancestors, all of one totem in each case, went into the ground. These

+trees or rocks are called _Nanja_. Thereabouts the dying ancestors

+deposited possessions peculiar to Aruntadom, their stone amulets, or

+_churinga nanja_, with what are now read as totemic incised marks.

+Their spirits, all of one totem in each case, haunt the _Nanja_ rock or

+tree, and are especially attached to these stone amulets,[16] called

+_churinga nanja_. The spirits discarnate await a chance of entering

+into women, and being reborn. When a child comes to the birth, the

+mother, whatever her own or her husband's totem may be, names the

+spot where she supposes that she conceived the child, and the child's

+_Nanja_ tree or rock is that in the _Oknanikilla_, or mortuary local

+totem-centre nearest to the place where the child was conceived. Its

+male kin hunt for the _churinga_, or stone amulet, there deposited

+by the dying _Alcheringa_ ancestor; if they find it, it becomes the

+child's _churinga_, for he is merely the ancestor spirit reborn. He

+(or she) "comes into his own"; his _Nanja_ tree or rock, his _churinga

+nanja_, and his original totem, which may be, and often is, neither

+that of his father or mother.

+

+Thus inheriting his own old _Nanja_ tree and _churinga_, and totem,

+_the child is not necessarily of his father's or mothers but is of

+his own old original totem_, say Grub, or Hakea Flower, or Kangaroo,

+or Frog. His totem is thus not inherited, we repeat, as elsewhere,

+from either parent, but is derived, by the accident of his place of

+conception, from the _local_ totem, from the totemic ghosts (all

+of one totem) haunting the particular mortuary totem centre, or

+_Oknanikilla_, where he was conceived. His totem may thus be in _both_

+of the exogamous moieties, and for that reason alone is not exogamous.

+To take an example. A woman, by totem Cat, has a husband by totem

+Iguana. She conceives a child, and believes that she conceived it in a

+certain district. The local totem of that district is the Grub, Grub

+ghosts haunt the region; the child, therefore, is a Grub. He inherits

+his exogamous class, say Bukhara, from his father, and he must marry

+a woman of Class Kumara. But she may also be a Grub, for her totem,

+like his, has been acquired (like his, not by inheritance, but) by the

+accident that her mother conceived her in a Grub district. Thus, and

+thus only, are totems not exogamous among the Arunta. They are not

+inherited from either parent.

+

+It is probable that, after male descent came in, the Arunta and Kaitish

+at first inherited their totems from their fathers, as among all other

+tribes with male descent. This appears to be proved by the fact that

+they still do inherit, from their fathers, totemic rites, and the power

+of doing totemic mummeries for their fathers' totems, even when, by

+the accident of their places of conception, they do not inherit their

+fathers' totems. When they did inherit the paternal totem, they were,

+doubtless, totemically exogamous, like all other tribes with either

+male or female descent.

+

+One simple argument upsets the claim of Arunta totems to be primitive.

+In no tribe with female descent can a district have its _local_ totem,

+as among the Arunta. A district can only have a local totem if the

+majority of the living people, and of the haunting ghosts of the

+dead, are of one totem only. But this (setting aside the occasional

+results of an isolated Urabunna superstition) can only occur under male

+reckoning of descent, which confessedly is not primitive. In a region

+where reckoning in the female line exists a woman could not say, "I

+conceived my child in Grub district, the country of totem Grub"--for

+such a country there is not and cannot be. Consequently, among the

+Urabunna as everywhere with reckoning of descent in the female line,

+every child is of its mother's totem.

+

+Let us examine other tribes who, like the Arunta, have the theory of

+reincarnation, but whose totems are, as elsewhere, exogamous, unlike

+those of the Arunta. The Urabunna have female descent, and their myth

+about the origin of totemic ancestors approximates to that of the

+Arunta, but, unlike the Arunta fable, does not produce, or account

+for, non-exogamy in totems. Things began, say the Urabunna, by the

+appearance of a few creatures half human, half bestial or vegetable.

+They had miraculous powers, and dropped spirits which tenanted lizards,

+snakes, and so on, all over the district. These spirits later became

+incarnated in human beings of the Lizard, Snake, or other totem, and

+are constantly being reincarnated. The two Urabunna phratries were

+originally a green and a brown snake: the Green Snake said to the

+Brown Snake, "I am Kirarawa, you are Matthurie"--the phratry names.

+It does not appear that these names now mean Green Snake and Brown

+Snake, though they may once have had these significations. The spirits

+left about by these snakes, like all the other such spirits (_mai

+aurli_) keep on being incarnated, and, when incarnated, the children

+bear the totem name of their mothers in each case. A Green Snake

+woman is entered by a spirit, which she bears as a Green Snake child.

+The accident of the locality in which the child was conceived does

+not affect his totem, so Urabunna totems remain in their own proper

+phratries, and therefore, by phratry law, are exogamous, as everywhere,

+except among the Arunta.[17]

+

+This arrangement is merely the usual arrangement, with female descent A

+woman's child is of the woman's totem. Believing in reincarnation, the

+Urabunna merely adapt that belief to the facts. With female descent an

+Emu woman's child is Emu. If a tribe has male descent, an Emu father's

+child is Emu. With female descent, a spirit has entered an Emu woman

+and been born Emu: with male descent, a spirit has entered the wife of

+an Emu man, and, by inheritance from his father, is Emu. Yet Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen think that the Arunta and Kaitish rule--demanding

+the non-primitive male descent, local groups, local ghosts all of one

+totem, and _churinga_ stones of the mark of that totem (all of which

+are indispensable), "is probably the simplest and most primitive."[18]

+

+Most primitive, by our author's own statement, the Arunta method cannot

+be, for, as they show, it demands male descent, local totemism, and the

+peculiar belief about manufactured stone _churinga_. But they think it

+"most simple," because the Urabunna have a complicated myth, which,

+however, in no way affects the result, namely, that each child takes

+its mother's totem. Each spirit, according to the myth, changes its

+phratry and sex, and, necessarily, its totem, at each reincarnation,

+but that does not affect the result. Each child, as in all tribes with

+female descent, is still of its mother's totem.[19] No _churinga nanja_

+cause an anomaly among the Urabunna, for the _churinga nanja_, and the

+belief about them, among the Urabunna do not exist.

+

+The Urabunna myth, adapted to male descent, occurs in all the northern

+tribes, from the northern bounds of the Kaitish to the sea, which have

+no stone _churinga nanja_; and in all of them totems are exogamous,

+because they never occur in both phratries, being uninfluenced by the

+Arunta _churinga_ belief. They cannot, for they are duly inherited

+from the father, and they are so inherited because the tribes have not

+the exceptional _Churinga Nanja_ creed, attaching the spirit to the

+amulet of a local totem group, which fixes--by the accident of place of

+conception--the totem of each child.

+

+The Arunta non-exogamous totems, in Australia, as we saw, are only

+found where _stone churinga nanja_ are in use; these amulets being

+peculiarly the residence of the spirits of totemic ancestors.

+

+The origin of that belief is obscure. It could not arise in the

+present condition of Arunta or Kaitish affairs, for, now, every stone

+_churinga_ in the tribe has already its recognised legal owner, and,

+on the death of an owner, or the extinction of a local totem group,

+the _churinga_ are not left lying about to be found on or in the

+earth, but pass by a definite rule of inheritance; and they are all

+carefully warded and frequently examined, in Ertnatu-lunga, or sacred

+storehouses.[20] Thus stone _churinga nanja_, to-day, are not left

+lying about on the surface, or buried in graves, like those which, on

+the birth of each Arunta child, are sought for, and sometimes found, at

+the local totem-centre, and near the _Nanja_ tree or rock, where the

+child was conceived. There _churinga nanja_ must have been _buried_,

+of old, if our authors correctly say that the mythical ancestors "went

+into the ground, each carrying his _churinga_ with him."[21] Again we

+read, "Many of the _churinga_ were placed _in_ the ground, some natural

+object again marking the spot." The spot was always marked by some

+natural object, such as a tree or rock.[22]

+

+Though our authors tell us that they know Arunta natives who, on the

+birth of a child, have sought for and found his _churinga nanja_ near

+the _Nanja_ rock or tree next to the place where he was conceived, they

+do not say that the _churinga_ are found by digging.[23] If they are,

+or if the _Oknanikilla_ really are ancient burying-places (about which

+we are told nothing), the association of the _churinga nanja_ with the

+ghost of the man in whose grave it is buried would be easily explained.

+But the impression left is that the stone _churinga nanja_ found after

+search are discovered on the surface, dropped there by the spirit when

+about to be reincarnated.[24]

+

+Here a curious fact may be filed for reference. Stone amulets,

+fashioned and decorated by man, are not known to be in use south of

+the Arunta region. But a cousin of my own, Mr. William Lang, found a

+stone object not unlike one figured by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,

+on his station near Cooma, New South Wales. The decoration was of

+the rectilineal type prevalent in that region. Mr. Lang knew nothing

+of the Arunta _churinga_ till I drew his attention to the subject.

+He then visited the Sydney Museum, and found several stone objects,

+"banana-shaped," exactly like the specimen (wooden?), one out of five

+known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and published by them in their

+first work (p. 150). The New South Wales ornament, however, was always

+rectilineal. The articles appear to be obsolete among the tribes of

+New South Wales. It is said that they were erected of old round graves

+of the dead. Whites call them "grave stones." Careful articles on

+these decorated stone objects of New South Wales have been written by

+Mr. W. R. Harper and Mr. Graham Officer.[25] As a rule, they are not

+banana-shaped or crescentine, but are in the form of enormous stone

+cigars. They used to be placed, twelve or thirteen of them, on graves,

+and their weight, averaging about 3 lbs. to 4 lbs., makes them less

+portable than most of the _churinga_ of the Arunta. It does not seem

+at all probable that Arunta stone _churinga_ were ever erected round

+graves, but excavations at _Oknanikilla_, if they could be executed

+without a shock to Arunta sentiment, might throw some light on the

+subject.

+

+In my opinion, the _churinga_ found at _Oknanikilla_ by the Arunta may

+have had no such original significance as is now attached to them. The

+belief may be a mere myth, explaining the sense of objects found and

+not understood--relics, as the myth itself avers, of an earlier race,

+the _Alcheringa_ folk. The only information about those New South Wales

+decorated cigar-shaped and banana-shaped stone objects which could be

+got out of a local black was: "All same as bloody brand." He meant,

+conceivably, that the incised markings were totem marks, I think, and

+in that sense the marks on Arunta stone _churinga_ are now interpreted.

+

+It would not be surprising if the Arunta--supposing that they possessed

+the belief in "spirit trees," and the belief in reincarnation, and then

+found, near the _Nanja_ trees or rocks, the stone amulets or "grave

+stones" of some earlier occupants of the region--evolved the myth that

+ancestral souls, connected with the spirit trees, abode especially

+in these decorated stones, common enough in American and European

+neolithic sites.

+

+This is, of course, a mere conjecture. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+agree with us when they say: "It is this idea of spirit individuals

+associated with _churinga_, and resident in certain definite spots,

+that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta

+tribes."[26]

+

+Three facts are now apparent. The Arunta (i) must have reckoned in

+the male line for a very long time, otherwise their myths would not

+take local totem-centres for granted as a primeval fact, since such

+centres can only occur and exist under male reckoning of descent; in

+cases where the husbands do not go to the wives' region of abode. (2)

+The myth that totemic _local_ ghosts are reincarnated cannot be older

+than _local_ totem-centres, for it is their old local totem-centres

+that the totemic ghosts do haunt. The spots are strewn with their old

+totem-marked _churinga_. The myths make the wandering groups of fabled

+ancestors all of one totem, because, by male reckoning, they could be

+little else till the _churinga_ superstition arose and scattered totems

+about at random in the population.

+

+Again, (3) even local totemism, _plus_ the belief in the reincarnation

+of primary ancestral spirits, did not produce the non-exogamy of

+totems, till it was reinforced by the unique Arunta belief in the stone

+_churinga nanja._

+

+The totemism of the Arunta, then, was originally like that of their

+neighbours, exogamous, till the stone _churinga nanja_ became the

+centre of a myth which introduces the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties among the Arunta, where it has broken down the old exogamous

+totemic rule. Among the Kaitish, as we saw, the rule is still surviving

+in general practice.

+

+We now proceed to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+passed through the present Arunta state of belief and customary law.

+

+Suppose that the Arunta to-day dropped their _churinga nanja_ belief,

+and allowed the totem name to be inherited through the father, as

+the right to work the ceremonies of the totem still is inherited by

+sons who do not inherit the totem itself. What would follow? Why,

+totems among the Arunta would still be non-exogamous, for the existing

+_churinga nanja_ belief has brought the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties, and there they would remain, after they came to be inherited

+in the male line. In the same way, if the northern tribes had once

+been in the Arunta state of belief, their totems would still be in

+both exogamous moieties, and would not regulate marriage. But this is

+not the case. These tribes, therefore, have never been in the present

+Arunta condition. _Q.E.D_.

+

+The Arunta belief is, obviously, an elaboration of the belief in

+reincarnation, not held, as far as is known, by the Dieri, but held by

+the Urabunna, and by all tribes from the Urabunna northwards to the

+sea. Mr. Howitt does not mention the belief among the south-eastern

+tribes. But there is a kind of tendency towards it among the Euahlayi

+of north-west New South Wales, reported on by Mrs. Langloh Parker

+(MS.). This tribe reckons in the female line, has phratries, and uses

+the class names (four), but not the phratry names of the Kamilaroi.

+Each individual has a _Minngah tree_ haunted by spirits unattached.

+Medicine men have _Minngah_ rocks. These answer to the Arunta _Nanja_

+(Warramunga, _Mungai_) trees and rocks in mortuary local totem-centres.

+But the _Minngah_-tree spirits do not seek reincarnation. Only spirits

+of persons dying young, before initiation, are reincarnated. Fresh

+souls for new bodies are made by the Crow and the Moon. These spirits,

+when "made," hang in the boughs of the _coolabah_ tree only, not round

+_Minngah_ trees or rocks.

+

+I think it possible, or even probable, that ideas like those of the

+Euahlayi exist among the southern Arunta and elsewhere. Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen give a Kaitish myth of two men "who arose from _churinga_,"

+and heard Atnatu (the Kaitish sky-dwelling being, the father of some

+men) making, in the sky, a noise with his _churinga_ (the wooden bull

+roarer).[27] Now, I have seen the statement, on which I lay no stress,

+that in extreme south-west Aruntadom a sky-dwelling Emu-footed being

+lost two stone _churinga_. Out of one sprang a man, out of the other a

+woman. They had offspring, "but not by begetting."

+

+Among the tribes with the reincarnation belief connubial relations

+are supposed only to "prepare the mother for the reception and birth

+also of an already formed spirit child."[28] This apparent ignorance

+of physical facts, not found among the south-eastern tribes, is a

+corollary from the reincarnation belief, or from the other belief that

+spirit children are "made" by some non-human being. (Cf. Chapter XI.)

+

+To continue with the statement as to the southern Arunta, the

+sky-dwelling being "has laid germs of the little boys in the mistletoe

+branches, germs of little girls among the split stones ... such a germ

+of a child enters a woman by the hip." Now among the Euahlayi, when the

+spirit children made by the Crow and the Moon are weary of waiting to

+be reincarnated, they are changed into mistletoe branches.

+

+I do not insist on the alleged sky-dwelling being of these Arunta, for

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (in their two books) have not found him,

+and Mr. Howitt thinks that his name arises from a misunderstanding.

+Kempe, a missionary of 1883, speaks of "Altjira, 'god,' who gives the

+children."[29] Altjira, "god," may be a mistake, based on the root of

+_Alcheringa_ or _Altjiringa_, "dream." On the other hand, Mr. Gillen

+himself credits the Arunta with a belief in a sky-dwelling being, and

+with a creed incompatible with the faith in reincarnation, as, in tins

+Anunta myth, human souls are not reincarnated. This information we

+quote.

+

+"ULTHAANA

+

+"The sky is said to be inhabited by three persons, a gigantic man with

+an immense foot shaped like that of an emu, a woman, and a child who

+never develops beyond childhood. The man is called Ulthaana, meaning

+'spirit.' When a native dies his spirit is said to ascend to the

+home of the great Ulthaana, where it remains for a short time; the

+Ulthaana then throws it into the Saltwater (sea) [these natives have

+no personal knowledge of the sea], from whence it is rescued by two

+benevolent but lesser Ulthaana who perpetually reside on the seashore,

+apparently merely for the purpose of rescuing spirits who have been

+subject to the inhospitable treatment of the great Ulthaana of the

+heavens (alkirra). Henceforth the spirit of the dead man lives with the

+lesser Ulthaana."[30] Is it possible that Mr. Gillen's "Great Ulthaana

+of the Heavens, alkirra," is Kempe's Altjira? Or can he be a native

+modification of Kempe's own theology? Probably not.

+

+In any case the Arunta of Mr. Gillen who do not believe in

+reincarnation cannot possibly, it would seem, possess the Arunta form

+of totemism. It is only natural that varieties of myth and belief

+should exist, and it is asserted that there is a myth among the Arunta

+of the extreme south-west section about a sky-dwelling being, who,

+like the Crow and the Moon of Euahlayi belief, makes spirit children,

+and places them in the mistletoe boughs. The story that the first man

+and woman sprang from two of this being's lost _churinga_, again, is

+matched by the Kaitish story of two men who rose from _churinga_. The

+Arunta described by Mr. Gillen, they whose souls dwell with "the lesser

+Ulthaana," no more believe in reincarnation than do the south-eastern

+tribes. These variants in belief and myth usually occur among savages.

+

+The Arunta add to the reincarnation myth, the peculiarity of mortuary

+local totem-centres, and of the attachment of the spirit to a stone

+_churinga_ inscribed with the marks of that totem, and from these

+peculiar ideas--as much isolated as the peculiar ideas of the Urabunna

+or the Euahlayi--arises the non-exogamous character of Arunta totemism.

+No _one_, out of such varying freaks of belief, can be regarded as

+primitive, more than another, but the Arunta variant, for the reason

+repeatedly given, cannot possibly be primitive.

+

+The Arunta totems are not only non-exogamous: their actual _raison

+d'�tre_, to-day, is to exist as the objects of magical co-operative

+societies, fostering the totem plants and animals as articles of tribal

+food supply. Mr. Spencer thinks this the primary purpose of totem

+societies, everywhere. Now we have not, as yet, been told _why_ each

+society took to doing magic for this or that animal or other thing in

+nature. They cannot have been "charged with" this duty, except by some

+central authority. As there did not yet exist, by the hypothesis, so

+much as a tribe with phratries, what can this central authority have

+been? If it existed, on what principle did it select, out of the horde,

+groups to become magical societies? Were they groups of kin, or groups

+of associates by contiguity? On what principle could the choice of

+departments of nature to be controlled by each group, be determined

+by the central authority? Had the groups already distinguishing

+names--Emu, Eagle Hawk, Opossum, &c.--how did these names arise, and

+did these names determine the department of nature for which each

+group was allotted to do magic? Or did authority give to each group a

+magical department, and did the nature of that department determine the

+group-name, such as Frogs, Grubs, Hakea Trees?

+

+Or was there no formal distribution, no sudden organisation, no central

+authority? Did a casual knot of men, or a firm of wizards, say, "Let

+_us_ do magic for the Kangaroo, and get more Kangaroos to eat"? Was

+their success so great and enviable that other casual knots of men or

+firms of wizards followed their example? And, in this case, why do

+Arunta totemists not eat their totems freely? Is it because they think

+that to do so would frighten the totems, and make them recalcitrant

+to their magic? But that cannot be the case if their success, while

+they worked their magic on their own account, was great, enviable, and

+generally imitated. And, if it was not, why was it imitated? Next,

+how, among the magical societies, was exogamy introduced? Mr. Spencer

+writes: "Our knowledge of the natives leads us to the opinion that

+this really took place; that the exogamic groups were deliberately

+introduced _so as to regulate marital regulations_." This was, then, a

+Marriage Reform Act. However, Mr. Spencer hastens to add that he cannot

+conceive a motive for the Marriage Reform Act. "We do not mean that

+the regulations had anything whatever to do with the idea of incest,

+or of any harm accruing from the union of individuals who were regarded

+as too nearly related."[31]

+

+We have shown that no such ideas could occur to the supposed

+promiscuous horde, who knew not that there is such a thing as

+procreation, but supposed that, like the stars in Caliban's philosophy,

+children "came otherwise." Yet the "exogamic system" does nothing

+but prohibit certain marriages, and "it is quite possible that the

+exogamic groups were deliberately introduced so as to regulate marital

+relations."[32]

+

+Mr. Spencer's theory is, then, that there was a horde with magical

+totemic societies, how evolved we cannot guess. Across that came the

+arrangement of classes to regulate marriage, as it does, but the

+ancestors who possibly introduced it had, he says, no idea that there

+was any moral or material harm in unregulated marriages. Then why did

+they regulate them?

+

+The hypothetical horde of the kind which we have described had no

+_marriage_ relations, and had no possible reason for regulating

+intersexual relations.

+

+It is true that reformatory movements in marriage law are actually

+being purposefully introduced, among tribes which, possessing

+already such laws, of unknown origin, to reform, have deduced from

+these laws themselves that there is a right and wrong in matters of

+sex. Certainly, too, much of savage marriage law is of ancient and

+purposeful institution. But the question is, not how moral laws, once

+developed, might be improved; but how a tabu law against sexual

+relations between near kin could even be so much as dreamed of by

+members of a communal horde, who bad do idea of kin, and could not

+possibly tell who was akin to whom. _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui

+co�te!_ We must account for _le premier pas_.

+

+Again, the _Intichiuma_, or co-operative totemic magic, of the

+Arunta, regarded by our authors as "primary," is nowhere reported of

+the tribes of the south and east. Mr. Howitt asserts its absence.

+The lack of record, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "is no proof

+that these ceremonies did not exist" If they did, bow could they

+escape the knowledge of Mr. Howitt, an initiated man?[33] As a fact,

+when you leave the centre, and reach the _north_ sea-coast, totemic

+magic dwindles, and nearly disappears. Among the coast tribes of

+the north, the _Intichiuma_ magic is "very slightly developed." Its

+faint existence is "doubtless to be associated with the fact that

+they inhabit country where the food supply and general conditions of

+life are more favourable than in the central area of the continent

+which is the home of these ceremonies." But surely the regions of

+the south and east, where there is no _Intichiuma_, are also better

+in supply and general conditions than the centre. Why then should

+the apparent absence of _Intichiuma_ in the south and east be due to

+want of observation and record, while the "very slight development"

+of _Intichiuma_ on the north coast is otherwise explained, namely, by

+conditions--which also exist in the south!

+

+Moreover, co-operative and totemic magic is most elaborately organised

+among the Sioux, Dakotah, Omaha, and other American tribes, where

+supplies are infinitely better than in any part of Australia,[34]

+and agriculture has there, as in Europe, a copious magic. Magic, as

+a well-known fact, is most and best organised in the most advanced

+non-scientific societies. In Australia it is most organised in the

+centre, and dwindles as you move either north, south, or east. This

+implies that, socially, the centre is in this respect most advanced and

+least primitive; while magic, partly totemic, is highly organised in

+the much more prosperous islands of the Torres Straits, and in America.

+

+It is true that Collins (1798), a very early observer, saw east-coast

+natives performing ceremonies connected with Kangaroos, in one of which

+a Kangaroo hunt was imitated. Collins believed that this was imitative

+magic of a familiar kind, done to secure success in the chase. In

+_Magic and Religion_, p. 100, I express the same opinion. But Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen write, as to the magic observed by Collins, "There

+can be little doubt but that these ceremonies, so closely similar

+in their nature to those now performed by the central natives, were

+totemic in their origin"--they may be regarded as "clear evidence of

+the existence of these totemic ceremonies ... in a tribe living right

+on the eastern coast."[35]

+

+Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe

+(i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of

+grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of _totemic_

+ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance,

+not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the

+number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and

+to do _that_ is the aim of the _Intichiuma_.[36] The hunt dances

+seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation

+ceremony.[37] In the Emu _Intichiuma_ of the Arunta the Emus are

+represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed

+to see the imitators of the fowls.[38] The ceremonies reported by

+Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course

+were not allowed to see."[39]

+

+Apparently we have _not_ "clear evidence" that Collins saw

+_Intichiuma_, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr.

+Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.

+

+It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to

+believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain

+animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact,

+we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes

+outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice

+most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America

+and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of

+supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development

+of _Intichiuma_ on the north coast of Australia.

+

+I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of

+the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The

+country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many

+ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months,

+while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting

+which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and

+bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does

+Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names,

+deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the

+belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names

+had a special _rapport_ with the name-giving animals or plants. This

+_rapport_ was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and

+for the good of the tribe, which is singularly _solidaire_.

+

+We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions

+cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism

+of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat

+our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly

+_late_ system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other

+northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and

+nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties,

+denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing

+to the isolated belief in reincarnation of _local_ ghosts, attached

+to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere,

+by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because

+of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem,

+does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites.

+Totemism is thus _en pleine d�cadence_ among the Arunta, from whom,

+consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.

+

+

+NOTE

+

+      The Arunta legends of the _Alcheringa_ usually describe

+      the various wandering groups, all, in each case, of one

+      totem, as living exclusively for long periods on their own

+      totems, plants, or animals. This cannot be historically

+      true; many plants, and such animals as grubs, are in

+      season for but a brief time. On the other hand, we meet a

+      legend of women of the Quail totem who lived exclusively,

+      not on quails, but on grass seeds.[40] Again, in only one

+      case are men of the _Achilpa_, or Wild Cat totem, said

+      to have eaten anything, and what they ate was the Hakea

+      flower. Later they became Plum men, _Ulpmerka_, but are

+      not said to have eaten plums. In a note (Note I, p. 219)

+      Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that "Wild Cat men are

+      represented constantly as feeding on plums." They are

+      never said to have eaten their own totem, the Wild Cat,

+      which is forbidden to all Arunta, though old men may

+      eat a little of it Reasons, not totemic, are given for

+      the avoidance.[41] We are not told anything about the

+      _Intichiuma_ or magical rites for the increase of the Wild

+      Cat, which is not eaten. Are they performed by men of the

+      Wild Cat totem? The old men of the totem might eat very

+      sparingly of the Wild Cat, at their _Intichiuma_, but

+      certainly the members of other totems who were present

+      would not eat at all. The use of a Wild Cat _Intichiuma_

+      is not obvious: there is no desire to propagate the animal

+      as an article of food.

+

+[1] _J. A. I._, xii. p. 497. Cf. Native Tribes of South-East Australia,

+PP. 173, 174.

+

+[2] I neglected to observe this important passage when reviewing Mr.

+Howitt's ideas in _Social Origins_.

+

+[3] _J. A. I._, N.S., i. pp. 284, 285.

+

+[4] _Folk Lore_, December 1904, p. 473. For Mr. Spencer's assertion

+that the Aninta social type is advanced, see _Central Tribes_; cf. p.

+211. For the probable advanced and relatively recent character of their

+initiatory ceremonies, see _Central Tribes_, p. 217; _Northern Tribes_,

+p. 329.

+

+[5] _Northern Tribes_, p. 147.

+

+[6] _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[7] _Northern Tribes_, p. 274.

+

+[8] _J. A. I._, August 1898, pp. 20, 21.

+

+[9] _Northern Tribes_, p. 281.

+

+[10] Ibid., p. 175.

+

+[11] Ibid.

+

+[12] _Central Tribes_, pp. 125, 126.

+

+[13] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 151, 152.

+

+[14] _Central Tribes_, pp. 125, 126.

+

+[15] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[16] Ibid., p. 150. Figures of the objects are given.

+

+[17] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 145-148.

+

+[18] Ibid., p. 174.

+

+[19] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 146, 149.

+

+[20] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, pp. 153-155.

+

+[21] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[22] _Op. cit_., p. 124.

+

+[23] _Op. cit_., p. 132.

+

+[24] The _churinga_ here spoken of are a kind of stone amulets, of very

+various shapes, marked with such archaic patterns of cups, concentric

+circles or half circles, and other devices as are found on rock

+surfaces in our islands, in India, and generally all over the world,

+as in New Caledonia. The same marks occur on small plaques of slate or

+schist, in Portuguese neolithic sites, in pal�olithic sites, and in

+Scotland, where Dr. Munro regards them as not of genuine antiquity.

+See _Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia_, Gongora y Martinez,

+Madrid, 1868, p. 109; _Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve_, vol. ii.

+pp. 429-462, Estacio da Veiga, Lisbon, 1887; _Portugalia_, i. Part IV.,

+Severo and Brenha, 1903; _Magic and Religion_ (A. L.), pp. 246-256,

+1901. For a pal�olithic bone object, exactly like an Arunta _churinga_,

+see Hoernes, _Der Diluviale Mensch in Europa_, p. 138, 1903. It does

+not follow, of course, that these objects in Europe were ever connected

+with a belief like that of the Arunta. The things were probably

+talismans of one sort or another.

+

+[25] _Proceedings_, Linnaean Society of New South Wales, 1898, vol.

+xxiii. part 3, and vol. xxvi. p. 238.

+

+[26] _Op. cit_., p. 123.

+

+[27] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 272, 373.

+

+[28] _Central Tribes_, p. 265.

+

+[29] Geographical Society of Halle, _Proceedings_, 1883, p. 53.

+

+[30] Notes on Some Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the

+_McDonnell Ranges_, belonging to the _Arunta Tribe_. Gillen, _Horn

+Expedition_, iv. p. 183.

+

+[31] _J. A. I._, N.S., p. 278.

+

+[32] Ibid., i. pp. 284, 285. Dr. Roth has conjectured that phratries

+were introduced "by a process of natural selection" to regulate the

+food supply. But how did they come to regulate marriage? (_Aborigines

+of North-West Central Queensland_, pp. 69, 70.)

+

+[33] See _Northern Tribes_, pp. xiii, xiv, 173.

+

+[34] Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology. Siouan Cults. Bureau of Ethnology_,

+1881-1882, pp. 238, 239; 1889-1890, p. 537. Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 24.

+For Torres Islands, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. pp. 5-17.

+

+[35] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 224, 225.

+

+[36] Spencer and Gillen, p. 169.

+

+[37] _Natives of South-East Australia_, p. 545.

+

+[38] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 182, 183.

+

+[39] _Northern Tribes_, p. 225.

+

+[40] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 417.

+

+[41] Ibid., p. 168.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V

+

+THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

+

+

+      Theories of Dr. Durkheim--Was man originally

+      promiscuous?--Difficulty of ascertaining Dr. Durkheim's

+      opinion--Apparent contradictions--Origin of totemism--A

+      horde, which did not prohibit incest, splits into two

+      "primary clans"--These are hostile--Each has an animal

+      god, and its members are of the blood of the god,

+      consubstantial with him--Therefore may not intermarry

+      within his blood--Hence exogamy--These gods, or totems,

+      "cannot be changed at will"--Questions as to how these

+      beliefs arise--Why does the united horde choose different

+      gods?--Why only two such gods?--Uncertainty as to whether

+      Dr. Durkheim believes in the incestuous horde--Theory of

+      "collective marriage," a "last resource"--The "primary

+      clans" said to have "no territorial basis"--Later it

+      is assumed that they do have territorial bases--Which

+      they overpopulate--Colonies sent forth--These take new

+      totems--Proof that an exogamous "clan" has no territorial

+      basis--And cannot send out "clan" colonies--Colonies

+      can only be _tribal_--No proof that a "clan" ever

+      does change its totem--Dr. Durkheim's defence of

+      one of his apparent inconsistencies--Reply to his

+      defence--Mr. Frazer's theory (1887) that a totemic "clan"

+      throws off other clans of new totems, and becomes a

+      phratry--Objections to this theory--The facts are opposed

+      to it--Examples--Recapitulation--Eight objections to Dr.

+      Durkheim's theory.

+

+

+Dr. Durkheim, Professor of Sociology in the University of Bordeaux,

+has displayed much acuteness in his destructive analysis of the Arunta

+claims to possess a primitive form of totemism.[1] He has also given

+the fullest and most original explanation of the reason why, granting

+that groups of early men had each a special regard for a particular

+animal or plant, whose name they bore, they tabooed marriage within

+that name.[2]

+

+With these and other merits the system of Dr. Durkheim, as unfolded at

+intervals in his periodical (_L'Ann�e Sociologique_, 1898-1904), has,

+I shall try to show, certain drawbacks, at least as we possess it at

+present, for it has not yet appeared in the form of a book. As to the

+point which in this discussion we have taken first, throughout, it is

+not easy to be certain about the Professor's exact opinion. What was

+the condition of human society _before_ totemic exogamy was evolved?

+Dr. Durkheim writes, "Many facts tend to prove that, at the beginning

+of societies of men, incest was not forbidden. Nothing authorises us

+to suppose that incest was prohibited before each horde (_peuplade_)

+divided itself into two primitive 'clans,' at least" (namely, what we

+now call "phratries"), "for the first form of the prohibition known to

+us, exogamy, everywhere appears as correlative to this organisation,

+and certainly this is not primitive. Society must have formed a compact

+and undivided mass before bisecting itself into two distinct groups,

+and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature" (of relationships)

+"confirm this hypothesis."[3]

+

+So far this is the ordinary theory. An undivided promiscuous horde,

+for reasons of moral reformation, or any other reason, splits itself

+into two exogamous "clans," or germs of the phratries. These, when they

+cease to be hostile (as they were on Dr. Durkheim's but not on Mr.

+Howitt's theory), peacefully intermarry, and become the phratries in a

+local tribe.

+

+Why did the supposed compact horde thus divide itself into two distinct

+hostile "clans," each, on Dr. Durkheim's theory, claiming descent from

+a different animal, the totem of each "clan"? Why were two bodies in

+the same horde claiming two different animal ancestors? Why were the

+two divisions in a common horde mutually hostile? That they _were_

+originally hostile appears when our author says that, at a given stage

+of advance, "the different totemic groups were _no longer_ strangers or

+enemies, one of the other."[4] Marriages, at this early period, must

+necessarily have been made by warlike capture, for the two groups were

+hostile, were exogamous, and, being hostile, would not barter brides

+peacefully. Women, therefore, we take it, could only be obtained for

+each group by acts of war. "Ages passed before the exchange of women

+became peaceful and regular. What vendettas, what bloodshed, what

+laborious negotiations were for long the result of this _r�gime_!"[5]

+

+But why were they exogamous, these two primary groups formed by the

+bisection of a previously undivided incestuous horde? Why could not

+each of the two groups marry its own women? There must have been a time

+when they were not exogamous, and could marry their own women, for

+they were only exogamous, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, because they were

+totemic, and they did not begin by being totemic. The totem, says Dr.

+Durkheim, in explanation of exogamy, is a "god" who is in each member

+of his group while they are in him. He is blood of their blood and soul

+of their soul.[6] This being so--as it is wrong to shed the blood of

+our kindred--a man of totem Emu, say, may not marry a maid of, say,

+totem Emu; he must seek a bride from the only other group apparently

+at this stage accessible, that is a maid of, say, totem Kangaroo.

+Presently all Kangaroos of a generation must have been Emus by female

+descent; all Emus, Kangaroos; for the names were inherited through

+women. The clans were thus inextricably blended, and neither had a

+separate territory, a point to be remembered.

+

+Manifestly the strange superstitious metaphysics of totemism must have

+occupied a long time in evolution. The sacredness of the totem is the

+result of a primitive "religiosity," Dr. Durkheim says, which existed

+before gods or other mythological personages had been developed. There

+is supposed by early man (according to our author) to be a kind of

+universal element of power, dreadful and divine, which attaches to

+some things more than to others, to some men more than to others, and

+to all women in their relations with men.[7] This mystic something

+(rather like the _Mana_ of the Maories, and the _Wakan_ of many North

+American tribes) is believed by each group (if I correctly understand

+Dr. Durkheim) to concentrate itself in their name-giving animal, their

+totem.[8] All tabu, all blood tabu, has in the totem animal its centre

+and shrine, in the opinion of each group. Human kinship, of Emu man to

+Emu woman, is, if I understand rightly, a corollary from their common

+kinship with the Emu bird; or rather the _sacredness_ of their kinship,

+not to be violated by marriage, is thus derived; an opinion which I

+share.

+

+How all this came to be so; _why_ each of two "clans" in one horde

+chose, or acquired, a given animal as the centre of the mysterious

+sacred atmosphere, Dr. Durkheim has not, so far, told us. Yet surely

+there must have been a reason for selecting two special animals, one

+for each of the two "clans," as _the_ tabu, _the_ totem, _the_ god.

+Moreover, as such a strange belief cannot be an innate idea of the

+human mind, and as this belief, with its corollaries, is, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory, the sole origin of exogamy, there must have been

+a time when men, not having the belief, were not exogamous, and when

+their sexual relations were wholly unregulated. They only came under

+regulation after two "clans" of people, in a horde, took to revering

+two different sacred animals, according to Dr. Durkheim.

+

+The totem, he says, is not only the god, but the ancestor of the

+"clan," and this ancestor, says Dr. Durkheim, is not a species--animal

+or vegetable--but is such or such an individual Emu or Kangaroo. This

+individual Emu or Kangaroo, however, is not alive, he is a creature of

+fancy; he is a "mythical being, whence came forth at once all the human

+members of the 'clan,' and the plants or animals of the totem species.

+Within him exist, potentially, the animal species and the human 'clan'

+of the same name."[9]

+

+"Thus," Dr. Durkheim goes on, "the totemic being is immanent in the

+clan, he is incarnate in each individual member of the clan, and dwells

+in their blood. He is himself that blood. But, while he is an ancestor,

+he is also a god, he is the object of a veritable cult; he is the

+centre of the clan's religion.... Therefore there is a god in each

+individual member of the clan (for the entire god is in each), and, as

+he lives in the blood, the blood is divine. When the blood flows, the

+god is shed" (_le dieu se r�pand_).

+

+All this, of course, was the belief (if ever it was the belief) when

+totemism was in its early bloom and vigour, for to-day a black will

+shoot his totem, but not sitting; and will eat it if he can get nothing

+else, and Mr. Howitt mentions cases in which he will eat his totem

+if another man bags it.[10] The Euahlayi, with female kin, eat their

+totems, after a ceremony in which the tabu is removed.[11] Totemism

+is thus decadent to-day. But "a totem is not a thing which men think

+they can dispose of at their will, at least so long as totemic beliefs

+are still in vigour.... A totem, in short, is not a mere name, but

+before all and above all, he is a religious principle, which is one and

+consubstantial with the person in whom it has its dwelling-place; it

+makes part of his personality. One can no more change one's totem than

+one can change one's soul...."[12] He is speaking of Arunta society on

+the eve of a change from female to male reckoning of descent.

+

+So far, the theory of Dr. Durkheim is that in a compact communal

+horde, where incest was not prohibited, one "clan" or division took to

+adoring, say, the Eagle Hawk, another set the Crow; to claiming descent

+each from their bird; to regarding his blood as tabu; to seizing

+wives only from the other "clan"; and, finally, to making peaceful

+intermarriages, each, exclusively, only from the other set, Eagle Hawk

+from Crow, Crow from Eagle Hawk. We do not learn why half the horde

+adored one, and the other half another animal. If the disruption of the

+horde produced two such "clans," "at least," there may have been other

+"clans," sets equally primal, as Lizard, Ant, Wallaby, Grub. About

+these we hear nothing more in the theory; the two "primary clans" alone

+are here spoken of as original, and are obviously the result of a mere

+conjecture, to explain the two phratries of animal name, familiar in

+our experience.

+

+No attempt is made to explain either why members of the _same_ horde

+chose _separate_ animal gods; or why--unless because of consequent

+religious differences--the two "clans," previously united, were now

+hostile; or why there were at first only two such religious hostile

+"clans"; or, if there were more, what became of the others.

+

+Meanwhile, we are not even sure that Dr. Durkheim does believe in a

+primary incestuous horde, when "Society must have formed a compact

+undivided mass ... before splitting into two distinct groups, and some

+of Morgan's tables of nomenclature corroborate this hypothesis."[13]

+It is true that Dr. Durkheim makes this assertion. But, in the same

+volume (i. p. 332), Dr. Durkheim tells us that Mr. Morgan's theory of

+obligatory promiscuity (a theory based, as we saw in Chapter II., on

+the terms of relationship) "seems to us to be definitely refuted."

+Again, Mr. Morgan, like Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer, regarded the

+savage terms for relationships as one proof of "group marriage,"

+or "collective marriage," including unions of the nearest of kin.

+(Compare our Chapter III.) But Dr. Durkheim writes, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than a last resource, intended

+to enable us to envisage these strange customs: but it is impossible

+to overlook all the difficulties which it raises ... this improbable

+conception."[14]

+

+Is it possible that, after many times reading the learned Professor's

+work, I misunderstand him? With profound regret I gather that he does

+not believe in the theory of "obligatory promiscuity" in an undivided

+horde, which I have supposed to be the basis of his system; a horde

+"in which there is nothing to show that incest was forbidden." That

+incest, in Mr. Morgan's theory, was "obligatory," I cannot suppose,

+because, if nobody knew who was akin to whom, nothing could compel a

+man to marry his own sister or daughter. I am obliged to fear that I

+do not understand what is meant. For Dr. Durkheim made society begin

+in a united solid _peuplade_, in which "there is no reason to suppose

+that incest was forbidden," and as proof he cited some of Mr. Morgan's

+tables of relationships. He then gave his theory of how exogamy was

+introduced into the "compact undivided mass." He next appears to reject

+this "mass," and Morgan's argument for its existence. Is there an

+inconsistency, or do I merely fail to understand Dr. Durkheim?

+

+Let us, however, take Dr. Durkheim's theory of a horde with

+"permissive" incest, split, for some reason, into two distinct hostile

+"clans" worshipping each its own "god," an animal; each occupying

+a different territory; reckoning by female kin; exogamous, and

+intermarrying. Such communities, exogamous, intermarrying, and with

+female descent, Dr. Durkheim uniformly styles "primary clans," or

+"elementary totemic groups."[15] It is obvious that they constitute,

+when once thoroughly amalgamated by exogamy and peaceful intermarriage,

+_a local tribe_, with a definite joint territory, and without _clan_

+territory. At every hearth, through the whole tribal domain, both

+clans are present; the male mates are, say, Eagle Hawks, the women and

+children are Crows, or _vice versa_. Neither "clan" as such "has any

+longer a territorial basis." "The clan," says Dr. Durkheim, "has no

+territorial basis." "The clan is an amorphous group, a floating mass,

+with no very defined individuality; its contours, especially, have no

+material marks on the soil."[16] This is as true as it is obvious.

+The clans, when once thoroughly intermixed, and with members of each

+clan present, as father, mother, and children, by every hearth, can,

+as clans, have no local limits, no territorial boundaries, and Dr.

+Durkheim maintains this fact Indeed, he distinguishes the clan from the

+tribe as being _non-territorial_.[17]

+

+Yet though he thus asserts what every one must see to be true, his

+whole theory of the origin of the totem kins ("secondary clans")

+within the phratries, and his theory (as we shall show later) of the

+matrimonial classes, rests on the contradictory of his averment. He

+then takes the line that the exogamous clans with female descent do, or

+did, possess definite separate territorial bases, which seems contrary

+to the passage where he says that they do not![18] He has reversed his

+position.

+

+We first gave Dr. Durkheim's statement as to how the totem kins (which

+he calls "secondary clans") came to exist within the phratries.

+

+"When a clan increases beyond a certain measure, its population cannot

+exist within the same space: it therefore throws off colonies, which,

+as they no longer occupy the same habitat with, nor share the interests

+of the original group from which they emerged, end by taking a totem

+which is all their own: thenceforth they constitute new clans."[19]

+Again, "the phratry is a primary clan, which, as it develops, has been

+led to segment itself into a certain number of secondary clans, which

+retain their sentiment of community and of solidarity."[20]

+

+All this is (as far as I can see), by Dr. Durkheim's own previous

+statement, impossible. A totemic clan, exogamous, with female descent,

+cannot, as a clan, overflow its limits of "space," for, as a clan,

+he tells us, it "has no territorial basis," no material assigned

+frontier, marked on the soil.[21] "One cannot say at what precise point

+of space it begins, or where it ends." The members of one "clan" are

+indissolubly blended with the members of the other "clan," in the local

+tribe. This point, always overlooked by the partisans of a theory that

+the various totem kins are segments of "a primary clan," can be made

+plain. By the hypothesis there are two "clans" before us, of which

+Eagle Hawk (male) always marries Crow (female), their children being

+Crows, and Crow (male) always marries Eagle Hawk (female), the children

+being Eagle Hawks. The _tribal_ territory is over-populated (the _clan_

+has no territory). A _tribal_ decree is therefore passed, that clan

+Eagle Hawk must "segment itself," and go to new lands. This decree

+means that a portion of clan Eagle Hawk must emigrate. Let, then,

+Eagle Hawk men, women, and children, to the amount of half of the clan,

+be selected to emigrate. They go forth to seek new abodes. In doing so

+the Eagle Hawk men leave their Crow wives at home; the Eagle Hawk women

+leave their Crow children, and Crow husbands; the Eagle Hawk children

+leave their Crow fathers. Not a man or woman in the segmented portion

+of clan Eagle Hawk can now have a wife or a husband, for they can only

+marry Crows. They all die out! Such is the result of segmenting clan

+Eagle Hawk.

+

+Yet the thing can be managed in no other way, for, if the emigrant

+Eagle Hawk men take with them their Crow wives and children, they

+cannot marry (unless men marry their daughters, Crows) when they

+become widowers, and unless Crow brothers marry Crow sisters, which is

+forbidden. Moreover, _this_ plan necessitates a segmentation, not of

+_clan_ Eagle Hawk, but of the _tribe_, which is composed of both Crows

+and Eagle Hawks. These conspicuous facts demolish the whole theory of

+the segmentation of a "clan" into a new clan which takes a new totem,

+though it would need two.

+

+Moreover, why should a tribal colony of two blended clans take, as

+would be absolutely necessary, two new totem names at all? We know not

+one example of change of totem name in Australia.[22] Their old totems

+were their gods, their flesh, their blood, their vital energies, by

+Dr. Durkheim's own definition. "The members of a clan literally deem

+themselves of one flesh, of one blood, and the blood is that of the

+mythic being" (the totem) "from which they are all descended."[23]

+How and _why_ then, should emigrants from "clans," say Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, change their gods, their blood, their flesh, their souls? To

+imagine that totems or even the descent of totems can be changed, by

+legislation, from the female to the male line, is, says Dr. Durkheim,

+"to forget that the totem is not a thing which men think they can

+dispose of at will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."[24]

+

+Our author goes on: "A totem, in fact, is not a mere name, it is, above

+all and before all, a religious principle, one with the individual in

+whom it dwells; and part of his personality. One can no more change his

+totem, than he can change his soul...."

+

+In that case, how did the supposed colonies thrown off by a segmented

+clan, manage to change their totems, as they did, on Dr. Durkheim's

+theory?[25] They lived in the early vigour of totemic beliefs, and

+during that blooming age of totemism, says Dr. Durkheim, "the totem is

+not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will," and yet, on

+his theory, they did dispose of it, they took new totems.[26]

+

+The supposed process seems to me doubly impossible by Dr. Durkheim's

+premises. A "clan," exogamous, with female kin, cannot overflow its

+territory, for it has confessedly, as a "clan," no delimitations of

+territory. Consequently a clan cannot throw off a colony (only a

+tribe can do that); therefore, as there can be no "clan" colony, the

+tribal colony cannot change its one totem, _for it has two_. Moreover,

+Dr. Durkheim says that there can be no such cavalier treatment of the

+totem: "Tant du moins que les croyances tot�miques sont encore en

+vigueur." Yet he also says that the totems were thus cavalierly treated

+when totemic beliefs were in vigour.

+

+Dr. Durkheim, however, might reply: "A tribe with two 'clans' can throw

+off colonies, each colony necessarily consisting of members of both

+clans, and these can change their two totems." That might pass, if he

+had not said that, while totemic beliefs are in vigour, men cannot

+dispose of the totem, "a part of their personalities," at their will.

+

+One argument, based on certain facts, has been advanced to show

+that the totem kins in the phratries are really the result of the

+segmentation of a "clan" into new clans with new totems. This argument,

+however, breaks down on a careful examination of the facts on which it

+is based, though I did not see that when I wrote _Social Origins_, p.

+59, Note 1. The chief circumstance appealed to is this. The Mohegans

+in America have three phratries: (1) WOLF, with totem kins Wolf, Bear,

+Dog, Opossum; (2) TURKEY, with totem kins Turkey, Crane, Chicken;

+(3) TURTLE, with totem kins Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle,

+Yellow Eel. "Here we are almost forced to conclude," wrote Mr. Frazer

+in 1887, "that the Turtle phratry was originally a Turtle clan which

+subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a

+particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clan may have been a

+later subdivision."[27]

+

+Mr. Frazer has apparently abandoned this position, but it seems to

+have escaped his observation, and the observation of Dr. Durkheim, who

+follows him here, that in several cases given by himself the various

+species of totem animals are _not_ grouped (as they ought to be on the

+hypothesis of subdivision) under the headship of one totem of their own

+kind--like the three sorts of Turtle in the Mohegan Turtle phratry--but

+quite the reverse. They are found in the opposite phratry, under an

+animal not of their species.

+

+Thus Mr. Dawson, cited by Mr. Frazer, gives for a Western Victoria

+tribe, now I believe extinct:--

+

+      _Phratry A_.

+  Totem kins:

+    _Long-billed Cockatoo_.

+    Pelican.

+

+      _Phratry B_.

+  Totem kins:

+    _Banksian Cockatoo_.

+    Boa Snake.

+    Quail.

+

+The two cockatoos are, we see, in _opposite phratries_, not in the

+same, as they should be by Mr. Frazer's theory.[28]

+

+This is a curious case, and is explained by a myth. Mr. Dawson, the

+recorder of the case (1881) was a scrupulous inquirer, and remarks

+that it is of the utmost importance to be able to converse with the

+natives in their own language. His daughter, who made the inquiries,

+was intimately acquainted with the dialects of the tribes in the Port

+Fairy district. The natives collaborated "with the most scrupulous

+honesty." The tribes had an otiose great Being, Pirmeheeal, or Mam

+Yungraak, called also Peep Ghnatnaen, that is, "Father Ours." He is

+a gigantic kindly man, living above the clouds. Thunder is his voice.

+"He is seldom mentioned, but always with respect."[29] This Being,

+however, did not institute exogamy. The mortal ancestor of the race

+"was by descent a Kuurokeetch, or Long-billed Cockatoo." His wife was a

+female Kappatch (Kappaheear), or Banksian Cockatoo. These two birds now

+head opposite phratries. Their children could not intermarry, so they

+brought in "strange flesh"--alien wives--whence, by female descent,

+came from abroad the other totem kins, Pelican, Boa Snake, and Quail.

+Pelican appears to be in Long-billed Cockatoo phratry; Boa Snake in

+Banksian Cockatoo phratry. At least these pairs may not intermarry.

+Quail, as if both a phratry and a totem kin by itself, may intermarry

+with any of the other four, while only three kins are open to each

+of the other four.[30] In this instance a Cockatoo phratry has not

+subdivided into Cockatoo totem kins, but two species of Cockatoos head

+opposite phratries, and are also totem kins in their own phratries.

+

+In the same way, in the now extinct Mount Gambier tribe, the phratries

+are Kumi and Kroki. Black Cockatoo (Wila) is in Kroki; in Kumi is Black

+Crestless Cockatoo (Karaal).[31] By Mr. Frazer's theory, which he

+probably no longer holds, a Cockatoo primary totem kin would throw off

+other kins, named after various other species of Cockatoo, and become a

+Cockatoo phratry, with several Cockatoo totem kins. The reverse is the

+fact: the two Cockatoos are in opposite phratries.

+

+Again, among the Ta-ta-thi tribe, two species of Eagle Hawk occur as

+totems. One is in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), the other is in Crow

+phratry (_Kilpara_). This could not have occurred through Eagle Hawk

+"clan" splitting into other clans, named after other species of Eagle

+Hawk.[32]

+

+In the Kamilaroi phratries two species of Kangaroos occur as totem

+kins, but the two Kangaroo totem kins are in opposite phratries.[33]

+

+If Mr. Frazer's old view were correct, both species of Kangaroo would

+be in the same phratry, like the various kinds of Turtle in the Mohegan

+Turtle phratry. Again, in the Wakelbura tribe, in Queensland, there are

+Large Bee and Small or Black Bee _in opposite phratries_.[34]

+

+On Mr. Frazer's old theory, we saw, a phratry is a totem kin which

+split into more kins, having for totems the various species of the

+original totem animal. These, as the two sorts of Bees, Cockatoos,

+Kangaroos, and so on, would on this theory always be in the same

+phratry, like the various kinds of Mohegan Turtles. But Mr. Frazer

+himself has collected and published evidence to prove that this is far

+from being usually the case; the reverse is often the case. Thus the

+argument derived from the Mohegan instance of the Turtle phratry is

+invalidated by the opposite and more numerous facts. The case of the

+Mohegan Turtle phratry, with various species of Turtles for totem kins

+within it, is again countered in America, by the case of the Wyandot

+Indians. They have four phratries. If these have names, the names are

+not given. But the first phratry contains _Striped Turtle_, Bear, and

+Deer. The second contains _Highland Turtle, Black Turtle_, and _Smooth

+Large Turtle_. If this phratry was formed by the splitting of Highland

+Turtle into Black and Smooth Turtles, why is Striped Turtle in the

+opposite phratry?[35] The Wyandots, in Ohio, were village dwellers,

+with female reckoning of lineage and exogamy. If they married out of

+the tribe, the alien was adopted into a totem kin of the other tribe,

+apparently changing his totem, though this is not distinctly stated.[36]

+

+Thus Dr. Durkheim's theory of the segmentation of a primary totem

+"clan" into other "clans" of other totems is not aided by the facts

+of the Mohegan case, which are unusual. We more frequently find

+that animals of different species of the same genus are in opposite

+phratries than in the same phratry. Again, a totem kin (with female

+descent) cannot, we repeat, overpopulate its territory, for, as Dr.

+Durkheim says, an exogamous clan with female descent has no territorial

+basis. Nor can it segment itself without also segmenting its linked

+totem kin or kins, which merely means segmenting the local tribe. If

+that were done, there is no reason why the members of the two old

+"clans" in the new colony should change their totems. Moreover, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory that cannot be done "while totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."

+

+To recapitulate our objections to Dr. Durkheim's theory, we say

+(i.) that it represents human society as in a perpetual state of

+segmentation and resegmentation, like the Scottish Kirk in the many

+secessions of bodies which again split up into new seceding bodies.

+First, we have a _peuplade_, or horde, apparently (though I am not

+quite sure of the Doctor's meaning) permitted to be promiscuous in

+matters of sex. (ii.) That horde, for no obvious reason, splits into

+at least two "clans"--we never hear in this affair of more than the

+two. These two new segments select each a certain animal as the focus

+of a mysterious impersonal power. On what grounds the selection was

+made, and why, if they wanted an animal "god," the whole horde could

+not have fixed on the same animal, we are not informed. The animals

+were their "ancestors"--half the horde believed in one ancestor, half

+in another. The two halves of the one horde now became hostile to each

+other, whether because of their divergence of opinion about ancestry or

+for some other reason, (iii.) Their ideas about their animal god made

+it impossible for members of the same half-horde to intermarry, (iv.)

+Being hostile, they had to take wives from each other by acts of war.

+(v.) Each half-horde was now an exogamous totem kin, a "primary clan,"

+reckoning descent on the female side. As thus constituted, "no clan has

+a territorial basis": it is an amorphous group, a floating mass. As

+such, no clan can overflow its territorial limits, for it has none.

+

+(vi.) But here a fresh process of segmentation occurs. The clan _does_

+overflow its territory, though it has none, and, going into new lands,

+takes a new totem, though this has been declared impossible; "the

+totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will, at

+least while totemic beliefs are in vigour." Thus the old "clans" have

+overflowed their territorial limits, though "clans" have none, and

+segments have wandered away and changed their totems, though, in the

+vigour of totemic ideas, men do not think that they can dispose of

+their totems at will, (vii.) In changing their totems, they, of course,

+change their blood, but, strange to say, they still recognise their

+relationship to persons not of their blood, men of totems not theirs,

+namely, the two primary clans from which they seceded. Therefore they

+cannot marry with members of their old primary clans, though these are

+of other totems, therefore, _ex hypothesi_, of different blood from

+themselves, (viii.) The primary clans, as relations all round grow

+pacific, become the phratries of a tribe, and the various colonies

+which had split off from a primary clan become totem kins in phratries.

+But such colonies of a "clan" with exogamy and female descent are

+impossible.

+

+If these arguments are held to prove the inadequacy of Dr. Durkheim's

+hypothesis, we may bring forward our own.[37]

+

+

+[1] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_ v. pp. 82-141.

+

+[2] Ibid., i. pp. 35-57.

+

+[3] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. pp. 62, 63.

+

+[4] Dr. Durkheim here introduces a theory of Arunta totemic magic.

+As he justly says, the co-operative principle--each group in a tribe

+doing magic for the good of all the other groups--cannot be primitive.

+The object of the magic, he thinks, was to maintain in good condition

+the totems, which are the gods, of the groups, and, indeed, "the

+condition of their existence." Later, ideas altered, ancestral souls,

+reincarnated, were the source of life, but the totemic magic survived

+with a new purpose, as Magical Co-operative Stores. But why have the

+more primitive tribes no totem magic? (_L'Ann�e Sociologique_, v. pp.

+117, 118, 119.)

+

+[5] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. p. 64.

+

+[6] Ibid., pp. 51, 52.

+

+[7] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. pp. 38-57.

+

+[8] Ibid., i. pp. 38-53; v. pp. 87, 88. "Le caract�re sacr� est d'abord

+diffus dans les choses avant de se concr�tiser sous la forme des

+personalit�s d�termin�s."

+

+[9] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. p. 51, and Note I.

+

+[10] For other rules see Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, pp.

+320-328.

+

+[11] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[12] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, v. pp. 110, 111.

+

+[13] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. p. 63.

+

+[14] i. _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. p. 318.

+

+[15] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, v. pp. 91, 92.

+

+[16] Ibid., i. p. 20.

+

+[17] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[18] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[19] L'Ann�e Sociologique, i. p. 6.

+

+[20] Ibid., v. p. 91.

+

+[21] Ibid., i. p. 20. The thing would only be possible if the two

+"clans" were not yet exogamous and intermarrying; but then they would

+not be "clans," by the definition!

+

+[22] In _Natives of South-East Australia_, pp. 215, 216, we hear on

+the evidence of "Wonghi informants" that members of the totems are

+allowed to change totems, "to meet marriage difficulties," and because

+in different ports of the tribal territory different animals, which

+act as totems, are scarce. The tribe, haring matrimonial classes, is

+not pristine, and, if the report be accurate, totemic ideas, from Dr.

+Durkheim's point of view, cannot be "still in their vigour."

+

+[23] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. p. 51.

+

+[24] Ibid., V. p. 110.

+

+[25] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[26] In _Folk Lore_, March 1904, I criticised what I regard as an

+inconsistency in this part of Dr. Durkheim's theory. I here cite his

+reply textually, from _Folk Lore_, June 1904, pp. 215-216.

+

+R�PONSE A M. LANG.

+

+"Dans le _Folk Lore_ de Mars, M. Lang, sous pr�texte de se d�fendre

+contre mes critiques, m'attaque directement. Je suis donc oblig�,

+� mon grand regret, de demander l'hospitalit� du _Folk Lore_ pour

+les quelques observations qui suivent. Afin d'abr�ger le d�bat, je

+n'examinerai pas si M. Lang s'est justifi� ou non de mes critiques, et

+me borne � r�pondre � celle qu'il m'a adress�e.

+

+"M. Lang me reproche d'avoir reni� ma propre th�orie sur la nature du

+totem. J'aurais (L'Ann�e Sociologique, i. pp. 6 et 52) dit qu'un clan

+peut changer de totem et, dans la m�me p�riodique (v. pp. 110, 111),

+j'aurais �tabli qu'un tel changement est impossible. En r�alit�, la

+seconde opinion qui m'est ainsi attribu�e n'est pas la mienne et je ne

+l'ai pas exprim�e.

+

+"En effet, je n'ai pas dit que groupes et individus ne pouvaient

+jamais changer de totem, mail, ce qui est tout autre chose, que _le

+principe de filiation tot�mique, la mani�re dont le totem est r�put�

+se transmettre des parents aux enfants ne pouvait �tre modifi�e par

+mesure legislative, par simple convention_. Je cite les expressions que

+j'ai employ�es et que tait M. Lang: "Tant que, d'apr�s les croyances

+regnantes, le totem de l'enfant �tait regard� comme une emanation

+du totem de la m�re, il n'y avait pas de mesure legislative qui p�t

+faire qu'il en fut autrement." Et plus bas ("Les croyances tot�miques)

+ne permettaient pas que _le mode_ de transmission du totem p�t �tre

+modifi� d'un coup, par un acte de la volont� collective." Il est

+clair, en effet, que si l'on croit fermement que l'esprit tot�mique

+de l'enfant est d�termin� par la fait de la conception, il n'y a pas

+de legislation qui puisse d�cider qu'� partir d'un certain moment il

+aura lieu de telle fa�on et non de telle autre. Mais mon assertion

+ne porte que sur ce cas particulier. Et des changements de totems

+restent possibles dans d'autres conditions comme celles dont il est

+question dans le Tome I. de _L'Ann�e Sociologique_. J'ajoute que m�me

+ces changements n'ont jamais lieu, � mon sens, par mesure legislative.

+J'ai, il est vrai, compar� un changement de totem � un changement

+d'�me. Mais ces changements d'�mes n'ont rien d'impossible (pour

+l'homme primitif) dans les conditions d�termin�es. Seulement, ils ne

+sauraient avoir lieu par d�cret; or, c'est tout ce que signifiaient

+les quatre ou cinq mots incrimin�s par M. Lang. Leur sens est tr�s

+clairement d�termin� par tout le contexte comme je viens de le montrer.

+En tout cas, apr�s les explications qui pr�c�dent, appuy�es sur des

+textes, il ne saurait y avoir de doute sur ma pens�e, et je consid�re

+par suite le d�bat comme clos. E. DURKHEIM."

+

+It distresses me that I am unable to understand Dr. Durkheim's defence.

+He does say (_L'An. Soc._ i. p. 6) that the colonies of "clans" too

+populous "to exist within their space" "end by taking a totem which

+is all their own, and thenceforth constitute new clans." He also does

+say that "the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of

+at their will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in vigour"

+(_L'An. Soc._ v. p. 110). But his hypothetical colonies _did_ "dispose

+of" their old totems "at their will," and took new totems "all their

+own," and that while "totemic beliefs were in their vigour." I was

+saying nothing about _le principe de filiation tot�mique_, nor was Dr.

+Durkheim when he spoke of clan colonies changing their totems. I print

+Dr. Durkheim's defence as others, more acute than myself, may find it

+satisfactory.]

+

+[27] Totemism, p. 62, 1887.

+

+[28] Totemism, p. 65, citing Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 26 _et

+seq_.

+

+[29] Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 49.

+

+[30] Ibid., pp. 26, 27.

+

+[31] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 168. Totemism, p. 85.

+

+[32] _J. A. I._, xiv. p. 349. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,

+p. 100. I do not know certainly whether Mr. Howitt now translates

+_Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_ as Eagle Hawk and Crow.

+

+[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 104.

+

+[34] Totemism, p. 85. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,

+p. 112.

+

+[35] Powell, Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, p. 60.

+

+[36] Op. cit., p. 68.

+

+[37] I have excised a criticism of Dr. Durkheim's theory of the modus

+by which "primary clans" segmented into secondary clans (_L'Ann�e

+Sociologique_, vi. pp. 7-34), because, since a clan, exogamous and

+with female reckoning of descent, cannot conceivably segment itself,

+as we have proved, my other arguments are as superfluous as they are

+numerous.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI

+

+THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

+

+

+      Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social

+      condition--Either men lived in male communities, each

+      with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living

+      alone with his female mates and children--His adolescent

+      sons he drove away--The latter view accepted--It

+      involves practical exogamy--Misunderstood by M. Salomon

+      Reinach--Same results would follow as soon as totems were

+      evolved--Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men,

+      of _the names_ of natural objects--Mr. Howitt states this

+      opinion--Savage belief in magical _rapport_ between men

+      and things of the same name--Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys

+      died for this fact--Theory of Dr. Pikler--Totemism arises

+      in the need of names to be represented in pictographs--But

+      the pictograph is later than the name--Examples of magic

+      of names--Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin

+      between themselves and objects of the same names--These

+      objects regarded with reverence--Hence totemic exogamy

+      merely one aspect of the general totem name--Group

+      names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members

+      of other local groups--Proof that such names may be

+      accepted and gloried in--Cases of _tribal_ names given

+      from without and accepted--Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of

+      names--His objection to our theory answered--Mr. Howitt's

+      objections answered--American and Celtic cases of derisive

+      nicknames accepted--Two Australian totem names certainly

+      sobriquets--Religious aspect of totemism--Results from a

+      divine decree--Other myths--Recapitulation.

+

+

+The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of

+kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and

+for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the

+kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be.

+Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two

+"phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No

+system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in

+the preceding critical chapters.

+

+In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have

+been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis

+as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career.

+Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's

+knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves

+that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt

+inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting

+methods must have forced men to live in _small_ separate groups. The

+members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and

+dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the

+associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for

+and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons,

+and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups

+necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could

+be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal

+horde of theory.

+

+Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his

+opinion as to their social condition.

+

+He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy

+of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of

+Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the

+stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now

+exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in

+small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful,

+with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b)

+he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several

+wives, like the Gorilla--for all the natives agree that bat one adult

+male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes

+place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the

+others, establishes himself as head of the community.

+

+"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at

+last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding

+within the limits of the same family."[1]

+

+There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and

+the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all

+_compelled_ to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the

+case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own

+daughters.

+

+Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second

+hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so

+very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his

+women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.

+

+There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of

+male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),[2]

+and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to

+the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community

+would end in his second--given the jealousy and brutality and animal

+passions of early man, as postulated by him.

+

+On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small

+"family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose

+harem contains _all_ the young females in the group, would be

+necessarily exogamous in practice--for the younger male members. The

+sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and

+such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could,

+similar communities.

+

+With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now

+_conscious_, would become, "No marriage within this group of

+contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various

+"family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives,

+and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other

+similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was

+obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr.

+Atkinson, in his _Primal Law_.)[3]

+

+If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal

+state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional

+conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., _supra_), would still

+keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed

+communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the

+jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by

+preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This

+would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual

+separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can

+have no certainty.[4] Young males would thus be obliged to win mates,

+probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were

+so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as

+the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy,"

+No marriage within the totem name and blood."

+

+The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been

+sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group

+possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one

+blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr.

+Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred

+totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there

+must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us)

+that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that,

+or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek

+for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with

+animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the

+various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer

+remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of

+particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem

+possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed _the

+names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of

+totemism?_"[5] The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer

+which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for

+instance, need not have yet been developed.

+

+In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show

+that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal,

+unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly

+intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or

+early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief

+in a specially close and mystical _rapport_ between the totem animal or

+plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in

+that _rapport_ arise?

+

+Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the

+_name_ of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that

+name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief

+in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu,

+and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism

+begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.

+

+It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this--that the

+community of name, if it existed, _and if its origin were unknown_,

+would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection

+between all who bore it, men or beasts--can have escaped the notice of

+any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with

+its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted

+forty-two pages of his _Golden Bough_[6] to the record of examples of

+this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to

+the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time,

+not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that

+part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever

+you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on

+Welsh Fairies.[7] This opinion rests on philological analysis of the

+Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.[8] But, if

+the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul,

+then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There

+we have the _rapport_ between man and totemic animal for which we are

+seeking.

+

+Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage

+belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and

+things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same

+thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same

+name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That

+is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed

+when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets

+of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.

+

+This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the

+names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.[9] Men, says

+Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender

+schriftlich fixierbarer _Name_ von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They

+wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these

+communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the

+pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect,

+on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian

+villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.

+

+This is practically the theory of Mr. Max M�ller.[10] Mr. Max M�ller

+wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, _then_ (ii.) a clan name, then

+(iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name

+of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's

+theory.[11]

+

+It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use

+_before_, not as Mr. Max M�ller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems

+to think, _after_ its pictorial representation, "the clan mark."

+A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used

+the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late

+institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting

+up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart,"

+or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the

+scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He

+does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the

+signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must

+have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch,

+or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to

+understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture

+language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism

+certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die _Folge_ der Schriftart,

+der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."[12]

+

+The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before

+the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this

+advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of

+pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without

+writing, a _tribal_ name, such at least as are the _tribal_ names of

+the men who say _Wonghi_ or _Kamil_ when they mean "No," or of other

+tribes when they mean "What?"

+

+Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the _naming_," and here

+we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the

+naming is a consequence of the primitive _schriftteknik_," a result of

+the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known

+by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear,

+before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint,

+as [symbol], or of the Rain-cloud, as [symbol] or of the

+Bear's-foot, as [symbol] [13]

+

+So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; _naming is_ indeed the

+original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs

+which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not

+possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and

+accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,[14] in ages of

+philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a

+material connection between things and their names," and, in the same

+way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was

+an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving

+animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the

+name-giving animal.[15]

+

+Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion,

+but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for

+discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably,

+in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.[16]

+

+Thus, given a set of local groups[17] known by the names of Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were

+intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was,

+in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed

+mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name,

+is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical

+properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader

+has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already

+cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.

+

+In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, _Aritna

+Churinga_, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never

+to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group."

+To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as

+the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."[18]

+

+These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all

+students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in _Social

+Origins_. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather,

+for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for

+granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat

+that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in

+a mystic and transcendental connection of _rapport_. Other Australian

+examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically

+injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough

+Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this

+superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names

+to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the

+groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition

+about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would

+be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge

+of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have

+carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few

+American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but

+every one knows the real names.

+

+He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge

+to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known

+to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the

+full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal

+the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private

+essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all

+groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr.

+Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"[19] that is,

+with injurious intentions towards the person.

+

+Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally

+the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close

+must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides

+the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr.

+Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what

+beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of

+injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was

+"haunted by the impression that I had met examples."[20] Mr. Howitt,

+we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But

+it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only

+punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an

+enemy's totem.

+

+An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep _his_

+intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city

+of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course

+his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance,

+because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally

+known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some

+enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner--in other

+words, use it as an incantation."[21]

+

+Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic _rapport_

+between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be

+familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his

+secret name.

+

+This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as

+groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how

+they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was

+quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves,

+"What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals

+whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most

+important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the

+savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this

+assertion?

+

+Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and

+their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious

+acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such

+speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths,

+they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise

+nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving

+animals, the connection indicated by the name.

+

+Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably

+unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother

+and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may

+not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the

+Arunta are said not to understand them),[22] but the facts of blood

+connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape

+no human beings.[23] As savages undeniably do not draw the line between

+beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do,

+it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group

+name, and therefore _solidaire_ with the group, was united with it, as

+the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by

+the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother,

+or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and

+regard for the animal.

+

+Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally

+diffused beliefs about the _wakan_ or _mana_, or mystically sacred

+quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various

+totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its

+blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry

+a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any

+blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon

+clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So

+strong is the intertotemic avoidance.[24] The belief grew to the pitch

+that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (Greek: chresthai gynaiki),

+and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was

+established.[25]

+

+Unessential to my system is the question, _how_ the groups got animal

+names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got

+them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking,

+indicated an essential and mystic _rapport_ between each group and

+its name-giving animal. No more than these three things--a group

+animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection

+between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in

+the blood superstitions--was needed to give rise to all the totemic

+creeds and practices, including exogamy.

+

+Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups

+is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various

+myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would

+not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name

+denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between

+themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.

+

+In _Social Origins_ I ventured a guess as to how the group names first

+arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.[26] I showed

+that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and

+I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as

+in France--Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney--Starlings,

+Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names

+of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as

+Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hy�nas,

+Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural

+England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be

+totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that

+animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "_not_ Eaters of"

+this or that.[27] I thus established the prevalence in human nature,

+among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In

+Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the

+inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or

+another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once

+attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will

+be discovered.

+

+I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the

+existence in the European class least modified by education of the

+tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle

+even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among

+individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not

+alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull,

+and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot,

+of course, _prove_ that their group animal-names were given thus from

+without, but the process is undeniably a _vera causa_, and does operate

+as we show.

+

+As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne

+by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."[28]

+Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory

+on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the

+difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for

+themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but

+why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one

+group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name

+for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks,"

+"barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders,

+and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We"

+are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men"--in

+their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not

+"we"), and we are something else to them; _we_ are not _they_; we all

+need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders,

+differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity

+felt in everyday life.

+

+That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and

+even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated

+in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from

+without), and in _Les Gueux, Huguenots,_ Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers,

+Cameronians ("_that nickname_," cries Patrick Walker (1720),

+"why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a

+nickname?")[29] I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland

+clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive

+nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given,

+accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.

+

+Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations,"

+that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the

+Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for

+"No," such as _Kamil_ (Kamilaroi), _Wira_ (Wirajuri), _Wonghi_ (Wonghi

+tribe), _Kabi_ (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were

+given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted

+from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi

+tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It

+is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to

+them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the

+tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."[30]

+There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do

+the French call themselves _Oui Oui_? Not much I but the natives of New

+Caledonia call them _Oui Oui_.[31]

+

+Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no

+reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without.

+Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and

+_wakan_, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among

+savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names

+were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood

+by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among

+the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in

+or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the

+savage ideas about animals.

+

+Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr.

+Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on

+"Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of

+mine. He says, "To adopt or _receive_ the name of an animal or plant,

+or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with

+the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to

+become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is

+exactly my own opinion. The very early groups _received_ animal names,

+I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed

+themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under

+the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a

+very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give

+many examples of the process from America.[32]

+

+It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely,

+that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But

+he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory.

+His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I

+prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I

+do _not_ prove that the villagers--styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows,

+and so on--accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice

+in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the

+modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very

+much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were

+cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names

+survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them

+gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are

+not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names

+and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to

+savages.

+

+A native of Dingley Dell may call all natives of Muggleton

+"Potato-grubs," and the Muggleton people, from time immemorial, may

+have called the Dingley Dell folk "Rooks." But, not being savages, they

+do not think--as Mr. Hill-Tout's savages do--that "to receive the name

+of an animal is to be under its protection, to become one with it in

+a very special and mysterious sense," and they do not, like savages,

+think nobly of grubs and rooks. The distinction is obvious, except to

+critics. Mr. Hill-Tout thus accepts my premises as regards savages

+and their ideas about names, but rejects my conclusion, because modern

+villagers do not reason like savages! As to villagers, my evidence

+was only meant to show the wide diffusion, from ancient Israel to the

+Orkneys, of the habit of giving animal names to village groups. For

+evidence of the effect which that habit would have on savages, I have

+now cited Mr. Hill-Tout himself. He has merely misunderstood a very

+plain argument,[33] which he advanced as representing his own opinion

+(pp. 64-66). But then Mr. Hill-Tout has a counter theory.

+

+Is my argument intelligible? A modern villager resents the bawling out

+of "Mouse" as he passes, Mouse being the collective nickname of his

+village, because he does not think nobly of Mice. The savage does think

+nobly of all animals, and so has no reason for resenting, but rather

+for glorying in, his totem name, whether Mouse or Lion. These facts

+were plainly asserted in _Social Origins_, p. 169, to no avail.

+

+Mr. Howitt, in his turn, does not approve of my idea, thus stated by

+him, that "the plant and animal names would be impressed upon each

+group from without, and some of them would stick, would be stereotyped,

+and each group would come to answer to its nickname." He replies--

+

+"To me, judging of the possible feelings of the ancestors of the

+Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most

+improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have

+given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which

+such names have been adopted."[34] Mr. Howitt, of course, could not

+possibly find kinships now adopting animal and other such names given

+from without, because all kinships where totemism exists have got such

+names already, and with the names a sacred body of customs. But does he

+suppose that the many local tribes calling themselves by their word for

+"No" (as _Kabi, Kamil, Wonghi,_ and so on), originally gave these names

+to themselves, saying, "We are the people who, when we mean 'No,' say

+'Wonghi'"? That seems to me hardly credible! Much more probably tribes

+who used Kamil or Kabi for "No" gave the name of _Wonghi_ to a tribe

+who used _Wonghi_ in place of their _Kamil_ or _Kabi_. In that case the

+tribes, as tribes, have adopted names given from without.

+

+Again, I consider that the feelings of that noble savage, the Red

+Indian, are at least as sensitive to insult as those of Mr. Howitt's

+blacks. Now it so happens that the Blackfoot Indians of North America,

+who apparently have passed out of totemism, have "_gentes_, a _gens_

+being a body of consanguineal kinsmen in the male line," writes Mr. G.

+B. Grinnell.[35] These clans, no longer totemic, needed names, and some

+of their names, at least, are most insulting nicknames. Thus we have

+Naked Dogs, Skunks, They Don't Laugh, Buffalo Dung, All Crazy Dogs,

+Fat Roasters, and--Liars! No men ever gave such names to their own

+community. In a diagram of the arrangement of these clans in camp, made

+about 1850, we find the _gentes_ of the Pi-kun'-I under such pretty

+titles as we have given.[36]

+

+To return from America to Australia, the Narrinyeri tribe, like the

+Sioux and Blackfeet, have reckoning of descent in the male line,

+and, like the Sioux, have local settlements (called "clans" by Mr.

+Howitt), and these local settlements have names. Does Mr. Howitt think

+it likely that one such "clan" called itself "Where shall we go?" and

+another called itself "Gone over there"?[37] These look to me like

+names given by other groups. Tribes, local groups ("clans"), and totem

+kins having names already, I cannot expect to show Mr. Howitt the names

+of such sets of people in the act of being given from without and

+accepted. But, as regards individuals, they "often have what may be

+called a nickname, arising from some strongly marked feature in their

+figures, or from fancied resemblance to some animal or plant."[38] The

+individuals "answer to" such nicknames, I suppose, but they cannot

+evolve, in a lifetime, respect for the plant or animal that yields the

+nickname, because they cannot forget how they come to bear it.

+

+Obvious at a glance as such replies to such objections are, it seems

+that they have not occurred to the objectors.

+

+If we want to discover clans adopting and glorying in names which are

+certainly, in origin, derisive nicknames, we find Clan Diarmaid, whose

+name, Campbell, means "Wry Mouth,"[38] and Clan Cameron, whose name

+means "Crooked Nose."[39] Moreover, South African tribes believe that

+tribal _siboko_, as Baboon and Alligator, may, and did, arise out of

+nicknames; for, as we have seen, their myths assert that nicknames are

+the origin of such tribal and now honourable names. I cannot prove, of

+course, that the process of adopting a name given from without occurred

+among prehistoric men, but I have demonstrated that, among all sorts

+and conditions of men in our experience, the process is a _vera causa_.

+

+Dismissing my theory, Mr. Howitt, in place of it, "could more easily

+imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed

+the idea of relationship with animals, or even with plants."[40] They

+might; a man, as in the case given, might dream of a lace lizard, and

+believe that he was one. He might even be named, as an individual,

+"Lace Lizard," but that does not help us. Totem names, as Mr. Fison

+insists, are, and always were, group names. But Mr. Howitt "gets no

+forrarder," if he means that the children of his Lace Lizard become a

+totem kin of Lace Lizards, for under a system of female descent the

+man's children would not be Lace Lizards. Does Mr. Howitt know of a

+single instance in a tribe with female kin where the children of a man

+who, on dream evidence, believed himself to be a Kangaroo, were styled

+Kangaroos? He must adopt the line of saying that, while totemism was

+being evolved, women did the dreaming of being Hakea flowers, Witchetty

+Grubs, Kangaroos, Emus, and so forth, and bequeathed the names to their

+children. But he will not find that process going on in any known

+instance, I fear.

+

+The processes of my hypothesis, though necessarily conjectural, are

+at least _ver� caus�_, are in human nature, as we know it. A curious

+new example of totems, certainly based on sobriquets not derived from

+animals, occurs among the Warramanga tribe of Central Australia.

+One totem kin is merely called "The Men" (_Kati_), the name which,

+in dozens of cases, a tribe gives to itself. Another totem kin is

+called "The Laughing Boys" (_Thaballa_), a name which is obviously

+a nickname, and not given from within. The _Thaballa_ have found it

+necessary to evolve a myth about descent from a giggling boy and his

+giggling playmates, and to practise magic for their behoof, as they are

+supposed not to be dead. All this has clearly been done by the Laughing

+Boy totem kin merely to keep themselves in line with other totem kins

+named from lower animal form.[41] _This_ totem name can have been

+nothing but a group nickname.[42]

+

+I have next to explain the nature of the superstitious regard paid by

+totemists to their name-giving animals.

+

+My guess, says Dr. Durkheim, is "difficult for those who know the

+religious character of the totem, the cult of which it is our object to

+explain. How could a sobriquet become the centre of a regular religious

+system?"

+

+Dr. Durkheim calls the system "religious," and adds that I "leave on

+one side this religious aspect of totemism: but to do so is to leave on

+one side the essential factor in the phenomenon to be explained."

+

+Now, as a matter of fact, I left no element of Australian totemism "on

+one side." I mentioned every totemic tabu and magical practice that

+was known to me. But I do not (it is really a mere question of words)

+describe the beliefs as "religious." Dr. Durkheim does; he describes

+them, as we saw, almost in the terms of the Creed of St. Athanasius.

+But I find, in Australia, no case of such religious usages as praying

+to, or feeding, or burying, the totem. Such really "religious" rites

+are performed, in Samoa, for example, where an animal, once probably a

+totem, is now regarded as the shrine or vehicle of an ancestral spirit,

+who has become a kind of god,[43] and, in Egypt, the animal gods had

+once, it seems all but certain, been totems. In Australia, to be sure,

+two totems, Eagle Hawk and Crow, were creators, in some myths. So far,

+totemic conceptions may be called "religious" conceptions, more or

+less, and if Dr. Durkheim likes to call totems "gods," as he does, he

+has a right to do so. The difference here, then, is one of terminology.

+

+We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really

+religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr.

+Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the

+aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that

+is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after

+animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed,

+nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these

+divisions _and the assumption of the animal names_, were in consequence

+of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil,

+given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."[44] "Any tradition

+of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes

+it to a supernatural agency."[45] Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence

+(always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious"

+character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the

+decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees

+given by Zeus to Minos.

+

+Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in

+_Social Origins_, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being

+or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby

+giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction.

+Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained

+the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a

+veritable religious system."[46]

+

+As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal

+institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the

+Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales.

+Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away,

+but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word

+Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few

+words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I

+think, a previous community of language.

+

+Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution

+of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back

+here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was

+a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about

+Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of

+his body--even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had

+a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he

+gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every

+one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men

+and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must

+never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far

+apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further

+confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the

+totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual

+totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the _wirreenuns_

+(sorcerers or medicine men), called his _yunbeai_, any hurt to which

+injures him, and which he may never eat--his hereditary totem he may."

+

+In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.

+

+Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the

+decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite

+other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the

+effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate

+marriage.[47] Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "_in the plural form_

+Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."[48] In fact, in

+the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the _Alcheringa_ men

+of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine,

+partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many

+mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual

+to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind

+of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.[49]

+

+Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the

+sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that _he_

+(Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in

+question.

+

+Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely

+decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or _Alcheringa_ female

+Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in

+an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up

+and went away as human beings in every direction."[50]

+

+Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes

+exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only

+be imagined by men living under exogamy already.

+

+In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth

+of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth

+is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul

+is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes

+hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The

+Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the

+souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children.

+As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor

+of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was

+evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they

+have a cult, obtain,... more or less religious. All these facts are

+universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess

+that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection

+between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually

+were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr.

+Frazer's _Totemism_.

+

+In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural

+cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so

+called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small

+fish, and a very small opossum." _These are but two out of seven kins,

+in one Australian tribe_. In the other five cases the totem kins,

+according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of

+course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.[51]

+

+_Enfin_, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic

+tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it

+matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They

+certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to

+explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term,

+"religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of

+totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving

+animals of groups, we next turn.

+

+So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of

+distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These

+became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten.

+The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between

+animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature

+of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men

+and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, _with

+animals_, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From

+these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.

+

+The nature and origin of the supposed connection or _rapport_ between

+each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way

+consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and

+with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern

+times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert

+Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that

+the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and

+Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or

+Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded

+a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay

+family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the

+MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat,

+in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the

+conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic,

+from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The

+Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, _the

+badge of a group, not of an individual_.... And even if it were first

+given to an individual, his family, _i.e._ his children, could not

+inherit it from him."[52] These are words of gold.

+

+

+[1] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, it pp. 361-363. 1871.

+

+[2] I do not extend conjecture to a period when "our human or

+half-human ancestors" may hare had a rutting season, like stags. Cf.

+Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, pp. 27, 28.

+

+[3] Here I cannot but remark on the almost insuperable difficulty of

+getting savants to understand an unfamiliar idea. M. Salomon Reinach

+writes, "Another theory (Atkinson, Letourneau) explains exogamy as

+the result of the sexual jealousy of the male, chief of the primitive

+group. (Cf. _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, 1904, pp. 407, 434.) He is supposed

+to have tabooed all the women of the clan, reserving them for himself.

+This conception of a chief not only polygamous but _omnigamous_"

+(_pasigamous_ must be meant!) "is founded on no known ethnological

+fact." (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 161, Note I, 1905.) Mr.

+Atkinson does not speak of a "clan" at all. The "clan," in French,

+American, and some English anthropologists' terminology, is a totem

+kin with exogamy and female reckoning of descent. Mr. Atkinson speaks,

+in the first instance, of "family groups," "the cyclopean family," and

+a sire with his female mates and children. Such a sire is no more and

+no less "omnigamous" than a Turk in his harem, except that, as his

+condition is "semi-brutish," his daughters (as in Panama, in 1699) are

+not tabooed to him. Ethnology cannot now find this state of things of

+course; it is a theory of Mr. Darwin's, based on the known habits of

+the higher mammals.

+

+[4] See Mr. Crawley's "_The Mystic Rose_" for this theory of sexual

+taboo.

+

+[5] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 153.

+

+[6] _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 404-446.

+

+[7] _Nineteenth Century_, xxx. p. 566 sq.

+

+[8] See examples in "Cupid and Psyche," in my _Custom and Myth_, and

+Mr. Clodd's _Tom Tid Tot_, pp. 91-93.

+

+[9] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_. Von Dr. Julius Pikler, Professor der

+Rechtsphilosophie an der Universit�t Budapest. K. Koffmann, Berlin,

+_s.a._ Apparently of 1900. This tract, "The Origin of Totemism,"

+written in 1899, did not come to my knowledge till after this chapter

+was drafted.

+

+[10] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, i. p. 201.

+

+[11] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 141, 142.

+

+[12] _Ursprung des Totemismus_, p. 7.

+

+[13] See Colonel Mallery on Pictographs, _Report of Bureau of

+Ethnology_, 1888-1889, pp. 56-61.

+

+[14] "From two inscriptions found at Elensis it appears that the names

+of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea, probably they

+were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, and thrown into deep water

+in the Gulf of Salamis. ... A clearer illustration of the confusion

+between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its

+material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of

+civilised Greece." (_Golden Bough_, 2, i p. 441.) Cf. Budge, _Egyptian

+Magic_, pp. 160-162, 1901. "The Egyptians regarded the creation as the

+result of the utterance of the name of the god Neb-er-tcher by himself

+Isis could not do her will on him till she learned the _name_ of the

+god Ra." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the great sky-dwelling

+Being of the Kaitish tribe "made himself and gave himself his name." He

+made himself very inadequately, according to the myth, which may rest

+on a false etymology, and the meaning of his name is not pretty, but

+it would not surprise one if, by uttering his name, he made himself.

+(_Northern Tribes_, p. 498.)

+

+[15] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_, pp. 10, 11.

+

+[16] _Social Origins_, p. 138.

+

+[17] I am sure to be told that in Chapter III. I declared _local_

+totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line, and not

+primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named group

+local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of _totem_

+groups, but of _local groups bearing animal names_, a very different

+thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved

+totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem. No

+group that was _not_ local could get a name to itself, at this early

+stage of the proceedings. The "local habitation" precedes the "name."

+

+[18] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 139.

+

+[19] _J. A. I._, p. 53, August 1888.

+

+[20] _Social Origins_, pp. 145, 146, and Note 1.

+

+[21] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 51. _South-Eastern Tribes_, p. 736.

+

+[22] Other tribes decidedly do understand. Can the _Churinga nanja_

+and reincarnation beliefs have set up nescience of obvious facts among

+the Arunta? "The children originate solely from the male parent, and

+only owe their infantine nurture to the mother," according to certain

+Australian tribes _with female descent_. (Howitt, _J. A. I._, 1882, p.

+502. _South-Eastern Tribes_, pp. 283, 284. So, too, the Euahlayi. Mrs.

+Langloh Parker's MS.)

+

+[23] Cf. _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 360-362.

+

+[24] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 254.

+

+[25] On this point of the blood tabu see Dr. Durkheim, _L'Ann�e

+Sociologique_, i. pp. 47-57. Also M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, vol.

+x. p. 65. The point was laid before me long ago by Mr. Arthur Platt,

+when he was editing the papers of Mr. J. F. McLennan. Dr. Durkheim

+charges me (_Folk Lore_, December 1903) with treating these tabus

+"vaguely" in _Social Origins_. I merely referred the reader more than

+once, as in _Social Origins_, p. 57, Note I, to Dr. Durkheim's own

+exposition, also to M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, x. p. 65. The theory

+of the sacredness of the blood is not absolutely necessary. The totem

+tabu often excludes all contact with the totem by the totemist.

+

+[26] The passage will be found in _Social Origins_, pp. 166-175.

+

+[27] _Social Origins_, pp. 295-301.

+

+[28] _Folk Lore_, December 1903, p. 423.

+

+[29] _Vindication of Cameron's Name_. "Saints of the Covenant," i. p.

+251.

+

+[30] _Northern Tribes_, p. 10, Note 2.

+

+[31] J. J. Atkinson. The natives call _us_ "White Men." We do not call

+ourselves "God dams," but Jeanne d'Arc did.

+

+[32] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, vol. ix., vii. pp. 64, 66.

+

+[33] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ut supra, pp. 96, 97.

+

+[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.

+

+[35] _Blackfoot Lodge Tales_, p. 208, 1893.

+

+[36] _Op. cit._, p. 225.

+

+[37] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 131.

+

+[38] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 638.

+

+[39] Macbain, _Gaelic Etymological Dictionary_.

+

+[40] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.

+

+[41] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 207-210.

+

+[42] I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he knows

+no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning Mr.

+Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special variety

+of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that analogous

+names obtain now in certain tribes, _e.g._ the Yum." (_Op. cit._, p.

+154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were sobriquets

+given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does know such cases

+after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating of Yuin names,

+unless names of individuals derived from their skill in catching or

+spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These exist among

+the more elderly Kuna�. (_Op. cit._, p. 738.) But Mr. Haddon was not

+thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of group names. On

+his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because wolves and ravens

+were their chief articles of diet.

+

+[43] See Turner's _Samoa_, and Mr. Tylor, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. p. 142.

+

+[44] _J. A. I._, August 1888, pp. 53, 54. Also volume xiii. p. 498.

+Cf., too _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 89, 488, 498.

+

+[45] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 67.

+

+[46] _Bureau of Ethnology Report_, 1892, 1893, Part I. pp. 22, 23.

+Howitt, _Organisation of Australian Tribes_, p. 134 Information from

+Mrs. Langloh Parker. These sources give Menomini, Dieri, Murring,

+Woeworung, and Euahlayi myths, attributing totemic rules and names to

+divine institution.

+

+[47] Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 25.

+

+[48] _J. A. I._, 1888, p. 498. Cf. _Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia_, pp. 482-484. Mura-Mura, till further notice, are mythical

+ancestors, not reincarnated.

+

+[49] _Making of Religion_, p. 232, 1898.

+

+[50] _Assoc. Adv. Science_, p. 531, and Note 30, 1902. For other

+discrepant myths, cf. _Native Tribes of S.E. Australia_, pp. 475, 482.

+

+[51] Grey, _Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia_.

+That only two of seven totems in one tribe were explained is usually

+overlooked.

+

+[52] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 165, 1880.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII

+

+RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

+

+

+      How phratries and totem kins were developed--Local

+      animal-named groups would be exogamous--Children in these

+      will bear the group names of their mothers--Influence of

+      tattooing--Emu _local_ group thus full of persons who

+      are Snipes, Lizards, &c--_by maternal descent_--Members

+      are Emus _by local group name_: Snipes, Lizards, &c,

+      by _name of descent_--No marriage, however, within

+      local group--Reason, survival of old tabu--Reply to

+      Dr. Durkheim--The names bring about peaceful relations

+      between members of the different local groups--Tendency

+      to peaceful betrothals between men and women of the

+      various local groups--Probable leadership of two strong

+      local groups in this arrangement--Say they are groups

+      Eagle Hawk and Crow--More than two such groups sometimes

+      prominent--Probable that the dual alliance was widely

+      Imitated--The two chief allied local groups become the

+      phratries--Tendency of phratries to die out--Often

+      superseded by matrimonial classes--Meaning of surviving

+      phratry names often lost, and why--Their meaning known

+      in other tribes--Members, _by descent_, of various animal

+      names, within the old local groups (now phratries),

+      become the totem kins of to-day--Advantages of this

+      theory--Difficulties which it avoids.

+

+

+We have perhaps succeeded in showing how totemism my have become a

+belief and a source of institutions: we have shown, at least, that

+granting savage methods of thought, totemism might very naturally have

+come in this way.

+

+Totemism certainly arose in an age when, if descent reckoned, and,

+if names were inherited, it was on the spindle side. "_All abnormal

+instances,_" writes Mr. Howitt, "_I have found to be connected with

+changes in the line of descent_. The primitive and complete forms" (of

+totemism) "have uterine descent, and it is in cases where descent

+is counted in the male line that I find the most abnormal forms to

+occur."[1]

+

+As few scholars seriously dispute this opinion of Mr. Howitt, based

+on a very wide experience, and fortified by the almost universal view

+that descent was reckoned, when totemism began, in the female line,

+and as the point is accepted by every author whose ideas I have been

+discussing, we need not criticise hypotheses which assume that totemism

+arose when descent was reckoned in the male line, or that totems arose

+out of personal manitus of males, transferred to the female line.

+

+Now, granting that our system so far may afford a basis of argument, we

+have to show how the phratries and the totem kins within them might be

+logically and naturally developed.

+

+If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of

+Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a

+_sacred_ sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical

+rule would be that of the jealous Sire, "No males to touch the females

+in my camp," with expulsion of adolescent sons. In efflux of time

+that rule, become habitual, would be, "No marriage within the local

+group." Next, let the local groups receive names, such as Emus, Crows,

+Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, "No marriage within the local

+group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe." But, if the primal

+groups were not exogamous, they would become so, as soon as totemic

+myths and tabus were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other

+names of small local groups.

+

+The natural result will be that all the wives among the _local_ groups

+called Snipes will come to bear names other than Snipe, will come

+to be known by the names of the _local_ groups from which they have

+been acquired. These names they will retain, I suggest, in local group

+Snipe, by way of distinction--as the Emu woman, the Opossum woman, and

+so forth. The Emus know the names of the groups from which they have

+taken women, and it seems probable enough that the women may even have

+borne tattoo marks denoting their original groups, as is now in some

+places the Australian practice. "It probably has been universal," says

+Mr. Haddon.[2]

+

+If, then, the stranger women among the Emus are known, in that local

+group, as the Opossum woman, the Snipe woman, the Lizard woman; their

+children in the group might very naturally speak of each other as "the

+Snipe woman's, the Lizard woman's children," or more briefly as "the

+little Snipes," "the young Lizards," and so on. I say "might speak,"

+for though totem names have the advantage of being easily indicated,

+and in practice are often indicated by gesture language, I take it that

+by this time man had evolved language.[3]

+

+In course of time, by this process (which certainly did occur, though

+at how early a stage it came first into being we cannot say), each

+_local_ group becomes heterogeneous. Emu _local_ group is now full of

+members of Snipe, Lizard, and other animal-named members _by maternal

+descent_. There are thus what Mr. Howitt has called "Major totems"

+(name-giving animals of local groups), and "Minor totems" (various

+animal names of male and female members within, for example, _local_

+group Emu, these various animal names being acquired _by female

+descent_). Each member of a local Emu group is now Emu by local group;

+but is Snipe, Lizard, Opossum, Kangaroo, or what not, by _name of

+maternal descent_.

+

+This theory is no original idea, it is Mr. McLennan's mode of

+accounting for the heterogeneity of the local group. They are not all

+Wolves, for example, where descent is reckoned in the female line, and

+exogamy is the rule. In the local group Wolf are Ravens, Doves, Dogs,

+Cats, what you will, names derived by the children from mothers of

+these names. I do not pretend that I can demonstrate the existence of

+the process, but it accounts for the facts and is not out of harmony

+with human nature. Can any other hypothesis be suggested?

+

+When things have reached this pitch, each local group, _if it

+understood the situation as it is now understood among most savages_,

+might find wives peacefully in its own circle. Lizard man, in _local_

+group Emu, might marry Snipe woman also in _local_ group Emu, _as far

+as extant totem law now goes_. They were both, in fact, members of a

+small local _tribe_ of animal name, with many kins of animal names,

+by female descent, within that tribe. Why then might not Snipe (by

+descent) in Emu _local_ group marry a woman, by descent Lizard, in

+the same Emu _local_ group? Many critics have asked this question,

+including Dr. Durkheim.[4] I had given my answer to the question before

+it was asked,[5] backing my opinion by a statement of Dr. Durkheim

+himself. People of different totems in the same _local_ group (say Emu)

+_might_ have married; but then, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another

+case, "the old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs,

+survives."[6] "Now the old prohibition in this case was that a man of

+the Emu (_local_) group was not to marry a woman of the Emu (_local_)

+group. That rule endures, even though the Emu group now contains men

+and women of several distinct and different totem kins," that is to

+say, of different animal-named kins _by descent_.

+

+I may add that, as soon as speculation about the animal names led to

+the belief in the mystic _rapport_ between the animals and their human

+namesakes, and so led to tabu on the intermarriage of persons of the

+same animal name, the tabu would attach as much to the name-giving

+animal of the _local_ group as to the animals of the kins _by descent_

+within that _local_ group.

+

+Thus Lizard man, in Emu local group, cannot marry Snipe woman in the

+same. Both are also, by _local_ group name, Emus. He is Emu-Lizard, she

+is Emu-Snipe.

+

+If it be replied that now no regard is paid by the members of a phratry

+to their phratriac animal (where it is known), I answer that the

+necessary _poojah_ is done, by the members of the totem kin of that

+animal, within his phratry, while all do him the grace of not marrying

+within his name.[7] A Lizard man and a Snipe woman in Emu _local_ group

+could not, therefore, yet marry. The members of the local group, though

+of different animal names _of descent_, had still to ravish brides from

+other hostile _local_ groups.

+

+Each _local_ group was now full of men and women who, _by maternal

+descent_, bore the same animal names as many members of the other

+_local_ groups. A belief in a mystic _rapport_ between the bearers of

+the animal names and the animals themselves now being developed, Snipe

+and Lizard and Opossum _by descent_, in Emu _local_ group, must already

+have felt that they were not really strangers and enemies to men of

+the same names _by descent_, Snipe, Lizard, and Opossum, and of the

+same connection with the same name-giving animals, in Kangaroo _local_

+group, or any other adjacent _local_ group.

+

+This obvious idea--human beings who are somehow connected with the

+same animals are also connected with each other--was necessarily an

+influence in favour of peace between the local groups. In whatever

+_local_ group a Snipe by descent might be, he would come to notice a

+connection between himself and Snipes _by descent_ in all other _local_

+groups. Consequently men at last arranged, I take it, to exchange

+brides on amicable terms, instead of Snipe _by descent_ risking the

+shedding of kindred blood, that of another Snipe _by descent_, in the

+mellay of a raid to lift women from another _local_ group.

+

+If two strong local groups, say Emu and Kangaroo, or Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, took the lead in this treaty of alliance and _connubium_, and if

+the other local groups gradually came into it under their leadership

+(for union would make Eagle Hawk and Crow powerful), or if several

+local groups chose two such groups to head them in a peaceful exchange

+of brides, we have, in these two now united and intermarrying local

+groups of animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, the primal forms of the

+actual phratries of to-day.

+

+But why do we find in a tribe only two phratries? I have asked myself

+and been asked by others. In the first place, in America, we note

+examples of three or more phratries in the same tribe. Again, in

+Australia, we seem to myself to find probable traces of more than two

+phratries in a tribe, traces of what Mr. Frazer styles "sub-phratries,"

+what one may call "submerged phratries" (see Chapter X.). Further, dual

+alliances are the most usual form of such combinations: two strong

+groups, allied and setting the example, would attract the neighbouring

+groups into their circle. Finally, if I am right in thinking that the

+phratriac arrangement arose in a given centre, and was propagated

+by emigrants, and was borrowed by distant tribes (which is a point

+elsewhere discussed), the original model of a dual alliance would

+spread almost universally, while, as has been said, traces of more

+numerous combinations appear to occur.

+

+Except as parties of old to a peaceful arrangement, the phratries, as

+they at present exist (where they exist), have often now no reason for

+existence. Where totems are exogamous, or where totems and matrimonial

+classes exist, the phratry is now an empty survival; having done its

+work it does no more work, and often vanishes. If members of _local_

+animal-named groups, become fully totemic, had at once understood their

+own position as under the now existing totem law, they could have taken

+wives of different totems _of descent_ each in their own group, without

+any phratries at all. People manage their affairs thus in all totemic

+parts of the world where there are no phratries, though, for what we

+know, phratries may have existed, and vanished, in these places, when

+their task was ended.

+

+Again, phratries die out, we repeat, even in America and Australia. In

+some regions of Australia their place has been taken by the opposed

+matrimonial classes, prohibiting marriage between mothers' and

+sons', fathers' and daughters' generations. That arrangement, as it

+is not found in the most primitive Australian tribes, which have only

+phratries and totems, must be later than phratries and totems. It was

+a later enactment, within the phratry, and, as among the Arunta and

+Wiraidjuri, it has now superseded the phratry. The matrimonial classes,

+originally introduced within each pre-existing phratry, now regulate

+marriage, among Arunta and Wiraidjuri, and the phratry has dropped off,

+its name being unknown, like the flower which has borne its fruit.

+

+Again, in Australia, as has been said, we shall try to show that

+phratries, in many tribes, are perhaps a _borrowed_ institution, not

+an institution independently evolved everywhere. That is rendered

+probable because, among many tribes, the phratry names survive but are

+now meaningless, yet these same phratry names possess, or have recently

+possessed, a meaning in the language of other tribes, from whom the

+institution may apparently (though not necessarily) have been borrowed

+with the foreign names of each phratry.

+

+For all these reasons, phratries seem, in some regions, to be a

+device adopted, by some tribe, or tribes, at a given moment, for a

+given purpose (peace), and borrowed from them by some other tribes,

+or propagated by emigrants into new lands. Men might borrow the

+_names_ of the phratries, or might use other names which were already

+current designations of their own local groups. The purpose of the

+phratry organisation, I argue, may have been the securing of peace

+and alliance, and the movement may have been originated, somewhere in

+Australia, by two powerful local groups of animal name; in one vast

+region known as Eagle Hawk and Crow, Mukwara and Kilpara, and by

+other names of the same meaning. Such I take to have been the mode

+in which phratries arose, out of the alliance and _connubium_ of two

+local groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow; or of more than two groups. Mr.

+Frazer says that the Moquis of Arizona have ten phratries (quoting

+Bourke, _Snake Dance_, p. 336) and the Wyandots have four; the Mohegans

+have three.[8] These, or other groups, took the lead in recognising

+the situation, namely, that brides might be peacefully exchanged among

+_local_ groups becoming conscious of common kinship in their totems _by

+descent_.

+

+Meanwhile, in the various otherwise animal-named members of _local_

+groups Eagle Hawk and Crow--in the men and women within _local_ groups

+Eagle Hawk and Crow who were Snipes, Lizards, Opossums, and so on, _by

+maternal descent_--we have the forerunners of the totem kins within the

+phratries of to-day. In the same way, members of all other adjacent

+_local_ groups could also come into Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries by

+merely dropping their _local_ group-names, keeping their names by

+_descent_.

+

+We have not, on this system, to imagine that there were but two

+totem groups in each district, at the beginning (a thing unlikely to

+happen anywhere, still less always and everywhere), and that many of

+their members, hiving off, took new totem names. Our scheme gives us,

+naturally, and on Mr. Darwin's lines, first, many small local groups,

+perhaps in practice exogamous; then these local groups invested with

+animal names; then, the animals become totems, sanctioning exogamy;

+then by exogamy and female descent, each animal-named _local_ group

+becomes full of members of other animal names _by descent_; then an

+approach to peace among all the groups naturally arises; then pacific

+_connubium_ between them all, at first captained by two leading local

+groups, say Crow and Eagle Hawk (though there is no reason why there

+should not have been more of such alliances in a tribe, and there are

+traces of them),[9] and, lastly, the allies prevailing, the inhabitants

+of a district became an harmonious tribe, with two phratries (late

+_local_ groups), say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and with the other old

+local group-names represented in what are now the totem kins within

+the phratries. This arrangement, in course of time, is perhaps even

+borrowed, foreign phratry names and all, by distant groups hitherto not

+thus organised.

+

+This scheme, it will be observed, is in harmony with what Mr.

+Howitt's knowledge of native life shows him to have occurred. From

+the beginning, in the physical conditions of Australia, no horde or

+communal mob could keep together, for lack of supplies. No assemblage

+"could assume dimensions more than that of a few members," before it

+was broken up by economic causes.[10] There were thus, in a district,

+many small groups, not, as on Dr. Durkheim's theory, just two groups,

+broken out of a larger horde by their unexplained religious devotion

+each to its own god, an animal, say Eagle Hawk for one group, Crow

+for the other. On the other hand, there was now an indefinite number

+of small _local_ groups, each of animal name, each containing members

+of as many names _of descent_ as the local groups from which each

+local group had taken wives. Such groups would now be larger than mere

+hearth-circles, in proportion as improved skill in fishing, net-making,

+spearing, and trapping animals, and in selecting and cooking edible

+vegetables and roots, with improved implements, enabled larger groups

+to subsist in their territorial area. This scheme is manifestly

+consistent with the probable economic and social conditions, while

+the animal group-names are explained by the necessity under which the

+groups lay to differentiate each other by names. The regard later paid

+to the name-giving animals as totems is explained, on the ground of the

+savage theory of the mystical quality of names of unknown origin, names

+also borne by animals, powerful, wise, mysterious creatures.

+

+These processes must have occupied long ages in evolution.

+

+This hypothesis escapes the difficulty as to how an incestuous horde,

+guided by an inspired medicine man, could ever come to see that there

+was such a thing as incest, and that such a thing ought not to be

+tolerated. We also escape Dr. Durkheim's difficulty--How did two

+hostile sects of animal worshippers arise in the "compact mass" of the

+horde; and how could they, though of one blood, claim separate origins?

+We also see how totem kins could occur within the phratries, without

+needing to urge alternately that such kins both do and do not possess

+a territorial basis. Again, we have not to decide, what we can never

+know, whether man was _originally_ gregarious and promiscuous or not.

+We see that circumstances forced him to live in groups so small that

+the jealous will of the Sire or Sires could enforce exogamy on the

+young members of the camp, a prohibition which the natural conservatism

+of the savage might later extend to the members of the animal-named

+local group, even when heterogeneous. However heterogeneous by descent,

+all members of the local group were, by habitat, of one animal name,

+and when tabus arose in deference to the sacred animal, these tabus

+forbade marriage whether in the animal-named local group, or in the

+animal name of descent.

+

+So far, the theory "marches," and meets all facts known to us, in

+pristine tribes with female descent, phratries, and totem kins, but

+without "matrimonial classes," four or eight. The theory also meets

+facts which have not, till now, been recognised in Australia, and which

+we proceed to state.

+

+

+

+[1] _Rep. Reg. Smithsonian Institute_, p. 801, 1883.

+

+[2] _Evolution in Art_, pp. 252-257.

+

+[3] "This question, Minna Murdu?" ("What totem?") "can be put by

+gesture language, to which, in the same way, a suitable reply can be

+made." (Mr. Howitt, on the Dieri. _Rep. Reg. Smith. Institute_, p. 804,

+Note I, 1883.)

+

+[4] _Folk Lore_, December 1903.

+

+[5] _Social Origins_, p. 56, Note 1.

+

+[6] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, v. p. 106, Note I.

+

+[7] The Kamilaroi are said to offer exceptions to this rule.

+

+[8] _Totemism_, pp. 60-62. We must remember that American writers use

+the word "phratry" in several quite different senses; we cannot always

+tell what they mean when they use it.

+

+[9] If the Urabunna rules are correctly reported on, they may have

+several "sub-phratries."

+

+[10] _J. A. I._, xii. p. 497.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII

+

+A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

+

+

+      On our theory, in each phratry there should be a totem kin

+      of the phratry name--If not, fatal to Dr. Durkheim's and

+      Mr. Frazer's theories, as well as to ours--The fact occurs

+      in America: why not in Australia?--Questions asked by Mr.

+      Thomas--The fact, totem kins of phratriac names within

+      the phratries, _does_ occur in Australia--The fact not

+      hitherto observed--Why not observed--Three causes--The

+      author's conjecture--Evidence proving the conjecture

+      successful--Myth favouring Mr. Fraser's theory--Another

+      myth states the author's theory--_Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_

+      remain, as phratry names, among many tribes which give

+      other names to Eagle Hawks and Crows--The Eagle Hawk,

+      under another name, is totem in _Mukwara_ (Eagle Hawk)

+      phratry--The Crow, under another name, is a totem

+      _Kilpara_ (Crow) phratry--Thus the position is the same as

+      in America--List of examples in proof--Barinji, Barkinji.

+      Ta-ta-thi, Keramin, Wiraudjuri, and other instances--Where

+      phratry names are lost--Eagle Hawk and Crow totems are

+      still in _opposite_ phratries--Five examples--Examples of

+      Cockatoo-named phratries, each containing its own Cockatoo

+      totem--Often under new names--Bee phratries with Bee

+      matrimonial classes--Cases of borrowed phratry and class

+      names--Success of our conjectures--Practical difficulty

+      caused by clash of old and new laws--Two totem kins cannot

+      legally marry--Difficulty evaded--These kins change their

+      phratries--Shock to tender consciences--Change takes the

+      line of least resistance--Example of a change to be given.

+

+

+On the theory propounded in the last chapter, the lead in making

+peaceful alliance and _connubium_ between exogamous groups previously

+hostile, was probably taken, and the example was set, or the allies

+were captained, by two or in some cases more of the exogamous

+animal-named local groups themselves. Such leading groups, by our

+theory, in time became the two phratries of the tribe. If this were the

+case, these two kins, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, or, among the Thlinkets

+in America, Wolf and Raven, should be found to-day among the totem

+kins, should exist not only as names of phratries, but as names of

+totem kins _in_ the phratries. If they are not so found, it will prove

+a serious objection, not only to our hypothesis, but to that of Dr.

+Durkheim, and (at one time at least) of Mr. J. G. Frazer. Their theory

+being that two primary totem kins sent off colonies which took new

+totem names, and that the primary kins later became phratries, in the

+existing phratries we should discover totem kins of the phratry names,

+say, totem kin Raven in Raven phratry, and totem kin Wolf in Wolf

+phratry. This phenomenon has been noted in America, but only faintly

+remarked on, or not at all observed, in Australia.

+

+Why should there be this difference, if it does exist, in the savage

+institutions of the two continents? The facts which, on either

+theory--Dr. Durkheim's or my own--were to be expected, are observed in

+America; in Australia they have only been noticed in two or three lines

+by Mr. Howitt, which have escaped comment by theorists. When once we

+recognise the importance of Mr. Howitt's remark, that in some phratries

+the animals of phratry names "are also totems," we open a new and

+curious chapter in the history of early institutions.

+

+As to America, both Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim observe that "among the

+Thlinkets and Mohegans, each phratry bears a name which is also the

+name of one of the clans," thus the Thlinkets have a Wolf totem kin

+in Wolf phratry; a Raven totem kin in Raven phratry. Mr. Frazer adds,

+"It seems probable that the names of the Raven and Wolf were the two

+original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards, by subdivision,

+became phratries."[1]

+

+We have seen the objections to this theory of subdivision (Chapter V.

+_supra_), in discussing the system of Dr. Durkheim, who, by the way,

+gives two entirely different accounts of the Thlinket organisation in

+three successive pages; one version from Mr. Morgan, the other more

+recent, and correct, from Mr. Frazer.[2] Wolf and Raven do not appear

+in Mr. Morgan's version.[3]

+

+If Mr. Frazer's view in 1887 and Dr. Durkheim's are right, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow phratries, say, are in Australia examples of the primary

+original totem kins, and as totem kins they ought to remain (as Raven

+and Wolf do among the Thlinkets), after they become heads of phratries.

+Again, if I am right, the names of the two leading local groups, after

+becoming phratries, should still exist to this day in the phratries, as

+names of totem kins. This is quite obvious, yet except in the Thlinket

+case, the Haida case, and that of the Mohegans, we never (apparently)

+have found--what we ought always to find--within the phratries two

+totem kins bearing the same animal names as the phratries bear. Why

+is this? What has become of the two original, or the two leading local

+animal-named groups and totem kins? Nobody seems to have asked this

+very necessary question till quite recently.[4]

+

+What has become of the two lost totem kins?

+

+Mr. Thomas's objection to an earlier theory of mine, in which the two

+original totem kins were left in the vague, ought to be given in his

+own words: "Mr. Lang assumes" (in _Social Origins_) "that the animals

+of the original connubial groups" (phratries) "did not become totems,

+and, consequently, that there were no totem kins corresponding to

+the original groups. This can only have taken place if a rule were

+developed that men of Emu" (local) "group might not marry women of the

+Emu kin, and _vice versa_. This would involve, however, a new rule

+of exogamy distinct from both group (local) and kin (totem) bars to

+marriage. This must have come about either (a) because the Emu kin

+were regarded as potentially members of the Emu group (an extension of

+group exogamy, the existence of which it would be hard to prove), or

+(b) because the Emu group or Emu kin were (legally) kindred, and as

+such debarred from marrying. ... In either case, on Mr. Lang's theory,

+two whole kins were debarred from marriage or compelled to change

+their totems" (when phratries arose). "I do not know which is less

+improbable."

+

+Certainly the two kins could not change their totems, and certainly

+they would not remain celibate.

+

+Meanwhile the _apparent_ disappearance in Australia of the two

+original, or leading, totem kins, of the same names as the phratries,

+is as great a difficulty to Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old theory

+as to my own, only they did not observe the circumstance.

+

+How vanished the totem kins of the same names as the phratries? I

+answer that they did not vanish at all, and I go on to prove it.

+The main facts are very simple, the totem kins of phratry names in

+Australia are often in their phratries. But at a first glance this is

+not obvious. The facts escape observation for the following reasons:--

+

+(1) In most totemic communities, except in Australia and in some

+American cases, there are no phratries, and consequently there is no

+possible proof that totem kins of the phratriac names exist, for we do

+not know the names of the lost phratries.

+

+(2) In many Australian cases, such as those of the Wiraidjuri and

+Arunta, the phratries have now no names, and really, as phratries, no

+existence. Dual divisions of the tribes exist, but are known to us by

+the names of the four or eight "matrimonial classes" (a relatively late

+development)[5] into which they are parcelled, as, among the Arunta,

+Panunga, Bukhara, Purula, Kumara.[6]

+

+We cannot therefore say in such cases, that the totem kins of phratriac

+names have vanished, because we do not know how the phratries were

+named; they may have had the names of two extant totem kins, but their

+names are lost.

+

+(3) Again, there are Australian cases, as of the Urabunna and Dieri of

+Central Australia, in which the phratries have names--Matthurie and

+Kirarawa (Urabunna), or Matteri and Kararu (Dieri)--but these phratry

+names cannot be, or are not translated. Manifestly, then, the meaning

+of the names may be identical with names of extant totem kins in these

+phratries, may be names of obsolete or almost obsolete sacred meaning,

+originally denoting totems now recognised by other names in the

+everyday language of the tribe.

+

+Confronted by the problem of the two apparently lost totem kins, those

+of the same names as the phratries, I conjectured that phratry names,

+now meaningless in the speech of the tribes where they appear, might

+be really identical in meaning with other names now denoting totem

+animals in the phratries. This conjecture proved to be correct, and I

+proceed to show how my conclusion was reached. The evidence, happily,

+is earlier than scientific discussion of the subject, and is therefore

+unbiassed.

+

+So long ago as 1852 or 1853, Mr. C. G. N. Lockhart, in his Annual

+Report to the Government of New South Wales, recorded a myth of the

+natives on the Lower Darling River, which flows from the north into the

+Murray River, the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria.[7]

+The tribes had the phratries named by Mr. Lockhart _Mookwara_ and

+_Keelpara_, usually written _Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_. These were the

+usual intermarrying exogamous phratries. According to the natives,

+Mukwara and Kilpara were the two wives of a prehistoric black fellow,

+"the Eves of the Adam of the Darling," Mr. Lockhart says--like the

+Hebrew Lilith and Eve, wives of Adam, _Lilith being a Serpent woman_.

+(If Rachael and Leah are really animal names, they may be old phratry

+names, though I think it highly improbable.)

+

+The children of wife Mukwara married those of wife Kilpara, and _vice

+versa_, the children taking the mother's name. Next, says the myth, as

+in the theories of Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Frazer, the two stocks, Mukwara

+and Kilpara, subdivided into totem kins, as Kilpara into Emu, Duck,

+&c., Mukwara into Kangaroo, Opossum, &c. (There is perhaps no modern

+theory of the origin of totemism, including my own, which has not been

+somewhere, and to some extent, anticipated by the mythical guesses of

+savages. The Port Fairy tribes, in their myth, take my view, and make

+the phratries arise in the male ancestor and his wife, two Cockatoos

+of various species; the totem kins were brought in by the sons of

+the two Cockatoos marrying women from a distance, of other animal

+parentage, their children keeping the maternal names, as Duck, Snipe,

+and so on. This myth is well inspired, for once!) In the passage of Mr.

+Lockhart, as cited by Mr. Curr, he does not give the translation of the

+names Mukwara and Kilpara. But in Mr. Brough Smyth's _Aborigines of

+Victoria_, a compilation of evidence published in 1878, we find another

+myth. "The natives of the northern parts of Victoria" believe that the

+makers of the world were "two beings that had severally the forms of

+the Crow and the Eagle Hawk." The Eagle Hawk was _Mak-quarra_; the Crow

+is _Kil-parra_.[8]

+

+Again, Mr. Bulmer writes: "The blacks of the Murray"--the river

+severing northern Victoria from New South Wales--"are divided into

+two classes" (phratries), "the Mak-quarra, or Eagle, and the Kilparra,

+or Crow. If the man be Mak-quarra, the woman must be Kil-parra," by

+phratry.[9]

+

+One myth (1852-53) explains Mukwara and Kilpara as wives of one man,

+and mothers of the phratries. The other (1878) says that Mukwara was a

+cosmic Eagle Hawk, Kilpara a cosmic Crow. They were on hostile terms,

+like Ormuzd and Ahriman; like the Thlinket phratry-founders, Raven and

+Wolf; and like the name-giving founders of phratries in New Britain, Te

+Kabinana, the author of good, and Te Kovuvura, the author of evil.[10]

+Eagle Hawk and Crow, Kilpara and Mukwara, in one of the myths, made

+peace, one condition being that "the Murray blacks should be divided

+into two classes" (phratries) called Mukwara and Kilpara, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow.[11]

+

+Crow and Eagle Hawk, then, were apparently names of hostile groups,

+which, making _connubium_, became allied phratries.

+

+The evidence thus is that Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk, that Kilpara meant

+Crow, in the language of some tribe which, so far, I have not been able

+to identify in glossaries. Probably the tribe is now extinct. But these

+two names for Eagle Hawk and Crow now denote two phratries in many

+widely separated tribes, which, in common use, _employ various quite

+different names for Eagle Hawk and Crow_.

+

+Now the point is that, in Mukwara phratry (Eagle Hawk), we almost

+always find, _under another name_, Eagle Hawk as a totem kin; and in

+Kilpara, Crow, we find, _under another name_, Crow as a totem kin.

+In many other cases, we cannot translate the phratry names, but, by

+a fortunate chance, the meanings of Kilpara and Mukwara have been

+preserved, and we see that, as in America, so also in Australia,

+phratries contain totem kins representing the phratry animal-name

+givers.

+

+We proceed to give instances.

+

+On the Paroo River, for example, are the Barinji; they call the Eagle

+Hawk "Biliari," or Billiara; their name for Crow is not given[12] But

+among the Barinji, Biliari, the Eagle Hawk, is a totem in the phratry

+called Mukwara, which means Eagle Hawk; Crow is not given, we saw,

+but here at least is the totem kin Eagle Hawk--Biliari--in the Eagle

+Hawk phratry, called by the foreign, and, to the Barinji, probably

+meaningless name, "Mukwara" (Mak-quarra).[13] This applies to four

+other tribes.

+

+The Barkinji have the same phratry names, Mukwara and Kilpara, as the

+Barinji. Their totem names are on the same system as those of the

+Ta-ta-thi Among the Ta-ta-thi the light Eagle Hawk is _Waip-illi_, he

+comes in Mukwarra, that is, in Eagle Hawk, phratry; and _Walakili_

+(the Crow), among the Ta-ta-thi, comes in Crow (Kilpara) phratry. The

+Wiimbaio, too, have totem Eagle Hawk in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) and totem

+Crow in Kilpara (Crow).

+

+The Keramin tribe live four hundred miles away from the Barinji. They

+have not the same name, Biliari, for the Eagle Hawk. Their name for

+Eagle Hawk is Mundhill. This totem, Eagle Hawk, among the Keramin,

+appears in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara). The Keramin name for Crow is

+Wak. He occurs in Kilpara (Crow) phratry. All is as by my theory it

+ought to be.[14]

+

+None of these tribes has "matrimonial classes," a relatively late

+device, or no such classes are assigned to them by our authorities.

+These tribes are of a type so archaic, that Mr. Howitt has called the

+primitive type, _par excellence_, "Barkinji."

+

+All this set of tribes have their own names, in their own various

+tongues, for "Eagle Hawk" and "Craw," but all call their phratries by

+the foreign or obsolete names for "Eagle Hawk" and "Crow," namely,

+Mukwara and Kilpara. Occasionally either Crow totem is not given by

+our informants, or Eagle Hawk totem is not given, but Eagle Hawk, when

+given, is always in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), and Crow, when given,

+is always in Crow phratry (Kilpara). Where both Eagle Hawk and Crow

+totems are given, they invariably occur, Eagle Hawk totem in Mukwara

+(Eagle Hawk) phratry, and Crow totem in Kilpara (Crow) phratry.

+

+In the Ngarigo tribe, the phratries are Eagle Hawk and Crow (Merung and

+Yukambruk), but neither fowl is given in the lists of totems, which,

+usually, are not exhaustive. The same fact meets us in the Wolgal

+tribe; the phratries are Malian and Umbe (Eagle Hawk and Crow), but

+neither bird is given as a totem.[15] Mr. Spencer, in a letter to me,

+gives, for a tribe adjacent to the Wolgal, the phratries Multu (Eagle

+Hawk), and Umbe (Crow); the totems I do not know. Among the Wiraidjuri

+tribe, Mr. Howitt does not know the phratry names, but the tribe

+have the Kamilaroi class names, and Eagle Hawk and Crow, as usual, in

+the opposite unnamed phratries. Among a sept of the Wiraidjuri on the

+Lachlan River, the phratry names are Mukula and Budthurung. The meaning

+of Mukula is not given, but Budthurung means "Black Duck" and Black

+Duck totem is in Black Duck phratry, Budthurung in Budthurung, as it

+ought to be.[16] Mr. Howitt writes that there is "no explanation" of

+why Budthurung is both a phratry name and a totem name. The fact, we

+see, is usual.

+

+In several cases, where phratry names are lost, or are of unknown

+meaning, Eagle Hawk and Crow occur in _opposite_ exogamous moieties,

+which once had phratry names, or now have phratry names of unknown

+significance. The evidence, then, is that Eagle Hawk and Crow totems,

+over a vast extent of country, have been in Eagle Hawk and Crow

+phratries, while, when they occur in phratries whose names are lost,

+the lost names or untranslatable names _may_ have meant Eagle Hawk and

+Crow. Unluckily the names of the phratries of the central tribes about

+Lake Eyre and south-west--Kararu and Matteri--are of unknown meaning:

+such tribes are the Dieri, Urabunna, and their neighbours. We do indeed

+find Kuraru, meaning Eagle Hawk, in a tribe where the phratry name is

+Kararu; and Karawora is also a frequent name for Eagle Hawk in these

+tribes. But then Kurara means Rain, in a cognate tribe; and we must not

+be led into conjectural translations of names, based merely on apparent

+similarities of sound.

+

+At all events, in the Kararu-Matteri phratries, we find Eagle Hawk

+and Crow opposed, appearing in opposite phratries in five cases, just

+as they do in tribes far south.[17] Again, in the Kulin "nation," now

+extinct, we learn that their phratries were Bunjil (Eagle Hawk) and

+Waa (Crow), while of the totems nothing is known.[18] It is obvious

+that several phratry names, capable of being translated, mean these two

+animals, Eagle Hawk and Crow, while two other widespread phratry names,

+Yungaru and Wutaru, appear to be connected with other animals. "The

+symbol of the Yungaru division," says Mr. Bridgman, "is the Alligator,

+and of the Wutaru, the Kangaroo."[19] Mr. Chatfield, however, gives Emu

+or Carpet Snake for Wutaru, and Opossum for Yungaru.[20]

+

+More certain animal names for phratries are Kroki-Kumite;

+Krokitch-Gamutch; Krokitch-Kuputch; Ku-urokeetch-Kappatch;

+Krokage-Kubitch; all of which denote two separate species of cockatoo;

+while these birds, _sometimes under other names_, are totems in

+the phratries named after them. The tribe may not know the meaning

+of its phratry names. Thus, in tribes east of the Gournditch Mara,

+Kuurokeetch means Long-billed Cockatoo, and Kappatch means Banksian

+Cockatoo, as I understand.[21] But, within the phratries of all the

+Kuurokeetch-Kappatch forms of names, the two Cockatoos also occur

+_under other names_, as totem kins: such names are Karaal, Wila,

+Wurant, and Garchuka.[22]

+

+In the Annan River tribe, Mr. Howitt gives the phratries as Walar (a

+Bee), and Marla (a Bee), doubtless two Bees of different species.[23]

+In this case two names of matrimonial classes, Walar and Jorro, also

+mean Bee. Other cases of conjectural interpretation of phratry names

+might be given, but where the phratry names can be certainly translated

+they are names of animals, in all Australian cases known to me except

+one. When the phratry names cannot be translated, the reason may be

+that they were originally foreign names, borrowed, with the phratriac

+institution itself, by one tribe from another. Thus if tribes with

+totems Eagle Hawk and Crow (Biliara and Waa, let us say) borrowed the

+phratriac institution from a Mukwara-Kilpara tribe, they might take

+over Mukwara and Kilpara as phratry names, while not knowing, or at

+last forgetting, their meaning.

+

+Borrowing of songs and of religious dances is known to be common in

+the tribes, and it is certain that the Arunta are borrowing four class

+names from the north. Again, several tribes have the Kamilaroi _class_

+names (Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi), but have not the Kamilaroi _phratry_

+names, Kupathin and Dilbi. Thus the Wiraidjuri, with Kamilaroi _class_

+names, have not Kamilaroi _phratries_, but have Mukula (untranslated),

+and Budthurung (Black Duck). The Wonghibon, with Kamilaroi _class_

+names, have _phratries_ Ngielbumurra and Mukumurra. On the other

+hand the Kaiabara tribe, far north in Queensland, have the Kamilaroi

+_phratry_ names Dilebi and Kubatine (= Dilbi and Kupathin), but their

+class names are not those of the Kamilaroi.[24]

+

+It may be that some tribes, which had already _phratries_ not of

+the Kamilaroi names, borrowed the Kamilaroi _classes_, while other

+tribes having the Kamilaroi _phratries_ evolved, or elsewhere borrowed

+_classes_ of names not those of the Kamilaroi.

+

+Again, when the four or eight class system has taken firm hold, doing

+the work of the phratries, tribes often forget the meaning of the

+phratry names, or forget the names themselves. Once more, the phratry

+names may once have designated animals, whose names were changed for

+others, in the course of daily life, or by reason of some taboo. All

+these causes, with the very feeble condition of Australian linguistic

+studies, hamper us in our interpretations of phratry and class names.

+Often the tribes in whose language they originally occurred may be

+extinct. But we have shown that many phratry names are names of

+animals, and that the animals which give names to phratries often

+occur, in Australia as in America, as totems within their own phratries.

+

+We have thus discovered the two lost totem kins!

+

+Thus, if only for once, conjectures made on the strength of a theory

+are proved to be correct by facts later observed. We guessed (i.)

+that in the phratries should be totem-kin animals identical with the

+phratriac animals. We guessed (ii.) that the phratriac names of unknown

+sense might be identical in meaning with the actual everyday names of

+the totem animals. And we guessed (iii.) for reasons of early marriage

+law (as conjectured in our system) that the totem kins of the same

+names as the phratries would be found each in the phratry of its own

+name--if discovered in Australia at all.

+

+All three conjectures are proved to be correct. The third was implied

+in Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old hypothesis, that there were two

+original groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and that the totem kins were

+segmented out of them, so that each original animal-named group would

+necessarily head its own totemic colonies. But this, in many cases, as

+we have seen, is what it does not do, and another animal of its genus

+heads the opposite phratry.

+

+Not accepting Mr. Frazer's old theory, I anticipated the discovery of

+Eagle Hawk totem kin _in_ Eagle Hawk phratry, and of Crow _in_ Crow

+phratry, for reasons less simple and conspicuous. It has been shown,

+and is obvious that, by exogamy and female descent, each local group of

+animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, would come to contain members of

+every group name _except its own_. When the men of Crow _local_ group

+had for generations never married a woman of Crow name, and when the

+wives, of other names, within Crow _local_ group had bequeathed these

+other names to their children, there could be, in Crow local group,

+no Crow _by descent_, nor any Eagle Hawk _by descent_ in Eagle Hawk

+_local_ group.

+

+Suppose that these two local groups, each full of members of other

+animal names derived from other groups by maternal descent, made

+_connubium_, and became phratries containing totem kins. _What, then,

+would be the marriageable status of the two kins which bare the phratry

+names?_ All Crows would be, as we saw, by my system, in Eagle Hawk

+phratry; all Eagle Hawks would be Crow phratry (or other phratries, or

+"sub-phratries," if these existed). They could not marry, of course,

+within their own phratries, that was utterly out of the question. _But,

+also, they could not marry into the opposite phratries, lately local

+groups, because these bore their own old sacred local group names_. For

+the the law of the local group had been, "_No marriage within the name

+of the local group_," "No Crow to marry into local group Crow." Yet

+here is Crow who, by phratry law, cannot marry into his own phratry,

+Eagle Hawk; while, if he marries into phratry Crow, he contravenes

+the old law of "No marriage within the local group of your own name."

+That group, to be sure, is now an element in a new organisation, the

+phratry organisation, but, as Dr. Durkheim says in another case, "The

+old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."[25]

+

+This quandary would necessarily occur, under the new conditions, and in

+the new legal situation created by the erection of the two animal-named

+local groups into phratries.

+

+Two whole totem kins, say Wolf and Raven, or Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+were, in the new conditions, _plus_ the old legal survival, cut off

+from marriage. If they died celibate, their disappearance needs no

+further explanation. But they do not disappear. If they changed their

+totems their descendants are lost under new totem names; but, if

+totems were now fully-blown entities, they could not change their

+totems. They could, however, desert their local tribe, which has no

+_tribal_ "religion" (it sometimes, however, has an animal name), and

+join another set of local groups (as Urabunna and Arunta do constantly

+naturalise themselves among each other, to-day), or, _they could simply

+change their phratries_ (late their local groups). Eagle Hawk totem

+kin, by going into Eagle Hawk phratry, could marry into Crow phratry;

+and Crow totem kin, by going into Crow phratry, could marry into Eagle

+Hawk phratry. This, I suggest, was what they did.

+

+This would entail a shock to tender consciences, as each kin is now

+marrying into the very phratry which had been forbidden to it. But, if

+totems were now full blown, anything, however desperate, was better

+than to change your totem; and after all, Eagle Hawk and Crow were only

+returning each into the new phratry which represented their old local

+group by maternal descent. Thus in America we do find Wolf totem kin,

+among the Thlinkets, in Wolf phratry, and Raven in Raven phratry; with

+Eagle Hawk in Eagle Hawk, Crow in Crow phratries, Cockatoo and Bee

+in Cockatoo and Bee phratries, Black Duck in Black Duck phratry, in

+Australia.

+

+The difficulty, that Crow and Eagle Hawk were now marrying precisely

+where they had been forbidden to marry when phratry law first was

+sketched out, has been brought to my notice. But the weakest must go to

+the wall, and, as soon as the totem became (as Mr. Howitt assures us

+that it has become) nearer, dearer, more intimately a man's own than

+the phratry animal, to the wall, under pressure of circumstances, went

+attachment to the phratry. _Il faut se marier_, and marriage could

+only be achieved, for totem kins of the phratry names; by a change of

+phratry.

+

+But is the process of totem kins changing their local groups (now

+become phratries) a possible process? Under the new _r�gime_ of fully

+developed totemism it was possible; more, it was certainly done, in the

+remote past, by individuals, as I proceed to demonstrate.

+

+

+

+[1] _Totemism_, p. 62. Cf. McLennan, _Studies_, Series II. pp. 369-371.

+

+[2] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, i. pp. 5-7.

+

+[3] It is not plain what Mr. Frazer meant when he wrote (_Totemism_,

+p. 63). "Clearly split totems might readily arise from single families

+separating from the clan and expanding into new clans." Thus a male of

+"clan" Pelican has the personal name "Pouch of a Pelican." But, under

+female descent, he could not possibly leave the Pelican totem kin,

+and set up a clan named "Pelican's Pouch." His wife, of course, would

+be of another "clan," say Turtle, his children would be Turtles; they

+could not inherit their father's personal name, "Pouch of a Pelican,"

+and set up a Pelican's Pouch clan. The thing is unthinkable. "A single

+family separating from the clan" of female descent, would inevitably

+possess at least (with monogamy) two totem names, those of the father

+and mother, among its members. The event might occur with male descent,

+if the names of individuals ever became hereditary exogamous totems,

+but not otherwise. And we have no evidence that the personal name of an

+individual ever became a hereditary totem name of an exogamous clan or

+kin.

+

+[4] It was first put to me by Mr. N. W. Thomas, in _Man_, January 1904,

+No. 2.

+

+[5] Mr. Howitt affirms that the relative lateness of these classes, as

+sub-divisions of the phratries, is "now positively ascertained." (_J.

+A. I._, p. 143, Note. 1885.)

+

+[6] Spencer and Gillen, _passim_.

+

+[7] Curr, _The Australian Race_, ii. p. 165. Trubner, London, 1886.

+

+[8] Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423-424. Mr. Howitt renders Kilpara, "Crow,"

+among the Wiimbaio, citing Mr. Bulmer, (_Native Tribes of S. E.

+Australia_, p. 429.)

+

+[9] Brough Smyth. i p. 86.

+

+[10] Danks, _J. A. I._, xviii. 3, pp. 281-282.

+

+[11] Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423, 424.

+

+[12] Cameron, _J. A. I._, xiv. p. 348. _Native Tribes of S-E.

+Australia_, p. 99.

+

+[13] _Biliarinthu_ is a class name in the Worgaia tribe of Central

+Australia. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 747.)

+

+[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 98-100.

+

+[15] Ibid., p. 102.

+

+[16] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 107.

+

+[17] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 91-94.

+

+[18] Ibid., p. 126.

+

+[19] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 40. 1880.

+

+[20] Ibid., p. 41.

+

+[21] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 125.

+

+[22] Ibid., pp. 121-124.

+

+[23] Ibid., p. 118.

+

+[24] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.

+

+[25] _L'Ann�e Sociologique_, v. p. 106, Note. _Social Origins_, p. 56,

+Note.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX

+

+TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

+

+

+      The totemic redistribution--The same totem is never

+      in both phratries--This cannot be the result of

+      accident--Yet, originally, the same totems must have

+      existed in _both_ phratries, on any theory of the origin

+      of phratries--The present state of affairs is the result

+      of legislation--To avoid clash of phratry law and totem

+      law, the totems were redistributed--No totem in both

+      phratries--Recapitulation--Whole course of totemic

+      evolution has been surveyed--Our theory colligates every

+      known fact--Absence of conjecture in our theory--All the

+      causes are _ver� caus�_--Protest against use of such terms

+      as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems,"

+      "sub-totems"--The true totem is hereditary, and marks the

+      exogamous limit--No other is genuine.

+

+

+That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was

+necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial

+problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed

+conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an

+arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of

+laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members

+of totem kins.

+

+That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had

+become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in

+all the primitive types of tribal organisation: _The same totem never

+exists in both phratries_.[1] This in no way increases, as things

+stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in

+the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more

+recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem

+kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never

+in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.[2]

+Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in

+both of the _local_ groups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus

+if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives

+from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women

+would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle

+Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries,

+representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both

+of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe,

+Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the

+other.

+

+This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the

+first establishment of phratry law, or later.

+

+If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the

+two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it

+remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow

+group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by

+Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose

+new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.

+

+It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of

+the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least,

+in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, by

+_phratry_ law, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his

+own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. By _totem_ law, however, he may

+not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was

+fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged

+so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it

+necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes,

+say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes

+in Crow phratry, or _vice versa_. They obviously could not change

+their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry,

+the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to

+override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the

+course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many

+phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class

+names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America,

+and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among

+totemists--(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).

+

+But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have

+decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated

+by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy

+still.

+

+Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as

+we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been

+demonstrated by actual fact, by that _re_distribution of totem kins in

+the phratries--never the same totem in both phratries--which cannot be

+due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that

+nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf.

+Chapter IV.)

+

+It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition

+to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the

+rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem

+being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that

+became a phratry name, including several totem kins.

+

+Now that this feeling--to which the totem of the kin was far nearer

+and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its

+name--is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr.

+Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory--his

+own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our

+terminology, the phratry name) "is _general_, the totem name is in

+one sense _individual_, for it is certainly nearer to the individual

+than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he

+belongs."[3] Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to

+be much _nearer_ to the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than

+the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.[4]

+

+As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose

+men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and

+we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never

+the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their

+phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on

+my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed

+us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate

+marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.

+

+It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not

+account for the fact that phratriac names--say Eagle Hawk, Crow--are

+commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that

+Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."[5]

+

+We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that

+the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing,

+from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk;

+and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions

+very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no

+everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with

+the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other

+names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.

+

+Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole

+course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves

+but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven,

+by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he

+had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons

+and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and

+milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing,

+of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal

+names, which I show to be usual as group _sobriquets_ in ancient Israel

+and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for

+silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be

+signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs,

+whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is

+no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner

+naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring,

+as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this

+day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long

+been forgotten.

+

+It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate

+a mystical _rapport_, and transcendental connection, between the name

+and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that this _rapport_

+is exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that

+myths have been invented to explain the _rapport_ which must, it is

+held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases.

+It is no conjecture that the myths explain the _rapport_, usually,

+as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is

+no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood,

+and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood

+of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas,

+if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an

+inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an

+animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection

+between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one

+animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?

+

+We have thus reached _totemism_, and we trace its varying forms in

+the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution--under

+changing conditions--of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrably

+_ver� caus�_, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the

+hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.

+

+The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt

+justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning

+of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names

+lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or

+are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic

+anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent,

+become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names

+(names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among

+the isolated Kurnai.

+

+In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members

+of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error

+of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters

+by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or

+individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an

+associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under

+some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron

+animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after

+a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem

+kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one

+totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are

+not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems,"

+"Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying

+totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or

+to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised

+and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later

+devised.

+

+

+[1] The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.

+

+[2] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 55--57, in which the author fails to

+discover any mode by which the distribution could occur accidentally or

+automatically.

+

+[3] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 40.

+

+[4] Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.

+

+[5] N. W. Thomas, _Man_, January 1904, No. 2.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X

+

+MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

+

+

+      Matrimonial classes--Their working described--Prevent

+      persons of successive generations from

+      intermarrying--Child and parent unions forbidden in

+      tribes without matrimonial classes--Obscurity caused by

+      ignorance of philology--Meanings of names of classes

+      usually unknown--Mystic names for common objects--Cases in

+      which meaning of class names is known--They are names of

+      animals--Variations in evidence--Names of classes from the

+      centre to Gulf of Carpentaria--They appear to be Cloud,

+      Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat--Uncertainty of these

+      etymologies--One totem to one totem marriages--Obscurity

+      of evidence--Perhaps the so-called "totems" are

+      matrimonial classes--Meaning of names forgotten--Or

+      names tabued--The classes a deliberately framed

+      institution--Unlike phratries and totem kins--Theory of

+      Herr Cunow--Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.

+

+

+The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been

+explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi,

+who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to

+a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer

+has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our

+term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into

+its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's

+"sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of

+these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in

+its mother's phratry, which is _not_ its mother's. That a man of class

+Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin

+phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem,

+belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which is _not_ hers, that is,

+belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of

+the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally

+differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally

+forbid their intermarriage.

+

+But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom,

+among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning

+of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among

+the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his

+phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the

+Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes,

+while retaining one result of that organisation--no parent and child

+marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the

+centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous

+and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in

+the north.

+

+One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of

+their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their

+names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention

+no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia

+could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.

+

+In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names

+of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative

+philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and

+Sanskrit divine names, say, Ath�n�, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon,

+comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found

+an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was

+disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or

+two, remained impenetrably obscure.

+

+If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a

+copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the

+weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy

+to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of

+Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have

+manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these

+laws have been codified by no Grimm.

+

+As a science, Australian philology does not exist. In 1880 Mr. Fison

+wrote, "It is simply impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of these

+words" (changes of name and grade conferred at secret ceremonies),

+"without a very full knowledge of the native dialects," and without

+strong personal influence with the blacks.... "In all probability

+there are not half-a-dozen men so qualified in the whole Australian

+continent."[1]

+

+The habit of using, in the case of the initiate, mystic terms even for

+the everyday names of animals, greatly complicates the problem. It

+does not appear that most of the recorders of the facts know even one

+native dialect as Dr. Walter Roth knows some dialects of North-West

+Central Queensland. In the south-east, Kamilaroi was seriously

+studied, long ago, by Mr. Threlkeld and Mr. Ridley, who wrote tracts

+in that language. Sir George Grey and Mr. Matthews, with many others,

+have compiled vocabularies, the result of studies of their own, and

+Mr. Curr collected brief glossaries of very many tribes, by aid of

+correspondents without linguistic training.

+

+Into this ignorance as to the meanings of the names of matrimonial

+classes, Mr. Howitt brings a faint little gleam of light In a few

+cases, he thinks, the meaning of class and "sub-class" names is

+ascertained. Among the Kuinmurbura tribe, between Broad Sound and Shoal

+water Bay, the "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes") "were totems."

+By this Mr. Howitt obviously means that the classes bore animal names.

+They meant (i.) the Barrimundi, (ii.) a Hawk, (iii.) Good Water, and

+(iv.) Iguana.[2] For the Annan River tribe, he gives "sub-classes"

+(our "matrimonial classes"), (i.) Eagle Hawk, (ii.) Bee, (iii.)

+Salt-Water-Eagle Hawk, (iv.) Bee.[3] This is not very satisfactory. In

+previous works he gave so many animal names for his "sub-classes," Mr.

+Frazer's "sub-phratries" (our "matrimonial classes"), that Mr. Frazer

+wrote, "It seems to follow that the sub-phratries of the Kamilaroi

+(Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have, or once had, totems also," that is,

+had names derived from animals or other objects.[4]

+

+Mr. Howitt himself at one time appeared to hold that the names of the

+matrimonial classes are often animal names. His phraseology here is

+not very lucid. "The main sections themselves are frequently, probably

+always, distinguished by totems." Here he certainly means that the

+phratries have usually animal names, though we are not told that the

+phratries, as such, treat their name-giving animal, even when they know

+the meaning of its name, "with the decencies of a totem." Mr. Howitt

+goes on, "The probability is that they are all" (that all the classes

+are) "totems."[5] By this Mr. Howitt perhaps intends to say that all

+the "classes" (both the phratries and the matrimonial classes) probably

+have animal or other such names.

+

+Again, the class names of the Kiabara tribe were said to denote four

+animals--Turtle, Bat, Carpet Snake, Cat.[6] But now (1904) the Kiabara

+class names are given without translation, and the four animals are

+thrown into the list of totems, with Flood Water and Lightning totems

+(which names were previously given as translations of Kubatine and

+Dilebi, the phratry names).[7] Doubtless Mr. Howitt has received

+more recent information, but, if we accept what he now gives us, the

+meanings of his "sub-class" names are only ascertained in the cases of

+two tribes, and then are names of animals.

+

+I spent some labour in examining the class names of the tribes studied

+by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, from the Arunta in the centre to the

+Tingilli at Powell's Creek, after which point our authors no longer

+marched due north, but turned east, at a right angle, reaching the

+sea, and the Binbinga, the Mara, and Anula coast tribes, on or near

+the MacArthur River. The class names of these coastal tribes did not

+resemble those of the central tribes. But if Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+had held north by west, in place of turning due east from Newcastle

+Waters, they would have found, as far as the sea at Nichol Bay, four

+classes whose names closely resemble the class names of the central

+tribes, and are reported as Paljarie, or Paliali, or Palyeery (clearly

+the Umbaia and Binbinga Paliarinji), Kimera or Kymurra, (obviously

+Kumara), Banigher, or Bunaka, or Panaka (Panunga, cf. Dieri Kanunka =

+Bush Wallaby),[8] and Boorungo, or Paronga.[9]

+

+It thus appears scarcely doubtful that, from the Arunta in the centre,

+to the furthest north, several of the class names are of the same

+linguistic origin, and--whether by original community of speech, or by

+dint of borrowing--had once the same significance. Now we can show that

+some of these names, in the dialects of one tribe or another, denote

+objects in nature. Thus Warramunga Tj-_upila'_ (Tj being an affix) at

+least suggests the Dieri totem, _Upala_, "Cloud." _Biliarinthu_, in the

+same way, suggests the _Barinji Biliari_, "Eagle Hawk," or the Umbaia

+Paliarinji. _Ungalla_, or _Thungalla_, is Arunta _Ungilla_, "Crow,"

+the Ungola, or Ungala, "Crow" of the Yaroinga and Undekerabina of

+North-West Queensland,[10] while _Panunga, Banaka, Panaka,_ resembles

+Dieri _Kanunka_--"Bush Wallaby," or _Kanunga_, "Kangaroo Rat."

+

+The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to

+class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may

+seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other,

+or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical

+change are obvious. We lay no stress on the "equations" given above,

+but merely offer the suggestion that class names have often been animal

+names, and hint that inquiry should keep this idea in mind.

+

+I do not, then, offer my "equations" as more than guesses in a field

+peculiarly perilous. The word which means "fire" in one tribe, means

+"snake" in another. "What fools these fellows are, they call 'fire'

+'snakes,'" say the tribesmen. However, if we guess right, we find Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Cloud, and Kangaroo Rat, as class names, over an enormous

+extent of Central and Northern Australia.[11]

+

+About the deliberate purpose of the classes there can be no doubt. They

+were introduced to bar marriages, not between parents and children, for

+these are forbidden in primitive tribes, but between persons of the

+parental and filial generations. Or the names were given to stereotype

+classes, already existing, but hitherto anonymous, within which

+marriage was already prohibited. To make the distinction permanent,

+it was only necessary to have a linked pair of classes of different

+names in each phratry, the child never taking the maternal class name,

+but always that of the linked class in her phratry (under a system of

+female descent). The names Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, would have served

+the turn as well as any others. If a tribe had two words for young, and

+two for old, these would have served the turn; as

+

+Phratry { Jeune. _Dilbi_ { Old.

+

+Phratry

+

+_Kupatkin_ { Vieux. { Young.

+

+

+Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with

+assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we

+guess that this may have been so more generally.

+

+According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say,

+of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or

+rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other

+class" (phratry).[12] But neither in their first nor second volume do

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure

+point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the

+northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another

+special totem."[13] This would seem _prima facie_ to be an almost

+impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among

+tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot

+be obtained.

+

+Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage

+is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial

+classes.[14] Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry

+names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the

+phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain

+many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin

+with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense,

+and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry

+called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but

+"sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several

+totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements

+as were accessible in 1887.[15] There might conceivably be, in some

+tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal

+names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins.

+With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might

+be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many

+tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry

+names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.

+

+Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem

+names--two for each phratry--might be tabued or reserved, and made to

+act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the

+actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem

+kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other

+cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that,

+among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each

+of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition

+exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a

+stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is

+"Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to

+orange or monkey _in everyday life_. It is an archaic word of the same

+significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving

+object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes

+appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as

+we have shown that some phratry names also are.

+

+For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different

+class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries

+and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal

+and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such

+names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare

+not go, in the present state of our information.

+

+The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed

+institution.

+

+In this respect they seem to differ from the phratry and totem names,

+which, as we have tried to show, are things of long and unconscious

+evolution. But conscious purpose is evident in the institution of

+matrimonial classes. We tentatively suggest that, if their names turn

+out to be usually names of animals and other objects, this occurs

+because animal-named sub-phratries once existed, and were converted

+into the mechanism of the classes; or because the pre-existing

+totemic system of nomenclature was preserved in the development of

+a new institution. Herr Cunow's theory that the class names mean

+"Young," "Old," "Big," "Little" (_Kubbi = Kubbura_, "young"; _Kunibo =

+Kombia_, _Kumbia, Gumboka_, "great or old"), needs a wide and assured

+etymological basis.[16] Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis appears to assume

+that "clans," exogamous, with female descent, are territorial, which

+(see Chapter V.) is not possible.

+

+Whatever their names may mean, the matrimonial classes were instituted

+to prevent marriage between persons of parental and filial generations.

+

+

+[1] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 59, 60.

+

+[2] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. III.

+

+[3] Ibid., p. 118.

+

+[4] _Totemism_, p. 84. Cf. _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 41.

+

+[5] _J. A. I._, 1885, p. 143. Cf. Note 4.

+

+[6] _J. A. I._, xiii. pp. 336, 341.

+

+[7] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.

+

+[8] _J. A. I._, August 1890, p. 38.

+

+[9] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 36. _J. A. I._, ix. pp. 356, 357. Curr,

+i. p. 298. _Austral. Assoc. Adv. Science_, ii. pp. 653. 654. _Journal

+Roy. Soc. N.S.W._ vol. xxxii. p. 86. R. H. Matthews.

+

+[10] Roth, p. 50.

+

+[11] Mr. N. W. Thomas helped the chase of these names, without claiming

+any certainty for the "equations."

+

+[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 176. Citing Spencer

+end Gillen, p. 60.

+

+[13] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 71, Note 2.

+

+[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 189-194.

+

+[15] _Totemism_, pp. 64-67.

+

+[16] _Die Verwandschafts Organisationen der Australneger_. Stuttgart,

+1894.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XI

+

+MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+      Mr. Frazer's latest theory--Closely akin to that of

+      Professor Spencer--Arunta totemism the most archaic--Proof

+      of Arunta primitiveness--Their ignorance of the facts

+      of procreation--But the more primitive south-eastern

+      tribes are not ignorant of the facts--Proof from Mr.

+      Howitt--Yet south-eastern tribes are subject to Mr.

+      Frazer's supposed causes of ignorance--Mr. Frazer's new

+      theory cited--No account taken of primitive tribes of

+      the southern interior--Similar oversight by Mr. Howitt

+      as regards religion--Examples of this oversight--Social

+      advance does not explain the religion of tribes which have

+      not made the social advance--Theory of borrowing needed by

+      Mr. Howitt--Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+      exogamy--Objections to the suggestion.

+

+

+Throughout these chapters, when there was occasion to mention the

+totemic theories of Mr. J. G. Frazer, we have spoken of them with

+reserve, as the theory of this or that date. Fortunately his article,

+"The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian

+Aborigines," in the _Fortnightly Review_ (September 1905), enables us

+to report Mr. Frazer's latest, perhaps final, hypothesis. "After years

+of sounding," he says, "our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

+

+In essence Mr. Frazer's latest hypothesis is that of Professor Baldwin

+Spencer. He accepts _Pirrauru_ as "group marriage," and holds that the

+Arunta retain the most archaic form of totemism now known to exist.

+In Chapter III. we believe ourselves to have proved that _Pirrauru_

+is not "group marriage"; and that the "classificatory names for

+relationships "do not demonstrate the existence of "group marriage" in

+the relatively near, or of promiscuity in the very distant past.

+

+In Chapter IV. we show that, by Professor Spencer's statement,

+the Arunta are in a highly advanced social state for Australians.

+Inheritance of local office (Alatunjaship) and of the paternal totemic

+ritual goes in the male, not in the female line of descent, which is

+confessedly the more archaic. (Mr. Frazer, however, now thinks this

+point open to doubt.) The institutions are of a _local_ character; and

+the ceremonials are of what Professor Spencer considers the later and

+much more complex type. Arunta totemism, Mr. Spencer shows, depends

+on the idea of ancestral spirits attached to stone _churinga nanja_,

+amulets of various forms usually inscribed with archaic patterns, and

+these _churinga nanja_, with this belief about them, are not found

+outside of the Arunta region. Without them, the Arunta system of

+totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer

+says nothing. For these and many other reasons, most of which have been

+urged by Dr. Durkheim, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Marett, and other students, we

+have explained the Arunta system as a late, isolated, and apparently

+unique institution. As the Arunta ceremonials and institutions, with

+inheritance in the male line and local magistracies hereditable in

+the male line, are at the opposite pole from the primitive, while the

+Arunta totemic system reposes on an isolated superstition connected

+with manufactured stone objects, and not elsewhere found in Australia,

+it has seemed vain to regard Arunta totemism as the most archaic.

+

+This, however, is the present hypothesis of Mr. Frazer, as of Mr.

+Spencer, and he adduces a proof of Arunta primitiveness concerning

+which too little was said in our Chapter IV. The Arunta system

+"ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of

+offspring; and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as

+well as the paternal side."[1] The theory "denies implicitly, and the

+natives themselves deny explicitly, that children are the fruit of the

+commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance of natural causation

+cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote."[2]

+

+Now when the Arunta "ignore the tie of blood on the maternal side,"

+they prove too much. They ignore that of which they are not ignorant.

+Not being idiots, they are well aware of the maternal tie of blood;

+but they do not permit it to affect the descent of the totem, which is

+regulated by their isolated superstition, the doctrine of reincarnation

+combined with the _churinga nanja_ belief. Nor do they ignore

+fatherhood, as we saw, in affairs of inheritance of local office and

+totemic rites.

+

+But they _do_ deny that the intercourse of the sexes is the cause of

+birth of children. Here the interesting point is that tribes much more

+primitive, the south-eastern tribes, with female reckoning of descent,

+inheritance in the female line, and no hereditary local moderatorships,

+are perfectly well aware of all that the more advanced Arunta do

+not know. Yet they, quite as much as the Arunta, are subject to the

+causes which, according to Mr. Frazer, produce the Arunta nescience

+of the facts of procreation. That nescience, says Mr. Frazer, "may

+be explained easily enough from the habits and modes of thought of

+savage men." Thus, "first, the sexual act precedes the first symptoms

+of pregnancy by a considerable interval." _Je n'en vois pas la

+n�cessit�._ Secondly, savage tribes "allow unrestricted licence of

+intercourse between the sexes under puberty," and thus "familiarise

+him" (the savage) "with sexual unions that are necessarily sterile;

+from which he may not unnaturally conclude that the intercourse of

+the sexes has nothing to do with the birth of offspring." The savage,

+therefore, explains the arrival of children (at least the Arunta does)

+by the entrance of a discarnate ancestral spirit into the woman.

+

+The conspicuous and closing objection to this theory is, that savages

+who are at least as familiar as the Arunta with (1) the alleged

+remoteness in time of the sexual act from the appearance of the first

+symptoms of pregnancy (among them, such an act and the symptoms may

+be synchronous), and (2) with licence before puberty, are not in

+the Arunta state of ignorance. They are under no illusions on these

+interesting points.

+

+The tribes of social organisation much more primitive than that of

+the Arunta, the south-eastern tribes, as a rule, know all about the

+matter. Mr. Howitt says, "these" (south-eastern) "aborigines, even

+while counting descent--that is, counting the class names--through the

+mother, never for a moment feel any doubt, according to my experience,

+that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe

+their infantine nurture to their mother."[3] Mr. Howitt also quotes

+"the remark made to me in several cases, that a woman is only a nurse

+who takes care of a man's children for him."[4]

+

+Here, then, we have very low savages among whom the causes of savage

+ignorance of procreation, as explained by Mr. Frazer, are present,

+but who, far from being ignorant, take the line of Athene in the

+_Eumenides_ of �schylus. I give Mr. Raley's translation of the

+passage:--

+

+"The parent of that which is called her child is not really the

+_mother_ of it, she is but the _nurse_ of the newly conceived foetus. It

+is the male who is the author of its being, while she, as a stranger

+for a stranger (_i.e._ no _blood relation_), preserves the young

+plant...."--_Eumenides_, 628-631.

+

+These south-eastern tribes, far more primitive than the Arunta in their

+ceremonials, and in their social organisation, do not entertain that

+dominant factor in Aruntadom, the belief in the perpetual reincarnation

+of the souls of the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_. That

+belief is a philosophy far from primitive. As each child is, in Arunta

+opinion, a being who has existed from the beginning of things, he is

+not, he cannot be, a creature of man's begetting. Sexual acts, say

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, only, at most, "prepare" a woman for the

+reception of a child--who is as old as the world! If the Arunta were

+experimental philosophers, and locked a girl up in Danae's tower, so

+that she was never "prepared," they would, perhaps, be surprised if she

+gave birth to a child.

+

+However that may be, the Arunta nescience about reproduction is not

+caused by the facts which, according to Mr. Frazer, are common to them

+with other savages. These facts produce no nescience among the more

+primitive tribes with female descent, simply because these primitive

+tribes do not share the far from primitive Arunta philosophy of eternal

+reincarnation. If the Arunta deny the fact of procreation among the

+lower animals, that is because "the man and his totem are practically

+indistinguishable," as Mr. Frazer says. What is sauce for the goose is

+sauce for the gander.

+

+The proof of Arunta primitiveness, the only proof, has been their

+nescience of the facts of generation. But we have demonstrated that,

+where Mr. Frazer's alleged causes of that nescience are present,

+among the south-eastern tribes, they do not produce it; while among

+the Arunta, it is caused by their system of philosophy, which the

+south-eastern tribes do not possess.

+

+Mr. Frazer next applies his idea to the evolution of a new theory of

+the Origin of Totemism. Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has

+its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem

+for each region. These centres, _Oknanikilla_, are, in myth, and for

+all that I know, in fact, burial-places of the primal ancestors, and in

+each is one, or there may be more, _Nanja_ trees or rocks, permanently

+haunted by ancestral spirits, all of the same totem, whose stone

+amulets, _churinga nanja_, are lying in or on the ground. When a woman

+feels a living child's part in her being, she knows that it is a spirit

+of an ancestor of the local totem, haunting the _Nanja_, and that totem

+is allotted to the child when born.

+

+Mr. Frazer from these known facts, deduces thus his new theory of the

+Origin of Totemism. It is best to give it in his own words:[5]--

+

+      "Naturally enough, when she is first aware of the

+      mysterious movement within her, the mother fancies that

+      something has that very moment passed into her body, and

+      it is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain

+      what the thing is she should fix upon some object that

+      happened to be near her and to engage her attention at the

+      critical moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be

+      watching a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or

+      bathing in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might

+      imagine that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed,

+      of water, or of a gum-tree, had passed into her, and

+      accordingly, that when her child was born, it was really

+      a kangaroo, a grass-seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to

+      the bodily eye it presented the outward form of a human

+      being. Amongst the objects on which her fancy might pitch

+      as the cause of her pregnancy we may suppose that the

+      last food she had eaten would often be one. If she had

+      recently partaken of emu flesh or yams she might suppose

+      that the emu or yam, which she had unquestionably taken

+      into her body, had, so to say, struck root and grown up in

+      her. This last, as perhaps the most natural, might be the

+      commonest explanation of pregnancy; and if that was so, we

+      can understand why, among the Central Australian tribes,

+      if not among totemic tribes all over the world, the great

+      majority of totems are edible objects, whether animals or

+      plants.[6] Now, too, we can fully comprehend why people

+      should identify themselves, as totemic tribes commonly

+      do, with their totems, to such an extent as to regard

+      the man and his totem as practically indistinguishable.

+      A man of the emu totem, for example, might say, 'An emu

+      entered into my mother at such and such a place and time;

+      it grew up in her, and came forth from her. I am that

+      emu, therefore I am an emu man. I am practically the same

+      as the bird, though to you, perhaps, I may not look like

+      it.' And so with all the other totems. On such a view

+      it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one

+      of his totem species, should regard it with respect and

+      affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed

+      of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess,

+      to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances,

+      for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice

+      of _Intichiuma_, that is, magical ceremonies, performed

+      by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would

+      be a natural development of the original germ or stock

+      of totemism.[7] That germ or stock, if my conjecture is

+      right, is, in its essence, nothing more or less than an

+      early theory of conception, which presented itself to

+      savage man at a time when he was still ignorant of the

+      true cause of the propagation of the species. This theory

+      of conception is, on the principles of savage thought,

+      so simple and obvious that it may well have occurred to

+      men independently in many parts of the world. Thus we

+      could understand the wide prevalence of totemism among

+      distant races without being forced to suppose that they

+      had borrowed it from each other. Further, the hypothesis

+      accounts for one of the most characteristic features of

+      totemism, namely, the intermingling in the same community

+      of men and women of many different totem stocks. For

+      each person's totem would be determined by what may be

+      called an accident, that is, by the place where his mother

+      happened to be, the occupation in which she was engaged,

+      or the last food she had eaten at the time when she first

+      felt the child in her womb; and such accidents (and with

+      them the totems) would vary considerably in individual

+      cases, though the range of variation would necessarily be

+      limited by the number of objects open to the observation,

+      or conceivable by the imagination, of the tribe. These

+      objects would be chiefly the natural features of the

+      district, and the kinds of food on which the community

+      subsisted; but they might quite well include artificial

+      and even imaginary objects, such as boomerangs and

+      mythical beasts. Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which

+      we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on

+      the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the

+      savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might

+      not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which

+      might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the

+      mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season.

+

+      "If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in

+      the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing,

+      based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole

+      history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first

+      place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta

+      and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception

+      with that of locality, could be derived from this

+      hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as

+      I shall point out immediately. And in the second place,

+      the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in

+      its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the

+      ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the

+      Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present.

+      Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and

+      simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the

+      evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of

+      sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

+

+How the totemic spirits became localised, is, Mr. Frazer says, "matter

+of conjecture," and he guesses that, after several women had felt the

+first recognised signs of maternity, "in the same place, and under the

+same circumstances "--for example, at the moment of seeing a Witchetty

+Grub, or a Laughing Boy--the site would become an _Oknanikilla_ haunted

+by spirits of the Laughing Boy or Grub totem.[8] The Arunta view is

+different; these places are burial-grounds of men all of this or

+that totem, who have left their _churinga nanja_ there. About these

+essential parts of the system, Mr. Frazer, as has been observed, says

+nothing. His theory I do not criticise, as I have already stated my

+objection to his premises. "The ultimate origin of exogamy ..." he

+says, "remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," but is a matter of

+deliberate institution. The tribes, already totemic, but not exogamous,

+were divided into the two exogamous phratries, and still later into the

+matrimonial classes, which the most pristine tribes do not possess,

+though they do know about procreation, while the more advanced Arunta,

+with classes and loss of phratry names, do not know. In the primitive

+tribes, with no churinga nanja, the totems became hereditary. Among

+the advanced Arunta, with _churinga nanja_, the totems did not (like

+all other things, including the right to work the paternal totemic

+ritual), become hereditary, though their rites did, which is curious.

+Consequently, Mr. Frazer suggests, the Arunta did not redistribute the

+totems so that one totem never occurs in both exogamous phratries; and

+totems in the region of _churinga nanja_ alone are not exogamous.

+

+Finally the tribes of Central Australia, which we prove to have the

+more advanced ceremonial, system of inheritance, local magistracies

+hereditary in the male line, and the matrimonial classes which

+Mr. Frazer proclaims to be later than the mere phratries of many

+south-eastern tribes--"are the more backward, and the coastal tribes

+the more progressive."[9]

+

+This is a very hard saying!

+

+It seems to rest either on Mr. Frazer's opinion that the south tribes

+of Queensland, and many on the Upper Murray, Paroo, and Barwan rivers

+are "coastal" ("which is absurd"), or on a failure to take them into

+account. For these tribes, the Barkinji, Ta-Ta-Thai, Barinji, and the

+rest, are the least progressive, and "coastal," of course, they are not.

+

+This apparent failure to take into account the most primitive of all

+the tribes, those on the Murray, Paroo, Darling, Barwan, and other

+rivers, and to overlook even the more advanced Kamilaroi, is exhibited

+by Mr. Howitt, whose example Mr. Frazer copies, in the question of

+Australian religious beliefs.

+

+I quote a passage from Mr. Howitt, which Mr. Frazer re-states in his

+own words. He defines "the part of Australia in which a belief exists

+in an anthropomorphic supernatural being, who lives in the sky, and

+who is supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the

+natives ... That part of Australia which I have indicated as the

+habitat of tribes having that belief" (namely, 'certainly the whole of

+Victoria and of New South Wales up to the eastern boundaries of the

+tribes of the Darling River') "is also the area where there has been

+the advance from group marriage to individual marriage, _from descent

+in the female line to that in the male line_; where the primitive

+organisation under the class system has been more or less replaced

+by an organisation based on locality--in fact, where those advances

+have been made to which I have more than once drawn attention in this

+work."[10]

+

+This is an unexpected remark!

+

+Mr. Howitt, in fact, has produced all his examples of tribes with

+descent in the female line, except the Dieri and Urabunna "nations,"

+from the district which he calls "the habitat of tribes in which there

+has been advance ... from descent in the female to that in the male

+line." Apparently all, and certainly most of the south-eastern tribes

+described by him who have not made that advance, cherish the belief in

+the sky-dwelling All Father.

+

+I give examples:--

+

+Narrinyeri          Male descent.        All Father.

+Wiimbaio            Female descent.          "

+Wotjobaluk              " "                  "

+Woeworung           Male descent.            "

+Kulin                   " "                  "

+Kurnai                  " "                  "

+Wiradjuri           Female descent.          "

+Wathi Wathi             " "                  "

+Ta-Ta-Thi               " "                  "

+Kamilaroi               " "                  "

+Yuin                Male descent.            "

+Ngarigo             Female descent.          "

+

+About other tribes Mr. Howitt's information is rather vague, but,

+thanks to Mrs. Langloh Parker, we can add:--

+

+_Euahlayi_     Female descent       All Father.

+

+Here, then, we have eight tribes with female descent and the All

+Father, against five tribes with male descent and the All Father, in

+the area to which Mr. Howitt assigns "the advance from descent in the

+female line to that in the male line." The tribes with female descent

+occupy much the greater part of the southern interior, not of the

+coastal line, of South-East Australia.

+

+Mr. Frazer puts the case thus, "it can hardly be an accidental

+coincidence that, as Dr. Howitt has well pointed out, the same regions

+in which the germs of religion begin to appear have also made some

+progress towards a higher form of social and family life."[11]

+

+But though Dr. Howitt has certainly "pointed it out," his statement

+seems in collision with his own evidence as to the facts. The tribes

+with female descent and the "germs of religion" occupy the greater part

+of the area in which he finds "the advance from descent in the female

+line to that in the male line." He does find that advance, with belief

+in the All Father, in some tribes, mainly coastal, of his area, but

+he also finds the belief in the All Father among "nations" and tribes

+which have not made the "advance"--in the interior. As the northern

+tribes who have made the "advance" are mainly credited with no All

+Father, it is clear that the "advance" in social and family life has

+no connection with the All Father belief. Mr. Howitt, in saying so,

+overlooks his own collection of evidence. Large tribes and nations, in

+the region described by him, are in that social organisation which he

+justly regards as the least advanced of all, yet they have the "germs

+of religion," which he explains as the results of a social progress

+which they have not made.

+

+In these circumstances Mr. Howitt might perhaps adopt a large theory

+of borrowing. The primitive south-east tribes have not borrowed from

+the remote coastal tribes the usage of male descent; they have not

+borrowed matrimonial classes from the Kamilaroi. But, nevertheless,

+they have borrowed, it may be said, their religion from remote coastal

+tribes. Of course, it is just as easy to guess that the coastal tribes

+have borrowed their Bunjil All Father from the Kamilaroi Baiame, or the

+Mulkari of Queensland.

+

+I have not commented on Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+exogamy. It was the result, he thinks, of a deliberate reformation,

+and its earliest form was the division of the tribe into the two

+phratries. "Exogamy was introduced ... at first to prevent the marriage

+of brothers with sisters, and afterwards" (in the matrimonial classes)

+"to prevent the marriage of parents with children."[12] The motive was

+probably a superstitious fear that such close unions would be harmful,

+in some way, "to the persons immediately concerned," according to "a

+savage superstition to which we have lost the clue." I made the same

+suggestion in _Custom and Myth_ (1884). I added, however, that totemic

+exogamy might be only one aspect of the general totem tabu on eating,

+killing, or touching, &c., an object of the totem name. We seem to

+have found the clue to that superstition, including the blood tabu,

+emphasised by Dr. Durkheim. But, on this showing, the animal patrons

+of phratries and totem kins, with their "religion," are among the

+causes of exogamy, while some unknown superstition, in Mr. Frazer's

+system, may have been the cause. As we have a known superstition, of

+origin already explained, it seems unnecessary to suppose an unknown

+superstition.

+

+Again, if the reformers knew who were brothers and sisters, how can

+they have been promiscuous? Further, the phratriac prohibition includes

+vast numbers of persons who are _not_ brothers and sisters, except

+in the phratry. Sires could prohibit unions of brothers and sisters,

+each in his own hearth circle; the phratriac prohibition is much more

+sweeping, so is the matrimonial class prohibition. Once more, parent

+with child unions do not occur among primitive tribes which have no

+matrimonial classes at all.

+

+For these reasons Mr. Frazer's system does not recommend itself at

+least to persons who cherish a different theory.

+

+He may, perhaps, explain the Kaitish usage, in which totems, though

+not hereditary but acquired in the Arunta manner, remain practically

+exogamous, by suggesting that the Kaitish are imitating the totemic

+exogamy of the rest of the savage world. But this hardly accounts for

+the fact that, among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate

+in one, and another set of totems in the other exogamous moiety of

+the tribe. These facts indicate that the Arunta system is relatively

+recent, and has not yet overcome among the Kaitish the old rule of

+totemic exogamy. Mr. Frazer, too, as has been said, does not touch on

+the concomitance of stone _churinga nanja_ with the Arunta system of

+acquiring totems.

+

+

+[1] _Fortnightly Review_, September 1905, p. 453.

+

+[2] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 455; cf. Spencer and Gillen, _N. T. C.

+A._, pp. 124 _seq._, p. 265.

+

+[3] _Journal Anthrop. Institute_, p. 502 (1882).

+

+[4] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 283, 284.

+

+[5] _Fortnightly Review_, pp. 455-458.

+

+[6] As to the Central Australian totems, see Spencer and Gillen,

+_Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, Appendix B, pp. 767-773.

+Amongst the two hundred and one sorts of totems here enumerated, no

+less than a hundred and sixty-nine or a hundred and seventy are eaten.

+

+[7] When some years ago these _Intichiuma_ ceremonies were first

+discovered on a great scale among the Central Australians, I was so

+struck by the importance of the discovery that I was inclined to see in

+these ceremonies the ultimate origin of totemism; and the discoverers

+themselves, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, were disposed to take the same

+view. See Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen, and J. G. Frazer, in _Journal

+of the Anthropological Institute_, xxviii. (1899), pp. 275-286; J. G.

+Frazer, "The Origin of Totemism," _Fortnightly Review_, April and May,

+1899. Further reflection has led me to the conclusion that magical

+ceremonies for the increase or diminution of the totems are likely to

+be a later, though still very early, outgrowth of totemism rather than

+its original root. At the present time these magical ceremonies seem to

+constitute the main function of totemism in Central Australia. But this

+does not prove that they have done so from the beginning.

+

+[8] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 458.

+

+[9] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 463.

+

+[10] Howitt, _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 500.

+

+[11] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 452.

+

+[12] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 6l.

+

+

+

+

+APPENDIX

+

+SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+With some American theories of the origin of totemism, I find it

+extremely difficult to deal. They ought not to be neglected, that were

+disrespectful to the valued labours of the school of the American

+"Bureau of Ethnology." But the expositions are scattered in numerous

+Reports, and are scarcely focussed with distinctness. Again, the

+terminology of American inquirers, the technical words which they use,

+differ from those which we employ. That fact would be unimportant if

+they employed their technical terms consistently. Unluckily this is not

+their practice. The terms "clan," "gens," and "phratry" are by them

+used with bewildering inconsistency, and are often interchangeable.

+When "clan" or _gens_, means, now (i) a collection of _gentes_, or (2)

+of families, or (3) of phratries, and again (4) "clan" means a totem

+kin with female descent; and again (5) a village community; while a

+phratry may be (1) an exogamous moiety of a tribe, or (2) a "family,"

+or (3) a magical society; and a _gens_ may be (1) a clan, or (2) a

+"family," or (3) an aggregate of families, or (4) a totem kin with

+male descent, or (5) a magical society, while "tribal" and "sub-tribal

+divisions" are vaguely spoken of--the European student is apt to be

+puzzled! All these varieties of terminology occur too frequently in

+the otherwise most praiseworthy works of some of the American School

+of Anthropologists. I had collected the examples, but to give them at

+length would occupy considerable space, and the facts are only too

+apparent to every reader.[1]

+

+Once more, and this point is of essential importance, the recent

+writers on totemism in America dwell mainly on the institution as

+found among the tribes of the north-west coast of the States and of

+British Columbia. These tribes are so advanced in material civilisation

+that they dwell in village settlements. They have a system of credit

+which looks like a satirical parody of the credit system of the

+civilised world. In some tribes there is a regular organisation by

+ranks, _noblesse_ depending on ancestral wealth.

+

+It seems sanguine to look for the origins of totemism among tribes so

+advanced in material culture. The origin of totemism lies far behind

+the lowest savagery of Australia. It is found in a more primitive

+form among the southern and eastern than in most of the north-western

+American tribes, but the north-western are chiefly studied, for

+example, by Mr. Hill-Tout, and by Dr. Boas. A new difficulty is caused

+by the alleged intermixture of tribes in very different states of

+social organisation. That intermixture, if I understand Mr. Hill-Tout,

+causes some borrowing of institutions among tribes of different

+languages, and different degrees of culture, in the west of British

+Columbia and the adjacent territories. We find, in the north, the

+primitive Australian type of organisation (Thlinket tribe), with

+phratries, totems, and descent in the female line. South of these are

+the Kwakiutl, with descent wavering in a curious fashion between the

+male and female systems. Further south are the Salish tribes, who have

+evolved something like the modern family, reckoning on both sides of

+the house. I, with Mr. McGee of the United States Bureau of Ethnology,

+suppose the Kwakiutl to be moving from the female to the male line

+of descent. In the opinions of Mr. Hill-Tout and Dr. Boas, they are

+moving from the advanced Salish to the primitive Thlinket system,

+under the influence of their primitive neighbours. It is not for me to

+decide this question. But it is unprecedented to find tribes with male

+reverting to female reckoning of descent

+

+Next, Mr. Hill-Tout employs "totem" in various senses. As totems he

+reckons (1) the sacred animals of the tribe; (2) of the religious or

+magical societies (containing persons of many totems of descent); (3)

+of the individual and (4) the hereditary totems of the kin. All these,

+our author says, are, by their original concept, Guardian Spirits. All

+such protective animals, plants, or other objects, which patronise

+and give names to individuals, or kins, or tribes, or societies, are

+"totems," in the opinion of the late Major Powell, and the "American

+School," and are essentially "guardian spirits." All are derived by the

+American theory[2] from the _manitu_, or guardian, of some individual

+to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired

+dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that

+man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning

+in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory), and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while

+men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society

+"totems" suggested by dreams. These communities may or may not be

+exogamous, they may even be endogamous. By the friends of this theory

+the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as

+"accidental," rather than essential.

+

+Using the word "totem" in this wide sense, or in these many senses,

+which are not ours, it is plain that a man and woman who chance to have

+the same "personal totem," (i) or belong to the same religious society

+with its "totem," (i) or to the same local tribe with its "totem,"

+(3) may marry, and, by this way of looking at the matter, "totems" do

+permit marriage within the totem, and are not exogamous. But we, for

+our part (like Mr. E. B. Tylor, and M. Van Gennep[3]), call none of

+these personal, tribal, or society sacred animals "totems." That term

+we reserve for the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin. Thus it is

+not easy, it is almost impossible, for us to argue with Mr. Hill-Tout,

+as we and he use the term "totem" in utterly different senses.

+

+On his theory there are all sorts of "totems," belonging to individuals

+and to various kinds of associations. The totems hereditary in the kins

+when they are exogamous, are exogamous (on Mr. Hill-Tout's theory)

+because the kins, in certain cases, made a treaty of alliance and

+intermarriage with other kins for purely political purposes. They

+might have made such treaties, and become exogamous, though they had

+no totems, no name-giving animals; and they might have had name-giving

+animals, and yet not made such treaties involving exogamy. Thus totemic

+exogamy is, on this theory, a mere accident: the totem has nothing to

+do with the exogamous rule.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "The totem groups are exogamous not because

+of their common totem, but because of blood relationship. It is

+the blood-tie[4] that bans marriage within the totem group, not the

+common totem. That exogamy and the totem group with female descent go

+together is accidental, and follows from the fact that the totem group

+is always, in Indian theory at least, blood related. Where I believe

+you err is in regarding exogamy as the essential feature of totemism.

+I cannot so regard it. To me it is secondary, and becomes the bar to

+marriage only because it marks kinship by blood, which is the real bar,

+however it may have arisen, and from whatever causes."

+

+Here I am obliged to differ from Mr. Hill-Tout. I know no instance

+in which a tribe with female kin (the most primitive confessedly),

+and with hereditary totems, is not exogamous. Exogamy, then, if an

+accident, must be called an inseparable accident of totemism, with

+female descent, till cases to the contrary are proved to exist. Mr.

+Hill-Tout cites the Arunta case: totems among the Arunta are not

+exogamous. But of that argument we have disposed (see Chapter IV.), and

+it need no longer trouble us.

+

+Again, it is not possible to agree with Mr. Hill-Tout when he writes,

+"It is the blood-tie that bars marriage within the totem group, not

+the common totem." The totem does not by its law prevent marriages of

+blood kin. A man, as far as totem law goes, may marry his daughter by

+blood, a brother may marry his sister on the father's side (with female

+descent), and a man may not marry a woman from a thousand miles away if

+she is of his totem, though she is not of his blood. It is not the real

+blood-tie itself, but the blood-tie as defined and sanctioned by the

+totem, that is not to be violated by marriage within it.

+

+To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal

+or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal

+form, that is _his_ "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his

+descendants, and then it is _their_ "totem"; or his sisters may adopt

+it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem

+of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it

+at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there

+must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals,

+but tribes in America have very few totems. If a man does transmit

+his animal protector, his descendants, lineal or collateral, may

+become exogamous, on the theory, by making other kins treaties of

+intermarriage to secure political alliances; or they may not, just

+as taste or chance direct. All the while, every "totem" of every

+sort, hereditary or not, is, on this theory, a guardian spirit.

+That spiritual entity is the essence of totemism, exogamy is an

+accident--according to Mr. Hill-Tout.

+

+Such is his theory. It is, perhaps, the result of studying the

+North-West American _Sulia_, or "personal totem" answering to the

+_nyarongs_ of Borneo, the _naguals_ of the Southern American tribes,

+the _yunbeai_ of the _Euahlayi_ of New South Wales, and the "Bush

+Souls" of West Africa. All of these are, as the Ibans of Borneo imply

+in the term _nyarong_, "spirit helpers," in animal or material form.

+Some tribes call genuine totems by one name, but call animal familiars

+of an individual by another name. _Budjan_, among the Wiradjuri, stands

+both for a man's totem, and for the animal familiar which, rduring

+apparently hypnotic suggestion," he receives on being initiated.[5]

+Among the Ibans (but not among the few Australian tribes which have

+_yunbeai_), the spirit helper may befriend the great-grandchildren of

+its original _prot�g�_.[6]

+

+But in no case recorded does this _nyarong_ become the hereditary totem

+of an exogamous kin.

+

+The "spirit helper" does not do that, nor am I aware, on the other

+hand, that the hereditary totem of an exogamous kin is ever, or

+anywhere, regarded as a "tutelary spirit." No such idea has ever

+been found in Australia. Again, if I understand Dr. Boas, among his

+north-western tribes, such as the Thlinket, who have female descent

+and hereditary exogamous totems, the totem is no more regarded as a

+tutelary spirit than it is among the Australians. Of the Kwakiutl

+he says, "The _manitu_" (that is, the individual's tutelary spirit)

+"was acquired by a mythical ancestor, and the connection has become

+so slight, in many cases, that the tutelary genius of the clan has

+degenerated into a crest."

+

+That the "crest" or totem mark was originally a "tutelary genius"

+among the Thlinket, seems to be merely the hypothesis of Dr. Boas.

+Even among the Kwakiutl, in their transitional state, the totem mark

+now is "in many cases a crest." "This degeneration" (from spirit to

+crest), our author writes, "I take to be due to the influence of the

+northern totemism," such as that of the Thlinket.[7] Thus the Thlinket,

+totemic on Australian primitive lines, do _not_ regard their hereditary

+exogamous totems as "tutelary spirits."[8] No more do the Australians,

+nor the many American totemists who claim descent from the animal which

+is their totem.[9]

+

+The tutelary spirit and the true totem, in my opinion, are utterly

+different things. The American theory that all things (their name is

+legion) called "totems" by the American School are, in origin and

+essence, tutelary spirits, is thus countered by the fact that the

+Australian tribes do not regard their hereditary totems as such; nor

+do many American tribes, even when they are familiar with the idea of

+the tutelary spirits of individuals. The Euahlayi, in Australia for

+instance, call tutelary spirits _yunbeai_; hereditary totems they call

+by a separate name, _Dhe_.[10]

+

+The theory that the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin is the

+"spirit helper" or "tutelary genius," acquired by and transmitted by an

+actual ancestor, cannot be proved, for many reasons. We know plenty of

+tribes in which the individual has a "spirit helper," we know none in

+which he bequeaths it _as the totem of an exogamous kin_.

+

+Again we find, (1) in Australia, tribes with hereditary totems, but

+with no "personal totems," as far as our knowledge goes. Whence, then,

+came Australian hereditary totems? Next, (2) we find tribes with both

+hereditary and "personal totems," but the "personal totems" are never

+hereditable. The "spirit helpers," where they do occur in Australia,

+are either the familiars of wizards (like the witch's cat or hare),

+or are given by wizards to others.[11] Next, (3) we find, in Africa

+and elsewhere, tribes with "personal totems," but with no hereditary

+totems. Why not? For these reasons, the theory that hereditary

+kin-totems are personal tutelary spirits become hereditary, seems a

+highly improbable conjecture. If it were right, genuine totemism, with

+exogamy, might arise in any savage society where "personal totems"

+flourish. But we never find totemism, with exogamy, just coming into

+existence.

+

+To sum up the discussion as far as it has gone, Mr. Hill-Tout had

+maintained (1) that the concept of a ghostly helper is the basis of

+all his varieties of so-called "totems." I have replied that the idea

+of a tutelary spirit makes no part of the Australian, or usually of

+the American "concepts" about the hereditary totems. This is matter of

+certainty.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout next argues that hereditary totems are only "personal

+totems" become hereditary, which may happen, he says, in almost any

+stage of savage society. I have replied, "not _plus_ the totemic law of

+exogamy," and he has answered (3) that the law is casual, and may or

+may not accompany a system of totemic kindred, instancing the Arunta,

+as a negative example. In answer, I have shown that the Arunta case is

+not to the point, that it is an isolated "sport."

+

+I have also remarked frequently, in previous works, that under the

+primitive method of reckoning descent in the female line, an individual

+male cannot bequeath his personal protective animal as a kin-name to

+his descendants, so that the hereditary totem of the kin cannot have

+originated in that way. Mr. Hill-Tout answers that it can, and does,

+originate in that way--a male founder of a family can, and does, found

+it by bequeathing his personal protective animal to the descendants of

+his sisters, so that it henceforth passes in the female line. I quote

+his reply to my contention that this is not found to occur.[12]

+

+"The main objection brought against this view of the matter by Mr.

+Andrew Lang and others is that the personal totem is not transmissible

+or hereditable. But is not this objection contrary to the facts of the

+case? We have abundant evidence to show that the personal totem _is_

+transmissible and hereditable. Even among tribes like the Thompson,

+where it was the custom for every one of both sexes to acquire a

+guardian spirit at the period of puberty, we find the totem is in

+some instances hereditable. Teit says, in his detailed account of the

+guardian spirits of the Thompson Indians, that 'the totems of the

+shamans[13] are sometimes inherited directly from the parents'; and

+among those tribes where individual totemism is not so prevalent, as,

+for instance, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, the personal

+totem of a chief or other prominent individual, more particularly if

+that totem has been acquired by means other than the usual dream or

+vision, such as a personal encounter with the object in the forest

+or in the mountains, is commonly inherited and owned by his or her

+posterity. It is but a few weeks ago that I made a special inquiry into

+this subject among some of the Halkomelem tribes of the Lower Fraser.

+'Dr. George,' a noted shaman[14] of the Tcil'Qe'Ek, related to me the

+manner in which his grandfather had acquired their family totem,[15]

+the Bear; and made it perfectly clear that the Bear had been ever since

+the totem of all his grandfather's descendants. The important totem of

+the Sqoi�q�[16] which has members in a dozen different tribes of the

+coast and Lower Fraser Salish, is another case in point. It matters

+little to us _how_ the first possessor of the totem acquired it. We may

+utterly disregard the account of its origin as given by the Indians

+themselves, the main fact for us is, that between a certain object or

+being and a body of people, certain mysterious relations have been

+established, identical with those existing between the individual and

+his personal totem; and _that these people trace their descent from and

+are the lineal descendants of the man or woman who first acquired the

+totem_. Here is evidence direct and ample of the hereditability of the

+individual totem, and American data abound in it."

+

+All these things occur under the system of male kinship. Even if the

+"personal totem" of a chief or shaman is adopted by his offspring, it

+does not affect my argument, nor are the bearers of the badge thus

+inherited said to constitute an exogamous kin.[17] If they do not, the

+affair is not, in my sense, "totemic" at all. We should be dealing not

+with totemism but with heraldry, as when a man of the name of Lion

+obtains a lion as his crest, and transmits it to his family. Meanwhile

+I do not see "evidence direct and ample," or a shred of evidence,

+_that a man's familiar animal is borrowed by his sisters, and handed on

+to their children_.

+

+Next, as to that point, Mr. Hill-Tout writes:[18]--

+

+"To return to Mr. Lang's primary objection, that the evolution of the

+group totem cannot proceed from the personal, individual totem because

+in the more primitive forms of society where totemism originated "male

+ancestors do not found houses or clan names," descent being on the

+female side. As Mr. Lang has laid so much stress upon this argument,

+and is able apart from it to appreciate the force of the evidence

+for the American point of view, if it can be clearly shown that his

+objection has no basis in fact, that his conception of the laws of

+inheritance under matriarchy is faulty, consistency must needs make him

+a convert to the American view. The singular error into which Mr. Lang

+has fallen is in overlooking the fact that male property and rights

+are as hereditable under mother-right as under father-right, the only

+difference being that in the latter case the transmission is _directly_

+from the father to his offspring, and in the former _indirectly_ from

+the maternal uncle to his sister's children. What is there to prevent

+a man of ability under matriarchy from 'founding a family,' that

+is, acquiring an individual totem which by his personal success and

+prosperity is looked upon as a _powerful helper_, and therefore worthy

+of regard and reverence? Under mother-right the _head_ of the clan is

+invariably a man, the elder male relative on the maternal side; and

+the clan name is not so much the property of the woman as of her elder

+brother or her conventional 'father,' that is, her maternal uncle. The

+'fathers' of the group, that is, the maternal uncles, are just as much

+the heads and I founders of houses' and clans in the matriarchal state

+as under the more advanced state of patriarchal rule. And that they

+_do_ found family and group totems the evidence from our northern coast

+tribes makes clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.

+

+"The oft-quoted case of the Bear totem among the Tsimshians is a case

+in point, and this is but one of scores that could be cited. The origin

+of this totem came about in the following manner: 'A man was out

+hunting and met a black bear who took him to his home and taught him

+many useful things. After a lengthy stay with the bear the man returned

+home. All the people became afraid of him, he looked and acted so like

+a bear. Some one took him in hand and rubbed him with magic herbs and

+he became a man again. Thereafter whenever he went hunting his friend

+the bear helped him. He _built a house and painted the bear on the

+front of it, and his sister made a dancing blanket, the design of which

+represented a bear. Thereafter the descendants of his sister used the

+bear for their crest, and were known as the Bear clan._'[19]

+

+"Who was the 'founder of the family' here, and the source of the clan

+totem? Clearly and indubitably the many and _so it invariably was,

+as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems plainly

+shows_.[20] It matters not, I may point out, that these myths may

+have been created since the formation of the clans to account for

+their origin, the point for us is that the man was regarded by the

+natives as the 'founder' of the family and clan. The founders of

+families and totem-crests are as invariably men under matriarchy

+as under patriarchy, the essential difference only between the two

+states in this regard being that under one the descent is through the

+'conventional father,' under the other through the 'real or ostensible

+father.' Such being the case, Mr. Lang's chief argument falls to the

+ground, and the position taken by American students as to the origin of

+group-totems is as sound as before."

+

+Now where, outside the region of myth, is there proof that Mr.

+Hill-Tout's processes ever do occur?

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout argues that the founder of the totem kin is "invariably

+the man, as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems

+plainly shows." But myths have no historical authority, and many of

+these myths show the very opposite: in them a beast or other creature

+_begets_ the "clan."[21] To be sure, Mr. Hill-Tout says nothing about

+_these_ myths, or about scores of familiar American myths[22] to the

+very same effect.

+

+Again, as mythical evidence is worthless, Mr. Hill-Tout argues that

+"the man was regarded by the natives themselves as the 'founder' of

+the family or clan." Yes, in some myths, but not in those which Mr.

+Hill-Tout overlooks.

+

+That the natives in some myths regard the man as founder of a totem

+kin under female descent proves nothing at all. Does the Tsimshian Bear

+myth prove that the natives themselves turn into Bears, and become men

+again? Does it even prove that such an occurrence, to-day, would now

+seem normal to them? Nothing is proved, except that _in myth-making_

+the natives think that this metamorphosis may have occurred in the

+past. In the same way--when myth-making--they think that a man might

+convey his badge to his sisters, to be hereditary in the female line.

+To prove his case, Mr. Hill-Tout must show that men actually do thus

+convey their personal protective animals and badges into the female

+line. To that evidence I shall bow.

+

+If I reasoned like our author, I might argue, "The South African tribes

+say that their totems (_siboko_) arose in nicknames given to them on

+account of known historical incidents, therefore my conjecture that

+totems thus arose, in group names given from without, is corroborated

+by the natives themselves, who testify thus to the actuality of that

+mode of getting tribal names and _siboko_."[23]

+

+But I, at least, cannot argue thus! The process (_my_ process) does

+not and cannot occur in South African conditions, where tribes of an

+advanced culture have sacred protective animals. The natives have

+merely hit on my own conjecture, as to the remote germ of totemic

+names, and applied it where the process never occurs. The Tsimshians,

+in the same way, are familiar with the adoption of protective animals

+by male individuals. They are also familiar with the descent of

+the kin-totem through females. Like the famous writer on Chinese

+Metaphysics, the Tsimshians "combine their information." A man, they

+say, became a bear, and became a man again. He took the Bear for his

+badge; and to account for the transmission of the badge through women,

+the Tsimshians add that his sister also took and transmitted the Bear

+cognisance, as a hereditary totem. They think this could be done,

+exactly as the Bakwena think that their tribal protective animal, the

+Crocodile, the Baboon, or another, could arise in a nickname, _given

+recently_. It could not do so, the process is no longer possible, the

+explanation in this case is false, and does not help my theory of the

+origin of totemism. In the same way the Bear myth does not help Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory, unless he can prove that sisters do actually take

+and transmit to their descendants, as exogamous totems, the _sulia_ or

+individual protective animal of their brothers. Of this process I do

+not observe that Mr. Hill-Tout gives a single verifiable example.

+

+As to this argument, Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "I cannot accept your

+criticism on the poor evidence of the Tsimshian accounts of the origin

+of their totem kins. You could not take such a view, I think, if you

+had personal, first-hand knowledge of the Indian mind. Your objections

+apply to 'classic myths,' but not to the accounts of tribes who are

+_still_ in the totemic stage."

+

+I fail to understand the distinction. It is now universally recognised

+that most myths, "classic" or savage (the classic being survivals of

+savage myths), are mere fanciful hypotheses framed to account for

+unexplained facts. Moreover, I am discussing and comparing the myths

+of various savage races, I am not speaking of "classic myths." Savages

+have anticipated us in every one of our hypotheses as to the origin of

+totemism, but, of course, they state their hypotheses in the shape of

+myths, of stories told to account for the facts. Some Australian myths

+favour Mr. Howitt's hypothesis, others favour that of Mr. Spencer, one

+flatters that of Dr. Haddon, one African myth is the fore-runner of

+my theory, and a myth of the Tsimshians anticipates the idea of Mr.

+Hill-Tout. But all these myths are equally valueless as historical

+evidence.

+

+As to heritage under female kin, which I am said not to understand,

+no man reckoning by female kin has hitherto been said to inherit his

+totem _from his maternal uncle_! A man inherits his totem from his

+mother only, and inherits it if he has no maternal uncles, and never

+had. If a man has a _manitu_, a _nagual_, a _yunbeai_, a _nyarong_, or

+"personal totem," his sister does not take it from him and hand it to

+her children, or, if this ever occurs, I say once more, we need proof

+of it. A man may inherit "property and rights" from his maternal uncles

+under female kin. But I speak of the totem name, which a man undeniably

+does not inherit from his maternal uncle, while there is no proof

+offered that a woman ever takes such a name from her brother, and hands

+it on to her children. So I repeat that, under the system of reckoning

+in the female line, "male ancestors do not found houses or clan names,"

+or are not proved to do so.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It is apparent, probably, that a theory of totemism derived in great

+part from the myths and customs of a few advanced tribes, dwelling in

+village communities, and sometimes in possession of the modern family,

+with male kin, is based on facts which are not germane to the matter.

+The origin of totemism must be sought in tribes of much more backward

+culture, and of the confessedly "more primitive" type of organisation

+with female descent To disprove Mr. Hill-Tout's theory is of course

+impossible. There may have been a time when "personal totems" were as

+common among the Australians as they are now rare. There may have been

+a time when an Australian man's sisters adopted, and transmitted, his

+"personal totem," though that is no longer done to our knowledge. It

+may have chanced that stocks, being provided, on Mr. Hill-Tout's plan,

+with tutelary spirits of animal names descending in the female line,

+made marriage treaties, and so became exogamous. Then we should have

+explained totemism, perhaps, but a considerable number of missing facts

+must be discovered and reported before this explanation can be accepted.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout's scheme, I presume, would work out thus: there are sets

+of human beings, A, B, C, D, E, F. In all of these every man acquires

+an animal, plant, or other friendly object. Their sisters adopt it as a

+name, and hand it on to their children. The stocks are now named after

+the familiar animals, as Grouse, Trout, Deer, Turtle, Buffalo, Salmon,

+and hundreds more. They have hitherto, I presume, married as they

+please, anyhow. But stocks Grouse and Deer think, "We shall be stronger

+if we give our women to each other, and never let a Grouse marry a

+Grouse, or a Deer a Deer." They make this pact, the other stocks,

+Salmon, Turtle, Buffalo, &c., come into it, ranging themselves under

+Deer or Grouse, and now Deer and Grouse are phratries in a tribe with

+the other animals as heads of totem kins in the phratries. The animals

+themselves go on being tutelary spirits, and are highly respected.

+

+This scheme (whether Mr. Hill-Tout would arrange it just thus or not)

+works perfectly well. It explains the origin of exogamy--not by an

+inexplicable _moral_ reform, and bisection of the horde, but as the

+result of a political alliance. It explains the origin of totemism by

+a theory of animal-shaped tutelary spirits taken on by sisters from

+brothers, and bequeathed by the sisters when they become mothers to

+their children. It explains the origin of phratries, and of totem

+kins in the phratries. It works out all along the line--if only one

+knew that very low savages deliberately made political alliances; and

+if all low savages had animal-shaped tutelary spirits; and if these

+were known to be adopted from brothers by sisters, and by sisters

+bequeathed, for an eternal possession, to their children; and if these

+transactions, once achieved, were never repeated in each line of female

+descent--no sister in the next generation taking on her brother's

+personal tutelary animal, and bequeathing it to her children for ever.

+Finally, if savages in general did regard their hereditary totems as

+tutelary spirits, the sketch which I make on Mr. Hill-Tout's lines

+would leave nothing to be desired. But we do not know any of these

+desirable facts.

+

+If I have stated Mr. Hill-Tout's ideas correctly, he agrees with me in

+regarding the tribe as formed by aggregation of many more primitive

+groups. He does not regard the phratries and totem kins as the result

+of the segmentation of a primordial indiscriminate mass or horde,

+split up at the injunction of an inspired medicine man, or by a tribal

+decree. Against our opinion, Mr. Howitt argues that only one writer

+who "has or had a personal acquaintance with the Australian blacks"

+accepts it, the Rev. John Matthew. It is accepted, however, as far as

+"sub-phratries" go (as an alternative hypothesis), by Mr. Hewitt's

+friend, Dr. Fison.[24] But I have given my reasons for not accepting

+Mr. Howitt's doctrine, and I await some reason for his rejection

+of mine. Even authors who have "a personal acquaintance with the

+Australian blacks" should, I venture to think, give their reasons for

+rejecting one and persisting in another theory of "the probabilities

+of the case."[25] I have shown why I think it improbable that a

+postulated prehistoric tribe split itself up, for no alleged reason,

+at the suggestion of a medicine man. Now I am anxious to know why my

+postulated groups should not make marriage alliance for the reason of

+securing peace--a very sufficient motive for betrothals.

+

+

+[1] Compare Mr. N. W. Thomas's criticisms of Mr. Hill-Tout, in _Man_,

+May, June, July 1904.

+

+[2] We must not suppose that all American scholars agree with the views

+of the "American School." Major Powell used "totem" in from ten to

+fourteen different meanings.

+

+[3] _Tot�misme et Tabou � Madagascar_. 1904.

+

+[4] A perfectly fictitious blood-tie, when a man Crow is born in

+Victoria, and a woman Crow on the Gulf of Carpentaria.--A. L.

+

+[5] Howitt. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 144.

+

+[6] For full details see Messrs. McDougall and Hose, _J. A. I._, N.S.,

+xxxi pp. 199-201.

+

+[7] _Report of Nat. Mus._, U.S., 1895, p. 336.

+

+[8] Mr. Hill-Tout differs from my understanding of Dr. Boas's remarks.

+

+[9] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5. Dorman, pp. 231-234.

+

+[10] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[11] _J. A. I._, vol. xvi. pp. 44, 50, 350. Howitt, _Native Tribes of

+South-East Australia_, pp. 144, 387, 388. MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[12] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ix., xi. p. 72.

+

+[13] These are not totems, but "familiars," like the witch's cat or

+hare.--A. L.

+

+[14] The shaman's sons keep on the shaman business, with the paternal

+familiar. It is not, in my sense, a totem.--A. L.

+

+[15] My italics.

+

+[16] _Brit. Ass._, 1902. _Report of Ethnol. Survey of Canada_, pp.

+51-52, 57. A fairy tale about the origin of a society of healing and

+magical influence.--A. L.

+

+[17] Mr. Hill-Tout says elsewhere: "Shamans _only_ inherited their

+_sulia_" (he speaks of these personal totems or _sulia_) "from their

+fathers; other men had to acquire their own. But this applied only

+to the dream or vision totem or protective spirit." If a man "met

+his ghostly guardian in form of a bear," when hunting, he would take

+it as his "crest" and transmit it. This happened in the case of "Dr.

+George," who inherited his crest and guardian, the Bear, from his

+great-grandfather, who met a bear not in a dream but when hunting. (_J.

+A. I._, vol. xxxiv. pp. 326, 327.) Such inheritance, in an advanced

+American tribe of to-day, does not seem to me to corroborate the belief

+that totems among the many primitive tribes of Australia are the result

+of inheriting a personal crest or guardian spirit of a male ancestor.

+

+[18] _Transactions_, ix. p. 76.

+

+[19] _Fifth Report on the Physical Characteristics, &c., of the N.W.

+Tribes of Canada_, B.A.A.S., p. 24. London, 1889.

+

+[20] The myths, in fact, vary; the myth of descent from the totem also

+occurs even in these tribes. (Hartland, _Folk Lore_, xi. I, pp. 60-61.

+Boas, _Nat. Mus. Report_, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)--A. L.

+

+[21] Cf. Mr. Hartland in _Folk Lore_, ut supra.

+

+[22] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5.

+

+[23] For the full account of _Siboko_ see Chapter II., _supra_.

+

+[24] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 71, 72.

+

+[25] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 143, 144.

+

+

+

+

+

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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

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+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

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+Title: The Secret of the Totem

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+Author: Andrew Lang

+

+Release Date: April 11, 2014 [EBook #45363]

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+Language: English

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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

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+(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

+

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+

+</pre>

+

+<h1>THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM</h1>

+

+<h4>BY</h4>

+

+<h2>ANDREW LANG</h2>

+

+<h5>LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.</h5>

+

+<h5>39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON</h5>

+

+<h5>NEW YORK AND BOMBAY</h5>

+

+<h5>1905</h5>

+<hr class="full" />

+

+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;">

+<img src="images/cover_totem.jpg" width="450" alt="" />

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h5>CONTENTS</h5>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 40%; font-size: 0.8em;"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></p>

+

+<div class="center" style="font-size: 0.8em;">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="">

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">METHOD OF INQUIRY</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">THE ARUNTA ANOMALY</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">VI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">THE AUTHOR'S THEORY</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">VII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">VIII.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">A NEW POINT EXPLAINED</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">IX.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">X.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">MATRIMONIAL CLASSES</a></td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="right">XI.</td><td align="left"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM</a></td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 40%; font-size: 0.8em;"><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX: AMERICAN THEORIES</a></p>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></h4>

+

+

+<p>This book is the natural sequel of <i>Social Origins and Primal Law</i>,

+published three years ago. In <i>Primal Law</i>, Mr. J. J. Atkinson sought

+for the origin of marriage prohibitions in the social conditions of

+early man, as conceived of by Mr. Darwin. Man, in the opinion of the

+great naturalist, was a jealous animal; the sire, in each group,

+kept all his female mates to himself, expelling his adolescent male

+offspring. From this earliest and very drastic restriction, Mr.

+Atkinson, using the evidence of "avoidances" between kinsfolk in

+savage society, deduced the various prohibitions on sexual unions. His

+ingenious theory has been received with some favour, where it has been

+understood.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Atkinson said little about totemism, and, in <i>Social Origins</i>,

+I offered a theory of the Origin of Totemism; an elaboration of the

+oldest of all scientific theories, that of Garcilasso de la Vega, an

+Inca on the maternal side, the author of the <i>History of the Incas</i>.

+Totems, he conceived, arose in the early efforts of human groups to

+differentiate each from the others. Mr. Max Müller and Dr. Pikler

+set forth the same notion, independently. The "clans," or, as I

+say, "groups," needed differentiation by names, such as are still

+used as personal names by savages, and by names easily expressed in

+pictographs, and easily signalled in gesture language. The origin of

+the group names, or sobriquets, once forgotten, the names, as usual,

+suggested a relation between the various name-giving objects and the

+groups which bore them. That relation was explained by the various

+myths which make the name-giving animals, plants, and other objects,

+mystic kinsmen, patrons, or ancestors of the groups named after them.

+From reflection on this mystic <i>rapport</i> between the objects and the

+human groups of the same names, arose the various superstitions and

+tabus, including that which prohibits unions between men and women of

+the same animal group-name, whether by locality or maternal descent.</p>

+

+<p>Critics objected that such a "trivial accident" as a name could not be

+the germ, or one of the germs of a great social system. But "the name

+goes before everything," as the Scots used to say; and in this book I

+have set forth the great importance of names in early society, a fact

+universally acknowledged by anthropologists.</p>

+

+<p>It was also objected that names given from without would never be

+accepted and gloried in, so I now prove that such names have often been

+accepted and gloried in, even when they are derisive; which, among

+savages, names derived from plants and animals are not; they are rather

+honourable appellations.</p>

+

+<p>So far, I have only fortified my position. But some acute criticisms

+offered in <i>Man</i> by Mr. N. W. Thomas enabled me to detect a weak point

+in my system, as given in <i>Social Origins</i>, and so led on to what I

+venture to think not unimportant discoveries regarding the Australian

+social organisations. To Mr. Thomas's researches, which I trust he will

+publish in full, I am much indebted, and he kindly read part of this

+book in type-written MS.</p>

+

+<p>I also owe much to Mrs. Langloh Parker, who generously permitted me to

+read, in her MS., her valuable account of the Euahlayi tribe of New

+South Wales, which is to be published by Messrs. Archibald Constable.

+No student has been so intimately acquainted as this lady with the

+women of an Australian tribe; while the men, in a place where they

+could be certain that they were free from tribal <i>espionnage</i>, were

+singularly communicative. Within its limits, Mrs. Langloh Parker's

+book, I think, may be reckoned almost as valuable as those of Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen.</p>

+

+<p>By the irony of fortune, I had no sooner seen my book in print, than

+Mr. J. G. Frazer's chapter on "The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism

+among the Australian Aborigines" (<i>Fortnightly Review</i>, September 1905)

+came into my hands. I then discovered that, just when I thought myself

+to have disentangled the ravelled thread of totemism, Mr. Frazer also

+thought, using another metaphor, that his own "plummets had found

+bottom"&mdash;a very different bottom. I then wrote Chapter XI., stating my

+objections to his theories. Many of these, mainly objections to the

+hypothesis of the relative primitiveness of the Arunta "nation," had

+often been urged before by others. I was unaware that they had been

+answered, but they have obviously been deemed inadequate. Meanwhile the

+question as between two entirely different solutions of the old mystery

+remains open.</p>

+

+<p>Since critics of my <i>Social Origins</i> often missed my meaning, I am

+forced to suppose that I may in like manner have misconstrued some of

+the opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to

+contest. I have done my best to understand, and shall deeply regret

+any failures of interpretation on my own part.</p>

+

+<p>Necessarily I was unaware that in Mr. Frazer's opinion, as set forth in

+his essay of September 1905, "the common assumption that inheritance

+of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it

+through the father need not hold good." I have throughout argued on

+that assumption, which I understood to be held by Mr. Frazer, as well

+as by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Howitt, and most authorities. If it be correct,

+as I still think it is, it cannot but be fatal to the Arunta claim to

+primitiveness. But Arunta society is, in many points, so obviously

+highly organised, and so confessedly advanced, that I am quite unable

+to accept this tribe as an example of the most archaic state of affairs

+extant. If I am wrong, much of my argument is shaken, and of this it

+is necessary to warn the reader. But a tribe really must be highly

+advanced in organisation, if it can afford to meet and devote four

+months to ceremonials, as it did, in a region said to be relatively

+deficient in natural supplies.</p>

+

+<p>In this book I have been able to use the copious materials of Mr.

+Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in their two recent works. It

+seems arrogant to differ from some of the speculative opinions of these

+distinguished observers, but "we must go where the logos leads us."</p>

+

+<p>I end by thanking Mr. H. J. Ford for his design of Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+heading the totems in their phratries, and betrothing two interesting

+young human members of these divisions.</p>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h3>THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM</h3>

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<h4><a id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h4>

+

+<h3>ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM</h3>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>The making of the local tribe of savagery&mdash;Earliest known

+stage of society&mdash;Result of complex processes&mdash;Elaborate

+tribal rules&mdash;Laws altered deliberately: sometimes

+borrowed&mdash;Existing legislative methods of savages not

+primitive&mdash;The tribe a gradual conquest of culture&mdash;The

+tribe a combination of small pre-tribal kinships&mdash;History

+of progress towards the tribe traceable in surviving

+institutions&mdash;From passion to Law&mdash;Rudeness of native

+culture in Australia&mdash;Varieties of social organisation

+there&mdash;I. Tribes with two phratries, totems, female

+descent&mdash;Tribes of this organisation differ as to

+ceremonies and beliefs&mdash;Some beliefs tend to polytheism:

+others towards monotheism&mdash;Some tribes of pristine

+organisation have totemic magic and <i>pirrauru</i>: others

+have not&mdash;The more northern tribes of pristine

+organisation share the ceremonies and beliefs of central

+tribes: not so the south-eastern tribes&mdash;Second form (a)

+of social organisation has male descent&mdash;Second form (b)

+has female descent <i>plus</i> "matrimonial classes"&mdash;Account

+of these&mdash;Eight-class system&mdash;The Arunta nation&mdash;Their

+peculiar form of belief in reincarnation&mdash;<i>Churinga

+nanja</i>&mdash;Recapitulation&mdash;The Euahlayi tribe.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>The question of the origin of totemism has more than the merely curious

+or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In

+the course of the inquiry we may be able to discern and discriminate

+the relative contributions of unreflecting passion, on one hand, and

+of deliberate reason, on the other, to the structure of the earliest

+extant form of human society. That form is the savage local tribe, as

+known to us in America and in Australia.</p>

+

+<p>Men live in united local communities, relatively large, and carefully

+regimented, before they have learned to domesticate animals, or to obey

+chiefs, or to practise the rudest form of agriculture, or to fashion

+clay into pottery, or to build permanent hovels. Customary law is older

+than any of these things, and the most ancient law which we can observe

+unites a tribe by that system of marriages which expresses itself in

+totemism.</p>

+

+<p>It is plain that the processes of evolution which have resulted in

+the most backward societies known to us, must have been very complex.

+If we reflect that the society of the Australian aborigines presents

+the institution of local tribes, each living peacefully, except for

+occasional internal squabbles, in a large definite tract of country;

+cultivating, on the whole, friendly relations with similar and

+similarly organised tribes; while obeying a most elaborate system of

+rules, it is obvious that these social conditions must be very remote

+from the absolutely primitive.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The rules of these tribes regulate

+every detail of private life with a minuteness and a rigour that

+remind us of what the Scottish Cavalier (1652) protested against as

+"the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial Government."

+Yet the tribes have neither presbyters, nor priests, nor kings.

+Their body of customary law, so copious and complex that, to the

+European, it seems as puzzling as algebra is to the savage, has been

+evolved, after a certain early point, by the slow secular action of

+"collective wisdom." We shall find that on this point, early deliberate

+modification of law, there can be no doubt.</p>

+

+<p>The recent personal researches of Mr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen make it certain that tribal affairs, now, among many

+tribes at least, are discussed with the utmost deliberation, and that

+modifications of institutions may be canvassed, adopted, or rejected,

+on the initiative of seniors, local "Headmen," and medicine men.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> It

+is also certain that tribe borrows from tribe, in the matter of songs,

+dances, and institutions, while members of one tribe are permitted to

+be present at the sacred ceremonials of others, especially when these

+tribes are on intermarrying terms.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> In such cases, the ceremonials

+of one tribe may affect those of another, the Arunta may influence the

+Urabunna, who borrow their sacred objects or <i>churinga</i> for use in

+their own rites. We even hear of cases in which native religious ideas

+have been propagated by missionaries sent from tribe to tribe.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus, conservative as is the savage by nature, he is distinctly capable

+of deliberate modification of his rites, ceremonies, and customary

+laws, and of interchanging ideas on these subjects with neighbouring

+tribes.</p>

+

+<p>All this is true, to-day, and doubtless has long been true.</p>

+

+<p>But at this point we must guard against what we consider a prevalent

+fallacy. The legislative action of the natives, the initiative of local

+Headmen, and Heads of Totems and of "Classes" (social divisions), and

+of medicine men inspired by "some supernatural being, such as Kutchi

+of the Dieri, Bunjil of the Wurunjerri, or Daramulun of the Coast

+Murring,"<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> is only rendered possible by the existence, to-day, of

+social conditions which cannot be primitive. To-day the Tribe, with

+its innumerable rules, and its common faith in Kutchi or Daramulun,

+with its recognised local or social Headmen, with its regulations for

+dealing with other tribes, and with its heralds or messengers, is an

+institution "in being." But, necessarily, this was not always so; the

+Tribe itself is a great "conquest of culture," and that conquest must

+have been made very slowly.</p>

+

+<p>The prevalent fallacy, then, is to take unconsciously for granted

+that the people was, from the beginning, regimented into tribes, or

+existed in "hordes" already as capable as actual tribes of deliberative

+assemblies and legislative action, and that, in these hordes, a certain

+law, "the universal basis of their social system, was brought about by

+intention," as Mr. Howitt believes.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>

+

+<p>The law in question, "the universal basis of their social system,"

+was nothing less than a rule compelling people who had hitherto been

+promiscuous in their unions, to array themselves into a pair of tribal

+divisions, in which no member might marry another member of the same

+division, but must marry a member of the opposite division. The mere

+idea of such an act of legislation, for which no motive is assigned

+(and no motive is conceivable) postulates the pre-existence of a

+community like the Tribe of to-day, with powers to legislate, and to

+secure obedience for its legislative acts. This postulate cannot be

+granted, it refracts the institutions of to-day on a past state of

+society which, in all probability, could possess no such institutions.

+The "chaotic horde" of the hypothesis could not allot to various human

+groups the duty of working magic (to take an instance) for the good of

+various articles of the common food supply, nor could it establish

+a new and drastic rule, suddenly regulating sexual unions which had

+previously been utterly unregulated.</p>

+

+<p>Human history does not show us a relatively large mass segregating

+itself into smaller communities. It shows us small communities

+aggregating into larger combinations, the village into the city, the

+European tribes into the kingdom, the kingdoms into the nation, the

+nation into the empire. The Tribe itself, in savage society, is a

+combination of small kins, or sets of persons of various degrees of

+status; these kins have not been legislatively segregated out of a

+pre-existing horde having powers of legislation. The idea of such a

+legislative primeval horde has been unconsciously borrowed from the

+actual Tribe of experience to-day.</p>

+

+<p>That tribe is not primitive, far from it, but is very old.</p>

+

+<p>Tribal collective wisdom, when once the tribe was evolved, has

+probably been at work, in unrecorded ages, over all the world, and in

+most places seems, up to a certain point, to have followed much the

+same strange course. The path does not march straight to any point

+predetermined by man, but loops, and zigzags, and retreats, and returns

+on itself, like the course of a river beset by rocks and shoals, and

+parcelled into wandering streams, and lagging in morasses. Yet the

+river reaches the sea, and the loops and links of the path, frayed by

+innumerable generations of early men, led at last to the haven of the

+civilised Family, and the Family Peace.</p>

+

+<p>The history of the progress must necessarily be written in the

+strange characters of savage institutions, and in these odd and

+elaborate regulations which alarm the incurious mind under the names

+of "Phratries," "Totems," "Matrimonial Classes," "Pirrauru," and

+"Piraungaru." In these, as in some Maya or Easter Island inscription,

+graven in bizarre signs, lies the early social history of Man. We pore

+over the characters, turning them this way and that, deciphering a mark

+here and there, but unable to agree on any coherent rendering of the

+whole, so that some scholars deem the problems insoluble&mdash;and most are

+at odds among themselves.</p>

+

+<p>Possibly we can at last present a coherent translation of the record

+which lies half concealed and half revealed in the savage institutions

+with their uncouth names, and can trace the course of an evolution

+which, beginning in natural passions, emotions, and superstitions,

+reached a rudimentary social law. That law, again, from a period far

+behind our historical knowledge, has been deliberately modified by men,

+much as a Bill in Parliament is modified by amendments and compromises

+into an Act. The industry of students who examine the customs of the

+remotest races has accumulated a body of evidence in which the various

+ways out of early totemic society towards the civilised conception of

+the family may be distinctly traced.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile we are concerned rather with the way into totemism out of a

+prior non-totemic social condition, and with the development of the

+various stages of totemic society in Australia. The natives of that

+country, when unspoiled by European influences, are almost on one

+level as to material culture. Some tribes have rather better and more

+permanent shelters than others; some have less inadequate canoes than

+the rest; some drape themselves against cold weather in the skins of

+beasts, while others go bare; but all are non-agricultural hunting

+wanderers, without domesticated animals, without priests, and without

+chiefs on the level of those of the old Highland clans. They are

+ignorant of pottery, a fact which marks the very lowest culture; they

+know not the bow and arrow; their implements of stone vary from the

+polished "neolithic" to the rough-hewn "palæolithic" type: a man will

+use either sort as occasion serves.</p>

+

+<p>While everyday life and its implements are thus rude, there are great

+varieties of social organisation, of ceremonial institutions, and of

+what, among Europeans, would be called speculative and religious ideas,

+expressing themselves in myths and rites.</p>

+

+<p>Taking social organisation first, we begin with what all inquirers

+(except one or two who wrote before the recent great contributions to

+knowledge appeared) acknowledge to be the most pristine type extant

+Each tribe of this type is in two intermarrying divisions (which we

+call "exogamous moieties," or "phratries"), and each phratry bears

+a name which, when it can be translated, is, as a rule, that of an

+animal.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> We shall show later why the meaning of the names has often

+been lost. Take the animal names of the phratries to be Emu and

+Kangaroo, no man of the Emu phratry may marry a woman of the same

+phratry, he must marry out of his phratry ("exogamy"); nor may a man

+of the Kangaroo phratry marry a woman of the same. Kangaroo phratry

+must marry into Emu, and Emu into Kangaroo. The phratry names in each

+case are, in the more primitive types of the organisation (which alone

+we are now considering) inherited from the mother.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> A man of the Emu

+phratry marries a woman of the Kangaroo phratry, and to that phratry

+her children belong. Thus members of either phratry must be found in

+any casual knot or company of natives. Within each phratry there are,

+again, kinships also known by hereditary names of animals or plants.

+Thus, in Emu phratry, there may be kins called, say, Emu, Opossum,

+Wallaby, Grub, and others; in the Kangaroo phratry <i>different</i> names

+prevail, such as Kangaroos, Lizards, Dingoes, Cockatoos, and others.

+The name-giving animals, in this case, are called by us "totems," and

+the human kins which bear their names are called "totem kins." No man

+or woman may marry a person of his or her own totem. But this, in fact,

+as matters stand in Australia, puts no fresh bar on marriage, because

+(except in four or five tribes of the Centre) if a man marries out

+of his phratry he must necessarily marry out of his totem kin, since

+there are no members of his totem name in the phratry into which he

+must marry. In America, in cases where there are no phratries, and

+universally, where totems exist without phratries, marriage between

+persons of the same totem is forbidden.</p>

+

+<p>The organisation of the more primitive tribes presents only the two

+exogamous moieties or phratries in each tribe and the totem kins in the

+phratries. We have Crow phratry and Eagle Hawk phratry, and, within

+Crow phratry, Crow totem kin,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> with other totem kins; within Eagle

+Hawk phratry, Eagle Hawk totem kin, with other totem kins, which are

+never of the same names as those in Crow phratry.</p>

+

+<p>This we call the primitive type, all the other organisations are the

+result of advances on and modifications of this organisation. It also

+occurs in America,<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> where, however, the phratry is seldom extant,

+though it does exist occasionally, and is known to have existed among

+the Iroquois and to have decayed.</p>

+

+<p>On examining Mr. Howitt's map<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> it will be seen that this type of

+social organisation extends, or has extended, from Mount Gambier, by

+the sea, in the extreme south, past Lake Eyre, to some distance beyond

+Cooper's Creek or the Barcoo River, and even across the Diamantina

+River in Queensland. But it is far from being the case that all tribes

+with this pristine organisation possess identical ceremonies and ideas.

+On the other hand, from the southern borders of Lake Eyre, northwards,

+the tribes of this social organisation have peculiar ceremonies,

+unknown in the south and east, but usual further north and west. They

+initiate young men with the rites of circumcision or subincision (a

+cruel process unknown outside of Australia), or with both. In the

+south-east the knocking out of a front tooth takes the place of these

+bloody ordeals. The Lake Eyre tribes, again, do not, like those south

+and east of them, hold by, and inculcate at the rites, "the belief as

+to the existence of a great supernatural anthropomorphic Being, by

+whom the ceremonies were first instituted, and who still communicates

+with mankind through the medicine men, his servants."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Their myths

+rather repose on the idea of beings previous to man, "the prototypes

+of, but more powerful in magic than the native tribes. These beings, if

+they did not create man, at least perfected him from some unformed and

+scarcely human creatures."<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus, the more northern tribes of primitive tribal organisation (say

+the Dieri and their congeners) have beliefs which might ripen into

+the Greek mythology of gods and Titans, while the faith of the tribes

+of the same social organisation, further south by east, might develop

+into a rude form of Hebrew monotheism, and the two myths may co-exist,

+and often do. The northern tribes about Lake Eyre, and the central and

+north tribes, work co-operative magic for the behoof of their totem

+animals, as part of the common food supply, a rite unknown to the south

+and east. They also practise a custom (<i>Pirrauru</i>) of allotting men

+and women, married or unmarried, as paramours to each other, after a

+symbolic ceremony. This arrangement also is unknown in the south and

+east, and even north by west, though almost everywhere there is sexual

+licence at certain ceremonial meetings. It is thus plain that the more

+northern tribes of the primitive organisation described, differ from

+their southern and eastern neighbours (i.) in their most important

+initiatory rites, (ii.) in some of their myths or beliefs,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> (iii.)

+in their totemic magic, and (iv.) in their allotment of permanent

+paramours. In the first three points these northern tribes of primitive

+type resemble, not the south-eastern tribes of the same social

+type, but the more socially advanced central, western, and northern

+"nations," with whom some of them are in touch and even intermarry.

+It is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that all tribes of the primitive

+tribal organisation are <i>solidaires</i> as to marriage, ceremonial rites,

+and beliefs.</p>

+

+<p>It is difficult to say which is the second type of tribal organisation.

+We have in Victoria, in a triangle with its apex on the Murray River,

+the organisation already described (1), but here descent is reckoned

+in the male, not in the female line. This implies some social advance:

+social institutions, with male descent of the totem name, are certain

+to become <i>local</i>, rather than totemistic. The Kangaroos, deriving the

+totem name from the father, are a local clan, in some cases, like the

+MacIans in Glencoe. The Kangaroo name prevails in the locality. This

+cannot occur, obviously, when the names are derived from mothers, and

+the women go to the husband's district. We may call the organisation

+thus described (2a), and as (2b) we should reckon the organisation

+which prevails, as a rule, on the east of Southern Australia, in

+Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern

+coast-line (with a gap in the centre of the coast-line), to the eastern

+limits of (1). Here we find (2b) a great set of tribes having female

+descent, but each individual belongs not only to one of two phratries,

+and to a totem, but also to a "Matrimonial Class." In each phratry

+there are two such classes. Among the Kamilaroi, in phratry Dilbi, are

+"classes" named Muri (male) and Kubi (male). In phratry Kupathin are

+Ipai (male) and Kumbo (male), while the women bear the feminine forms

+of these names. Their meaning is usually unknown, but in two or three

+tribes, where the meaning of the class names is known with certainty,

+they denote animals.</p>

+

+<p>The arrangement works thus, a man of phratry Dilbi, and of matrimonial

+class Muri, may not marry any woman that he chooses, in the other

+phratry, Kupathin. He can only marry a Kubatha, that is, a female of

+the class Kumbo. Their children, female descent prevailing, are of

+Kupathin <i>phratry</i>, and of the mother's totem, but do not belong to the

+<i>class</i> either of father (Muri) or of mother (Kumbo). <i>They must belong

+to the other class within her phratry</i>, namely Ipai. This rule applies

+throughout; thus, if a man of phratry Dilbi, and of Kubi class, marries

+a woman of Ipai class in phratry Kupathin, their children are neither

+of class Kubi nor of class Ipai, but of class Kumbo, the linked or

+sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.</p>

+

+<p>Suppose for the sake of argument that the class names denote, or once

+denoted animals, so that, say&mdash;</p>

+

+

+<p style="margin-left: 30%;">In phratry</p>

+

+<div class="center">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"><i>Dilbi</i></td><td align="left">Muri = Turtle.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Kubi = Bat.</td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 30%;">While in phratry</p>

+

+<div class="center">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"><i>Kupathin</i></td><td align="left">Ipai = Carpet Snake.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"></td><td align="left">Kumbo = Native Cat.</td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+<p>It is obvious that male Turtle would marry female Cat, and (with

+maternal descent) their children would, by class name, be Carpet

+Snakes. Bat would marry Carpet Snake, and their children would, by

+class name, be Cats. Persons of each generation would thus belong to

+classes of different animal names for ever, and no one might marry into

+either his or her own phratry, his or her own totem, or his or her own

+generation, that is, into his or her own class. It is exactly (where

+the classes bear animal names) as if two <i>generations</i> had totems.

+The mothers of Muri class in Dilbi would have Turtle, the mothers in

+Kupathin (Ipai) would have Carpet Snake. Their children, in Kupathin,

+would have Cat. Not only the phratries and the totem kins, but each

+successive generation, would thus be delimited by bearing an animal

+name, and marriage would be forbidden between all persons not of

+different animal-named phratries, different animal-named totem kins,

+and different animal-named generations. In many cases, we repeat, the

+names of the phratries and of the classes have not yet been translated,

+and the meanings are unknown to the natives themselves. That the class

+names were originally animal names is a mere hypothesis, based on few

+examples.</p>

+

+<p>Say I am of phratry Crow, of totem Lizard, of generation and

+matrimonial class Turtle; then I must marry only a woman of phratry

+Eagle Hawk, of any totem in Eagle Hawk phratry,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> and of generation

+and class name Cat. Our children, with female descent, will be of

+phratry Eagle Hawk, of totem the mother's, and of generation and class

+name Carpet Snake. <i>Their</i> children will be of phratry Crow, of totem

+the mother's, and of generation and class name Cat again; and so on

+for ever. Each generation in a phratry has its class name, and may

+not marry within that name. The next generation has the other class

+name, and may not marry within that. Assuming that phratry names,

+totem names, and generation names are always names of animals (or of

+other objects in nature), the laws would amount, we repeat, simply to

+this: No person may marry another person who, by phratry, or totem,

+or generation, owns the same hereditary animal name or other name

+as himself or herself. Moreover no one may marry a person (where

+matrimonial classes exist) who bears the same class or generation name

+as his mother or father.</p>

+

+<p>In practice the rules are thus quite simple, mistake is

+impossible&mdash;complicated as the arrangements look on paper. Where

+totem and phratry names only exist, a man has merely to ask a woman,

+"What is your phratry name?" If it is his own, an amour is forbidden.

+Where phratry names are obsolete, and classes exist, he has only to

+ask, "What is your class name?" If it is that of either class in

+his own phratry of the tribe, to love is to break a sacred law. It

+is not necessary, as a rule, even to ask the totem name. What looks

+so perplexing is in essence, and in practical working, of extreme

+simplicity. But some tribes have deliberately modified the rules, to

+facilitate marriage.</p>

+

+<p>The conspicuous practical result of the Class arrangement (not

+primitive), is that just as totem law makes it impossible for a person

+to marry a sister or brother uterine, so Class law makes a marriage

+between father and daughter, mother and son, impossible.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> But such

+marriages never occur in Australian tribes of pristine organisation

+(1) which have no class names, no collective names for successive

+generations. The origin of these class or generation names is a problem

+which will be discussed later.</p>

+

+<p>Such is the Class system where it exists in tribes with female descent.

+It has often led to the loss and disappearance of the phratry names,

+which are forgotten, since the two sets of opposed class names do the

+phratry work.</p>

+

+<p>We have next (3) the same arrangements with descent reckoned in the

+male line. This prevails on the south-east coast, from Hervey River to

+Warwick. In Gippsland, and in a section round Melbourne, there were

+"anomalous" arrangements which need not now detain us; the archaic

+systems tended to die out altogether.</p>

+

+<p>All these south central (Dieri), southern, and eastern tribes may

+be studied in Mr. Howitt's book, already cited, which contains the

+result of forty years' work, the information being collected partly by

+personal research and partly through many correspondents. Mr. Howitt

+has viewed the initiatory ceremonies of more than one tribe, and is

+familiar with their inmost secrets.</p>

+

+<p>For the tribes of the centre and north we must consult two books, the

+fruits of the personal researches of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, M.A., F.R.S.,

+Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne, and of Mr. F. J.

+Gillen, Sub-Protector of Aborigines, South Australia.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> For many

+years Mr. Gillen has been in the confidence of the tribes, and he and

+Mr. Spencer have passed many months in the wilds, being admitted to

+view the most secret ceremonies, and being initiated into the myths of

+the people. Their photographs of natives are numerous and excellent.</p>

+

+<p>These observers begin in the south centre, where Mr. Howitt leaves off

+in his northerly researches, and go north. They start with the Urabunna

+tribe, north-east of Lake Eyre, congeners of Mr. Howitt's Dieri, and

+speaking a dialect akin to theirs, while the tribe intermarry marry

+with the Arunta (whose own dialect has points in common with theirs)

+of the centre of the continent These Urabunna are apparently in the

+form of social organisation which we style primitive (No. 1), but there

+are said, rather vaguely, to be more restrictions on marriage than is

+usual, people of one totem in Kiraru phratry being restricted to people

+of one totem in Matteri phratry.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>

+

+<p>They have phratries, totem kins, apparently no matrimonial classes

+(some of their rules are imperfectly ascertained), and they reckon

+descent in the female line. But, like the Dieri (and unlike the tribes

+of the south and east), they practise subincision; they have, or are

+said to have, no belief in "a supernatural anthropomorphic great

+Being"; they believe in "old semi-human ancestors," who scattered about

+spirits, which are perpetually reincarnated in new members of the

+tribe; they practise totemic magic; and they cultivate the Dieri custom

+of allotting paramours. Thus, by social organisation, they attach

+themselves to the south-eastern tribes (1), but, like the Dieri, and

+even more so (for, unlike the Dieri, they believe in reincarnation),

+they agree in ceremonies, and in the general idea of their totemic

+magic, rites, and mythical ideas, with tribes who, as regards social

+organisation, are in state (4), reckon descent in the male line, and

+possess, not <i>four</i>, but <i>eight</i> matrimonial classes.</p>

+

+<p>This institution of eight classes is developing in the Arunta "nation,"

+the people of the precise centre of Australia, who march with, and

+intermarry with, the Urabunna; at least the names for the second set of

+four matrimonial classes, making eight in all, are reaching the Arunta

+from the northern tribes. All the way further north to the Gulf of

+Carpentaria, male descent and eight classes prevail, with subincision,

+prolonged and complex ceremonials, the belief in reincarnation of

+primal semi-human, semi-bestial ancestors, and the absence (except

+in the Kaitish tribe, next the Arunta) of any known belief in what

+Mr. Howitt calls the "All Father." Totemic magic also is prevalent,

+dwindling as you approach the north-east coast. In consequence of

+reckoning in the male line (which necessarily causes most of the

+dwellers in a group to be of the same totem), <i>local</i> organisation is

+more advanced in these tribes than in the south and east.</p>

+

+<p>We next speak of social organisation (5), namely, that of the Arunta

+and Kaitish tribes, which is without example in any other known totemic

+society all over the world. The Arunta and Kaitish not only believe,

+like most northern and western tribes, in the perpetual reincarnation

+of ancestral spirits, but they, and they alone, hold that each such

+spirit, during discarnate intervals, resides in, or is mainly attached

+to, a decorated kind of stone amulet, called <i>churinga nanja</i>. These

+objects, with this myth, are not recorded as existing among other

+"nations." When a child is born, its friends hunt for its ancestral

+stone amulet in the place where its mother thinks that she conceived

+it, and around the nearest <i>rendezvous</i> of discarnate <i>local</i> totemic

+souls, all of one totem only. The amulet and the <i>local</i> totemic

+centre, with its haunted <i>nanja</i> rock or tree, determine the totem

+of the child. Thus, unlike all other totemists, the Arunta do not

+inherit their totems either from father or mother, or both. Totems are

+determined by <i>local</i> accident. Not being hereditary, they are not

+exogamous: here, and here alone, they do not regulate marriage. Men

+may, and do, marry women of their own totem, and their child's totem

+may neither be that of its father nor of its mother. The members of

+totem groups are really members of societies, which co-operatively

+work magic for the good of the totems. The question arises, Is this

+the primitive form of totemism? We shall later discuss that question

+(Chapter IV.).</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile we conceive the various types of social organisation to

+begin with the south-eastern phratries, totems, and female reckoning

+of descent (1) to advance to these <i>plus</i> male descent (2a), and to

+these with female descent and four matrimonial classes (2b). Next

+we place (3) that four-class system with male descent; next (4) the

+north-western system of male descent with <i>eight</i> matrimonial classes,

+and last (as anomalous in some respects), (5) the Arunta-Kaitish system

+of male descent, eight classes, and non-hereditary non-exogamous totems.</p>

+

+<p>As regards ceremonial and belief, we place (1) the tribes south

+and east of the Dieri. (2) The Dieri. (3) The Urabunna, and north,

+central, and western tribes. (4) The Arunta. The Dieri and Urabunna we

+regard (at least the Dieri) as pristine in social organisation, with

+peculiarities all their own, but in ceremonial and belief more closely

+attached to the central, north, and west than to the south-eastern

+tribes. As concerns the bloody rites, Mr. Howitt inclines to the belief

+(corroborated by legends, whatever their value) that "a northern origin

+must ultimately be assigned to these ceremonies."<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> It is natural to

+assume that the more cruel initiatory rites are the more archaic, and

+that the tribes which practise them are the more pristine. But this is

+not our opinion nor that of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The older rite

+is the mere knocking out of front teeth (also used by the Masai of East

+Central Africa). This rite, in Central Australia, "has lost its old

+meaning, its place has been taken by other rites."<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> ... Increased

+cruelty accompanies social advance in this instance. In another matter

+innovation comes from the north. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are of the

+opinion that "changes in totemic matters have been slowly passing down

+from north to south." The eight classes, in place of four classes, are

+known as a matter of fact to have actually "reached the Arunta from the

+north, and at the present moment are spreading south-wards."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>

+

+<p>Again, a feebler form of the reincarnation belief, namely, that

+souls of the young who die uninitiated are reincarnated, occurs in

+the Euahlayi tribe of north-western New South Wales.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Whether the

+Euahlayi belief came from the north, in a limited way, or whether it

+is the germinal state of the northern belief, is uncertain. It is

+plain that if bloody rites and eight classes may come down from the

+north, totemic magic and the faith in reincarnation may also have

+done so, and thus modified the rites and "religious" opinions of

+the Dieri and Urabunna, who are said still to be, socially, in the

+most pristine state, that of phratries and female descent, without

+matrimonial classes.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> It is also obvious that if the Kaitish faith

+in a sky-dweller (rare in northern tribes) be a "sport," and if the

+Arunta <i>churinga nanja, plus</i> non-hereditary and non-exogamous

+totems, be a "sport," the Dieri and Urabunna custom, too, of solemnly

+allotted <i>permanent</i> paramours may be a thing of isolated and special

+development, not a survival of an age of "group marriage."</p>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 41.

+1904.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Cf. for example Spencer and Gillen, <i>Northern Tribes

+of Central Australia</i>, p. 26. Howitt, <i>Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia</i>, pp. 88, 89.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Howitt, <i>ut supra</i>, pp. 511, 513.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Hale, <i>U.S. Exploring Expedition</i>, p. 410. 1846.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Howitt, <i>ut supra</i>, p. 89.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Op. cit., p. 89.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> There are exceptions, or at least one exception is known

+to the rule of animal names for phratries, a point to which we shall

+return. Dr. Roth (<i>N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines</i>, p. 56) suggests

+that the phratry names Wutaru and Pakuta mean One and Two (cf. p. 26).

+For Wutaru and Yungaru, however, interpretations indicating names

+of animals are given, diversely, by Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Chatfield,

+<i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, pp. 40, 41.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> That reckoning descent in the female line, <i>among

+totemists</i>, is earlier than reckoning in the male line, Mr. Howitt,

+Mr. Tylor, Dr. Durkheim, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, with Mr. J.

+G. Frazer, till recently, are agreed. Starcke says "usually the female

+line only appears in connection with the Kobong (totem) groups," and he

+holds the eccentric opinion that totems are relatively late, and that

+the tribes with none are the more primitive! (<i>The Primitive Family</i>,

+p. 26, 1896.) This writer calls Mr. Howitt "a missionary."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> That this is the case will be proved later; the fact has

+hitherto escaped observation.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Frazer, <i>Totemism</i>, p. 6l. Morgan, <i>Ancient Society</i>, pp.

+90, 94 <i>et seq</i>.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>. Macmillan, 1904.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 640. For

+examples, pp. 528-535.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Ibid., p. 487.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> That is, on our present information. It is very unusual

+for orthodox adhesion to one set of myths to prevail.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Sometimes members of one totem are said to be restricted

+to marriage with members of only one other totem.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Howitt, <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 284,

+citing Mr. J. G. Frazer.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of Central Australia</i>, 1899. <i>Northern

+Tribes of Central Australia</i>, 1904. Macmillan.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Cf. Howitt, <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp.

+188-189. <i>Native Tribes of Central Australia</i>, p. 60.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> Howitt, <i>op. cit</i>., p. 676, <i>N.T.</i>, p. 20.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of Central Australia</i>, p. 214. The same

+opinion is stated as very probable in <i>Northern Tribes of Central

+Australia</i>, p. 329.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>N. T.</i>, p. 20.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Mrs. Langloh Parker's M.S.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> I am uncertain as to this point among the Urabunna, as

+will appear later.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></h4>

+

+<h3>METHOD OF INQUIRY</h3>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>Method of inquiry&mdash;Errors to be avoided&mdash;Origin of

+totemism not to be looked for among the "sports" of

+socially advanced tribes&mdash;Nor among tribes of male

+reckoning of descent&mdash;Nor in the myths explanatory

+of origin of totemism&mdash;Myths of origin of heraldic

+bearings compared&mdash;Tribes in state of ancestor-worship:

+their totemic myths cannot be true&mdash;Case of Bantu

+myths (African)&mdash;Their myth implies ancestor-worship

+&mdash;Another African myth derives <i>tribal</i> totems from

+tribal nicknames&mdash;No totemic myths are of any historic

+value&mdash;The use of conjecture&mdash;Every theory must start

+from conjecture&mdash;Two possible conjectures as to earliest

+men gregarious (the horde), or lonely sire, female mates,

+and off-spring&mdash;Five possible conjectures as to the

+animal names of kinships in relation to early society and

+exogamy&mdash;Theory of the author; of Professor Spencer; of

+Dr. Durkheim; of Mr. Hill-Tout; of Mr. Howitt&mdash;Note on

+McLennan's theory of exogamy.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>We have now given the essential facts in the problem of early society

+as it exists in various forms among the most isolated and pristine

+peoples extant. It has been shown that the sets of seniority (classes),

+the exogamous moieties (phratries), and the kinships in each tribe bear

+names which, when translated, are usually found to denote animals.

+Especially the names of the totem kindreds, and of the totems, are

+commonly names of animals or plants. If we can discover why this is

+so, we are near the discovery of the origin of totemism. Meanwhile we

+offer some remarks as to the method to be pursued in the search for a

+theory which will colligate all the facts in the case, and explain the

+origin of totemic society. In the first place certain needful warnings

+must be given, certain reefs which usually wreck efforts to construct

+a satisfactory hypothesis must be marked.</p>

+

+<p>First, it will be vain to look for the origin of totemism either

+among advanced and therefore non-pristine Australian types of tribal

+organisation, or among peoples not Australian, who are infinitely more

+forward than the Australians in the arts of life, and in the possession

+of property. Such progressive peoples may present many interesting

+social phenomena, but, as regards pure <i>primitive</i> totemism, they dwell

+on "fragments of a broken world." The totemic fragments, among them,

+are twisted and shattered strata, with fantastic features which cannot

+be primordial, but are metamorphic. Accounts of these societies are

+often puzzling, and the strange confused terms used by the reporters,

+especially in America, frequently make them unintelligible.</p>

+

+<p>The learned, who are curious in these matters, would have saved

+themselves much time and labour had they kept two conspicuous facts

+before their eyes.</p>

+

+<p>(1) It is useless to look for the <i>origins</i> of totemism among the

+peculiarities and "sports" which always attend the decadence of

+totemism, consequent on the change from female to male lineage, as Mr.

+Howitt, our leader in these researches, has always insisted. To search

+for the beginnings among late and abnormal phenomena, things isolated,

+done in a corner, and not found among the tribal organisations of the

+earliest types, is to follow a trail sure to be misleading.</p>

+

+<p>(2) The second warning is to be inferred from the first. It is waste

+of time to seek for the origin of totemism in anything&mdash;an animal

+name, a sacred animal, a paternal soul tenanting an animal&mdash;which is

+inherited from its first owner, he being an individual ancestor male.

+Such inheritance implies the existence of reckoning descent in the male

+line, and totemism conspicuously began in, and is least contaminated

+in, tribes who reckon descent in the female line.</p>

+

+<p>Another stone of stumbling comes from the same logical formation.

+The error is, to look for origins in myths about origins, told among

+advanced or early societies. If a people has advanced far in material

+culture, if it is agricultural, breeds cattle, and works the metals,

+of course it cannot be primitive. However, it may retain vestiges of

+totemism, and, if it does, it will explain them by a story, a myth of

+its own, just as modern families, and even cities, have their myths to

+account for the origin, now forgotten, of their armorial bearings, or

+crests&mdash;the dagger in the city shield, the skene of the Skenes, the

+sawn tree of the Hamiltons, the lyon of the Stuarts.</p>

+

+<p>Now an agricultural, metallurgic people, with male descent, in the

+middle barbarism, will explain its survivals of totemism by a myth

+natural in its intellectual and social condition; but not natural

+in the condition of the homeless nomad hunters, among whom totemism

+arose. For example, we have no reason to suspect that when totemism

+began men had a highly developed religion of ancestor-worship. Such a

+religion has not yet been evolved in Australia, where the names of the

+dead are usually tabooed, where there is hardly a trace of prayers,

+hardly a trace of offerings to the dead, and none of offerings to

+animals.<a name="FNanchor_1_24" id="FNanchor_1_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_24" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The more pristine Australians, therefore, do not explain

+their totems as containing the souls of ancestral spirits. On the

+other hand, when the Bantu tribes of Southern Africa&mdash;agricultural,

+with settled villages, with kings, and with many of the crafts, such

+as metallurgy&mdash;explain the origin of their <i>tribal</i> names derived

+from animals on the lines of their religion&mdash;ancestor-worship&mdash;their

+explanation may be neglected as far as our present purpose is

+concerned. It is only their theory, only the myth which, in their

+intellectual and religious condition, they are bound to tell, and it

+can throw no light on the origin of sacred animals.</p>

+

+<p>The Bantu local <i>tribes</i>, according to Mr. M'Call Theal, have <i>Siboko</i>,

+that is, name-giving animals. The tribesmen will not kill, or eat, or

+touch, "or in any way come into contact with" their <i>Siboko</i>, if they

+can avoid doing so. A man, asked "What do you dance?" replies by giving

+the name of his <i>Siboko</i>, which is, or once was, honoured in mystic or

+magical dances.</p>

+

+<p>"When a division of a tribe took place, each section retained the same

+ancestral animal," and men thus trace dispersed segments of their

+tribe, or they thus account for the existence of other tribes of the

+same Siboko as themselves.</p>

+

+<p>Things being in this condition, an ancestor-worshipping people has to

+explain the circumstances by a myth. Being an ancestor-worshipping

+people, the Bantu explain the circumstance, as they were certain to do,

+by a myth of ancestral spirits. "Each tribe regarded some particular

+animal as the one selected by the ghosts of its kindred, and therefore

+looked upon it as sacred."</p>

+

+<p>It should be superfluous to say that the Bantu myth cannot possibly

+throw any tight on the real origin of totemism. The Bantu,

+ancestor-worshippers of great piety, find themselves saddled with

+sacred tribal <i>Siboko</i>; why, they know not. So they naturally invent

+the fable that the <i>Siboko</i>, which are sacred, are sacred because they

+are the shrines of what to them are really sacred, namely, ancestral

+spirits.<a name="FNanchor_2_25" id="FNanchor_2_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_25" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> But they also cherish another totally different myth to

+explain their <i>Siboko</i>.</p>

+

+<p>We now give this South African myth, which explains tribal <i>Siboko</i>,

+and their origin, not on the lines of ancestor-worship, but, rather to

+my annoyance, on the lines of my own theory of the Origin of Totems!</p>

+

+<p>On December 9, 1879, the Rev. Roger Price, of Mole-pole, in the

+northern Bakuena country, wrote as follows to Mr. W. G. Stow,

+Geological Survey, South Africa. He gives the myth which is told to

+account for the <i>Siboko</i> or tribal sacred and name-giving animal of the

+Bahurutshe&mdash;Baboons. (These animal names in this part of Africa denote

+<i>local tribes</i>, not totem kins within a local tribe.)</p>

+

+<p>"Tradition says that about the time the separation took place between

+the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena, <i>Baboons</i> entered the gardens of

+the Bahurutshe and ate their pumpkins, before the proper time for

+commencing to eat the fruits of the new year. The Bahurutshe were

+unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken off and

+nibbled should be wasted, and ate them accordingly. This act is said to

+have led to the Bahurutshe being called Buchwene, Baboon people&mdash;which"

+(namely, the Baboon) "is their <i>Siboko</i> to this day&mdash;and their having

+the precedence ever afterwards in the matter of taking the first bite

+of the new year's fruits. If this be the true explanation," adds Mr.

+Price, "it is evident that what is now used as a term of honour was

+once a term of reproach. The Bakuena, too, are said to owe their

+<i>Siboko</i> (the Crocodile) to the fact that their people once ate an ox

+which had been killed by a crocodile."</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Price, therefore, is strongly inclined to think "that the <i>Siboko</i>

+of all the tribes was originally a kind of nickname or term of

+reproach, but," he adds, "there is a good deal of mystery about the

+whole thing."</p>

+

+<p>On this point Mr. Stow, to whom Mr. Price wrote the letter just cited,

+remarks in his MS.: "From the foregoing facts it would seem possible

+that the origin of the <i>Siboko</i> among these tribes arose from some

+sobriquet that had been given to them, and that, in course of time,

+as their superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed,

+these tribal symbols became objects of veneration and superstitious

+awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign influence

+averted...."<a name="FNanchor_3_26" id="FNanchor_3_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_26" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>

+

+<p>Here it will be seen that these South African tribes account for their

+<i>Siboko</i> now by the myth deriving the sacredness of the tribal animal

+from ancestor-worship, as reported by Mr. Theal, and again by nicknames

+given to the tribes on account of certain undignified incidents.</p>

+

+<p>This latter theory is very like my own as stated in <i>Social Origins</i>,

+and to be set forth and reinforced later in this work. But the theory,

+as held by the Bahurutsche and Bakuena, does not help to confirm mine

+in the slightest degree. Among these very advanced African tribes,

+the <i>Siboko</i> or <i>tribal</i> sacred animal, is the animal of the local

+<i>tribe</i>, not, as in pure totemism, of the scattered exogamous kin. It

+is probably a lingering remnant of totemism. The totem of the most

+powerful <i>local</i> group in a tribe having descent through males,

+appears to have become the <i>Siboko</i> of the whole tribe, while the other

+totems have died out. It is not probable that a nickname of remembered

+origin, given in recent times to a tribe of relatively advanced

+civilisation, should, as the myth asserts, not only have become a name

+of honour, but should have founded tribal animal-worship.</p>

+

+<p>It was in a low state of culture no longer found on earth, that I

+conceive the animal names of groups not yet totemic, names of origin no

+longer remembered, to have arisen and become the germ of totemism.</p>

+

+<p>Myths of the origin of totemism, in short, are of absolutely no

+historic value. <i>Siboko</i> no longer arise in the manner postulated by

+these African myths; these myths are not based on experience any more

+than is the Tsimshian myth of the Bear Totem, to be criticised later

+in a chapter on American Totemism. We are to be on our guard, then,

+against looking for the origins of totemism among the myths of peoples

+of relatively advanced culture, such as the village-dwelling Indians

+of the north-west coast of America. We must not look for origins among

+tribes, even if otherwise pristine, who reckon by male descent. We must

+look on all savage myths of origins merely as savage hypotheses, which,

+in fact, usually agree with one or other of our scientific modern

+hypotheses, but yield them no corroboration.</p>

+

+<p>On the common fallacy of regarding the tribe of to-day, with its

+relative powers, as primitive, we have spoken in Chapter I.</p>

+

+<p>By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far beyond

+our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we must have

+recourse as regards this matter to conjecture.</p>

+

+<p>Here a word might be said as to the method of conjecture about

+institutions of which the origins are concealed "in the dark backward

+and abysm of time."</p>

+

+<p>There are conjectures and conjectures! None is capable in every detail

+of historical demonstration, but one guess may explain all the known

+facts, and others may explain few or none. We are dealing with human

+affairs&mdash;they whose groups first answered to animal group-names were

+men as much as we are. They had reason; they had human language, spoken

+or by gesture, and human passions. That conjecture, therefore, which

+deals with the first totemists as men, men with plenty of human nature,

+is better than any rival guess which runs contrary to human nature as

+known in our experience of man, savage, barbaric, or civilised.</p>

+

+<p>Once more, a set of guesses which are consistent with themselves is

+better than a set of guesses which can be shown to be even ludicrously

+self-contradictory. If any guess, again, colligates all the known

+facts, if any conjectural system will "march," will meet every known

+circumstance in the face, manifestly it is a better system than one

+which stumbles, breaks down, evades giving an answer to the problems,

+says that they are insoluble, is in contradiction with itself, and does

+not even try to colligate all the known facts. A consistent system,

+unmarred by self-contradictions; in accordance with known human nature;

+in accordance, too, with recognised rules of evolution, and of logic;

+and co-ordinating all known facts, if it is tried on them, cannot be

+dismissed with the remark that "there are plenty of other possible

+guesses."</p>

+

+<p>Our method must be&mdash;having already stated the facts as they present

+themselves in the most primitive organisation of the most archaic

+society extant&mdash;to enumerate all the possible conjectures which have

+been logically (or even illogically) made as to the origin of the

+institutions before us.</p>

+

+<p>All theories as to how these institutions arose, must rest, primarily,

+on a basis of conjecture as to the original social character of man.

+Nowhere do we see absolutely <i>primitive</i> man, and a totemic system in

+the making. The processes of evolution must have been very gradually

+developed in the course of distant ages, but our conjecture as to the

+nature, in each case, of the processes must be in accordance with what

+is known of human nature. Conjecture, too, has its logical limitations.</p>

+

+<p>We must first make our choice, therefore, between the guess that the

+earliest human beings lived in very small groups (as, in everyday life,

+the natives of Australia are in many cases still compelled to do by the

+precarious nature of their food supplies), or the guess that earliest

+man was gregarious, and dwelt in a promiscuous horde with no sort of

+restraint. One or other view must be correct.</p>

+

+<p>On the former guess (men originally lived in very small groups), the

+probable mutual hostility of group to rival group, the authority of the

+strongest male in each group, and the passions of jealousy, love, and

+hate, must inevitably have produced <i>some</i> rudimentary restrictions on

+absolute archaic freedom. Some people would be prevented from doing

+some things, they must have been checked by the hand of the stronger;

+and from the habit of restraint customary rules would arise. The

+advocates of the alternative conjecture&mdash;that man was gregarious, and

+utterly promiscuous&mdash;take it for granted (it seems to me) that the

+older and stronger males established no rudimentary restrictions on

+the freedom of the affections, but allowed the young males to share

+with them the females in the horde, and that they permitted both

+sexes to go entirely as they pleased, till, for some unknown reason

+and by some unknown authority, the horde was bisected into exogamous

+moieties (phratries), and after somehow developing totem kins (unless

+animal-named magical groups had been previously developed, on purpose

+to work magic), became a tribe with two phratries.</p>

+

+<p>It is not even necessary for us to deny that the ancestors of man were

+<i>originally</i> communal and gregarious. What we deem to be impossible is

+that, till man had developed into something more like himself, as we

+know him, than an animal without jealousy, and ignorant of anything

+prejudicial to any one's interests in promiscuous unions, he could

+begin to evolve his actual tribal institutions. This is also the

+opinion of Mr. Howitt, as we shall see later.</p>

+

+<p>Thus whoever tries to disengage the evolutionary processes which

+produced the existing society of Australia must commence by making his

+choice between the two conjectures&mdash;early man gregarious, promiscuous,

+and anarchist; or early man unsociable, fierce, bullying, and jealous.

+A <i>via media</i> is attempted, however, by Mr. Howitt, to which we shall

+return.</p>

+

+<p>Next, it is clear and certain that some human beliefs about the

+animals which give their names, in known cases, to the two large

+exogamous divisions of the tribe (phratries), and about the other

+animals which give names to the totem kins, and, in one or two cases,

+to the matrimonial classes, must be, in some way, connected with the

+prohibitions to marry, first within the phratries, then, perhaps,

+within the totem kins, then within the Classes (or within the same

+generation).</p>

+

+<p>Thus there are here five courses which conjecture can logically take.</p>

+

+<p>(a) Members of certain recognised human groups already married

+habitually out of their group into other groups, <i>before</i> the animal

+names (now totem names) were given to the groups. The names came later

+and merely marked, at first, and then sanctioned, the limits within

+which marriage had already been forbidden while the groups were still

+nameless.</p>

+

+<p>Or (b) the animal names of the phratries and totem kins existed

+(perhaps as denoting groups which worked magic for the behoof of each

+animal) <i>before</i> marriage was forbidden within their limits. Later, for

+some reason, prohibitions were enacted.</p>

+

+<p>Or (c) at one time there were no marriage regulations at all, but

+these arose when, apparently for some religious reason, a hitherto

+undivided communal horde split into two sections, each of which revered

+a different name-giving animal as their "god" (totem), claimed descent

+from it, and, out of respect to their "god," did not marry any of

+those who professed its faith, and were called by its name, but always

+married persons of <i>another</i> name and "god."</p>

+

+<p>Or (d) men were at first in groups, intermarrying within the group.

+These groups received names from animals and other objects, because

+individual men adopted animal "familiars," as Bear, Elk, Duck, Potato,

+Pine-tree. The sisters of the men next adopted these animal or

+vegetable "familiars," or protective creatures, from their brothers,

+and bequeathed them, by female descent, to their children. These

+children became groups bearing such names as Bear, Potato, Duck, and

+so on. These groups made treaties of marriage with each other, for

+political reasons of acquiring strength by union. The treaties declared

+that Duck should never marry Duck, but always Elk, and <i>vice versa</i>.

+This was exogamy, instituted for political purposes, to use the word

+"political" proleptically.</p>

+

+<p>Or (e) men were at first in a promiscuous incestuous horde, but,

+perceiving the evils of this condition (whatever these evils might be

+taken to be), they divided it into two halves, of which one must never

+marry within itself, but always in the other. To these divisions animal

+names were given; they are the phratries. They threw off colonies, or

+accepted other groups, which took new animal names, and are now the

+totem kins.</p>

+

+<p>Finally, in (f) conjectures (a) and (c) may be combined thus: groups

+of men, still nameless as groups, had for certain reasons the habit of

+not marrying within themselves; but, after receiving animal names, they

+developed an idea that the animal of each group was its kinsman, and

+that, for a certain superstitious reason, it was even more wrong than

+it had been before, to marry "within the blood" of the animal, as, for

+Emu to marry Emu. Or (f2) the small groups did marry within themselves

+till, <i>after</i> receiving animal names, they evolved the superstition

+that such marriage was a sin against the animals, and so became

+exogamous.</p>

+

+<p>On the point of the original state of society conjecture seems to be

+limited to this field of possible choices. At least I am acquainted

+with no theory hitherto propounded, which does not set out from one

+or other of these conjectural bases. We must not attack each other's

+ideas merely because they start from conjectures: they can start in

+no other way. Our method must be to discover which conjecture, as it

+is developed, most consistently and successfully colligates all the

+ascertained facts and best endures the touchstone of logic.</p>

+

+<p>Of the hypotheses enumerated above, the system to be advocated here is

+that marked (f 1 and 2). Men, whatever their brutal ancestors may have

+done, when they became men indeed, lived originally in small anonymous

+local groups, and had, for a reason to be given, the habit of selecting

+female mates from groups <i>not</i> their own. Or, if they had not this

+habit they developed the rule, after the previously anonymous local

+groups had received animal names, and after the name-giving animals

+came to receive the measure of respect at present given to them as

+totems.</p>

+

+<p>The second hypothesis (b) (that the animal names of the groups were

+originally those of societies which worked magic, each for an animal,

+and that the prohibition on marriage was <i>later</i> introduced) has been

+suggested by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and is

+accepted by Mr. Howitt.</p>

+

+<p>The third conjecture (c) (man originally promiscuous, but ceasing to

+be so from religious respect for the totem, or "god") is that of Dr.

+Durkheim.</p>

+

+<p>The fourth theory (d) is that of Mr. Hill-Tout.<a name="FNanchor_4_27" id="FNanchor_4_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_27" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>The fifth theory (e) was that of Mr. Howitt. He now adopts the similar

+theory of Mr. Spencer (b).</p>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_24" id="Footnote_1_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_24"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The Dieri tribe do pray to the Mura-Mura, or <i>mythical</i>

+ancestors, but not, apparently, to the <i>remembered</i> dead.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_25" id="Footnote_2_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_25"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "Totemism, South Africa," J. G. Frazer, <i>Man</i>, 1901, No.

+III. Mr. Frazer does not, of course, adopt the Bantu myth as settling

+the question.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_26" id="Footnote_3_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_26"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Stow, MSS., 820. I owe the extract to Miss C. G. Burne.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_27" id="Footnote_4_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_27"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> I have not included the theory of Dr. Westermarck, in the

+<i>History of Human Marriage</i>, because that work is written without any

+reference to totemism.</p></div>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p class="caption">NOTE</p>

+

+<p>I have not included the theory of Mr. J. F. McLennan, the

+founder of all research into totemism. In his opinion,

+totemism, that is, the possession by different stocks of

+different name-giving animals, "is older than exogamy in

+all cases." That is, as Mr. Robertson Smith explains, "it

+is easy to see that exogamy necessarily presupposes the

+existence of a system of kinship which took no account

+of degrees, but only of participation in a common stock.

+Such an idea as this could not be conceived by savages

+in an abstract form; it must necessarily have had a

+concrete expression, or rather must have been thought

+under a concrete and tangible form, and that form seems

+to have been always supplied by totemism." (<i>Kinship and

+Marriage in Early Arabia</i>, p. 189, 1885). This means

+that, before they were exogamous, men existed in groups

+of animal name, as Ravens, Wolves, Ants, and so on. When

+they became conscious of kinship, and resolved to marry

+out of the kin, or stock, they fixed the name, say Raven,

+Wolf, or what not, as the limit within which there must

+be no marriage. But Mr. McLennan's theory as to why they

+determined to take no wives within the stock and name, has

+never been accepted. (See Westermarck, <i>History of Human

+Marriage</i>, pp. 311-314.)</p>

+

+<p>Mr. McLennan supposed that female infanticide made women

+scarce in each group, and that therefore they stole each

+other's girls, and, finally, abstained from their own.

+But the objections to this hypothesis are infinite and

+obvious. At one time Mr. McLennan thought that tattooing

+was the origin of totemism. Members of each group tattooed

+the semblance of an animal on their flesh&mdash;but, as far as

+I am aware, he did not ask why they adopted this practice.

+Manifestly a sense of some special connection between the

+animal and the group must have been prior to the marking

+of the members of the group with the effigy of the animal.

+What gave rise to this belief in the connection? (See

+Chapter VI., criticism of Dr. Pikler). Mr, McLennan merely

+mentioned to me, in conversation, this idea, which he

+later abandoned. It had previously occurred to Garcilasso

+de la Vega that the <i>germ</i> of totemism was to be found in

+the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which

+is the theory to be urged later, the <i>names</i> being the

+instruments of differentiation.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. A. K. Keane, as in Mr. McLennan's abandoned

+conjecture, and as in the theory of Dr. Pikler, makes

+totemism arise in "heraldic badges," "a mere device for

+distinguishing one individual from another, one family or

+clan group from another ... the personal or family name

+precedes the totem, which grows out of it." (Ethnology,

+pp. 9, II).</p></blockquote>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III</a></h4>

+

+<h3>THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY</h3>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>Why did man, if once promiscuous, regulate the relations

+of the sexes?&mdash;Theory of Professor Spencer&mdash;Animal-named

+magical societies were prior to regulation of

+marriage&mdash;Theory of Mr. Howitt&mdash;Regulations introduced by

+inspired medicine man&mdash;His motives unknown&mdash;The theory

+postulates the pristine existence of the organised tribe

+of to-day, and of belief in the All Father&mdash;Reasons

+for holding that men were originally promiscuous: (1)

+So-called survival of so-called "group marriage"; (2)

+Inclusive names of human relationships&mdash;Betrothals

+not denied&mdash;A form of marriage&mdash;Mitigated by

+<i>Pirauru</i>&mdash;Allotment of paramours at feasts&mdash;Is

+<i>Pirauru</i> a survival of group marriage?&mdash;Or a rare case

+of limitation of custom of feasts of license&mdash;Examples

+of such saturnalia&mdash;Fiji, Arunta, Urabunna,

+Dieri&mdash;Degrees of license&mdash;Argument against the author's

+opinion&mdash;Laws of incest older than marriage&mdash;Names of

+relationships&mdash;Indicate tribal status, not degrees of

+consanguinity&mdash;Fallacy exposed&mdash;Starcke <i>versus</i> Morgan's

+theory of primal promiscuity&mdash;Dr. Durkheim on Choctaw

+names of relationships&mdash;A man cannot regard his second

+cousin as his mother&mdash;Dr. Fison on anomalous terms of

+relationship&mdash;Grandfathers and grandsons call each other

+"brothers"&mdash;<i>Noa</i> denotes a man's wife and also all

+women whom he might legally wed&mdash;Proof that terms of

+relationship do not denote consanguinity&mdash;The <i>Pirrauru</i>

+custom implies previous marriage, and is not logically

+thinkable without it&mdash;Descriptions of <i>Pirrauru</i>&mdash;The

+<i>Kandri</i> ceremony merely modifies pre-existing

+marriage&mdash;<i>Pirrauru</i> is not "group marriage"&mdash;Is found

+only in tribes of the Matteri Kiraru phratries&mdash;Not found

+in south-eastern tribes&mdash;Mr. Howitt's "survivals" do not

+mean "group marriage."</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>In the theories which postulate that man began in a communal horde,

+with no idea of regulating sexual unions at all&mdash;because, having no

+notion of consanguinity, or of harm in consanguine marriages, he saw

+nothing to regulate&mdash;the initial difficulty is, how did he ever come

+to change his nature and to see that a rule must be made, as made it

+has been? Mr. Howitt endeavours (if I grasp his meaning) to show

+how man did at last see it, and therefore bisected the horde into

+intermarrying phratries. Mr. Spencer has only asserted that, while man

+saw nothing to regulate in marriages, he evolved an organisation, that

+of the phratries and classes, which did come, somehow, to regulate

+them. Dr. Durkheim takes it, that man if he was originally promiscuous,

+later regulated marriages out of respect to his totems, which were his

+gods. Mr. Hill-Tout supposes that the exogamous rules were made for

+"political" reasons.</p>

+

+<p>The theories of Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer differed from each other,

+originally, only in so far as that Mr. Spencer supposes animal-named

+<i>magical societies</i> (now totemic) to have arisen <i>before</i> man regulated

+marriage in any way; whereas this conception of animal-named groups

+not bound by totemic restrictions on marriage had not occurred to Mr.

+Howitt or any other inquirer, except Mr. J. G. Frazer, who evolved

+it independently. Mr. Spencer's theory in this matter rests entirely

+on his discovery, among the Arunta, in Central Australia, of totems

+marking magical societies, but not regulating marriage, and on his

+inference that, in the beginning, animal-named groups were everywhere

+mere magical societies. To work co-operative magic was their primary

+function. To that opinion Mr. Howitt has now come in, and he adds that

+"the division of the tribe" (into the two primary exogamous moieties

+or phratries, or "classes") "was made with intent to regulate the

+relations of the sexes."<a name="FNanchor_1_28" id="FNanchor_1_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_28" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> On one point, we repeat, namely, <i>why</i>

+division was made, Mr. Spencer utters no certain sound, nor does Mr.

+Howitt explicitly tell us for what reason sexual relations, hitherto

+unregulated, were supposed to need regulation. He conceives that there

+is "a widespread belief in the supernatural origin of the practice,"

+but that explains nothing.<a name="FNanchor_2_29" id="FNanchor_2_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_29" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus Mr. Howitt postulates the existence of a "tribe," divided

+into animal-named magical societies, and promiscuous. The tribe

+has "medicine men" who see visions. One of these men, conceiving,

+no one knows why, that it would be an excellent thing to regulate

+the relations of the sexes, announces to his fellow-men that he has

+received from a supernatural being a command to do so. If they approve,

+they declare the supernatural message "to the assembled headmen at one

+of the ceremonial meetings," the tribe obeys, and divides itself into

+the two primary exogamous moieties or phratries.<a name="FNanchor_3_30" id="FNanchor_3_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_30" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Mr. Howitt thus

+postulates the existence of the organised tribe, with its prophets, its

+"All Father" (such as Daramulun), its magical societies, its recognised

+headmen, and its public meetings for ceremonial and legislation, all in

+full swing, before the relations of the sexes are in any way regulated.</p>

+

+<p>On reflection, Mr. Howitt may find difficulties in this postulate.

+Meanwhile, we ask what made the very original medicine man, the Moses

+of the tribe, think of the new and drastic command which he brought

+down from the local Sinai? Why did this thinker suppose that the

+relations of the sexes ought to be regulated? Perhaps the idea was the

+inspiration of a dream. Mr. Spencer, acquainted chiefly with tribes who

+have no All Father, has not advanced this theory.</p>

+

+<p>The reasons given for supposing that the "tribe" was originally

+promiscuous are partly based (a) on the actual condition as regards

+individual marriage of some Australian tribes, mainly Dieri and

+Urabunna, with their congeners. These tribes, it is argued, are now

+no longer absolutely promiscuous, but men and women are divided into

+intermarriageable sets, so that all women of a certain status in Emu

+phratry are, or their predecessors have been, actual wives of all

+men of the corresponding status in Kangaroo phratry. The only bar

+to absolute promiscuity is that of the phratries (established by

+legislation on this theory), and of certain by-laws, of relatively

+recent institution. The names for human relationships (father, mother,

+son, daughter, brother, sister), again, (b) are, it is argued, such as

+"group marriage," and "group marriage" alone, would inevitably produce.

+All women of a certain status are my "mothers," all men of a certain

+status are my "fathers," all women of another status are my "sisters,"

+all of another are my "wives," and so on. Thus Mr. Spencer is able

+to say that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in

+practice in the Urabunna tribe" at the present day.<a name="FNanchor_4_31" id="FNanchor_4_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_31" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>This, however, does not mean that among many such tribes a man is not

+betrothed to a special woman, and does not marry that woman, with

+certain filthy initiatory "rites," contravening the usual rules of

+intercourse.<a name="FNanchor_5_32" id="FNanchor_5_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_32" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Nor is it denied that such man and wife habitually

+cohabit, and that the man, by hunting and fishing, provides for the

+wife and all her children, and recognises them as his own.</p>

+

+<p>It is meant that each man has only a certain set of nubile women

+open to him (<i>Nupa</i>, or <i>Noa</i>, or <i>Unawa</i>), and that out of these,

+in addition to his allotted bride, an uncertain number of women are

+assigned to him and to others, mainly at tribal festivals, as paramours

+(<i>Pirauru</i> or <i>Piraungaru</i>), by their elder brothers, or the heads of

+totem kins, or the seniors of the Urabunna tribe. "This relationship

+is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe

+are gathered together to perform important ceremonies."<a name="FNanchor_6_33" id="FNanchor_6_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_33" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> One woman

+may, on different occasions, be allotted as <i>Piraungaru</i> to different

+men, one man to different women. Occasionally, though rarely, the

+regular husband (he who marries the wife by filthy "rites") resists the

+allotting of his wife to another man, and then "there is a fight."</p>

+

+<p>The question is, does this Urabunna custom of <i>Piraungaru</i> (the

+existence of which in some tribes is not denied) represent a survival

+of a primary stage in which all men of a certain social and phratriac

+status were all alike husbands to all women of the corresponding status

+(group, or rather <i>status</i>, marriage); and was <i>that</i>, in turn, a

+survival of the anarchy of the horde, in which there were no grades at

+all, but anarchic promiscuity?</p>

+

+<p>That is the opinion of believers in "the primary undivided horde," and

+in "group marriage," or rather "status marriage."</p>

+

+<p>Or is this <i>Piraungaru</i> custom, as we think more probable, an organised

+and circumscribed and isolated legalisation, among a few tribes, of

+the utterly unbridled license practised by many savages on festive

+occasions corresponding to the Persian feast of the Sacaea, and to the

+Roman Saturnalia?<a name="FNanchor_7_34" id="FNanchor_7_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_34" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>

+

+<p>The <i>Piraungaru</i> allotments are made, as a rule, at great licentious

+meetings, but among the Urabunna, though they break the rules

+of individual marriage, they do not break the tribal rules of

+incest. By these rules the <i>Piraungaru</i> men and women must be legal

+intermarriageable persons (<i>Nupa</i>); their regulated paramourship is

+not, by tribal law, what we, or the natives, deem "incestuous." On the

+other hand, at Fijian seasons of license, even the relationship of

+brother and sister&mdash;the most sacred of all to a savage&mdash;is purposely

+profaned. Brothers and sisters are "intentionally coupled" at the feast

+of license called <i>Nanga</i>. The object is to have "a regular burst,"

+and deliberately violate every law. Men and women "publicly practised

+unmentionable abominations."<a name="FNanchor_8_35" id="FNanchor_8_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_35" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>

+

+<p>The Fijians are infinitely above the Urabunna in civilisation, being an

+agricultural people. Their Nanga feast is also called Mbaki&mdash;"harvest"

+Yet the Fijians, though more civilised, far exceed the license of

+the <i>Piraungaru</i> custom of the Urabunna, not only permitting, but

+enjoining, the extremest form of incest.</p>

+

+<p>The Arunta, again, neighbours of the Urabunna, though said to have

+more of "individual marriage" than they, in seasons of license go

+much beyond the Urabunna, though not so far as the Fijians. Women, at

+certain large meetings, "are told off ... and with the exception of

+men who stand in the relation of actual Uther, brother, or sons, they

+are, for the time being, common property to <i>all</i> the men present on

+the corroboree ground." Women are thus handed over to men "whom, under

+ordinary circumstances, they may not even speak to or go near."<a name="FNanchor_9_36" id="FNanchor_9_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_36" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>

+Every known rule, except that which forbids the closest incest as

+understood by ourselves, is deliberately and purposely reversed<a name="FNanchor_10_37" id="FNanchor_10_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_37" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>

+by the Arunta on certain occasions. Another example will be produced

+later, that of the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna.</p>

+

+<p>We suggest, then, that these three grades of license&mdash;the Urabunna,

+adulterous, but more or less permanent, and limited by rules and

+by tribal and modern laws of incest; the Arunta, not permanent,

+adulterous, and tribally incestuous, limited only by our own ideas of

+the worst kinds of incest; and the Fijian, not permanent, adulterous,

+and of an incestuous character not only unlimited by laws, but rather

+limited by the desire to break the most sacred laws&mdash;are all of the

+same kind. They are not, we suggest, survivals of "group marriage," or

+of a period of perfect promiscuity in everyday life, though that they

+commemorate such a fancied period is the Arunta myth, just as the Roman

+myth averred that the Saturnalia commemorated the anarchy of the Golden

+Age.</p>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 10%;">

+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">"In Saturn's time</span><br />

+Such mixture was not held a crime."<br />

+</p>

+

+<p>The Golden Age of promiscuity is, of course, reported, not in an

+historical tradition recording a fact, but in a myth invented to

+explain the feasts of license. Men find that they have institutions,

+they argue that they must once have been without institutions, they

+make myths about ancestors or gods who introduced institutions, they

+invent the Golden Age, when there were none, and, on occasion, revert

+for a day or a week to that happy ideal. The periods of license cannot

+be true commemorative functions, continued in pious memory of a time of

+anarchy since institutions began.</p>

+

+<p>But of the three types, Urabunna, Arunta, Fijian, the Urabunna, except

+in its degree of permanence, is the least licentious, least invades

+law, and it is a curious question why incest increases at these feasts

+as culture advances, up to a certain point. The law invaded by the

+Urabunna <i>Piraungaru</i> custom is not the tribal law of incest, nor

+the modern law of incest, but the law of the sanctity of individual

+marriage. It may therefore be argued (as against my own opinion) that

+the sanctity of individual marriage is still merely a nascent idea

+among the Urabunna, an idea which is recent, and so can be set aside

+easily; whereas the tribal laws of incest are strong with the strength

+of immemorial antiquity, and therefore must have already existed in a

+past age when there was no individual marriage at all. On this showing

+we have, first, the communal undivided horde; next, the horde bisected

+into groups which must not marry within each other (phratries), though

+<i>why</i> this arrangement was made and submitted to nobody can guess with

+any plausibility. By this time all females of phratry A might not only

+marry any man of phratry B, but were, according to the hypothesis, by

+theory and by practice, <i>all</i> wives of <i>all</i> men of phratry B. Next, as

+to-day, a man of B married a woman of A, with or without the existing

+offensive rites, but his tenure of her is still so insecure and recent

+that it is set aside, to a great extent, by the <i>Piraungaru</i> or

+<i>Pirauru</i> custom, itself a proof and survival of "group marriage," and

+of communal promiscuity in the past. Such is the argument for "group

+marriage," which may be advanced against my opinion, or thus, if I did

+not hold my opinion, I would state the argument.</p>

+

+<p>This licentious custom, whether called <i>Piraungaru</i> or by other names,

+is, with the tribal names for human relationships, the only basis of

+the belief in the primal promiscuous horde. Now, as to these names of

+relationships, we may repeat the adverse arguments already advanced by

+us in <i>Social Origins</i>, pp. 99-103. "Whatever the original sense of

+the names, they all now denote seniority and customary legal status in

+the tribe, with the reciprocal duties, rights, and avoidances.... The

+friends of group and communal marriage keep unconsciously forgetting,

+at this point of their argument, that <i>our</i> ideas of sister, brother,

+father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at

+certain other points of their argument) with the native terms,

+which <i>include</i>, indeed, but do not <i>denote</i> these relationships as

+understood by us.... We cannot say 'our word "son" must not be thought

+of when we try to understand the native term of relationship which

+includes sons&mdash;in <i>our</i> sense,' and next aver that 'sons, in <i>our</i>

+sense, are regarded [or spoken of] as real sons of the group, not of

+the individual, because of a past [or present] stage of promiscuity

+which made real paternity undiscoverable.'"</p>

+

+<p>Manifestly there lurks a fallacy in alternately using "sons," for

+example, in our sense, and then in the tribal sense, which includes

+both fatherhood, or sonship, in our sense, and also tribal status and

+duties. "The terms, in addition to their usual and generally accepted

+signification of relationship by blood, express a class or group

+relation quite independent of it."<a name="FNanchor_11_38" id="FNanchor_11_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_38" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus the tribal names may result from an expanded use of earlier names

+of blood relationship, or names of tribal status may now be applied

+to include persons who are within degrees of blood relationship. In

+the latter case, how do we know that a tribe with its degrees of

+status is primitive? Starcke thinks that Mr. Morgan's use of terms of

+relationship as proof of "communal marriage" is "a wild dream, if not

+the delirium of fever." "The nomenclature was in every respect the

+faithful reflection of the juridical relations which arose between

+the nearest kinsfolk of each tribe. Individuals who were, according

+to the legal point of view, on the same level with the speaker,

+received the same designation. The other categories of kinship were

+formally developed out of this standpoint." The system of names for

+relationships "affords no warrant" for Mr. Morgan's theory of primitive

+promiscuity.<a name="FNanchor_12_39" id="FNanchor_12_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_39" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>

+

+<p>Similar arguments against inferring collective marriage in the

+past from existing tribal terms of relationship are urged by Dr.

+Durkheim.<a name="FNanchor_13_40" id="FNanchor_13_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_40" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> He writes, taking an American case of names of

+relationship, as against Professor Kohler: "We see that the (Choctaw)

+word <i>Inoha</i> (mother) applies indifferently to all the women of my

+mother's group, from the oldest to the youngest. The term thus defines

+its own meaning: it applies to all the women of the family (or clan?)

+into which my father has married. Doubtless it is rather hard to

+understand how the same term can apply to so many different people.

+But certain it is, that the word cannot awake, in men's minds, any

+idea of <i>descent</i>, in the usual sense of the word. For a man cannot

+seriously regard his second cousin as his mother, even virtual. <i>The

+vocabulary of relationships must therefore express something other

+than relations of consanguinity, properly so-called....</i> Relationship

+and consanguinity are very different things ... relationship being

+essentially constituted by certain legal and moral obligations, which

+society imposes on certain individuals."<a name="FNanchor_14_41" id="FNanchor_14_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_41" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>

+

+<p>The whole passage should be read, but its sense is that which I have

+already tried to express; and Dr. Durkheim says, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than an <i>ultima ratio</i>" (a last

+resource), "intended to enable us to envisage these strange customs;

+but it is impossible to overlook all the difficulties which it raises."</p>

+

+<p>An analogous explanation of the wide use of certain terms of

+relationship has been given by Dr. Fison, of whom Mr. Howitt writes,

+"Much of what I have done is equally his."<a name="FNanchor_15_42" id="FNanchor_15_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_42" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Dr. Fison says, "All

+men of the same generation who bear the same totem are tribally

+brothers, though they may belong to different and widely separated

+tribes. Here we find an explanation of certain apparently anomalous

+terms of relationship. Thus, in some tribes the paternal grandson

+and his grandfather call one another 'elder brother' and 'younger

+brother' respectively. These persons are of the same totem."<a name="FNanchor_16_43" id="FNanchor_16_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_43" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> "Many

+other designations" in Mr. Morgan's Tables of Terms of Relationship

+"admit of a similar solution."<a name="FNanchor_17_44" id="FNanchor_17_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_44" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> The terms do not denote degrees of

+blood relationship, but of brotherhood in the totem (or phratry, or

+matrimonial class). It is so, too, with the Choctaw term for Mother.

+Every one knows who his mother, in our sense, is: the Choctaw term

+denotes a tribal status.</p>

+

+<p>If it be said that, because a man calls his wife his <i>Noa</i>, and also

+calls all women whom he might have married his <i>Noa</i>, therefore all

+these women, in past times, would have been his wives; it might as

+well be said that all the women whom he calls "mother" would, in times

+past, have collaborated in giving birth to him. As far as these terms

+indicate relationship, "a man is the younger brother of his maternal

+grandmother," and the maternal grandfather of his second cousin!<a name="FNanchor_18_45" id="FNanchor_18_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_45" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>

+The terms do not denote relationship in blood, clearly, but something

+quite different.</p>

+

+<p>The custom of <i>Piraungaru</i>, or <i>Pirrauru</i>, and cases of license at

+festivals, and the names for tribal relations, are, we repeat, the

+only arguments in favour of the theory of the communal horde.<a name="FNanchor_19_46" id="FNanchor_19_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_46" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> We

+have shown that the terms of relationship do not necessarily help the

+theory. That theory, again, is invalidated by its inability to account

+for the origin of the rules forbidding marriage between persons of the

+same phratry (for it does not tell us <i>why</i> the original medicine man

+conceived the idea of regulations), or even to account for the origin

+of the phratriac divisions.</p>

+

+<p>But why, on our system, can the <i>Piraungaru</i> custom break the rule of

+individual marriage more easily than the law prohibiting incest? Why it

+can do so on the theory of pristine promiscuity we have explained (p.

+41, <i>supra</i>).</p>

+

+<p>We reply that individual marriage has not, among savages, any

+"religious" sanction; it is protected by no form of the phratry or

+totem tabu; by no god, such as Hymen; but rests, as from the first it

+rested, on the character and strength of the possessor of the woman or

+women, and falls into abeyance if he does not choose to exert it. If

+the males of the Urabunna have so far departed from the natural animal

+instincts as usually (with exceptions) to prefer to relax their tenure

+of women, being tempted by the bribe of a legalised change of partners

+all round, they exhibit, not a primitive, but a rather advanced type of

+human nature. The moral poet sings:&mdash;</p>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 10%;">

+"Of <i>Whist</i> or <i>Cribbage</i> mark the amusing Game,<br />

+The <i>Partners</i> changing, but the <i>Sport</i> the same,<br />

+Then see one Man with one unceasing Wife,<br />

+Play the long Rubber of connubial Life."<a name="FNanchor_20_47" id="FNanchor_20_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_47" class="fnanchor">[20]</a><br />

+</p>

+

+<p>This is the "platform" of the Urabunna and Dieri, as it is of the

+old Cicisbeism in Italy, and of a section of modern "smart society,"

+especially at the end of the <i>ancien régime</i> in France. Man may fall

+into this way of thinking, just as, in Greece, he actually legalised

+unnatural passions by a ceremony of union. "That one practice, in many

+countries, became systematised," as Mr. J. F. McLennan wrote to Mr.

+Darwin.<a name="FNanchor_21_48" id="FNanchor_21_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_48" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>

+

+<p>This is not the only example of a legalised aberration from nature,

+or from second nature. Abhorrence of incest has become a law of

+second nature, among savage as among civilised men. But Dr. Durkheim

+publishes a long list of legalised aberrations from the laws of incest

+among Hebrews, Arabs, Phœnicians, Greeks, Slavonic peoples, Medes,

+Persians, Egyptians, Cambodians, and Peruvians.<a name="FNanchor_22_49" id="FNanchor_22_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_49" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> If these things,

+these monstrous aberrations, can be legalised "in the green tree," why

+should not jealousy fall into a kind of legalised abeyance among the

+Urabunna, under the law of partner-shifting? The <i>Piraungaru</i> custom

+does not prove that earliest man was not ferociously jealous; it merely

+shows that certain tribes have reached a stage in which jealousy is, at

+present, more or less suppressed in favour of legalised license.</p>

+

+<p>We catch the Urabunna and Dieri at a moment of development in which

+the abandonment of strict possession of a wife is compensated for by

+a legalised system of changing partners, enduring after the feast of

+license is over. But even so, a man is responsible, as father, for the

+children of his actual wife, not for the children of his <i>Piraungaru</i>

+paramours. For these their actual husbands (<i>Tippa Malku</i>) are

+responsible.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt says, in his earlier account of this institution, that among

+the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna, the men and women who are made

+<i>Pirauru</i> are not consulted. The heads of the tribe do not ask whether

+they fancy each other or not. "The time is one of festivity, feasting,

+and amusement," only too obviously! "Dancing is carried on." "A man

+can always exercise marital rights towards his <i>Pirauru</i>, if they

+meet when her <i>Noa</i> (real husband) is absent, but he cannot take her

+away from him unless by his consent," except at the feasts. But the

+husband usually consents. "In spite of all this arrangement, most of

+the quarrels among the Dieri arise out of this <i>Pirauru</i> practice....

+"A son or daughter regards the real husband (<i>Noa</i>) of his mother as

+his <i>Apiri Muria</i>, or "real father"; his mother's <i>Pirauru</i> is only his

+<i>Apiri Waka</i>, or "little father." At certain feasts of license, such

+as intertribal marriages, "no jealous feeling is allowed under penalty

+of strangling, but it crops up afterwards, and occasions many bloody

+affrays."<a name="FNanchor_23_50" id="FNanchor_23_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_50" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> Thus jealousy is not easily kept in abeyance by customary

+law.</p>

+

+<p>The idea of such a change of partners is human, not animal, and the

+more of a brute the ancestor of man was the less could he dream, in

+times truly primitive, of <i>Piraungaru</i> as a permanent arrangement. Men,

+in a few tribes, declined into it, and are capable of passing out of

+it, like the Urabunna or Dieri man, who either retains so much of the

+animal, or is rising so far towards the Homeric standard, as to fight

+rather than let his wife be allotted to another man, or at least to

+thump that other man afterwards.</p>

+

+<p>The Dieri case of the feast of license, just mentioned, is notable.

+"The various <i>Piraurus</i> (paramours) are allotted to each other by

+the great council of the tribe, after which their names are formally

+announced to the assembled people on the evening of the ceremony of

+circumcision, during which there is for a time a general license

+permitted between all those who have been thus allotted to each other."

+But persons of the same totem among the Dieri may not be <i>Piraurus</i>

+to each other, nor may near relations as we reckon kinship, including

+cousins on both sides.</p>

+

+<p>In this arrangement Mr. Howitt sees "a form of group marriage," while

+I see tribe-regulated license, certainly much less lawless than that

+of the more advanced Fijians or the Arunta. Mr. Howitt did not state

+that the <i>Pirauru</i> or <i>Piraungaru</i> unions are preceded (as marriage is)

+by any ceremony, unless the reading the banns, so to speak, by public

+proclamation among the Dieri is a ceremony.<a name="FNanchor_24_51" id="FNanchor_24_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_51" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Now he has discovered a

+ceremony as symbolic as our wedding ring (1904).</p>

+

+<p>Little light, if any, is thrown on these customs of legalised license

+by philology. Mr. Howitt thought that <i>Pirauru</i> may be derived from

+<i>Pira</i>, "the moon," and <i>Uru</i>, "circular." The tribal feasts of

+license are held at the full moon, but I am not aware that, by the

+natives, people are deemed peculiarly "moonstruck," or lunatic, at

+that season. If Urabunna <i>Piraungaru</i> is linguistically connected with

+Dieri <i>Pirauru</i>, then both <i>Piraungaru</i> and <i>Pirauru</i> may mean "Full

+Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to

+me!"<a name="FNanchor_25_52" id="FNanchor_25_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_52" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>

+

+<p>Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes the <i>Noa</i> of a man most frequently by

+being betrothed to him when she is a mere infant.... In certain cases

+she is given by the Great Council, as a reward for some meritorious

+act on his part." "None but the brave deserve the fair," and this is

+"individual marriage," though the woman who is wedded to one man may be

+legally allotted as Full Mooner, or <i>Pirauru</i>, to several. "The right

+of the <i>Noa</i> overrides that of the <i>Pirauru</i>. Thus a man cannot claim

+a woman who is <i>Pirauru</i> to him when her <i>Noa</i> is present in the camp,

+excepting by his consent." The husband generally yields, he shares

+equivalent privileges. "Such cases, however, are the frequent causes of

+jealousies and fights."<a name="FNanchor_26_53" id="FNanchor_26_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_53" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>

+

+<p>This evidence does not seem, on the whole, to force upon us the

+conclusion that the Urabunna <i>Piraungaru</i> custom, or any of these

+customs, any more than the custom of polyandry, or of legalised

+incest in higher societies, is a survival of "group marriage"&mdash;all

+men of certain social grades being actual husbands of all women of

+the corresponding grades&mdash;while again that is a survival of gradeless

+promiscuity. We shall disprove that theory. Rather, the <i>Piraungaru</i>

+custom appears to be a limited concession to the taste, certainly a

+human taste, for partner-changing&mdash;<i>which can only manifest itself

+where regular partnerships already exist</i>. Jealousy among these tribes

+is in a state of modified abeyance: like nature herself, and second

+nature, where, among civilised peoples, things unnatural, or contrary

+to the horror of incest, have been systematically legalised.</p>

+

+<p>I have so far given Mr. Howitt's account of <i>Pirrauru</i> (the name is now

+so written by him) among the Dieri, as it appeared in his works, prior

+to 1904. In that year he published his <i>Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia</i>, which contains additional details of essential importance

+(pp. 179-187). A woman becomes <i>Tippa Malku</i>,<a name="FNanchor_27_54" id="FNanchor_27_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_54" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> or affianced,<a name="FNanchor_28_55" id="FNanchor_28_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_55" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>

+to one man only, <i>before</i> she becomes <i>Pirrauru</i>, or what Mr. Howitt

+calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She

+is never the <i>Pirrauru</i> of all the men who are <i>Noa</i> to her, that is,

+intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a

+symbolic ceremony, as a <i>Pirrauru</i> to one or more men, who are <i>Noa</i>

+to her. At first, while a child, or at least while a maiden, she is

+betrothed (there are varieties of modes) to one individual male. She

+may ask her husband to let her take on another man as <i>Pirrauru</i>;

+"should he refuse to do this she must put up with it." If he consents,

+other men make two adjacent ridges of sand, and level them into one

+larger ridge, while a man, usually the selected lover, pours sand from

+the ridge over the upper part of his thighs, "buries the <i>Pirrauru</i> in

+the sand." (The phrase does not suggest that <i>Pirrauru</i> means "Full

+Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop

+wives (exchange their <i>Noa</i> as <i>Pirraurus</i>), and also when "the whole

+of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already

+<i>Pirrauru</i>, are <i>reallotted</i>," a term which suggests the temporary

+character of the unions.</p>

+

+<p>I am ready to allow that the <i>Kandri</i> ceremony, a symbol of recognised

+union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian

+<i>Ghandarva</i> rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified

+union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which

+is arranged subsequent to the <i>Tippa Malku</i> ceremony of permanent

+betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt,

+subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one

+woman to one man in the <i>Tippa Malku</i> arrangement. That arrangement

+is demonstrably more primitive than <i>Pirrauru</i>, for <i>Pirrauru</i> is

+unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of

+<i>Tippa Malku</i>.</p>

+

+<p>This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage"

+(I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All

+persons legally intermarriageable (<i>Noa</i>), under phratry law, were

+originally, he holds, <i>ipso facto</i>, married. Consequently the <i>Kandri</i>

+custom could not make them <i>more</i> married than they then actually were.

+In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial

+comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not

+<i>Noa</i>, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the <i>Kandri</i>

+ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons

+who are already <i>Tippa Malku</i> (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal

+paramours in certain other wedded or <i>Tippa Malku</i> women, and in men

+either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification

+of individual <i>Tippa Malku</i>, <i>Pirrauru</i> is impossible, and its

+existence is unthinkable.<a name="FNanchor_29_56" id="FNanchor_29_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_56" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>

+

+<p><i>Pirrauru</i> is a modification of marriage (<i>Tippa Malku</i>), <i>Tippa

+Malku</i> is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a

+<i>Tippa Malku</i> husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to

+himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his

+intended <i>fiancée</i>.<a name="FNanchor_30_57" id="FNanchor_30_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_57" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his

+<i>Pirrauru</i> woman away from her <i>Tippa Malku</i> husband "unless by his

+consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times"&mdash;feasts, in fact, of

+license. <i>Pirrauru</i> secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the

+seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless

+and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these <i>Pirrauru</i> "in

+commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property

+and social influence. What do the <i>Tippa Malku</i> husbands say to this

+arrangement?</p>

+

+<p>As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group

+marries another group, the <i>Pirrauru</i> literally heap hot coals on

+each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the

+"group" as <i>Pirrauru</i>. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled

+(<i>Nulina</i>). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri,

+praises <i>Pirrauru</i> for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One

+does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's

+wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy,

+checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying,

+but <i>Pirrauru</i> is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is

+involved. <i>Pirrauru may</i> (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live

+together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote

+from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.</p>

+

+<p>You may call <i>Pirrauru</i> a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a

+later modification of a prior <i>Tippa Malku</i> wedlock, it cannot be cited

+as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all

+female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is

+called "group marriage."<a name="FNanchor_31_58" id="FNanchor_31_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_58" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>

+

+<p>If <i>Pirrauru</i> were primitive, it might be looked for among these

+southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social

+organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent

+institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the

+All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or,

+at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri

+belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, <i>Pirrauru</i> is

+no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta

+and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri,

+Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, <i>Pirrauru</i> cannot

+claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to

+"individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain,

+prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln

+and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and

+Urabunna phratry names, <i>Matteri</i> and <i>Kararu</i>, exist.<a name="FNanchor_32_59" id="FNanchor_32_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_59" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Having

+identical phratry names (or one phratry name identical, as among the

+Kunandaburi), whether by borrowing or by original community of language

+and institutions: all these tribes southward to the sea from Lake Eyre

+may possess, or may have possessed, <i>Pirrauru</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Among the most pristine of all tribes, in the south by east, however,

+<i>Pirrauru</i> is not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the

+Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find no <i>Pirrauru</i>.

+But Mr. Howitt notes other practices which are taken by him to be mere

+rudimentary survivals of "group marriage." They are (i.) exchange of

+wives at feasts of marriage, or in view of impending misfortune, as

+when shipwrecked mariners break into the stores, and are "working at

+the rum and the gin." These are feasts of license, not survivals of

+"group marriage" nor of <i>Pirrauru</i>. (ii.) The <i>jus primae noctis</i>,

+enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all,

+nor is it a survival of <i>Pirrauru</i>. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia,"

+"almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost

+promiscuous and very rare) nor <i>Pirrauru</i>. (iv.) Seven brothers have

+one wife. This is adelphic polyandry, Mr. Howitt calls it "group

+marriage." (v.) "A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife

+of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by the

+clan." If this is "group marriage" (there is no "group" concerned)

+there was group marriage in ancient Rome.<a name="FNanchor_33_60" id="FNanchor_33_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_60" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> This, I think, is all

+that Mr. Howitt has to show for "group marriage" and <i>Pirrauru</i> among

+the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.</p>

+

+<p>The manner in which <i>Tippa Malku</i> betrothals are arranged deserves

+attention. They who "give this woman away," and they who give away her

+bride-groom also, are the brothers of the mothers of the pair, or the

+mothers themselves may arrange the matter.<a name="FNanchor_34_61" id="FNanchor_34_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_61" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt, on this point, observes that, if the past can be judged of

+by the present, "I should say that the practice of betrothal, which

+is universal in Australia, must have produced a feeling of individual

+proprietary right over the women so promised." Manifestly Mr. Howitt

+is putting the plough before the oxen. It is because certain kinsfolk

+have an acknowledged "proprietary right" over the woman that they can

+betroth her to a man: it is not because they can betroth her to a man

+that they have "a feeling of individual proprietary right over her."

+I give my coppers away to a crossing-sweeper, or exchange them for

+commodities, because I have an individual proprietary right over these

+coins. I have not acquired the feeling of individual proprietary right

+over the pence by dint of observing that I do give them away or buy

+things with them.</p>

+

+<p>The proprietary rights of mothers, maternal uncles, or any other

+kinsfolk over girls must, of course, have been existing and generally

+acknowledged before these kinsfolk could exercise the said rights of

+giving away. But, in a promiscuous horde, before marriage existed, how

+could anybody know what persons had proprietary rights over what other

+persons?<a name="FNanchor_35_62" id="FNanchor_35_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_62" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt here adds that the "practice of betrothal ..." (or perhaps

+he means that "the feeling of individual proprietary right"?) "when

+accentuated by the <i>Tippa Malku</i> marriage, must also tend to overthrow

+the <i>Pirrauru</i> marriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have

+proved, that if there were no <i>Tippa Malku</i> marriage there could be no

+<i>Pirrauru</i> to overthrow.</p>

+

+<p>As to the <i>Pirrauru</i> or <i>Piraungaru</i> custom, moreover, Mr. Howitt

+has himself candidly observed that, on his theory, it "ought rather

+to have been perpetuated than abandoned" (so it <i>is</i> abandoned)

+"under conditions of environment" (such as more abundant food) "which

+permitted the <i>Pirrauru</i> group to remain together on one spot,

+instead of being compelled by the exigencies of existence to separate

+into lesser groups having the Noa" (or regular) "marriage."<a name="FNanchor_36_63" id="FNanchor_36_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_63" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> So

+<i>Pirrauru</i> don't live in "groups"!</p>

+

+<p>As a fact, the more that supplies, in some regions, as on the south

+coast, permit relatively large groups to coexist, the less is their

+marital license; while, on the other hand, the less favourable the

+conditions of supply (as in the Barkinji region), the less do we hear

+of <i>Pirrauru</i>, or anything of the kind, except among tribes of the

+Kiraru and Matteri phratries. For these reasons, <i>Pirrauru</i> unions

+appear to mark an isolated moment in culture, not to be a survival of

+universal pristine promiscuity. They are almost always associated,

+in their inception, with seasons of frolic and lust, and with large

+assemblages, rather than with the usual course of everyday existence.</p>

+

+<p>For the reasons here stated, it does not seem that Australian

+institutions yield any evidence for primitive promiscuity.</p>

+

+

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_28" id="Footnote_1_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_28"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 89.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_29" id="Footnote_2_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_29"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 90.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_30" id="Footnote_3_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_30"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Loc. cit.</i> Mr. Howitt says "classes," but we adhere to

+the term "phratries."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_31" id="Footnote_4_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_31"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Natives of Central Australia</i>, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_32" id="Footnote_5_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_32"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Spencer end Gillen, pp. 92-98.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_33" id="Footnote_6_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_33"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Natives of Central Australia</i>, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_34" id="Footnote_7_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_34"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> For a large account of these customs see <i>The Golden

+Bough</i>, second edition.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_35" id="Footnote_8_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_35"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Fison, J.A.I., xiv. p. 28.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_36" id="Footnote_9_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_36"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Natives of Central Australia</i>, Spencer and Gillen, p. 97.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_37" id="Footnote_10_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_37"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Ibid., p. 111.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_38" id="Footnote_11_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_38"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Roth, <i>N.W.C. Queensland Aborigines</i>, p. 56.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_39" id="Footnote_12_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_39"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Starcke, <i>The Primitive Family</i>, p. 207.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_40" id="Footnote_13_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_40"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. pp. 313-316.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_41" id="Footnote_14_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_41"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. p. 315.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_42" id="Footnote_15_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_42"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, xiv.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_43" id="Footnote_16_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_43"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Can Dr. Fison mean of the same matrimonial class?</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_44" id="Footnote_17_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_44"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, pp. 166, 167.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_45" id="Footnote_18_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_45"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Native Races of South-East Australia</i>, p. 163. Pointed

+out by Mr. N. W. Thomas.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_46" id="Footnote_19_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_46"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> The participation of many men in the <i>jus primae noctis</i>

+is open to various explanations.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_47" id="Footnote_20_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_47"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Poetry of the Antijacobin.</i></p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_48" id="Footnote_21_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_48"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Studies in Ancient History</i>, ii. p. 52.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_49" id="Footnote_22_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_49"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i., pp.38, 39, 62.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_50" id="Footnote_23_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_50"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, pp. 56-60, August 1890.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_24_51" id="Footnote_24_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_51"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Howitt, <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1890, pp. 55-58.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_25_52" id="Footnote_25_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_52"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> What the Dieri call <i>Pirauru</i> (legalised paramour)

+the adjacent Kunan-daburi tribe call <i>Dilpa Mali</i>. In this tribe

+the individual husband or individual wife (that is, the real wife

+or husband) is styled <i>Nubaia</i>, in Dieri <i>Noa</i>, in Urabunna <i>Nupa</i>.

+Husband's brother, sister's husband, wife's sister, and brother's wife

+are all <i>Nubaia Kodimali</i> in Kunandabori, and are all <i>Noa</i> in Dieri.

+What <i>Dilpa Mali</i> (legalised paramour, or "accessory wife or husband")

+means in Kunandabori Mr. Howitt does not know. But he learns that <i>Kodi

+Mali</i> (applied to <i>Pirauru</i>) means "<i>not</i> Nubaia," that is, "<i>not</i>

+legal individual husband or wife." If we knew what Dilpa means in Dilpa

+Mali (legalised paramour of either sex), we should know more than we

+are apt to do in the present state of Australian philology.

+</p>

+<p>

+At Port Lincoln a man calls his own wife <i>Yung Ara</i>, that of his

+brother <i>Karteti</i> (<i>Trans. Phil. Soc. Vic.</i>, v. 180). What do these

+words mean?&mdash;<i>Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute</i>, 1883, pp.

+804-806.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_26_53" id="Footnote_26_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_53"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute</i>, 1883, p.

+807.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_27_54" id="Footnote_27_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_54"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Tippa</i>, in one tongue, <i>Malku</i> in another, denote the

+tassel which is a man's full dress suit.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_28_55" id="Footnote_28_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_55"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Mr. Howitt says that the pair are <i>Tippa Malku</i> "for the

+time being" (p. 179), though the association seems to be permanent.

+May girls Tippa Malku&mdash;"sealed" to a man&mdash;have relations with other

+men before their actual marriage, and with what men? We are not told,

+but a girl cannot be a <i>Pirrauru</i> before she is <i>Tippa Malku</i>. If

+<i>Pirrauru</i> "arises through the exchange by brothers of their <i>wives</i>"

+(p. 181), how can an unmarried man who has no wife become a <i>Pirrauru</i>?

+He does. When <i>Pirrauru</i> people are "re-allotted" (p. 182), does the

+old connection persist, or is it broken, or is it merely in being for

+the festive occasion? How does the jealousy of the <i>Pirrauru</i>, which is

+great, like the change? These questions, and many more, are asked by

+Mr. N. W. Thomas.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_29_56" id="Footnote_29_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_56"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual

+husbands and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and

+<i>Pirrauru</i> were devised to limit Tom, Dick, and Harry, &amp;c., to Jane,

+Mary, and Susan, &amp;c., all these men being <i>Pirrauru</i> to all these

+women, and <i>vice versa</i>. Next, Tippa Malku was devised, limiting Jane

+to Tom, but <i>Pirrauru</i> was retained, to modify that limitation. Anybody

+is welcome to this mode of making <i>Pirrauru</i> logically thinkable,

+without prior <i>Tippa Malku</i>: if he thinks that the arrangement is

+logically thinkable, which I do not.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_30_57" id="Footnote_30_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_57"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could

+not possess the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised,

+which, before marriage existed, it could not be.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_31_58" id="Footnote_31_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_58"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> I have here had the advantage of using a MS. note by Mr.

+N. W. Thomas.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_32_59" id="Footnote_32_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_59"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 191.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_33_60" id="Footnote_33_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_60"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 195, 217,

+219, 224, 260.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_34_61" id="Footnote_34_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_61"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 177, 178.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_35_62" id="Footnote_35_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_62"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Ibid., p. 283.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_36_63" id="Footnote_36_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_63"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, xiii. p. 34.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV</a></h4>

+

+<h3>THE ARUNTA ANOMALY</h3>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>How could man, if promiscuous, cease to be so?&mdash;Opinion

+of Mr. Howitt&mdash;Ethical training in groups very small, by

+reason of economic conditions&mdash;Likes and dislikes&mdash;Love

+and jealousy&mdash;Distinctions and restrictions&mdash;Origin of

+restrictions not explained by Professor Spencer&mdash;His

+account of the Arunta&mdash;Among them the totem does not

+regulate marriage, is not exogamous, denotes a magical

+society&mdash;Causes of this unique state of things&mdash;Male

+descent: doctrine of reincarnation, belief in

+spirit-haunted stone <i>churinga nanja</i>&mdash;Mr. Spencer thinks

+Arunta totemism pristine&mdash;This opinion contested&mdash;How

+Arunta totemism ceased to regulate marriage&mdash;Result

+of isolated belief in <i>churinga nanja</i>&mdash;Contradictory

+Arunta myths&mdash;Arunta totemism impossible in tribes

+with female descent&mdash;Case of the Urabunna&mdash;Origin of

+<i>churinga nanja</i> belief&mdash;Sacred stone objects in New

+South Wales&mdash;Present Arunta belief perhaps based on myths

+explanatory of stone amulets of unknown meaning&mdash;Proof

+that the more northern tribes never held the Arunta belief

+in <i>churinga nanja</i>&mdash;Traces of Arunta ideas among the

+Euahlayi&mdash;Possible traces of a belief in a sky-dwelling

+being among southern Arunta&mdash;Mr. Gillen's "great Ulthaana

+of the heavens"&mdash;How arose the magic-working animal-named

+Arunta societies?&mdash;Not found in the south-east&mdash;Mr.

+Spencer's theory that they do survive&mdash;Criticism of his

+evidence&mdash;Recapitulation&mdash;Arunta totemism not primitive

+but modified.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>Next we have to ask how, granting the hypothesis of the promiscuous

+horde, man ceased to be promiscuous. It will be seen that, on a theory

+of Mr. Howitt's, man was, in fact, far on the way of ceasing to be

+promiscuous or a "horde's man," before he introduced the moral reform

+of bisecting his horde into phratries, for the purpose of preventing

+brother with sister marriages. Till unions were permanent, and kin

+recognised, things impossible in a state of promiscuity, nobody could

+dream of forbidding brother and sister marriage, because nobody could

+know who was brother or sister to whom. Now, Mr. Howitt does indicate

+a way in which man might cease to be promiscuous, before any sage

+invented the system of exogamous phratries.</p>

+

+<p>He writes,<a name="FNanchor_1_64" id="FNanchor_1_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_64" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> "I start ... from the assumption that there was once an

+undivided commune ... I do not desire to be understood as maintaining

+that it implies necessarily the assumption of complete communism

+between the sexes. Assuming that the former physical conditions of the

+Australian continent were much as they are now, complete communism

+always existing would, I think, be an impossibility. The character of

+the country, the necessity of hunting for food, and of removing from

+one spot to another in search of game and of vegetable food, would

+necessarily cause any undivided commune, <i>when it assumed dimensions of

+more than that of a few members, to break up</i>, under the necessities

+of existence, into two or more communes of similar constitution to

+itself. In addition to this it has become evident to me, after a long

+acquaintance with the Australian savage, that, in the past as now,

+individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, although

+there was the admitted common right between certain groups of the

+commune, in practice these rights would either not be exercised by

+reason of various causes, or would remain in abeyance, so far as the

+separated but allied undivided communes were concerned, until on great

+ceremonial occasions, or where certain periodical gatherings for

+food purposes reunited temporarily all the segments of the original

+community. In short, so far as the evidence goes at present, I am

+inclined to regard the probable condition of the undivided commune as

+being well represented now by what occurs when on certain occasions the

+modified divided communes reunite."<a name="FNanchor_2_65" id="FNanchor_2_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_65" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

+

+<p>What occurs in these festive assemblies among certain central and

+northern tribes, as we have seen, is a legalised and restricted change

+of wives all round, with disregard, in some cases, of some of the

+tribal rules against incest. On Mr. Howitt's theory the undivided

+communal horde must always have been, as I have urged, dividing itself,

+owing to lack of supplies. It would be a very small group, continually

+broken up, and intercourse of the sexes even in that group, must

+have been restrained by jealousy, based on the asserted existence of

+individual "likes" and "dislikes." These restrictions, again, must have

+led to some idea that the man usually associated with, and responsible

+for feeding, and protecting, and correcting the woman and her children,

+was just the man who "liked" her, the man whom she "liked," and the man

+who "disliked" other men if they wooed her.</p>

+

+<p>But that state of things is not an undivided communal horde at all! It

+is much more akin to the state of things in which I take marriage rules

+to have arisen.</p>

+

+<p>We may suppose, then, that early moral distinctions and restrictions

+grew up among the practically "family" groups of everyday life, as

+described by Mr. Howitt, and we need not discuss again the question

+whether, at this very early period, there existed a community exactly

+like the local tribe of to-day in every respect&mdash;except that marriage

+was utterly unregulated, till an inspired medicine man promulgated the

+law of exogamy, his own invention.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt began his long and invaluable studies of these problems as

+a disciple of Mr. Lewis Morgan. That scholar was a warm partisan of

+the primeval horde, of group marriage, and (at times) of a reformatory

+movement. These ideas, first admitted to Mr. Howitt's mind, have

+remained with him, but he has seen clearly that the whole theory needed

+at least that essential modification which his practical knowledge of

+savage life has enabled him to make. He does not seem to me to hold

+that the promiscuous horde suddenly, for no reason, reformed itself:

+his reformers had previous ethical training in a state of daily life

+which is not that of the hypothetical horde. But he still clings to the

+horde, tiny as it must have been, as the source of a tradition of a

+brief-lived period of promiscuity. This faith is but the "after-image"

+left in his mental processes by the glow of Mr. Morgan's theory, but

+the faith is confirmed by his view of the terms of relationship, and of

+the <i>Piraungaru</i>, <i>Pirrauru</i>, and similar customs. We have shown, in

+the last chapter, that the terms and the customs are not necessarily

+proofs of promiscuity in the past, but may be otherwise interpreted

+with logical consistency, and in conformity with human nature.</p>

+

+<p>The statement of Mr. Howitt shows how the communal horde of the

+hypothesis might come to see that it needed moral reformation. In

+daily life, by Mr. Howitt's theory, it had practically ceased to be a

+communal horde before the medicine man was inspired to reform it. The

+hypothesis of Professor Baldwin Spencer resembles that of Mr. Howitt,

+but, unlike his (as it used to stand), accounts for the existence

+of animal-named sets of people within the phratries. Mr. Spencer,

+starting from the present social condition of the Arunta "nation" or

+group of tribes (Arunta, Kaitish, Ilpirra, Unmatjera), supposes that

+these tribes retain pristine traits, once universal, but now confined

+to them. The peculiar pristine traits, by the theory, are (1) the

+existence of animal-named local societies for magical purposes. The

+members of each local group worked magic for their name-giving animal

+or plant, but any one might marry a woman of his own group name, Eagle

+Hawk, Cockatoo, and the like, while these names were not inherited,

+either from father or mother, and did not denote a bond of kinship.

+Mr. Spencer, then, supposes the horde to have been composed of such

+magical societies, at a very remote date, before sexual relations were

+regulated by any law. Later, in some fashion, and for some reason

+which Mr. Spencer does not profess to explain, "there was felt the

+need of some form of organisation, and this gradually resulted in the

+development of exogamous groups."<a name="FNanchor_3_66" id="FNanchor_3_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_66" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> These "exogamous groups," among

+the Arunta, are now the four or eight "matrimonial classes," as among

+other tribes of northern Australia. These tribes, as a rule, have

+phratries, but the Arunta have lost even the phratry names.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Spencer's theory thus explains the existence of animal-named

+groups&mdash;as co-operative magical societies, for breeding the animals or

+plants&mdash;but does not explain how exogamy arose, or why, everywhere,

+except among the Arunta, all the animal or plant named sets of people

+are kinships, and are exogamous, while they are neither the one or

+the other among the Arunta. Either the Arunta groups have once been

+exogamous totem kinships, and have ceased to be so, becoming magical

+societies; or such animal-named sets of people have, everywhere, first

+been magical societies, and later become exogamous totem kinships. Mr.

+Spencer holds the latter view, we hold the former, believing that the

+Arunta have once been in the universal state of totemic exogamy, and

+that, by a perfectly intelligible process, their animal-named groups

+have become magical societies, no longer exogamous kinships. We can

+show how the old exogamous totem kinship, among the Arunta, became

+a magical society, not regulating sexual relations; but we cannot

+imagine how all totemic mankind, if they began with magical societies

+in an unregulated horde, should have everywhere, except among the

+Arunta, conspired to convert these magical societies into kinships

+with exogamy. If the social organisation of the Arunta were peculiarly

+primitive, if their beliefs and ceremonials were of the most archaic

+type, there might be some ground for Mr. Spencer's opinion. But Mr.

+Hartland justly says that all the beliefs and institutions of the

+Arunta "point in the same direction, namely, that the Arunta are the

+most advanced and not the most primitive of the Central Australian

+tribes."<a name="FNanchor_4_67" id="FNanchor_4_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_67" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>The Arunta, a tribe so advanced that it has forgotten its phratry

+names, has male kinship, eight matrimonial classes, and <i>local</i> totem

+groups, with Headmen hereditary in the male line, and so cannot

+possibly be called "primitive," as regards organisation. If, then,

+the tribe possesses a peculiar institution, contravening what is

+universally practised, the natural inference is that the Arunta

+institution, being absolutely isolated and unique, as far as its

+non-exogamy goes, in an advanced tribe, is a local freak or "sport,"

+like many others which exist. This inference seems to be corroborated

+when we discover, as we do at a glance, the peculiar conditions without

+which the Arunta organisation is physically impossible. These essential

+and indispensable conditions are admitted by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+to be:&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>1. Male reckoning of descent&mdash;which is found in very many tribes where

+totems are exogamous&mdash;as everywhere.</p>

+

+<p>2. Local totem groups, which are a result of male reckoning of descent.

+These also are found in many other tribes where, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous.</p>

+

+<p>3. The belief that the spirits of the primal ancestors of the

+"Dream-Time" (<i>Alcheringa</i>)&mdash;creatures evolved out of various animal

+shapes into human form&mdash;are constantly reincarnated in new-born

+children. This belief is found in all the northern tribes with male

+descent; and among the Urabunna, who have female descent&mdash;but among all

+these tribes totems are exogamous, as everywhere.</p>

+

+<p>4. The Arunta and Kaitish, with two or three minor neighbouring tribes,

+believe that spirits desiring incarnation, all of one totem in each

+case, reside "at certain definite spots." So do the Urabunna believe,

+but at each of these spots, in Urabunna land, there may be spirits <i>of

+several different totems.</i><a name="FNanchor_5_68" id="FNanchor_5_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_68" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> Among the Urabunna, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous. None of these four conditions, nor all of them, can

+produce the Arunta totemic non-exogamy.</p>

+

+<p>Finally (5) the Arunta and Kaitish, and they alone, believe not only

+that the spirits desiring reincarnation reside at certain definite

+spots, and not only that the spirits there are, in each case, <i>all

+of one totem</i> (which is essential), but also that these spirits are

+most closely associated with objects of stone, inscribed with archaic

+markings (<i>churinga nanja</i>), which the spirits have dropped in these

+places&mdash;the scenes where the ancestors died (<i>Oknanikilla</i>). These

+stone objects, and this belief in their connection with ancestral

+spirits, are found in the Arunta region alone, and are the determining

+cause, or inseparable accident at least, of the non-exogamy of Arunta

+totemism, as will be fully explained later.</p>

+

+<p>Not one of these five conditions is reported by Mr. Howitt among

+the primitive south-eastern tribes, and the fifth is found only in

+Aruntadom. Yet Mr. Spencer regards as the earliest form of totemism

+extant that Arunta form, which requires four conditions, not found in

+the tribes of primitive organisation, and a fifth, which is peculiar to

+the Arunta "nation" alone.</p>

+

+<p>That the Arunta tribe, whether shut off from all others or not (as

+a matter of fact it is not), should alone (while advanced in all

+respects, including marriage and ceremonials) have retained a belief

+which, though called primitive, is unknown among primitive tribes,

+seems a singularly paradoxical hypothesis. Meanwhile the cause of the

+Arunta peculiarity&mdash;non-exogamous totems&mdash;is recognised by Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen, who also declare that the cause is isolated. They

+say "it is the idea of spirit individuals associated with <i>churinga</i>"

+(manufactured objects of stone), "and resident in certain definite

+spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the

+Arunta tribe."<a name="FNanchor_6_69" id="FNanchor_6_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_69" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>

+

+<p>Again, they inform us that the <i>churinga</i> belief, and the existence of

+stone <i>churinga</i>, are things isolated. "In the Worgaia tribe, which

+inhabits the country to the north-east of the Kaitish" (neighbours of

+the Arunta), "we meet, so far as we have been able to discover, with

+the last traces of the <i>churinga</i>&mdash;that is, of the <i>churinga</i> with its

+meaning and significance, as known to us in the true central tribes,

+as associated with the spirits of <i>Alcheringa</i> ancestors" (mythical

+beings, supposed to be constantly reincarnated).<a name="FNanchor_7_70" id="FNanchor_7_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_70" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Thus, "the present

+totemic system of the Arunta tribe,"&mdash;in which, contrary to universal

+rule, persons of the same totem may inter-marry&mdash;reposes on a belief

+associated with certain manufactured articles of stone, and neither the

+belief nor the stone objects are discovered beyond a certain limited

+region. It is proper to add that the regretted Mr. David Carnegie

+found, at Family Wells, in the desert of Central Australia, two stone

+objects, one plain, the other rudely marked with concentric circles,

+which resemble <i>churinga nanja</i>. He mentions two others found and

+thrown away by Colonel Warburton. The meaning or use of these objects

+was not ascertained.<a name="FNanchor_8_71" id="FNanchor_8_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_71" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>

+

+<p>We differ from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they think that

+this peculiar and isolated belief, held by four or five tribes of

+confessedly advanced social organisation and ceremonials (a belief only

+possible under advanced social organisation), is the pristine form of

+totemism, out of which all totemists, however primitive, have found

+their way except the Arunta "nation" alone. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+write: "... the only conclusion which it seems possible to arrive at

+is that in the more northern tribes" (which have no churinga nanja,

+no <i>stone</i> churinga), "the churinga represent the surviving relics of

+a time when the beliefs among those tribes were similar to those which

+now exist among the Arunta. It is more easy to imagine a change which

+shall lead from the present Arunta or Kaitish belief to that which

+exists among the Warramunga, than it is to imagine one which shall

+lead from the Warramunga to the Arunta."<a name="FNanchor_9_72" id="FNanchor_9_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_72" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Now among the Warramunga,

+as everywhere, the division of the totems between the two (exogamous)

+moieties is complete, "and, with very few exceptions indeed, the

+children follow the father."<a name="FNanchor_10_73" id="FNanchor_10_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_73" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> (These exceptions are not explained.)

+Among the Kaitish the same totems occur among both exogamous moieties,

+so persons of the same totem <i>can</i> intermarry, but "it is a very rare

+thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself."<a name="FNanchor_11_74" id="FNanchor_11_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_74" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

+

+<p>The obvious conclusion is the reverse of that which our authors think

+"alone possible." The Kaitish have adopted the Arunta <i>churinga nanja</i>

+usage which introduces the same totem into both exogamous moieties,

+but, unlike the Arunta, they have not yet discarded the old universal

+rule, "No marriage within the totem." It is not absolutely forbidden,

+but it scarcely ever occurs. The Kaitish, as regards exogamy and

+religion, are a link between the primitive south-eastern tribes and the

+Arunta.</p>

+

+<p>We go on to show in detail how Arunta totems alone ceased to be

+exogamous, and to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+been, and never can have been, in the present Arunta condition. Among

+the Arunta, in the classes, none of them his own, into which alone a

+man may marry, there are plenty of women of his own totem. Thus, in

+marrying a woman of his totem, but not of his set of classes, a man

+does not break the law of Arunta exogamy. Now how does it happen that a

+totem may be in both sets of exogamous classes among the Arunta alone

+of mankind? Was this always the case from the beginning?</p>

+

+<p>It is, naturally, our opinion that among the Arunta, as everywhere

+else, matters were originally, or not much later, so arranged that

+the same totem never appeared in both phratries, or, afterwards, when

+phratries were lost, in both opposed sets of two or four exogamous

+matrimonial classes. The only objection to this theory is that

+the Arunta themselves believe it, and mention the circumstance in

+their myths. These myths cannot be historical reminiscences of the

+"Dream-Time," which never existed. But even a myth may deviate into

+truth, especially as the Arunta must know that in other tribes the same

+totem never occurs in both phratries, and are clever enough to see that

+their method needs explanation as being an exception to general rule;

+and that, even now, "the great majority of any one totem belong to one

+moiety of the tribe." So they say that originally all Witchetty Grubs,

+for instance, were in the Bulthara-Panunga moiety (as most Grubs still

+are to this day), while all Emus were in the opposite exogamous moiety

+(Purula-Kumura). But, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "owing to the

+system according to which totem names are" (<i>now</i>) "acquired, it is

+always possible for a man to be, say, a Purula or a Kumura, and yet a

+Witchetty; or, on the other hand, a Bulthara or a Panunga, and yet an

+Emu."<a name="FNanchor_12_75" id="FNanchor_12_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_75" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The present system of acquiring totem names has transferred

+the totems into both exogamous moieties, and so has made it possible

+to marry within the totem name.</p>

+

+<p>This suggests that, in native opinion or conjecture, Arunta totems,

+like all others, were once exogamous; no totem ever occurred originally

+in both exogamous moieties. It also indicates that, in the opinion

+of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, they only ceased to be exogamous when

+the present method of acquiring totem names, an unique method, was

+introduced. Happily, to prove the historical worthlessness of Arunta

+legendary myth, the tribe has a contradictory legend. The same totem,

+according to this fable, occurred in both exogamous moieties, even

+in the mythic Dream-Time (<i>Alcheringa</i>); by this fable the natives

+explain (what needs explaining) how the same totem does occur in <i>both</i>

+exogamous moieties to-day, and so is not exogamous.<a name="FNanchor_13_76" id="FNanchor_13_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_76" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>

+

+<p>This is nonsense, just as the other contradictory myth was conjecture.

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have themselves explained why the same totem

+may <i>now</i> occur in both moieties, and so be non-exogamous. The unique

+phenomenon is due to the actual and unique method of acquiring totem

+names.<a name="FNanchor_14_77" id="FNanchor_14_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_77" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Thus the modern method is not primitive. These passages are

+very instructive.</p>

+

+<p>The Arunta have been so long in the relatively advanced state of

+<i>local</i> totemism that their myths do not look behind it. A group,

+whether stationary or migratory, in the myths of the Dream-Time (the

+<i>Alcheringa</i>) always consists of persons of the same totem, with

+occasional visitors of other totems. The myths, we repeat, reflect the

+present state of local totem groups back on the past.</p>

+

+<p>The myths allege (here the isolated superstition comes in) that

+the mythical ancestors of the <i>Alcheringa</i> died, or "went into the

+ground" at certain now haunted spots, marked by rocks or trees, which

+may be called "mortuary local totem-centres"&mdash;in native speech,

+<i>Oknanikilla</i><a name="FNanchor_15_78" id="FNanchor_15_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_78" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Trees or rocks arose to mark the spot where the

+ancestors, all of one totem in each case, went into the ground. These

+trees or rocks are called <i>Nanja</i>. Thereabouts the dying ancestors

+deposited possessions peculiar to Aruntadom, their stone amulets, or

+<i>churinga nanja</i>, with what are now read as totemic incised marks.

+Their spirits, all of one totem in each case, haunt the <i>Nanja</i> rock or

+tree, and are especially attached to these stone amulets,<a name="FNanchor_16_79" id="FNanchor_16_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_79" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> called

+<i>churinga nanja</i>. The spirits discarnate await a chance of entering

+into women, and being reborn. When a child comes to the birth, the

+mother, whatever her own or her husband's totem may be, names the

+spot where she supposes that she conceived the child, and the child's

+<i>Nanja</i> tree or rock is that in the <i>Oknanikilla</i>, or mortuary local

+totem-centre nearest to the place where the child was conceived. Its

+male kin hunt for the <i>churinga</i>, or stone amulet, there deposited

+by the dying <i>Alcheringa</i> ancestor; if they find it, it becomes the

+child's <i>churinga</i>, for he is merely the ancestor spirit reborn. He

+(or she) "comes into his own"; his <i>Nanja</i> tree or rock, his <i>churinga

+nanja</i>, and his original totem, which may be, and often is, neither

+that of his father or mother.</p>

+

+<p>Thus inheriting his own old <i>Nanja</i> tree and <i>churinga</i>, and totem,

+<i>the child is not necessarily of his father's or mothers but is of

+his own old original totem</i>, say Grub, or Hakea Flower, or Kangaroo,

+or Frog. His totem is thus not inherited, we repeat, as elsewhere,

+from either parent, but is derived, by the accident of his place of

+conception, from the <i>local</i> totem, from the totemic ghosts (all

+of one totem) haunting the particular mortuary totem centre, or

+<i>Oknanikilla</i>, where he was conceived. His totem may thus be in <i>both</i>

+of the exogamous moieties, and for that reason alone is not exogamous.

+To take an example. A woman, by totem Cat, has a husband by totem

+Iguana. She conceives a child, and believes that she conceived it in a

+certain district. The local totem of that district is the Grub, Grub

+ghosts haunt the region; the child, therefore, is a Grub. He inherits

+his exogamous class, say Bukhara, from his father, and he must marry

+a woman of Class Kumara. But she may also be a Grub, for her totem,

+like his, has been acquired (like his, not by inheritance, but) by the

+accident that her mother conceived her in a Grub district. Thus, and

+thus only, are totems not exogamous among the Arunta. They are not

+inherited from either parent.</p>

+

+<p>It is probable that, after male descent came in, the Arunta and Kaitish

+at first inherited their totems from their fathers, as among all other

+tribes with male descent. This appears to be proved by the fact that

+they still do inherit, from their fathers, totemic rites, and the power

+of doing totemic mummeries for their fathers' totems, even when, by

+the accident of their places of conception, they do not inherit their

+fathers' totems. When they did inherit the paternal totem, they were,

+doubtless, totemically exogamous, like all other tribes with either

+male or female descent.</p>

+

+<p>One simple argument upsets the claim of Arunta totems to be primitive.

+In no tribe with female descent can a district have its <i>local</i> totem,

+as among the Arunta. A district can only have a local totem if the

+majority of the living people, and of the haunting ghosts of the

+dead, are of one totem only. But this (setting aside the occasional

+results of an isolated Urabunna superstition) can only occur under male

+reckoning of descent, which confessedly is not primitive. In a region

+where reckoning in the female line exists a woman could not say, "I

+conceived my child in Grub district, the country of totem Grub"&mdash;for

+such a country there is not and cannot be. Consequently, among the

+Urabunna as everywhere with reckoning of descent in the female line,

+every child is of its mother's totem.</p>

+

+<p>Let us examine other tribes who, like the Arunta, have the theory of

+reincarnation, but whose totems are, as elsewhere, exogamous, unlike

+those of the Arunta. The Urabunna have female descent, and their myth

+about the origin of totemic ancestors approximates to that of the

+Arunta, but, unlike the Arunta fable, does not produce, or account

+for, non-exogamy in totems. Things began, say the Urabunna, by the

+appearance of a few creatures half human, half bestial or vegetable.

+They had miraculous powers, and dropped spirits which tenanted lizards,

+snakes, and so on, all over the district. These spirits later became

+incarnated in human beings of the Lizard, Snake, or other totem, and

+are constantly being reincarnated. The two Urabunna phratries were

+originally a green and a brown snake: the Green Snake said to the

+Brown Snake, "I am Kirarawa, you are Matthurie"&mdash;the phratry names.

+It does not appear that these names now mean Green Snake and Brown

+Snake, though they may once have had these significations. The spirits

+left about by these snakes, like all the other such spirits (<i>mai

+aurli</i>) keep on being incarnated, and, when incarnated, the children

+bear the totem name of their mothers in each case. A Green Snake

+woman is entered by a spirit, which she bears as a Green Snake child.

+The accident of the locality in which the child was conceived does

+not affect his totem, so Urabunna totems remain in their own proper

+phratries, and therefore, by phratry law, are exogamous, as everywhere,

+except among the Arunta.<a name="FNanchor_17_80" id="FNanchor_17_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_80" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>

+

+<p>This arrangement is merely the usual arrangement, with female descent A

+woman's child is of the woman's totem. Believing in reincarnation, the

+Urabunna merely adapt that belief to the facts. With female descent an

+Emu woman's child is Emu. If a tribe has male descent, an Emu father's

+child is Emu. With female descent, a spirit has entered an Emu woman

+and been born Emu: with male descent, a spirit has entered the wife of

+an Emu man, and, by inheritance from his father, is Emu. Yet Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen think that the Arunta and Kaitish rule&mdash;demanding

+the non-primitive male descent, local groups, local ghosts all of one

+totem, and <i>churinga</i> stones of the mark of that totem (all of which

+are indispensable), "is probably the simplest and most primitive."<a name="FNanchor_18_81" id="FNanchor_18_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_81" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>

+

+<p>Most primitive, by our author's own statement, the Arunta method cannot

+be, for, as they show, it demands male descent, local totemism, and the

+peculiar belief about manufactured stone <i>churinga</i>. But they think it

+"most simple," because the Urabunna have a complicated myth, which,

+however, in no way affects the result, namely, that each child takes

+its mother's totem. Each spirit, according to the myth, changes its

+phratry and sex, and, necessarily, its totem, at each reincarnation,

+but that does not affect the result. Each child, as in all tribes with

+female descent, is still of its mother's totem.<a name="FNanchor_19_82" id="FNanchor_19_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_82" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> No <i>churinga nanja</i>

+cause an anomaly among the Urabunna, for the <i>churinga nanja</i>, and the

+belief about them, among the Urabunna do not exist.</p>

+

+<p>The Urabunna myth, adapted to male descent, occurs in all the northern

+tribes, from the northern bounds of the Kaitish to the sea, which have

+no stone <i>churinga nanja</i>; and in all of them totems are exogamous,

+because they never occur in both phratries, being uninfluenced by the

+Arunta <i>churinga</i> belief. They cannot, for they are duly inherited

+from the father, and they are so inherited because the tribes have not

+the exceptional <i>Churinga Nanja</i> creed, attaching the spirit to the

+amulet of a local totem group, which fixes&mdash;by the accident of place of

+conception&mdash;the totem of each child.</p>

+

+<p>The Arunta non-exogamous totems, in Australia, as we saw, are only

+found where <i>stone churinga nanja</i> are in use; these amulets being

+peculiarly the residence of the spirits of totemic ancestors.</p>

+

+<p>The origin of that belief is obscure. It could not arise in the

+present condition of Arunta or Kaitish affairs, for, now, every stone

+<i>churinga</i> in the tribe has already its recognised legal owner, and,

+on the death of an owner, or the extinction of a local totem group,

+the <i>churinga</i> are not left lying about to be found on or in the

+earth, but pass by a definite rule of inheritance; and they are all

+carefully warded and frequently examined, in Ertnatu-lunga, or sacred

+storehouses.<a name="FNanchor_20_83" id="FNanchor_20_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_83" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Thus stone <i>churinga nanja</i>, to-day, are not left

+lying about on the surface, or buried in graves, like those which, on

+the birth of each Arunta child, are sought for, and sometimes found, at

+the local totem-centre, and near the <i>Nanja</i> tree or rock, where the

+child was conceived. There <i>churinga nanja</i> must have been <i>buried</i>,

+of old, if our authors correctly say that the mythical ancestors "went

+into the ground, each carrying his <i>churinga</i> with him."<a name="FNanchor_21_84" id="FNanchor_21_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_84" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> Again we

+read, "Many of the <i>churinga</i> were placed <i>in</i> the ground, some natural

+object again marking the spot." The spot was always marked by some

+natural object, such as a tree or rock.<a name="FNanchor_22_85" id="FNanchor_22_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_85" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>

+

+<p>Though our authors tell us that they know Arunta natives who, on the

+birth of a child, have sought for and found his <i>churinga nanja</i> near

+the <i>Nanja</i> rock or tree next to the place where he was conceived, they

+do not say that the <i>churinga</i> are found by digging.<a name="FNanchor_23_86" id="FNanchor_23_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_86" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> If they are,

+or if the <i>Oknanikilla</i> really are ancient burying-places (about which

+we are told nothing), the association of the <i>churinga nanja</i> with the

+ghost of the man in whose grave it is buried would be easily explained.

+But the impression left is that the stone <i>churinga nanja</i> found after

+search are discovered on the surface, dropped there by the spirit when

+about to be reincarnated.<a name="FNanchor_24_87" id="FNanchor_24_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_87" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>

+

+<p>Here a curious fact may be filed for reference. Stone amulets,

+fashioned and decorated by man, are not known to be in use south of

+the Arunta region. But a cousin of my own, Mr. William Lang, found a

+stone object not unlike one figured by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,

+on his station near Cooma, New South Wales. The decoration was of

+the rectilineal type prevalent in that region. Mr. Lang knew nothing

+of the Arunta <i>churinga</i> till I drew his attention to the subject.

+He then visited the Sydney Museum, and found several stone objects,

+"banana-shaped," exactly like the specimen (wooden?), one out of five

+known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and published by them in their

+first work (p. 150). The New South Wales ornament, however, was always

+rectilineal. The articles appear to be obsolete among the tribes of

+New South Wales. It is said that they were erected of old round graves

+of the dead. Whites call them "grave stones." Careful articles on

+these decorated stone objects of New South Wales have been written by

+Mr. W. R. Harper and Mr. Graham Officer.<a name="FNanchor_25_88" id="FNanchor_25_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_88" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> As a rule, they are not

+banana-shaped or crescentine, but are in the form of enormous stone

+cigars. They used to be placed, twelve or thirteen of them, on graves,

+and their weight, averaging about 3 lbs. to 4 lbs., makes them less

+portable than most of the <i>churinga</i> of the Arunta. It does not seem

+at all probable that Arunta stone <i>churinga</i> were ever erected round

+graves, but excavations at <i>Oknanikilla</i>, if they could be executed

+without a shock to Arunta sentiment, might throw some light on the

+subject.</p>

+

+<p>In my opinion, the <i>churinga</i> found at <i>Oknanikilla</i> by the Arunta may

+have had no such original significance as is now attached to them. The

+belief may be a mere myth, explaining the sense of objects found and

+not understood&mdash;relics, as the myth itself avers, of an earlier race,

+the <i>Alcheringa</i> folk. The only information about those New South Wales

+decorated cigar-shaped and banana-shaped stone objects which could be

+got out of a local black was: "All same as bloody brand." He meant,

+conceivably, that the incised markings were totem marks, I think, and

+in that sense the marks on Arunta stone <i>churinga</i> are now interpreted.</p>

+

+<p>It would not be surprising if the Arunta&mdash;supposing that they possessed

+the belief in "spirit trees," and the belief in reincarnation, and then

+found, near the <i>Nanja</i> trees or rocks, the stone amulets or "grave

+stones" of some earlier occupants of the region&mdash;evolved the myth that

+ancestral souls, connected with the spirit trees, abode especially

+in these decorated stones, common enough in American and European

+neolithic sites.</p>

+

+<p>This is, of course, a mere conjecture. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+agree with us when they say: "It is this idea of spirit individuals

+associated with <i>churinga</i>, and resident in certain definite spots,

+that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta

+tribes."<a name="FNanchor_26_89" id="FNanchor_26_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_89" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>

+

+<p>Three facts are now apparent. The Arunta (i) must have reckoned in

+the male line for a very long time, otherwise their myths would not

+take local totem-centres for granted as a primeval fact, since such

+centres can only occur and exist under male reckoning of descent; in

+cases where the husbands do not go to the wives' region of abode. (2)

+The myth that totemic <i>local</i> ghosts are reincarnated cannot be older

+than <i>local</i> totem-centres, for it is their old local totem-centres

+that the totemic ghosts do haunt. The spots are strewn with their old

+totem-marked <i>churinga</i>. The myths make the wandering groups of fabled

+ancestors all of one totem, because, by male reckoning, they could be

+little else till the <i>churinga</i> superstition arose and scattered totems

+about at random in the population.</p>

+

+<p>Again, (3) even local totemism, <i>plus</i> the belief in the reincarnation

+of primary ancestral spirits, did not produce the non-exogamy of

+totems, till it was reinforced by the unique Arunta belief in the stone

+<i>churinga nanja.</i></p>

+

+<p>The totemism of the Arunta, then, was originally like that of their

+neighbours, exogamous, till the stone <i>churinga nanja</i> became the

+centre of a myth which introduces the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties among the Arunta, where it has broken down the old exogamous

+totemic rule. Among the Kaitish, as we saw, the rule is still surviving

+in general practice.</p>

+

+<p>We now proceed to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+passed through the present Arunta state of belief and customary law.</p>

+

+<p>Suppose that the Arunta to-day dropped their <i>churinga nanja</i> belief,

+and allowed the totem name to be inherited through the father, as

+the right to work the ceremonies of the totem still is inherited by

+sons who do not inherit the totem itself. What would follow? Why,

+totems among the Arunta would still be non-exogamous, for the existing

+<i>churinga nanja</i> belief has brought the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties, and there they would remain, after they came to be inherited

+in the male line. In the same way, if the northern tribes had once

+been in the Arunta state of belief, their totems would still be in

+both exogamous moieties, and would not regulate marriage. But this is

+not the case. These tribes, therefore, have never been in the present

+Arunta condition. <i>Q.E.D</i>.</p>

+

+<p>The Arunta belief is, obviously, an elaboration of the belief in

+reincarnation, not held, as far as is known, by the Dieri, but held by

+the Urabunna, and by all tribes from the Urabunna northwards to the

+sea. Mr. Howitt does not mention the belief among the south-eastern

+tribes. But there is a kind of tendency towards it among the Euahlayi

+of north-west New South Wales, reported on by Mrs. Langloh Parker

+(MS.). This tribe reckons in the female line, has phratries, and uses

+the class names (four), but not the phratry names of the Kamilaroi.

+Each individual has a <i>Minngah tree</i> haunted by spirits unattached.

+Medicine men have <i>Minngah</i> rocks. These answer to the Arunta <i>Nanja</i>

+(Warramunga, <i>Mungai</i>) trees and rocks in mortuary local totem-centres.

+But the <i>Minngah</i>-tree spirits do not seek reincarnation. Only spirits

+of persons dying young, before initiation, are reincarnated. Fresh

+souls for new bodies are made by the Crow and the Moon. These spirits,

+when "made," hang in the boughs of the <i>coolabah</i> tree only, not round

+<i>Minngah</i> trees or rocks.</p>

+

+<p>I think it possible, or even probable, that ideas like those of the

+Euahlayi exist among the southern Arunta and elsewhere. Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen give a Kaitish myth of two men "who arose from <i>churinga</i>,"

+and heard Atnatu (the Kaitish sky-dwelling being, the father of some

+men) making, in the sky, a noise with his <i>churinga</i> (the wooden bull

+roarer).<a name="FNanchor_27_90" id="FNanchor_27_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_90" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> Now, I have seen the statement, on which I lay no stress,

+that in extreme south-west Aruntadom a sky-dwelling Emu-footed being

+lost two stone <i>churinga</i>. Out of one sprang a man, out of the other a

+woman. They had offspring, "but not by begetting."</p>

+

+<p>Among the tribes with the reincarnation belief connubial relations

+are supposed only to "prepare the mother for the reception and birth

+also of an already formed spirit child."<a name="FNanchor_28_91" id="FNanchor_28_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_91" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> This apparent ignorance

+of physical facts, not found among the south-eastern tribes, is a

+corollary from the reincarnation belief, or from the other belief that

+spirit children are "made" by some non-human being. (Cf. Chapter XI.)</p>

+

+<p>To continue with the statement as to the southern Arunta, the

+sky-dwelling being "has laid germs of the little boys in the mistletoe

+branches, germs of little girls among the split stones ... such a germ

+of a child enters a woman by the hip." Now among the Euahlayi, when the

+spirit children made by the Crow and the Moon are weary of waiting to

+be reincarnated, they are changed into mistletoe branches.</p>

+

+<p>I do not insist on the alleged sky-dwelling being of these Arunta, for

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (in their two books) have not found him,

+and Mr. Howitt thinks that his name arises from a misunderstanding.

+Kempe, a missionary of 1883, speaks of "Altjira, 'god,' who gives the

+children."<a name="FNanchor_29_92" id="FNanchor_29_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_92" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> Altjira, "god," may be a mistake, based on the root of

+<i>Alcheringa</i> or <i>Altjiringa</i>, "dream." On the other hand, Mr. Gillen

+himself credits the Arunta with a belief in a sky-dwelling being, and

+with a creed incompatible with the faith in reincarnation, as, in tins

+Anunta myth, human souls are not reincarnated. This information we

+quote.</p>

+

+<p style="font-size: 0.8em;">"ULTHAANA</p>

+

+<p>"The sky is said to be inhabited by three persons, a gigantic man with

+an immense foot shaped like that of an emu, a woman, and a child who

+never develops beyond childhood. The man is called Ulthaana, meaning

+'spirit.' When a native dies his spirit is said to ascend to the

+home of the great Ulthaana, where it remains for a short time; the

+Ulthaana then throws it into the Saltwater (sea) [these natives have

+no personal knowledge of the sea], from whence it is rescued by two

+benevolent but lesser Ulthaana who perpetually reside on the seashore,

+apparently merely for the purpose of rescuing spirits who have been

+subject to the inhospitable treatment of the great Ulthaana of the

+heavens (alkirra). Henceforth the spirit of the dead man lives with the

+lesser Ulthaana."<a name="FNanchor_30_93" id="FNanchor_30_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_93" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>

+

+<p>Is it possible that Mr. Gillen's "Great Ulthaana

+of the Heavens, alkirra," is Kempe's Altjira? Or can he be a native

+modification of Kempe's own theology? Probably not.</p>

+

+<p>In any case the Arunta of Mr. Gillen who do not believe in

+reincarnation cannot possibly, it would seem, possess the Arunta form

+of totemism. It is only natural that varieties of myth and belief

+should exist, and it is asserted that there is a myth among the Arunta

+of the extreme south-west section about a sky-dwelling being, who,

+like the Crow and the Moon of Euahlayi belief, makes spirit children,

+and places them in the mistletoe boughs. The story that the first man

+and woman sprang from two of this being's lost <i>churinga</i>, again, is

+matched by the Kaitish story of two men who rose from <i>churinga</i>. The

+Arunta described by Mr. Gillen, they whose souls dwell with "the lesser

+Ulthaana," no more believe in reincarnation than do the south-eastern

+tribes. These variants in belief and myth usually occur among savages.</p>

+

+<p>The Arunta add to the reincarnation myth, the peculiarity of mortuary

+local totem-centres, and of the attachment of the spirit to a stone

+<i>churinga</i> inscribed with the marks of that totem, and from these

+peculiar ideas&mdash;as much isolated as the peculiar ideas of the Urabunna

+or the Euahlayi&mdash;arises the non-exogamous character of Arunta totemism.

+No <i>one</i>, out of such varying freaks of belief, can be regarded as

+primitive, more than another, but the Arunta variant, for the reason

+repeatedly given, cannot possibly be primitive.</p>

+

+<p>The Arunta totems are not only non-exogamous: their actual <i>raison

+d'être</i>, to-day, is to exist as the objects of magical co-operative

+societies, fostering the totem plants and animals as articles of tribal

+food supply. Mr. Spencer thinks this the primary purpose of totem

+societies, everywhere. Now we have not, as yet, been told <i>why</i> each

+society took to doing magic for this or that animal or other thing in

+nature. They cannot have been "charged with" this duty, except by some

+central authority. As there did not yet exist, by the hypothesis, so

+much as a tribe with phratries, what can this central authority have

+been? If it existed, on what principle did it select, out of the horde,

+groups to become magical societies? Were they groups of kin, or groups

+of associates by contiguity? On what principle could the choice of

+departments of nature to be controlled by each group, be determined

+by the central authority? Had the groups already distinguishing

+names&mdash;Emu, Eagle Hawk, Opossum, &amp;c.&mdash;how did these names arise, and

+did these names determine the department of nature for which each

+group was allotted to do magic? Or did authority give to each group a

+magical department, and did the nature of that department determine the

+group-name, such as Frogs, Grubs, Hakea Trees?</p>

+

+<p>Or was there no formal distribution, no sudden organisation, no central

+authority? Did a casual knot of men, or a firm of wizards, say, "Let

+<i>us</i> do magic for the Kangaroo, and get more Kangaroos to eat"? Was

+their success so great and enviable that other casual knots of men or

+firms of wizards followed their example? And, in this case, why do

+Arunta totemists not eat their totems freely? Is it because they think

+that to do so would frighten the totems, and make them recalcitrant

+to their magic? But that cannot be the case if their success, while

+they worked their magic on their own account, was great, enviable, and

+generally imitated. And, if it was not, why was it imitated? Next,

+how, among the magical societies, was exogamy introduced? Mr. Spencer

+writes: "Our knowledge of the natives leads us to the opinion that

+this really took place; that the exogamic groups were deliberately

+introduced <i>so as to regulate marital regulations</i>." This was, then, a

+Marriage Reform Act. However, Mr. Spencer hastens to add that he cannot

+conceive a motive for the Marriage Reform Act. "We do not mean that

+the regulations had anything whatever to do with the idea of incest,

+or of any harm accruing from the union of individuals who were regarded

+as too nearly related."<a name="FNanchor_31_94" id="FNanchor_31_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_94" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>

+

+<p>We have shown that no such ideas could occur to the supposed

+promiscuous horde, who knew not that there is such a thing as

+procreation, but supposed that, like the stars in Caliban's philosophy,

+children "came otherwise." Yet the "exogamic system" does nothing

+but prohibit certain marriages, and "it is quite possible that the

+exogamic groups were deliberately introduced so as to regulate marital

+relations."<a name="FNanchor_32_95" id="FNanchor_32_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_95" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>

+

+<p>Mr. Spencer's theory is, then, that there was a horde with magical

+totemic societies, how evolved we cannot guess. Across that came the

+arrangement of classes to regulate marriage, as it does, but the

+ancestors who possibly introduced it had, he says, no idea that there

+was any moral or material harm in unregulated marriages. Then why did

+they regulate them?</p>

+

+<p>The hypothetical horde of the kind which we have described had no

+<i>marriage</i> relations, and had no possible reason for regulating

+intersexual relations.</p>

+

+<p>It is true that reformatory movements in marriage law are actually

+being purposefully introduced, among tribes which, possessing

+already such laws, of unknown origin, to reform, have deduced from

+these laws themselves that there is a right and wrong in matters of

+sex. Certainly, too, much of savage marriage law is of ancient and

+purposeful institution. But the question is, not how moral laws, once

+developed, might be improved; but how a tabu law against sexual

+relations between near kin could even be so much as dreamed of by

+members of a communal horde, who bad do idea of kin, and could not

+possibly tell who was akin to whom. <i>Ce n'est que le premier pas qui

+coûte!</i> We must account for <i>le premier pas</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Again, the <i>Intichiuma</i>, or co-operative totemic magic, of the

+Arunta, regarded by our authors as "primary," is nowhere reported of

+the tribes of the south and east. Mr. Howitt asserts its absence.

+The lack of record, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "is no proof

+that these ceremonies did not exist" If they did, bow could they

+escape the knowledge of Mr. Howitt, an initiated man?<a name="FNanchor_33_96" id="FNanchor_33_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_96" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> As a fact,

+when you leave the centre, and reach the <i>north</i> sea-coast, totemic

+magic dwindles, and nearly disappears. Among the coast tribes of

+the north, the <i>Intichiuma</i> magic is "very slightly developed." Its

+faint existence is "doubtless to be associated with the fact that

+they inhabit country where the food supply and general conditions of

+life are more favourable than in the central area of the continent

+which is the home of these ceremonies." But surely the regions of

+the south and east, where there is no <i>Intichiuma</i>, are also better

+in supply and general conditions than the centre. Why then should

+the apparent absence of <i>Intichiuma</i> in the south and east be due to

+want of observation and record, while the "very slight development"

+of <i>Intichiuma</i> on the north coast is otherwise explained, namely, by

+conditions&mdash;which also exist in the south!</p>

+

+<p>Moreover, co-operative and totemic magic is most elaborately organised

+among the Sioux, Dakotah, Omaha, and other American tribes, where

+supplies are infinitely better than in any part of Australia,<a name="FNanchor_34_97" id="FNanchor_34_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_97" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>

+and agriculture has there, as in Europe, a copious magic. Magic, as

+a well-known fact, is most and best organised in the most advanced

+non-scientific societies. In Australia it is most organised in the

+centre, and dwindles as you move either north, south, or east. This

+implies that, socially, the centre is in this respect most advanced and

+least primitive; while magic, partly totemic, is highly organised in

+the much more prosperous islands of the Torres Straits, and in America.</p>

+

+<p>It is true that Collins (1798), a very early observer, saw east-coast

+natives performing ceremonies connected with Kangaroos, in one of which

+a Kangaroo hunt was imitated. Collins believed that this was imitative

+magic of a familiar kind, done to secure success in the chase. In

+<i>Magic and Religion</i>, p. 100, I express the same opinion. But Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen write, as to the magic observed by Collins, "There

+can be little doubt but that these ceremonies, so closely similar

+in their nature to those now performed by the central natives, were

+totemic in their origin"&mdash;they may be regarded as "clear evidence of

+the existence of these totemic ceremonies ... in a tribe living right

+on the eastern coast."<a name="FNanchor_35_98" id="FNanchor_35_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_98" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>

+

+<p>Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe

+(i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of

+grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of <i>totemic</i>

+ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance,

+not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the

+number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and

+to do <i>that</i> is the aim of the <i>Intichiuma</i>.<a name="FNanchor_36_99" id="FNanchor_36_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_99" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> The hunt dances

+seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation

+ceremony.<a name="FNanchor_37_100" id="FNanchor_37_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_100" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> In the Emu <i>Intichiuma</i> of the Arunta the Emus are

+represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed

+to see the imitators of the fowls.<a name="FNanchor_38_101" id="FNanchor_38_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_101" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> The ceremonies reported by

+Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course

+were not allowed to see."<a name="FNanchor_39_102" id="FNanchor_39_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_102" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>

+

+<p>Apparently we have <i>not</i> "clear evidence" that Collins saw

+<i>Intichiuma</i>, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr.

+Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.</p>

+

+<p>It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to

+believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain

+animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact,

+we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes

+outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice

+most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America

+and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of

+supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development

+of <i>Intichiuma</i> on the north coast of Australia.</p>

+

+<p>I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of

+the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The

+country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many

+ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months,

+while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting

+which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and

+bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does

+Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names,

+deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the

+belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names

+had a special <i>rapport</i> with the name-giving animals or plants. This

+<i>rapport</i> was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and

+for the good of the tribe, which is singularly <i>solidaire</i>.</p>

+

+<p>We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions

+cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism

+of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat

+our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly

+<i>late</i> system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other

+northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and

+nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties,

+denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing

+to the isolated belief in reincarnation of <i>local</i> ghosts, attached

+to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere,

+by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because

+of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem,

+does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites.

+Totemism is thus <i>en pleine décadence</i> among the Arunta, from whom,

+consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.</p>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+<p class="caption">NOTE</p>

+<p>The Arunta legends of the <i>Alcheringa</i> usually describe

+the various wandering groups, all, in each case, of one

+totem, as living exclusively for long periods on their own

+totems, plants, or animals. This cannot be historically

+true; many plants, and such animals as grubs, are in

+season for but a brief time. On the other hand, we meet a

+legend of women of the Quail totem who lived exclusively,

+not on quails, but on grass seeds.<a name="FNanchor_40_103" id="FNanchor_40_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_103" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> Again, in only one

+case are men of the <i>Achilpa</i>, or Wild Cat totem, said

+to have eaten anything, and what they ate was the Hakea

+flower. Later they became Plum men, <i>Ulpmerka</i>, but are

+not said to have eaten plums. In a note (Note I, p. 219)

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that "Wild Cat men are

+represented constantly as feeding on plums." They are

+never said to have eaten their own totem, the Wild Cat,

+which is forbidden to all Arunta, though old men may

+eat a little of it Reasons, not totemic, are given for

+the avoidance.<a name="FNanchor_41_104" id="FNanchor_41_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_104" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> We are not told anything about the

+<i>Intichiuma</i> or magical rites for the increase of the Wild

+Cat, which is not eaten. Are they performed by men of the

+Wild Cat totem? The old men of the totem might eat very

+sparingly of the Wild Cat, at their <i>Intichiuma</i>, but

+certainly the members of other totems who were present

+would not eat at all. The use of a Wild Cat <i>Intichiuma</i>

+is not obvious: there is no desire to propagate the animal

+as an article of food.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_64" id="Footnote_1_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_64"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, xii. p. 497. Cf. Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia, PP. 173, 174.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_65" id="Footnote_2_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_65"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> I neglected to observe this important passage when

+reviewing Mr. Howitt's ideas in <i>Social Origins</i>.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_66" id="Footnote_3_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_66"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, N.S., i. pp. 284, 285.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_67" id="Footnote_4_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_67"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Folk Lore</i>, December 1904, p. 473. For Mr. Spencer's

+assertion that the Aninta social type is advanced, see <i>Central

+Tribes</i>; cf. p. 211. For the probable advanced and relatively recent

+character of their initiatory ceremonies, see <i>Central Tribes</i>, p. 217;

+<i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 329.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_68" id="Footnote_5_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_68"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 147.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_69" id="Footnote_6_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_69"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Central Tribes</i>, p. 123.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_70" id="Footnote_7_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_70"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 274.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_71" id="Footnote_8_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_71"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1898, pp. 20, 21.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_72" id="Footnote_9_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_72"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 281.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_73" id="Footnote_10_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_73"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Ibid., p. 175.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_74" id="Footnote_11_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_74"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Ibid.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_75" id="Footnote_12_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_75"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Central Tribes</i>, pp. 125, 126.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_76" id="Footnote_13_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_76"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. 151, 152.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_77" id="Footnote_14_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_77"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Central Tribes</i>, pp. 125, 126.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_78" id="Footnote_15_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_78"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Central Tribes</i>, p. 123.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_79" id="Footnote_16_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_79"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Ibid., p. 150. Figures of the objects are given.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_80" id="Footnote_17_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_80"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. 145-148.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_81" id="Footnote_18_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_81"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Ibid., p. 174.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_82" id="Footnote_19_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_82"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. 146, 149.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_83" id="Footnote_20_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_83"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Central Tribes</i>, pp. 153-155.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_84" id="Footnote_21_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_84"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Central Tribes</i>, p. 123.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_85" id="Footnote_22_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_85"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Op. cit</i>., p. 124.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_86" id="Footnote_23_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_86"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Op. cit</i>., p. 132.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_24_87" id="Footnote_24_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_87"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> The <i>churinga</i> here spoken of are a kind of stone

+amulets, of very various shapes, marked with such archaic patterns of

+cups, concentric circles or half circles, and other devices as are

+found on rock surfaces in our islands, in India, and generally all over

+the world, as in New Caledonia. The same marks occur on small plaques

+of slate or schist, in Portuguese neolithic sites, in palæolithic

+sites, and in Scotland, where Dr. Munro regards them as not of genuine

+antiquity. See <i>Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia</i>, Gongora y

+Martinez, Madrid, 1868, p. 109; <i>Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve</i>,

+vol. ii. pp. 429-462, Estacio da Veiga, Lisbon, 1887; <i>Portugalia</i>, i.

+Part IV., Severo and Brenha, 1903; <i>Magic and Religion</i> (A. L.), pp.

+246-256, 1901. For a palæolithic bone object, exactly like an Arunta

+<i>churinga</i>, see Hoernes, <i>Der Diluviale Mensch in Europa</i>, p. 138,

+1903. It does not follow, of course, that these objects in Europe were

+ever connected with a belief like that of the Arunta. The things were

+probably talismans of one sort or another.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_25_88" id="Footnote_25_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_88"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Proceedings</i>, Linnaean Society of New South Wales, 1898,

+vol. xxiii. part 3, and vol. xxvi. p. 238.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_26_89" id="Footnote_26_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_89"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Op. cit</i>., p. 123.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_27_90" id="Footnote_27_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_90"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. 272, 373.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_28_91" id="Footnote_28_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_91"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Central Tribes</i>, p. 265.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_29_92" id="Footnote_29_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_92"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Geographical Society of Halle, <i>Proceedings</i>, 1883, p.

+53.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_30_93" id="Footnote_30_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_93"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Notes on Some Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of

+the <i>McDonnell Ranges</i>, belonging to the <i>Arunta Tribe</i>. Gillen, <i>Horn

+Expedition</i>, iv. p. 183.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_31_94" id="Footnote_31_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_94"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, N.S., p. 278.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_32_95" id="Footnote_32_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_95"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Ibid., i. pp. 284, 285. Dr. Roth has conjectured that

+phratries were introduced "by a process of natural selection" to

+regulate the food supply. But how did they come to regulate marriage?

+(<i>Aborigines of North-West Central Queensland</i>, pp. 69, 70.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_33_96" id="Footnote_33_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_96"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> See <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. xiii, xiv, 173.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_34_97" id="Footnote_34_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_97"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Dorsey, <i>Omaha Sociology. Siouan Cults. Bureau of

+Ethnology</i>, 1881-1882, pp. 238, 239; 1889-1890, p. 537. Frazer,

+<i>Totemism</i>, p. 24. For Torres Islands, <i>J. A. I.</i>, N.S., i. pp. 5-17.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_35_98" id="Footnote_35_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_98"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. 224, 225.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_36_99" id="Footnote_36_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_99"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, p. 169.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_37_100" id="Footnote_37_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_100"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Natives of South-East Australia</i>, p. 545.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_38_101" id="Footnote_38_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_101"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, pp. 182, 183.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_39_102" id="Footnote_39_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_102"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 225.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_40_103" id="Footnote_40_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_103"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of Central Australia</i>, p. 417.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_41_104" id="Footnote_41_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_104"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Ibid., p. 168.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V</a></h4>

+

+<h3>THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM</h3>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>Theories of Dr. Durkheim&mdash;Was man originally

+promiscuous?&mdash;Difficulty of ascertaining Dr. Durkheim's

+opinion&mdash;Apparent contradictions&mdash;Origin of totemism&mdash;A

+horde, which did not prohibit incest, splits into two

+"primary clans"&mdash;These are hostile&mdash;Each has an animal

+god, and its members are of the blood of the god,

+consubstantial with him&mdash;Therefore may not intermarry

+within his blood&mdash;Hence exogamy&mdash;These gods, or totems,

+"cannot be changed at will"&mdash;Questions as to how these

+beliefs arise&mdash;Why does the united horde choose different

+gods?&mdash;Why only two such gods?&mdash;Uncertainty as to whether

+Dr. Durkheim believes in the incestuous horde&mdash;Theory of

+"collective marriage," a "last resource"&mdash;The "primary

+clans" said to have "no territorial basis"&mdash;Later it

+is assumed that they do have territorial bases&mdash;Which

+they overpopulate&mdash;Colonies sent forth&mdash;These take new

+totems&mdash;Proof that an exogamous "clan" has no territorial

+basis&mdash;And cannot send out "clan" colonies&mdash;Colonies

+can only be <i>tribal</i>&mdash;No proof that a "clan" ever

+does change its totem&mdash;Dr. Durkheim's defence of

+one of his apparent inconsistencies&mdash;Reply to his

+defence&mdash;Mr. Frazer's theory (1887) that a totemic "clan"

+throws off other clans of new totems, and becomes a

+phratry&mdash;Objections to this theory&mdash;The facts are opposed

+to it&mdash;Examples&mdash;Recapitulation&mdash;Eight objections to Dr.

+Durkheim's theory.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>Dr. Durkheim, Professor of Sociology in the University of Bordeaux,

+has displayed much acuteness in his destructive analysis of the Arunta

+claims to possess a primitive form of totemism.<a name="FNanchor_1_105" id="FNanchor_1_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_105" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> He has also given

+the fullest and most original explanation of the reason why, granting

+that groups of early men had each a special regard for a particular

+animal or plant, whose name they bore, they tabooed marriage within

+that name.<a name="FNanchor_2_106" id="FNanchor_2_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_106" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

+

+<p>With these and other merits the system of Dr. Durkheim, as unfolded at

+intervals in his periodical (<i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, 1898-1904), has,

+I shall try to show, certain drawbacks, at least as we possess it at

+present, for it has not yet appeared in the form of a book. As to the

+point which in this discussion we have taken first, throughout, it is

+not easy to be certain about the Professor's exact opinion. What was

+the condition of human society <i>before</i> totemic exogamy was evolved?

+Dr. Durkheim writes, "Many facts tend to prove that, at the beginning

+of societies of men, incest was not forbidden. Nothing authorises us

+to suppose that incest was prohibited before each horde (<i>peuplade</i>)

+divided itself into two primitive 'clans,' at least" (namely, what we

+now call "phratries"), "for the first form of the prohibition known to

+us, exogamy, everywhere appears as correlative to this organisation,

+and certainly this is not primitive. Society must have formed a compact

+and undivided mass before bisecting itself into two distinct groups,

+and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature" (of relationships)

+"confirm this hypothesis."<a name="FNanchor_3_107" id="FNanchor_3_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_107" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>

+

+<p>So far this is the ordinary theory. An undivided promiscuous horde,

+for reasons of moral reformation, or any other reason, splits itself

+into two exogamous "clans," or germs of the phratries. These, when they

+cease to be hostile (as they were on Dr. Durkheim's but not on Mr.

+Howitt's theory), peacefully intermarry, and become the phratries in a

+local tribe.</p>

+

+<p>Why did the supposed compact horde thus divide itself into two distinct

+hostile "clans," each, on Dr. Durkheim's theory, claiming descent from

+a different animal, the totem of each "clan"? Why were two bodies in

+the same horde claiming two different animal ancestors? Why were the

+two divisions in a common horde mutually hostile? That they <i>were</i>

+originally hostile appears when our author says that, at a given stage

+of advance, "the different totemic groups were <i>no longer</i> strangers or

+enemies, one of the other."<a name="FNanchor_4_108" id="FNanchor_4_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_108" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Marriages, at this early period, must

+necessarily have been made by warlike capture, for the two groups were

+hostile, were exogamous, and, being hostile, would not barter brides

+peacefully. Women, therefore, we take it, could only be obtained for

+each group by acts of war. "Ages passed before the exchange of women

+became peaceful and regular. What vendettas, what bloodshed, what

+laborious negotiations were for long the result of this <i>régime</i>!"<a name="FNanchor_5_109" id="FNanchor_5_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_109" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>

+

+<p>But why were they exogamous, these two primary groups formed by the

+bisection of a previously undivided incestuous horde? Why could not

+each of the two groups marry its own women? There must have been a time

+when they were not exogamous, and could marry their own women, for

+they were only exogamous, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, because they were

+totemic, and they did not begin by being totemic. The totem, says Dr.

+Durkheim, in explanation of exogamy, is a "god" who is in each member

+of his group while they are in him. He is blood of their blood and soul

+of their soul.<a name="FNanchor_6_110" id="FNanchor_6_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_110" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> This being so&mdash;as it is wrong to shed the blood of

+our kindred&mdash;a man of totem Emu, say, may not marry a maid of, say,

+totem Emu; he must seek a bride from the only other group apparently

+at this stage accessible, that is a maid of, say, totem Kangaroo.

+Presently all Kangaroos of a generation must have been Emus by female

+descent; all Emus, Kangaroos; for the names were inherited through

+women. The clans were thus inextricably blended, and neither had a

+separate territory, a point to be remembered.</p>

+

+<p>Manifestly the strange superstitious metaphysics of totemism must have

+occupied a long time in evolution. The sacredness of the totem is the

+result of a primitive "religiosity," Dr. Durkheim says, which existed

+before gods or other mythological personages had been developed. There

+is supposed by early man (according to our author) to be a kind of

+universal element of power, dreadful and divine, which attaches to

+some things more than to others, to some men more than to others, and

+to all women in their relations with men.<a name="FNanchor_7_111" id="FNanchor_7_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_111" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> This mystic something

+(rather like the <i>Mana</i> of the Maories, and the <i>Wakan</i> of many North

+American tribes) is believed by each group (if I correctly understand

+Dr. Durkheim) to concentrate itself in their name-giving animal, their

+totem.<a name="FNanchor_8_112" id="FNanchor_8_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_112" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> All tabu, all blood tabu, has in the totem animal its centre

+and shrine, in the opinion of each group. Human kinship, of Emu man to

+Emu woman, is, if I understand rightly, a corollary from their common

+kinship with the Emu bird; or rather the <i>sacredness</i> of their kinship,

+not to be violated by marriage, is thus derived; an opinion which I

+share.</p>

+

+<p>How all this came to be so; <i>why</i> each of two "clans" in one horde

+chose, or acquired, a given animal as the centre of the mysterious

+sacred atmosphere, Dr. Durkheim has not, so far, told us. Yet surely

+there must have been a reason for selecting two special animals, one

+for each of the two "clans," as <i>the</i> tabu, <i>the</i> totem, <i>the</i> god.

+Moreover, as such a strange belief cannot be an innate idea of the

+human mind, and as this belief, with its corollaries, is, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory, the sole origin of exogamy, there must have been

+a time when men, not having the belief, were not exogamous, and when

+their sexual relations were wholly unregulated. They only came under

+regulation after two "clans" of people, in a horde, took to revering

+two different sacred animals, according to Dr. Durkheim.</p>

+

+<p>The totem, he says, is not only the god, but the ancestor of the

+"clan," and this ancestor, says Dr. Durkheim, is not a species&mdash;animal

+or vegetable&mdash;but is such or such an individual Emu or Kangaroo. This

+individual Emu or Kangaroo, however, is not alive, he is a creature of

+fancy; he is a "mythical being, whence came forth at once all the human

+members of the 'clan,' and the plants or animals of the totem species.

+Within him exist, potentially, the animal species and the human 'clan'

+of the same name."<a name="FNanchor_9_113" id="FNanchor_9_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_113" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>

+

+<p>"Thus," Dr. Durkheim goes on, "the totemic being is immanent in the

+clan, he is incarnate in each individual member of the clan, and dwells

+in their blood. He is himself that blood. But, while he is an ancestor,

+he is also a god, he is the object of a veritable cult; he is the

+centre of the clan's religion.... Therefore there is a god in each

+individual member of the clan (for the entire god is in each), and, as

+he lives in the blood, the blood is divine. When the blood flows, the

+god is shed" (<i>le dieu se répand</i>).</p>

+

+<p>All this, of course, was the belief (if ever it was the belief) when

+totemism was in its early bloom and vigour, for to-day a black will

+shoot his totem, but not sitting; and will eat it if he can get nothing

+else, and Mr. Howitt mentions cases in which he will eat his totem

+if another man bags it.<a name="FNanchor_10_114" id="FNanchor_10_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_114" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> The Euahlayi, with female kin, eat their

+totems, after a ceremony in which the tabu is removed.<a name="FNanchor_11_115" id="FNanchor_11_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_115" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Totemism

+is thus decadent to-day. But "a totem is not a thing which men think

+they can dispose of at their will, at least so long as totemic beliefs

+are still in vigour.... A totem, in short, is not a mere name, but

+before all and above all, he is a religious principle, which is one and

+consubstantial with the person in whom it has its dwelling-place; it

+makes part of his personality. One can no more change one's totem than

+one can change one's soul...."<a name="FNanchor_12_116" id="FNanchor_12_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_116" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> He is speaking of Arunta society on

+the eve of a change from female to male reckoning of descent.</p>

+

+<p>So far, the theory of Dr. Durkheim is that in a compact communal

+horde, where incest was not prohibited, one "clan" or division took to

+adoring, say, the Eagle Hawk, another set the Crow; to claiming descent

+each from their bird; to regarding his blood as tabu; to seizing

+wives only from the other "clan"; and, finally, to making peaceful

+intermarriages, each, exclusively, only from the other set, Eagle Hawk

+from Crow, Crow from Eagle Hawk. We do not learn why half the horde

+adored one, and the other half another animal. If the disruption of the

+horde produced two such "clans," "at least," there may have been other

+"clans," sets equally primal, as Lizard, Ant, Wallaby, Grub. About

+these we hear nothing more in the theory; the two "primary clans" alone

+are here spoken of as original, and are obviously the result of a mere

+conjecture, to explain the two phratries of animal name, familiar in

+our experience.</p>

+

+<p>No attempt is made to explain either why members of the <i>same</i> horde

+chose <i>separate</i> animal gods; or why&mdash;unless because of consequent

+religious differences&mdash;the two "clans," previously united, were now

+hostile; or why there were at first only two such religious hostile

+"clans"; or, if there were more, what became of the others.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile, we are not even sure that Dr. Durkheim does believe in a

+primary incestuous horde, when "Society must have formed a compact

+undivided mass ... before splitting into two distinct groups, and some

+of Morgan's tables of nomenclature corroborate this hypothesis."<a name="FNanchor_13_117" id="FNanchor_13_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_117" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>

+It is true that Dr. Durkheim makes this assertion. But, in the same

+volume (i. p. 332), Dr. Durkheim tells us that Mr. Morgan's theory of

+obligatory promiscuity (a theory based, as we saw in Chapter II., on

+the terms of relationship) "seems to us to be definitely refuted."

+Again, Mr. Morgan, like Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer, regarded the

+savage terms for relationships as one proof of "group marriage,"

+or "collective marriage," including unions of the nearest of kin.

+(Compare our Chapter III.) But Dr. Durkheim writes, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than a last resource, intended

+to enable us to envisage these strange customs: but it is impossible

+to overlook all the difficulties which it raises ... this improbable

+conception."<a name="FNanchor_14_118" id="FNanchor_14_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_118" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>

+

+<p>Is it possible that, after many times reading the learned Professor's

+work, I misunderstand him? With profound regret I gather that he does

+not believe in the theory of "obligatory promiscuity" in an undivided

+horde, which I have supposed to be the basis of his system; a horde

+"in which there is nothing to show that incest was forbidden." That

+incest, in Mr. Morgan's theory, was "obligatory," I cannot suppose,

+because, if nobody knew who was akin to whom, nothing could compel a

+man to marry his own sister or daughter. I am obliged to fear that I

+do not understand what is meant. For Dr. Durkheim made society begin

+in a united solid <i>peuplade</i>, in which "there is no reason to suppose

+that incest was forbidden," and as proof he cited some of Mr. Morgan's

+tables of relationships. He then gave his theory of how exogamy was

+introduced into the "compact undivided mass." He next appears to reject

+this "mass," and Morgan's argument for its existence. Is there an

+inconsistency, or do I merely fail to understand Dr. Durkheim?</p>

+

+<p>Let us, however, take Dr. Durkheim's theory of a horde with

+"permissive" incest, split, for some reason, into two distinct hostile

+"clans" worshipping each its own "god," an animal; each occupying

+a different territory; reckoning by female kin; exogamous, and

+intermarrying. Such communities, exogamous, intermarrying, and with

+female descent, Dr. Durkheim uniformly styles "primary clans," or

+"elementary totemic groups."<a name="FNanchor_15_119" id="FNanchor_15_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_119" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> It is obvious that they constitute,

+when once thoroughly amalgamated by exogamy and peaceful intermarriage,

+<i>a local tribe</i>, with a definite joint territory, and without <i>clan</i>

+territory. At every hearth, through the whole tribal domain, both

+clans are present; the male mates are, say, Eagle Hawks, the women and

+children are Crows, or <i>vice versa</i>. Neither "clan" as such "has any

+longer a territorial basis." "The clan," says Dr. Durkheim, "has no

+territorial basis." "The clan is an amorphous group, a floating mass,

+with no very defined individuality; its contours, especially, have no

+material marks on the soil."<a name="FNanchor_16_120" id="FNanchor_16_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_120" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> This is as true as it is obvious.

+The clans, when once thoroughly intermixed, and with members of each

+clan present, as father, mother, and children, by every hearth, can,

+as clans, have no local limits, no territorial boundaries, and Dr.

+Durkheim maintains this fact Indeed, he distinguishes the clan from the

+tribe as being <i>non-territorial</i>.<a name="FNanchor_17_121" id="FNanchor_17_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_121" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>

+

+<p>Yet though he thus asserts what every one must see to be true, his

+whole theory of the origin of the totem kins ("secondary clans")

+within the phratries, and his theory (as we shall show later) of the

+matrimonial classes, rests on the contradictory of his averment. He

+then takes the line that the exogamous clans with female descent do, or

+did, possess definite separate territorial bases, which seems contrary

+to the passage where he says that they do not!<a name="FNanchor_18_122" id="FNanchor_18_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_122" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> He has reversed his

+position.</p>

+

+<p>We first gave Dr. Durkheim's statement as to how the totem kins (which

+he calls "secondary clans") came to exist within the phratries.</p>

+

+<p>"When a clan increases beyond a certain measure, its population cannot

+exist within the same space: it therefore throws off colonies, which,

+as they no longer occupy the same habitat with, nor share the interests

+of the original group from which they emerged, end by taking a totem

+which is all their own: thenceforth they constitute new clans."<a name="FNanchor_19_123" id="FNanchor_19_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_123" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>

+Again, "the phratry is a primary clan, which, as it develops, has been

+led to segment itself into a certain number of secondary clans, which

+retain their sentiment of community and of solidarity."<a name="FNanchor_20_124" id="FNanchor_20_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_124" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>

+

+<p>All this is (as far as I can see), by Dr. Durkheim's own previous

+statement, impossible. A totemic clan, exogamous, with female descent,

+cannot, as a clan, overflow its limits of "space," for, as a clan,

+he tells us, it "has no territorial basis," no material assigned

+frontier, marked on the soil.<a name="FNanchor_21_125" id="FNanchor_21_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_125" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> "One cannot say at what precise point

+of space it begins, or where it ends." The members of one "clan" are

+indissolubly blended with the members of the other "clan," in the local

+tribe. This point, always overlooked by the partisans of a theory that

+the various totem kins are segments of "a primary clan," can be made

+plain. By the hypothesis there are two "clans" before us, of which

+Eagle Hawk (male) always marries Crow (female), their children being

+Crows, and Crow (male) always marries Eagle Hawk (female), the children

+being Eagle Hawks. The <i>tribal</i> territory is over-populated (the <i>clan</i>

+has no territory). A <i>tribal</i> decree is therefore passed, that clan

+Eagle Hawk must "segment itself," and go to new lands. This decree

+means that a portion of clan Eagle Hawk must emigrate. Let, then,

+Eagle Hawk men, women, and children, to the amount of half of the clan,

+be selected to emigrate. They go forth to seek new abodes. In doing so

+the Eagle Hawk men leave their Crow wives at home; the Eagle Hawk women

+leave their Crow children, and Crow husbands; the Eagle Hawk children

+leave their Crow fathers. Not a man or woman in the segmented portion

+of clan Eagle Hawk can now have a wife or a husband, for they can only

+marry Crows. They all die out! Such is the result of segmenting clan

+Eagle Hawk.</p>

+

+<p>Yet the thing can be managed in no other way, for, if the emigrant

+Eagle Hawk men take with them their Crow wives and children, they

+cannot marry (unless men marry their daughters, Crows) when they

+become widowers, and unless Crow brothers marry Crow sisters, which is

+forbidden. Moreover, <i>this</i> plan necessitates a segmentation, not of

+<i>clan</i> Eagle Hawk, but of the <i>tribe</i>, which is composed of both Crows

+and Eagle Hawks. These conspicuous facts demolish the whole theory of

+the segmentation of a "clan" into a new clan which takes a new totem,

+though it would need two.</p>

+

+<p>Moreover, why should a tribal colony of two blended clans take, as

+would be absolutely necessary, two new totem names at all? We know not

+one example of change of totem name in Australia.<a name="FNanchor_22_126" id="FNanchor_22_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_126" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> Their old totems

+were their gods, their flesh, their blood, their vital energies, by

+Dr. Durkheim's own definition. "The members of a clan literally deem

+themselves of one flesh, of one blood, and the blood is that of the

+mythic being" (the totem) "from which they are all descended."<a name="FNanchor_23_127" id="FNanchor_23_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_127" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>

+How and <i>why</i> then, should emigrants from "clans," say Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, change their gods, their blood, their flesh, their souls? To

+imagine that totems or even the descent of totems can be changed, by

+legislation, from the female to the male line, is, says Dr. Durkheim,

+"to forget that the totem is not a thing which men think they can

+dispose of at will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."<a name="FNanchor_24_128" id="FNanchor_24_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_128" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>

+

+<p>Our author goes on: "A totem, in fact, is not a mere name, it is, above

+all and before all, a religious principle, one with the individual in

+whom it dwells; and part of his personality. One can no more change his

+totem, than he can change his soul...."</p>

+

+<p>In that case, how did the supposed colonies thrown off by a segmented

+clan, manage to change their totems, as they did, on Dr. Durkheim's

+theory?<a name="FNanchor_25_129" id="FNanchor_25_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_129" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> They lived in the early vigour of totemic beliefs, and

+during that blooming age of totemism, says Dr. Durkheim, "the totem is

+not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will," and yet, on

+his theory, they did dispose of it, they took new totems.<a name="FNanchor_26_130" id="FNanchor_26_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_130" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>

+

+<p>The supposed process seems to me doubly impossible by Dr. Durkheim's

+premises. A "clan," exogamous, with female kin, cannot overflow its

+territory, for it has confessedly, as a "clan," no delimitations of

+territory. Consequently a clan cannot throw off a colony (only a

+tribe can do that); therefore, as there can be no "clan" colony, the

+tribal colony cannot change its one totem, <i>for it has two</i>. Moreover,

+Dr. Durkheim says that there can be no such cavalier treatment of the

+totem: "Tant du moins que les croyances totémiques sont encore en

+vigueur." Yet he also says that the totems were thus cavalierly treated

+when totemic beliefs were in vigour.</p>

+

+<p>Dr. Durkheim, however, might reply: "A tribe with two 'clans' can throw

+off colonies, each colony necessarily consisting of members of both

+clans, and these can change their two totems." That might pass, if he

+had not said that, while totemic beliefs are in vigour, men cannot

+dispose of the totem, "a part of their personalities," at their will.</p>

+

+<p>One argument, based on certain facts, has been advanced to show

+that the totem kins in the phratries are really the result of the

+segmentation of a "clan" into new clans with new totems. This argument,

+however, breaks down on a careful examination of the facts on which it

+is based, though I did not see that when I wrote <i>Social Origins</i>, p.

+59, Note 1. The chief circumstance appealed to is this. The Mohegans

+in America have three phratries: (1) WOLF, with totem kins Wolf, Bear,

+Dog, Opossum; (2) TURKEY, with totem kins Turkey, Crane, Chicken;

+(3) TURTLE, with totem kins Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle,

+Yellow Eel. "Here we are almost forced to conclude," wrote Mr. Frazer

+in 1887, "that the Turtle phratry was originally a Turtle clan which

+subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a

+particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clan may have been a

+later subdivision."<a name="FNanchor_27_131" id="FNanchor_27_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_131" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>

+

+<p>Mr. Frazer has apparently abandoned this position, but it seems to

+have escaped his observation, and the observation of Dr. Durkheim, who

+follows him here, that in several cases given by himself the various

+species of totem animals are <i>not</i> grouped (as they ought to be on the

+hypothesis of subdivision) under the headship of one totem of their own

+kind&mdash;like the three sorts of Turtle in the Mohegan Turtle phratry&mdash;but

+quite the reverse. They are found in the opposite phratry, under an

+animal not of their species.</p>

+

+<p>Thus Mr. Dawson, cited by Mr. Frazer, gives for a Western Victoria

+tribe, now I believe extinct:&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;"><i>Phratry A</i>.</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 40%;">Totem kins:</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;"><i>Long-billed Cockatoo</i>.</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;">Pelican.</span><br />

+<br />

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;"><i>Phratry B</i>.</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 40%;">Totem kins:</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;"><i>Banksian Cockatoo</i>.</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;">Boa Snake.</span><br />

+<span style="margin-left: 45%;">Quail.</span><br />

+</p>

+

+<p>The two cockatoos are, we see, in <i>opposite phratries</i>, not in the

+same, as they should be by Mr. Frazer's theory.<a name="FNanchor_28_132" id="FNanchor_28_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_132" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>

+

+<p>This is a curious case, and is explained by a myth. Mr. Dawson, the

+recorder of the case (1881) was a scrupulous inquirer, and remarks

+that it is of the utmost importance to be able to converse with the

+natives in their own language. His daughter, who made the inquiries,

+was intimately acquainted with the dialects of the tribes in the Port

+Fairy district. The natives collaborated "with the most scrupulous

+honesty." The tribes had an otiose great Being, Pirmeheeal, or Mam

+Yungraak, called also Peep Ghnatnaen, that is, "Father Ours." He is

+a gigantic kindly man, living above the clouds. Thunder is his voice.

+"He is seldom mentioned, but always with respect."<a name="FNanchor_29_133" id="FNanchor_29_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_133" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> This Being,

+however, did not institute exogamy. The mortal ancestor of the race

+"was by descent a Kuurokeetch, or Long-billed Cockatoo." His wife was a

+female Kappatch (Kappaheear), or Banksian Cockatoo. These two birds now

+head opposite phratries. Their children could not intermarry, so they

+brought in "strange flesh"&mdash;alien wives&mdash;whence, by female descent,

+came from abroad the other totem kins, Pelican, Boa Snake, and Quail.

+Pelican appears to be in Long-billed Cockatoo phratry; Boa Snake in

+Banksian Cockatoo phratry. At least these pairs may not intermarry.

+Quail, as if both a phratry and a totem kin by itself, may intermarry

+with any of the other four, while only three kins are open to each

+of the other four.<a name="FNanchor_30_134" id="FNanchor_30_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_134" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> In this instance a Cockatoo phratry has not

+subdivided into Cockatoo totem kins, but two species of Cockatoos head

+opposite phratries, and are also totem kins in their own phratries.</p>

+

+<p>In the same way, in the now extinct Mount Gambier tribe, the phratries

+are Kumi and Kroki. Black Cockatoo (Wila) is in Kroki; in Kumi is Black

+Crestless Cockatoo (Karaal).<a name="FNanchor_31_135" id="FNanchor_31_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_135" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> By Mr. Frazer's theory, which he

+probably no longer holds, a Cockatoo primary totem kin would throw off

+other kins, named after various other species of Cockatoo, and become a

+Cockatoo phratry, with several Cockatoo totem kins. The reverse is the

+fact: the two Cockatoos are in opposite phratries.</p>

+

+<p>Again, among the Ta-ta-thi tribe, two species of Eagle Hawk occur as

+totems. One is in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), the other is in Crow

+phratry (<i>Kilpara</i>). This could not have occurred through Eagle Hawk

+"clan" splitting into other clans, named after other species of Eagle

+Hawk.<a name="FNanchor_32_136" id="FNanchor_32_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_136" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>

+

+<p>In the Kamilaroi phratries two species of Kangaroos occur as totem

+kins, but the two Kangaroo totem kins are in opposite phratries.<a name="FNanchor_33_137" id="FNanchor_33_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_137" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>

+

+<p>If Mr. Frazer's old view were correct, both species of Kangaroo would

+be in the same phratry, like the various kinds of Turtle in the Mohegan

+Turtle phratry. Again, in the Wakelbura tribe, in Queensland, there are

+Large Bee and Small or Black Bee <i>in opposite phratries</i>.<a name="FNanchor_34_138" id="FNanchor_34_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_138" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>

+

+<p>On Mr. Frazer's old theory, we saw, a phratry is a totem kin which

+split into more kins, having for totems the various species of the

+original totem animal. These, as the two sorts of Bees, Cockatoos,

+Kangaroos, and so on, would on this theory always be in the same

+phratry, like the various kinds of Mohegan Turtles. But Mr. Frazer

+himself has collected and published evidence to prove that this is far

+from being usually the case; the reverse is often the case. Thus the

+argument derived from the Mohegan instance of the Turtle phratry is

+invalidated by the opposite and more numerous facts. The case of the

+Mohegan Turtle phratry, with various species of Turtles for totem kins

+within it, is again countered in America, by the case of the Wyandot

+Indians. They have four phratries. If these have names, the names are

+not given. But the first phratry contains <i>Striped Turtle</i>, Bear, and

+Deer. The second contains <i>Highland Turtle, Black Turtle</i>, and <i>Smooth

+Large Turtle</i>. If this phratry was formed by the splitting of Highland

+Turtle into Black and Smooth Turtles, why is Striped Turtle in the

+opposite phratry?<a name="FNanchor_35_139" id="FNanchor_35_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_139" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> The Wyandots, in Ohio, were village dwellers,

+with female reckoning of lineage and exogamy. If they married out of

+the tribe, the alien was adopted into a totem kin of the other tribe,

+apparently changing his totem, though this is not distinctly stated.<a name="FNanchor_36_140" id="FNanchor_36_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_140" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus Dr. Durkheim's theory of the segmentation of a primary totem

+"clan" into other "clans" of other totems is not aided by the facts

+of the Mohegan case, which are unusual. We more frequently find

+that animals of different species of the same genus are in opposite

+phratries than in the same phratry. Again, a totem kin (with female

+descent) cannot, we repeat, overpopulate its territory, for, as Dr.

+Durkheim says, an exogamous clan with female descent has no territorial

+basis. Nor can it segment itself without also segmenting its linked

+totem kin or kins, which merely means segmenting the local tribe. If

+that were done, there is no reason why the members of the two old

+"clans" in the new colony should change their totems. Moreover, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory that cannot be done "while totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."</p>

+

+<p>To recapitulate our objections to Dr. Durkheim's theory, we say

+(i.) that it represents human society as in a perpetual state of

+segmentation and resegmentation, like the Scottish Kirk in the many

+secessions of bodies which again split up into new seceding bodies.

+First, we have a <i>peuplade</i>, or horde, apparently (though I am not

+quite sure of the Doctor's meaning) permitted to be promiscuous in

+matters of sex. (ii.) That horde, for no obvious reason, splits into

+at least two "clans"&mdash;we never hear in this affair of more than the

+two. These two new segments select each a certain animal as the focus

+of a mysterious impersonal power. On what grounds the selection was

+made, and why, if they wanted an animal "god," the whole horde could

+not have fixed on the same animal, we are not informed. The animals

+were their "ancestors"&mdash;half the horde believed in one ancestor, half

+in another. The two halves of the one horde now became hostile to each

+other, whether because of their divergence of opinion about ancestry or

+for some other reason, (iii.) Their ideas about their animal god made

+it impossible for members of the same half-horde to intermarry, (iv.)

+Being hostile, they had to take wives from each other by acts of war.

+(v.) Each half-horde was now an exogamous totem kin, a "primary clan,"

+reckoning descent on the female side. As thus constituted, "no clan has

+a territorial basis": it is an amorphous group, a floating mass. As

+such, no clan can overflow its territorial limits, for it has none.</p>

+

+<p>(vi.) But here a fresh process of segmentation occurs. The clan <i>does</i>

+overflow its territory, though it has none, and, going into new lands,

+takes a new totem, though this has been declared impossible; "the

+totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will, at

+least while totemic beliefs are in vigour." Thus the old "clans" have

+overflowed their territorial limits, though "clans" have none, and

+segments have wandered away and changed their totems, though, in the

+vigour of totemic ideas, men do not think that they can dispose of

+their totems at will, (vii.) In changing their totems, they, of course,

+change their blood, but, strange to say, they still recognise their

+relationship to persons not of their blood, men of totems not theirs,

+namely, the two primary clans from which they seceded. Therefore they

+cannot marry with members of their old primary clans, though these are

+of other totems, therefore, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, of different blood from

+themselves, (viii.) The primary clans, as relations all round grow

+pacific, become the phratries of a tribe, and the various colonies

+which had split off from a primary clan become totem kins in phratries.

+But such colonies of a "clan" with exogamy and female descent are

+impossible.</p>

+

+<p>If these arguments are held to prove the inadequacy of Dr. Durkheim's

+hypothesis, we may bring forward our own.<a name="FNanchor_37_141" id="FNanchor_37_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_141" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_105" id="Footnote_1_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_105"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i> v. pp. 82-141.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_106" id="Footnote_2_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_106"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Ibid., i. pp. 35-57.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_107" id="Footnote_3_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_107"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. pp. 62, 63.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_108" id="Footnote_4_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_108"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Dr. Durkheim here introduces a theory of Arunta totemic

+magic. As he justly says, the co-operative principle&mdash;each group in

+a tribe doing magic for the good of all the other groups&mdash;cannot be

+primitive. The object of the magic, he thinks, was to maintain in good

+condition the totems, which are the gods, of the groups, and, indeed,

+"the condition of their existence." Later, ideas altered, ancestral

+souls, reincarnated, were the source of life, but the totemic magic

+survived with a new purpose, as Magical Co-operative Stores. But why

+have the more primitive tribes no totem magic? (<i>L'Année Sociologique</i>,

+v. pp. 117, 118, 119.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_109" id="Footnote_5_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_109"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. p. 64.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_110" id="Footnote_6_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_110"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 51, 52.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_111" id="Footnote_7_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_111"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. pp. 38-57.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_112" id="Footnote_8_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_112"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Ibid., i. pp. 38-53; v. pp. 87, 88. "Le caractère sacré

+est d'abord diffus dans les choses avant de se concrétiser sous la

+forme des personalités déterminés."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_113" id="Footnote_9_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_113"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. p. 51, and Note I.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_114" id="Footnote_10_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_114"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> For other rules see Spencer and Gillen, <i>Northern

+Tribes</i>, pp. 320-328.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_115" id="Footnote_11_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_115"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_116" id="Footnote_12_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_116"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, v. pp. 110, 111.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_117" id="Footnote_13_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_117"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. p. 63.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_118" id="Footnote_14_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_118"><span class="label">[14]</span></a><i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. p. 318.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_119" id="Footnote_15_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_119"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, v. pp. 91, 92.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_120" id="Footnote_16_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_120"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> Ibid., i. p. 20.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_121" id="Footnote_17_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_121"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Ibid., i. p. 6.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_122" id="Footnote_18_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_122"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Ibid., i. p. 6.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_123" id="Footnote_19_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_123"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> L'Année Sociologique, i. p. 6.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_124" id="Footnote_20_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_124"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Ibid., v. p. 91.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_125" id="Footnote_21_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_125"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Ibid., i. p. 20. The thing would only be possible if the

+two "clans" were not yet exogamous and intermarrying; but then they

+would not be "clans," by the definition!</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_126" id="Footnote_22_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_126"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> In <i>Natives of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 215, 216, we

+hear on the evidence of "Wonghi informants" that members of the totems

+are allowed to change totems, "to meet marriage difficulties," and

+because in different ports of the tribal territory different animals,

+which act as totems, are scarce. The tribe, haring matrimonial classes,

+is not pristine, and, if the report be accurate, totemic ideas, from

+Dr. Durkheim's point of view, cannot be "still in their vigour."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_127" id="Footnote_23_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_127"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. p. 51.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_24_128" id="Footnote_24_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_128"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Ibid., V. p. 110.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_25_129" id="Footnote_25_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_129"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Ibid., i. p. 6.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_26_130" id="Footnote_26_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_130"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> In <i>Folk Lore</i>, March 1904, I criticised what I regard as

+an inconsistency in this part of Dr. Durkheim's theory. I here cite his

+reply textually, from <i>Folk Lore</i>, June 1904, pp. 215-216.</p>

+

+<p><span style="font-size: 0.8em;">RÉPONSE A M. LANG.</span></p>

+

+<p>"Dans le <i>Folk Lore</i> de Mars, M. Lang, sous prétexte de se défendre

+contre mes critiques, m'attaque directement. Je suis donc obligé,

+à mon grand regret, de demander l'hospitalité du <i>Folk Lore</i> pour

+les quelques observations qui suivent. Afin d'abréger le débat, je

+n'examinerai pas si M. Lang s'est justifié ou non de mes critiques, et

+me borne à répondre à celle qu'il m'a adressée.</p>

+

+<p>"M. Lang me reproche d'avoir renié ma propre théorie sur la nature du

+totem. J'aurais (L'Année Sociologique, i. pp. 6 et 52) dit qu'un clan

+peut changer de totem et, dans la même périodique (v. pp. 110, 111),

+j'aurais établi qu'un tel changement est impossible. En réalité, la

+seconde opinion qui m'est ainsi attribuée n'est pas la mienne et je ne

+l'ai pas exprimée.</p>

+

+<p>"En effet, je n'ai pas dit que groupes et individus ne pouvaient

+jamais changer de totem, mail, ce qui est tout autre chose, que <i>le

+principe de filiation totémique, la manière dont le totem est réputé

+se transmettre des parents aux enfants ne pouvait être modifiée par

+mesure legislative, par simple convention</i>. Je cite les expressions que

+j'ai employées et que tait M. Lang: "Tant que, d'après les croyances

+regnantes, le totem de l'enfant était regardé comme une emanation

+du totem de la mère, il n'y avait pas de mesure legislative qui pût

+faire qu'il en fut autrement." Et plus bas ("Les croyances totémiques)

+ne permettaient pas que <i>le mode</i> de transmission du totem pût être

+modifié d'un coup, par un acte de la volonté collective." Il est

+clair, en effet, que si l'on croit fermement que l'esprit totémique

+de l'enfant est déterminé par la fait de la conception, il n'y a pas

+de legislation qui puisse décider qu'à partir d'un certain moment il

+aura lieu de telle façon et non de telle autre. Mais mon assertion

+ne porte que sur ce cas particulier. Et des changements de totems

+restent possibles dans d'autres conditions comme celles dont il est

+question dans le Tome I. de <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>. J'ajoute que même

+ces changements n'ont jamais lieu, à mon sens, par mesure legislative.

+J'ai, il est vrai, comparé un changement de totem à un changement

+d'âme. Mais ces changements d'âmes n'ont rien d'impossible (pour

+l'homme primitif) dans les conditions déterminées. Seulement, ils ne

+sauraient avoir lieu par décret; or, c'est tout ce que signifiaient

+les quatre ou cinq mots incriminés par M. Lang. Leur sens est très

+clairement déterminé par tout le contexte comme je viens de le montrer.

+En tout cas, après les explications qui précèdent, appuyées sur des

+textes, il ne saurait y avoir de doute sur ma pensée, et je considère

+par suite le débat comme clos. <span style="font-size: 0.8em;">E. DURKHEIM.</span>"</p>

+

+<p>It distresses me that I am unable to understand Dr. Durkheim's defence.

+He does say (<i>L'An. Soc.</i> i. p. 6) that the colonies of "clans" too

+populous "to exist within their space" "end by taking a totem which

+is all their own, and thenceforth constitute new clans." He also does

+say that "the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of

+at their will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in vigour"

+(<i>L'An. Soc.</i> v. p. 110). But his hypothetical colonies <i>did</i> "dispose

+of" their old totems "at their will," and took new totems "all their

+own," and that while "totemic beliefs were in their vigour." I was

+saying nothing about <i>le principe de filiation totémique</i>, nor was Dr.

+Durkheim when he spoke of clan colonies changing their totems. I print

+Dr. Durkheim's defence as others, more acute than myself, may find it

+satisfactory.]</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_27_131" id="Footnote_27_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_131"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Totemism, p. 62, 1887.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_28_132" id="Footnote_28_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_132"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Totemism, p. 65, citing Dawson, <i>Australian Aborigines</i>,

+p. 26 <i>et seq</i>.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_29_133" id="Footnote_29_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_133"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Dawson, <i>Australian Aborigines</i>, p. 49.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_30_134" id="Footnote_30_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_134"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 26, 27.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_31_135" id="Footnote_31_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_135"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, p. 168. Totemism, p. 85.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_32_136" id="Footnote_32_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_136"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, xiv. p. 349. <i>Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia</i>, p. 100. I do not know certainly whether Mr. Howitt now

+translates <i>Mukwara</i> and <i>Kilpara</i> as Eagle Hawk and Crow.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_33_137" id="Footnote_33_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_137"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 104.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_34_138" id="Footnote_34_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_138"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Totemism, p. 85. Howitt, <i>Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia</i>, p. 112.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_35_139" id="Footnote_35_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_139"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Powell, Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, p. 60.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_36_140" id="Footnote_36_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_140"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Op. cit., p. 68.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_37_141" id="Footnote_37_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_141"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> I have excised a criticism of Dr. Durkheim's theory of

+the modus by which "primary clans" segmented into secondary clans

+(<i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, vi. pp. 7-34), because, since a clan,

+exogamous and with female reckoning of descent, cannot conceivably

+segment itself, as we have proved, my other arguments are as

+superfluous as they are numerous.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI</a></h4>

+

+<h3>THE AUTHOR'S THEORY</h3>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social

+condition&mdash;Either men lived in male communities, each

+with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living

+alone with his female mates and children&mdash;His adolescent

+sons he drove away&mdash;The latter view accepted&mdash;It

+involves practical exogamy&mdash;Misunderstood by M. Salomon

+Reinach&mdash;Same results would follow as soon as totems were

+evolved&mdash;Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men,

+of <i>the names</i> of natural objects&mdash;Mr. Howitt states this

+opinion&mdash;Savage belief in magical <i>rapport</i> between men

+and things of the same name&mdash;Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys

+died for this fact&mdash;Theory of Dr. Pikler&mdash;Totemism arises

+in the need of names to be represented in pictographs&mdash;But

+the pictograph is later than the name&mdash;Examples of magic

+of names&mdash;Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin

+between themselves and objects of the same names&mdash;These

+objects regarded with reverence&mdash;Hence totemic exogamy

+merely one aspect of the general totem name&mdash;Group

+names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members

+of other local groups&mdash;Proof that such names may be

+accepted and gloried in&mdash;Cases of <i>tribal</i> names given

+from without and accepted&mdash;Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of

+names&mdash;His objection to our theory answered&mdash;Mr. Howitt's

+objections answered&mdash;American and Celtic cases of derisive

+nicknames accepted&mdash;Two Australian totem names certainly

+sobriquets&mdash;Religious aspect of totemism&mdash;Results from a

+divine decree&mdash;Other myths&mdash;Recapitulation.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of

+kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and

+for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the

+kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be.

+Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two

+"phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No

+system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in

+the preceding critical chapters.</p>

+

+<p>In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have

+been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis

+as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career.

+Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's

+knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves

+that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt

+inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting

+methods must have forced men to live in <i>small</i> separate groups. The

+members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and

+dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the

+associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for

+and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons,

+and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups

+necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could

+be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal

+horde of theory.</p>

+

+<p>Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his

+opinion as to their social condition.</p>

+

+<p>He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy

+of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of

+Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the

+stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now

+exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in

+small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful,

+with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b)

+he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several

+wives, like the Gorilla&mdash;for all the natives agree that bat one adult

+male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes

+place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the

+others, establishes himself as head of the community.</p>

+

+<p>"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at

+last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding

+within the limits of the same family."<a name="FNanchor_1_142" id="FNanchor_1_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_142" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>

+

+<p>There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and

+the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all

+<i>compelled</i> to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the

+case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own

+daughters.</p>

+

+<p>Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second

+hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so

+very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his

+women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.</p>

+

+<p>There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of

+male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),<a name="FNanchor_2_143" id="FNanchor_2_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_143" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>

+and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to

+the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community

+would end in his second&mdash;given the jealousy and brutality and animal

+passions of early man, as postulated by him.</p>

+

+<p>On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small

+"family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose

+harem contains <i>all</i> the young females in the group, would be

+necessarily exogamous in practice&mdash;for the younger male members. The

+sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and

+such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could,

+similar communities.</p>

+

+<p>With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now

+<i>conscious</i>, would become, "No marriage within this group of

+contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various

+"family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives,

+and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other

+similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was

+obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr.

+Atkinson, in his <i>Primal Law</i>.)<a name="FNanchor_3_144" id="FNanchor_3_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_144" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>

+

+<p>If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal

+state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional

+conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., <i>supra</i>), would still

+keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed

+communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the

+jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by

+preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This

+would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual

+separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can

+have no certainty.<a name="FNanchor_4_145" id="FNanchor_4_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_145" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Young males would thus be obliged to win mates,

+probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were

+so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as

+the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy,"

+No marriage within the totem name and blood."</p>

+

+<p>The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been

+sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group

+possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one

+blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr.

+Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred

+totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there

+must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us)

+that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that,

+or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek

+for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with

+animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the

+various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer

+remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of

+particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem

+possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed <i>the

+names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of

+totemism?</i>"<a name="FNanchor_5_146" id="FNanchor_5_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_146" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer

+which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for

+instance, need not have yet been developed.</p>

+

+<p>In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show

+that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal,

+unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly

+intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or

+early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief

+in a specially close and mystical <i>rapport</i> between the totem animal or

+plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in

+that <i>rapport</i> arise?</p>

+

+<p>Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the

+<i>name</i> of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that

+name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief

+in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu,

+and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism

+begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.</p>

+

+<p>It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this&mdash;that the

+community of name, if it existed, <i>and if its origin were unknown</i>,

+would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection

+between all who bore it, men or beasts&mdash;can have escaped the notice of

+any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with

+its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted

+forty-two pages of his <i>Golden Bough</i><a name="FNanchor_6_147" id="FNanchor_6_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_147" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> to the record of examples of

+this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to

+the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time,

+not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that

+part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever

+you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on

+Welsh Fairies.<a name="FNanchor_7_148" id="FNanchor_7_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_148" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> This opinion rests on philological analysis of the

+Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.<a name="FNanchor_8_149" id="FNanchor_8_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_149" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> But, if

+the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul,

+then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There

+we have the <i>rapport</i> between man and totemic animal for which we are

+seeking.</p>

+

+<p>Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage

+belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and

+things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same

+thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same

+name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That

+is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed

+when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets

+of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.</p>

+

+<p>This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the

+names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.<a name="FNanchor_9_150" id="FNanchor_9_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_150" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Men, says

+Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender

+schriftlich fixierbarer <i>Name</i> von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They

+wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these

+communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the

+pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect,

+on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian

+villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.</p>

+

+<p>This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Müller.<a name="FNanchor_10_151" id="FNanchor_10_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_151" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> Mr. Max Müller

+wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, <i>then</i> (ii.) a clan name, then

+(iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name

+of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's

+theory.<a name="FNanchor_11_152" id="FNanchor_11_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_152" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

+

+<p>It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use

+<i>before</i>, not as Mr. Max Müller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems

+to think, <i>after</i> its pictorial representation, "the clan mark."

+A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used

+the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late

+institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting

+up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart,"

+or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the

+scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He

+does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the

+signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must

+have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch,

+or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to

+understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture

+language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism

+certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die <i>Folge</i> der Schriftart,

+der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."<a name="FNanchor_12_153" id="FNanchor_12_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_153" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>

+

+<p>The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before

+the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this

+advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of

+pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without

+writing, a <i>tribal</i> name, such at least as are the <i>tribal</i> names of

+the men who say <i>Wonghi</i> or <i>Kamil</i> when they mean "No," or of other

+tribes when they mean "What?"</p>

+

+<p>Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the <i>naming</i>," and here

+we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the

+naming is a consequence of the primitive <i>schriftteknik</i>," a result of

+the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known

+by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear,

+before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint,

+as

+<img src="images/bird.jpg" width="20" alt="" />

+, or of the Rain-cloud, as

+<img src="images/rain.jpg" width="20" alt="" />

+ or of the

+Bear's-foot, as

+<img src="images/bear.jpg" width="15" alt="" />

+ <a name="FNanchor_13_154" id="FNanchor_13_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_154" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>.</p>

+

+<p>So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; <i>naming is</i> indeed the

+original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs

+which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not

+possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and

+accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,<a name="FNanchor_14_155" id="FNanchor_14_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_155" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> in ages of

+philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a

+material connection between things and their names," and, in the same

+way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was

+an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving

+animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the

+name-giving animal.<a name="FNanchor_15_156" id="FNanchor_15_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_156" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>

+

+<p>Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion,

+but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for

+discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably,

+in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.<a name="FNanchor_16_157" id="FNanchor_16_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_157" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus, given a set of local groups<a name="FNanchor_17_158" id="FNanchor_17_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_158" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> known by the names of Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were

+intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was,

+in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed

+mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name,

+is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical

+properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader

+has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already

+cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.</p>

+

+<p>In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, <i>Aritna

+Churinga</i>, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never

+to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group."

+To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as

+the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."<a name="FNanchor_18_159" id="FNanchor_18_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_159" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>

+

+<p>These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all

+students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in <i>Social

+Origins</i>. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather,

+for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for

+granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat

+that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in

+a mystic and transcendental connection of <i>rapport</i>. Other Australian

+examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically

+injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough

+Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this

+superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names

+to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the

+groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition

+about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would

+be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge

+of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have

+carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few

+American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but

+every one knows the real names.</p>

+

+<p>He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge

+to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known

+to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the

+full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal

+the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private

+essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all

+groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr.

+Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"<a name="FNanchor_19_160" id="FNanchor_19_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_160" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> that is,

+with injurious intentions towards the person.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally

+the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close

+must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides

+the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr.

+Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what

+beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of

+injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was

+"haunted by the impression that I had met examples."<a name="FNanchor_20_161" id="FNanchor_20_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_161" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Mr. Howitt,

+we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But

+it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only

+punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an

+enemy's totem.</p>

+

+<p>An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep <i>his</i>

+intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city

+of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course

+his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance,

+because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally

+known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some

+enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner&mdash;in other

+words, use it as an incantation."<a name="FNanchor_21_162" id="FNanchor_21_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_162" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>

+

+<p>Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic <i>rapport</i>

+between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be

+familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his

+secret name.</p>

+

+<p>This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as

+groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how

+they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was

+quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves,

+"What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals

+whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most

+important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the

+savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this

+assertion?</p>

+

+<p>Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and

+their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious

+acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such

+speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths,

+they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise

+nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving

+animals, the connection indicated by the name.</p>

+

+<p>Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably

+unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother

+and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may

+not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the

+Arunta are said not to understand them),<a name="FNanchor_22_163" id="FNanchor_22_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_163" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> but the facts of blood

+connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape

+no human beings.<a name="FNanchor_23_164" id="FNanchor_23_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_164" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> As savages undeniably do not draw the line between

+beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do,

+it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group

+name, and therefore <i>solidaire</i> with the group, was united with it, as

+the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by

+the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother,

+or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and

+regard for the animal.</p>

+

+<p>Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally

+diffused beliefs about the <i>wakan</i> or <i>mana</i>, or mystically sacred

+quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various

+totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its

+blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry

+a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any

+blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon

+clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So

+strong is the intertotemic avoidance.<a name="FNanchor_24_165" id="FNanchor_24_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_165" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> The belief grew to the pitch

+that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (χρῆσθαι γυναίκι),

+and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was

+established.<a name="FNanchor_25_166" id="FNanchor_25_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_166" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>

+

+<p>Unessential to my system is the question, <i>how</i> the groups got animal

+names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got

+them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking,

+indicated an essential and mystic <i>rapport</i> between each group and

+its name-giving animal. No more than these three things&mdash;a group

+animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection

+between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in

+the blood superstitions&mdash;was needed to give rise to all the totemic

+creeds and practices, including exogamy.</p>

+

+<p>Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups

+is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various

+myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would

+not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name

+denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between

+themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.</p>

+

+<p>In <i>Social Origins</i> I ventured a guess as to how the group names first

+arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.<a name="FNanchor_26_167" id="FNanchor_26_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_167" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> I showed

+that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and

+I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as

+in France&mdash;Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney&mdash;Starlings,

+Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names

+of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as

+Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyænas,

+Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural

+England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be

+totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that

+animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "<i>not</i> Eaters of"

+this or that.<a name="FNanchor_27_168" id="FNanchor_27_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_168" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> I thus established the prevalence in human nature,

+among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In

+Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the

+inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or

+another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once

+attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will

+be discovered.</p>

+

+<p>I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the

+existence in the European class least modified by education of the

+tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle

+even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among

+individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not

+alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull,

+and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot,

+of course, <i>prove</i> that their group animal-names were given thus from

+without, but the process is undeniably a <i>vera causa</i>, and does operate

+as we show.</p>

+

+<p>As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne

+by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."<a name="FNanchor_28_169" id="FNanchor_28_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_169" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>

+Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory

+on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the

+difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for

+themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but

+why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one

+group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name

+for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks,"

+"barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders,

+and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We"

+are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men"&mdash;in

+their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not

+"we"), and we are something else to them; <i>we</i> are not <i>they</i>; we all

+need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders,

+differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity

+felt in everyday life.</p>

+

+<p>That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and

+even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated

+in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from

+without), and in <i>Les Gueux, Huguenots,</i> Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers,

+Cameronians ("<i>that nickname</i>," cries Patrick Walker (1720),

+"why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a

+nickname?")<a name="FNanchor_29_170" id="FNanchor_29_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_170" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland

+clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive

+nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given,

+accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.</p>

+

+<p>Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations,"

+that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the

+Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for

+"No," such as <i>Kamil</i> (Kamilaroi), <i>Wira</i> (Wirajuri), <i>Wonghi</i> (Wonghi

+tribe), <i>Kabi</i> (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were

+given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted

+from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi

+tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It

+is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to

+them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the

+tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."<a name="FNanchor_30_171" id="FNanchor_30_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_171" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>

+There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do

+the French call themselves <i>Oui Oui</i>? Not much I but the natives of New

+Caledonia call them <i>Oui Oui</i>.<a name="FNanchor_31_172" id="FNanchor_31_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_172" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>

+

+<p>Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no

+reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without.

+Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and

+<i>wakan</i>, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among

+savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names

+were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood

+by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among

+the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in

+or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the

+savage ideas about animals.</p>

+

+<p>Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr.

+Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on

+"Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of

+mine. He says, "To adopt or <i>receive</i> the name of an animal or plant,

+or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with

+the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to

+become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is

+exactly my own opinion. The very early groups <i>received</i> animal names,

+I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed

+themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under

+the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a

+very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give

+many examples of the process from America.<a name="FNanchor_32_173" id="FNanchor_32_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_173" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>

+

+<p>It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely,

+that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But

+he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory.

+His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I

+prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I

+do <i>not</i> prove that the villagers&mdash;styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows,

+and so on&mdash;accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice

+in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the

+modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very

+much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were

+cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names

+survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them

+gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are

+not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names

+and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to

+savages.</p>

+

+<p>A native of Dingley Dell may call all natives of Muggleton

+"Potato-grubs," and the Muggleton people, from time immemorial, may

+have called the Dingley Dell folk "Rooks." But, not being savages, they

+do not think&mdash;as Mr. Hill-Tout's savages do&mdash;that "to receive the name

+of an animal is to be under its protection, to become one with it in

+a very special and mysterious sense," and they do not, like savages,

+think nobly of grubs and rooks. The distinction is obvious, except to

+critics. Mr. Hill-Tout thus accepts my premises as regards savages

+and their ideas about names, but rejects my conclusion, because modern

+villagers do not reason like savages! As to villagers, my evidence

+was only meant to show the wide diffusion, from ancient Israel to the

+Orkneys, of the habit of giving animal names to village groups. For

+evidence of the effect which that habit would have on savages, I have

+now cited Mr. Hill-Tout himself. He has merely misunderstood a very

+plain argument,<a name="FNanchor_33_174" id="FNanchor_33_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_174" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> which he advanced as representing his own opinion

+(pp. 64-66). But then Mr. Hill-Tout has a counter theory.</p>

+

+<p>Is my argument intelligible? A modern villager resents the bawling out

+of "Mouse" as he passes, Mouse being the collective nickname of his

+village, because he does not think nobly of Mice. The savage does think

+nobly of all animals, and so has no reason for resenting, but rather

+for glorying in, his totem name, whether Mouse or Lion. These facts

+were plainly asserted in <i>Social Origins</i>, p. 169, to no avail.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt, in his turn, does not approve of my idea, thus stated by

+him, that "the plant and animal names would be impressed upon each

+group from without, and some of them would stick, would be stereotyped,

+and each group would come to answer to its nickname." He replies&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>"To me, judging of the possible feelings of the ancestors of the

+Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most

+improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have

+given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which

+such names have been adopted."<a name="FNanchor_34_175" id="FNanchor_34_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_175" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Mr. Howitt, of course, could not

+possibly find kinships now adopting animal and other such names given

+from without, because all kinships where totemism exists have got such

+names already, and with the names a sacred body of customs. But does he

+suppose that the many local tribes calling themselves by their word for

+"No" (as <i>Kabi, Kamil, Wonghi,</i> and so on), originally gave these names

+to themselves, saying, "We are the people who, when we mean 'No,' say

+'Wonghi'"? That seems to me hardly credible! Much more probably tribes

+who used Kamil or Kabi for "No" gave the name of <i>Wonghi</i> to a tribe

+who used <i>Wonghi</i> in place of their <i>Kamil</i> or <i>Kabi</i>. In that case the

+tribes, as tribes, have adopted names given from without.</p>

+

+<p>Again, I consider that the feelings of that noble savage, the Red

+Indian, are at least as sensitive to insult as those of Mr. Howitt's

+blacks. Now it so happens that the Blackfoot Indians of North America,

+who apparently have passed out of totemism, have "<i>gentes</i>, a <i>gens</i>

+being a body of consanguineal kinsmen in the male line," writes Mr. G.

+B. Grinnell.<a name="FNanchor_35_176" id="FNanchor_35_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_176" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> These clans, no longer totemic, needed names, and some

+of their names, at least, are most insulting nicknames. Thus we have

+Naked Dogs, Skunks, They Don't Laugh, Buffalo Dung, All Crazy Dogs,

+Fat Roasters, and&mdash;Liars! No men ever gave such names to their own

+community. In a diagram of the arrangement of these clans in camp, made

+about 1850, we find the <i>gentes</i> of the Pi-kun'-I under such pretty

+titles as we have given.<a name="FNanchor_36_177" id="FNanchor_36_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_177" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>

+

+<p>To return from America to Australia, the Narrinyeri tribe, like the

+Sioux and Blackfeet, have reckoning of descent in the male line,

+and, like the Sioux, have local settlements (called "clans" by Mr.

+Howitt), and these local settlements have names. Does Mr. Howitt think

+it likely that one such "clan" called itself "Where shall we go?" and

+another called itself "Gone over there"?<a name="FNanchor_37_178" id="FNanchor_37_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_178" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> These look to me like

+names given by other groups. Tribes, local groups ("clans"), and totem

+kins having names already, I cannot expect to show Mr. Howitt the names

+of such sets of people in the act of being given from without and

+accepted. But, as regards individuals, they "often have what may be

+called a nickname, arising from some strongly marked feature in their

+figures, or from fancied resemblance to some animal or plant."[38] The

+individuals "answer to" such nicknames, I suppose, but they cannot

+evolve, in a lifetime, respect for the plant or animal that yields the

+nickname, because they cannot forget how they come to bear it.</p>

+

+<p>Obvious at a glance as such replies to such objections are, it seems

+that they have not occurred to the objectors.</p>

+

+<p>If we want to discover clans adopting and glorying in names which are

+certainly, in origin, derisive nicknames, we find Clan Diarmaid, whose

+name, Campbell, means "Wry Mouth,"<a name="FNanchor_38_179" id="FNanchor_38_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_179" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> and Clan Cameron, whose name

+means "Crooked Nose."<a name="FNanchor_39_180" id="FNanchor_39_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_180" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> Moreover, South African tribes believe that

+tribal <i>siboko</i>, as Baboon and Alligator, may, and did, arise out of

+nicknames; for, as we have seen, their myths assert that nicknames are

+the origin of such tribal and now honourable names. I cannot prove, of

+course, that the process of adopting a name given from without occurred

+among prehistoric men, but I have demonstrated that, among all sorts

+and conditions of men in our experience, the process is a <i>vera causa</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Dismissing my theory, Mr. Howitt, in place of it, "could more easily

+imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed

+the idea of relationship with animals, or even with plants."<a name="FNanchor_40_181" id="FNanchor_40_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_181" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> They

+might; a man, as in the case given, might dream of a lace lizard, and

+believe that he was one. He might even be named, as an individual,

+"Lace Lizard," but that does not help us. Totem names, as Mr. Fison

+insists, are, and always were, group names. But Mr. Howitt "gets no

+forrarder," if he means that the children of his Lace Lizard become a

+totem kin of Lace Lizards, for under a system of female descent the

+man's children would not be Lace Lizards. Does Mr. Howitt know of a

+single instance in a tribe with female kin where the children of a man

+who, on dream evidence, believed himself to be a Kangaroo, were styled

+Kangaroos? He must adopt the line of saying that, while totemism was

+being evolved, women did the dreaming of being Hakea flowers, Witchetty

+Grubs, Kangaroos, Emus, and so forth, and bequeathed the names to their

+children. But he will not find that process going on in any known

+instance, I fear.</p>

+

+<p>The processes of my hypothesis, though necessarily conjectural, are

+at least <i>veræ causæ</i>, are in human nature, as we know it. A curious

+new example of totems, certainly based on sobriquets not derived from

+animals, occurs among the Warramanga tribe of Central Australia.

+One totem kin is merely called "The Men" (<i>Kati</i>), the name which,

+in dozens of cases, a tribe gives to itself. Another totem kin is

+called "The Laughing Boys" (<i>Thaballa</i>), a name which is obviously

+a nickname, and not given from within. The <i>Thaballa</i> have found it

+necessary to evolve a myth about descent from a giggling boy and his

+giggling playmates, and to practise magic for their behoof, as they are

+supposed not to be dead. All this has clearly been done by the Laughing

+Boy totem kin merely to keep themselves in line with other totem kins

+named from lower animal form.<a name="FNanchor_41_182" id="FNanchor_41_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_182" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> <i>This</i> totem name can have been

+nothing but a group nickname.<a name="FNanchor_42_183" id="FNanchor_42_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_183" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>

+

+<p>I have next to explain the nature of the superstitious regard paid by

+totemists to their name-giving animals.</p>

+

+<p>My guess, says Dr. Durkheim, is "difficult for those who know the

+religious character of the totem, the cult of which it is our object to

+explain. How could a sobriquet become the centre of a regular religious

+system?"</p>

+

+<p>Dr. Durkheim calls the system "religious," and adds that I "leave on

+one side this religious aspect of totemism: but to do so is to leave on

+one side the essential factor in the phenomenon to be explained."</p>

+

+<p>Now, as a matter of fact, I left no element of Australian totemism "on

+one side." I mentioned every totemic tabu and magical practice that

+was known to me. But I do not (it is really a mere question of words)

+describe the beliefs as "religious." Dr. Durkheim does; he describes

+them, as we saw, almost in the terms of the Creed of St. Athanasius.

+But I find, in Australia, no case of such religious usages as praying

+to, or feeding, or burying, the totem. Such really "religious" rites

+are performed, in Samoa, for example, where an animal, once probably a

+totem, is now regarded as the shrine or vehicle of an ancestral spirit,

+who has become a kind of god,<a name="FNanchor_43_184" id="FNanchor_43_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_184" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> and, in Egypt, the animal gods had

+once, it seems all but certain, been totems. In Australia, to be sure,

+two totems, Eagle Hawk and Crow, were creators, in some myths. So far,

+totemic conceptions may be called "religious" conceptions, more or

+less, and if Dr. Durkheim likes to call totems "gods," as he does, he

+has a right to do so. The difference here, then, is one of terminology.</p>

+

+<p>We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really

+religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr.

+Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the

+aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that

+is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after

+animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed,

+nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these

+divisions <i>and the assumption of the animal names</i>, were in consequence

+of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil,

+given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."<a name="FNanchor_44_185" id="FNanchor_44_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_185" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> "Any tradition

+of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes

+it to a supernatural agency."<a name="FNanchor_45_186" id="FNanchor_45_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_186" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence

+(always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious"

+character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the

+decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees

+given by Zeus to Minos.</p>

+

+<p>Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in

+<i>Social Origins</i>, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being

+or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby

+giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction.

+Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained

+the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a

+veritable religious system."<a name="FNanchor_46_187" id="FNanchor_46_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_187" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>

+

+<p>As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal

+institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the

+Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales.

+Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away,

+but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word

+Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few

+words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I

+think, a previous community of language.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution

+of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back

+here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was

+a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about

+Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of

+his body&mdash;even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had

+a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he

+gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every

+one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men

+and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must

+never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far

+apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further

+confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the

+totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual

+totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the <i>wirreenuns</i>

+(sorcerers or medicine men), called his <i>yunbeai</i>, any hurt to which

+injures him, and which he may never eat&mdash;his hereditary totem he may."</p>

+

+<p>In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.</p>

+

+<p>Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the

+decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite

+other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the

+effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate

+marriage.<a name="FNanchor_47_188" id="FNanchor_47_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_188" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "<i>in the plural form</i>

+Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."<a name="FNanchor_48_189" id="FNanchor_48_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_189" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> In fact, in

+the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the <i>Alcheringa</i> men

+of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine,

+partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many

+mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual

+to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind

+of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.<a name="FNanchor_49_190" id="FNanchor_49_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_190" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>

+

+<p>Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the

+sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that <i>he</i>

+(Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in

+question.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely

+decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or <i>Alcheringa</i> female

+Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in

+an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up

+and went away as human beings in every direction."<a name="FNanchor_50_191" id="FNanchor_50_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_191" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>

+

+<p>Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes

+exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only

+be imagined by men living under exogamy already.</p>

+

+<p>In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth

+of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth

+is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul

+is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes

+hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The

+Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the

+souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children.

+As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor

+of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was

+evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they

+have a cult, obtain,... more or less religious. All these facts are

+universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess

+that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection

+between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually

+were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr.

+Frazer's <i>Totemism</i>.</p>

+

+<p>In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural

+cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so

+called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small

+fish, and a very small opossum." <i>These are but two out of seven kins,

+in one Australian tribe</i>. In the other five cases the totem kins,

+according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of

+course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.<a name="FNanchor_51_192" id="FNanchor_51_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_192" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>

+

+<p><i>Enfin</i>, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic

+tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it

+matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They

+certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to

+explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term,

+"religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of

+totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving

+animals of groups, we next turn.</p>

+

+<p>So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of

+distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These

+became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten.

+The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between

+animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature

+of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men

+and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, <i>with

+animals</i>, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From

+these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.</p>

+

+<p>The nature and origin of the supposed connection or <i>rapport</i> between

+each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way

+consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and

+with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern

+times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert

+Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that

+the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and

+Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or

+Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded

+a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay

+family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the

+MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat,

+in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the

+conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic,

+from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The

+Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, <i>the

+badge of a group, not of an individual</i>.... And even if it were first

+given to an individual, his family, <i>i.e.</i> his children, could not

+inherit it from him."<a name="FNanchor_52_193" id="FNanchor_52_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_193" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> These are words of gold.</p>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_142" id="Footnote_1_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_142"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Darwin, <i>Descent of Man</i>, it pp. 361-363. 1871.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_143" id="Footnote_2_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_143"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> I do not extend conjecture to a period when "our human or

+half-human ancestors" may hare had a rutting season, like stags. Cf.

+Westermarck, <i>History of Human Marriage</i>, pp. 27, 28.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_144" id="Footnote_3_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_144"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Here I cannot but remark on the almost insuperable

+difficulty of getting savants to understand an unfamiliar idea. M.

+Salomon Reinach writes, "Another theory (Atkinson, Letourneau) explains

+exogamy as the result of the sexual jealousy of the male, chief of the

+primitive group. (Cf. <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, 1904, pp. 407, 434.)

+He is supposed to have tabooed all the women of the clan, reserving

+them for himself. This conception of a chief not only polygamous but

+<i>omnigamous</i>" (<i>pasigamous</i> must be meant!) "is founded on no known

+ethnological fact." (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 161, Note I,

+1905.) Mr. Atkinson does not speak of a "clan" at all. The "clan," in

+French, American, and some English anthropologists' terminology, is a

+totem kin with exogamy and female reckoning of descent. Mr. Atkinson

+speaks, in the first instance, of "family groups," "the cyclopean

+family," and a sire with his female mates and children. Such a sire is

+no more and no less "omnigamous" than a Turk in his harem, except that,

+as his condition is "semi-brutish," his daughters (as in Panama, in

+1699) are not tabooed to him. Ethnology cannot now find this state of

+things of course; it is a theory of Mr. Darwin's, based on the known

+habits of the higher mammals.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_145" id="Footnote_4_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_145"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> See Mr. Crawley's "<i>The Mystic Rose</i>" for this theory of

+sexual taboo.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_146" id="Footnote_5_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_146"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 153.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_147" id="Footnote_6_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_147"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>Golden Bough</i>, 2, i. pp. 404-446.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_148" id="Footnote_7_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_148"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, xxx. p. 566 sq.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_149" id="Footnote_8_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_149"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> See examples in "Cupid and Psyche," in my <i>Custom and

+Myth</i>, and Mr. Clodd's <i>Tom Tid Tot</i>, pp. 91-93.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_150" id="Footnote_9_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_150"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Der Ursprung des Totemismus</i>. Von Dr. Julius Pikler,

+Professor der Rechtsphilosophie an der Universität Budapest. K.

+Koffmann, Berlin, <i>s.a.</i> Apparently of 1900. This tract, "The Origin

+of Totemism," written in 1899, did not come to my knowledge till after

+this chapter was drafted.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_151" id="Footnote_10_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_151"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Contributions to the Science of Mythology</i>, i. p. 201.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_152" id="Footnote_11_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_152"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Cf. <i>Social Origins</i>, pp. 141, 142.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_153" id="Footnote_12_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_153"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Ursprung des Totemismus</i>, p. 7.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_154" id="Footnote_13_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_154"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See Colonel Mallery on Pictographs, <i>Report of Bureau of

+Ethnology</i>, 1888-1889, pp. 56-61.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_155" id="Footnote_14_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_155"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> "From two inscriptions found at Elensis it appears that

+the names of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea,

+probably they were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, and thrown

+into deep water in the Gulf of Salamis. ... A clearer illustration of

+the confusion between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the

+name and its material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this

+practice of civilised Greece." (<i>Golden Bough</i>, 2, i p. 441.) Cf.

+Budge, <i>Egyptian Magic</i>, pp. 160-162, 1901. "The Egyptians regarded

+the creation as the result of the utterance of the name of the god

+Neb-er-tcher by himself Isis could not do her will on him till she

+learned the <i>name</i> of the god Ra." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell

+us that the great sky-dwelling Being of the Kaitish tribe "made

+himself and gave himself his name." He made himself very inadequately,

+according to the myth, which may rest on a false etymology, and the

+meaning of his name is not pretty, but it would not surprise one if, by

+uttering his name, he made himself. (<i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 498.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_156" id="Footnote_15_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_156"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Der Ursprung des Totemismus</i>, pp. 10, 11.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_157" id="Footnote_16_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_157"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Social Origins</i>, p. 138.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_158" id="Footnote_17_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_158"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> I am sure to be told that in Chapter III. I declared

+<i>local</i> totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line,

+and not primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named

+group local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of

+<i>totem</i> groups, but of <i>local groups bearing animal names</i>, a very

+different thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it

+evolved totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem.

+No group that was <i>not</i> local could get a name to itself, at this early

+stage of the proceedings. The "local habitation" precedes the "name."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_159" id="Footnote_18_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_159"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Native Tribes of Central Australia</i>,

+p. 139.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_160" id="Footnote_19_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_160"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, p. 53, August 1888.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_161" id="Footnote_20_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_161"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Social Origins</i>, pp. 145, 146, and Note 1.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_162" id="Footnote_21_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_162"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1888, p. 51. <i>South-Eastern Tribes</i>,

+p. 736.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_163" id="Footnote_22_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_163"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Other tribes decidedly do understand. Can the <i>Churinga

+nanja</i> and reincarnation beliefs have set up nescience of obvious

+facts among the Arunta? "The children originate solely from the male

+parent, and only owe their infantine nurture to the mother," according

+to certain Australian tribes <i>with female descent</i>. (Howitt, <i>J. A.

+I.</i>, 1882, p. 502. <i>South-Eastern Tribes</i>, pp. 283, 284. So, too, the

+Euahlayi. Mrs. Langloh Parker's MS.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_164" id="Footnote_23_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_164"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Cf. <i>Golden Bough</i>, 2, i. pp. 360-362.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_24_165" id="Footnote_24_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_165"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> Dalton, <i>Ethnology of Bengal</i>, p. 254.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_25_166" id="Footnote_25_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_166"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> On this point of the blood tabu see Dr. Durkheim,

+<i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. pp. 47-57. Also M. Reinach,

+<i>L'Anthropologie</i>, vol. x. p. 65. The point was laid before me long

+ago by Mr. Arthur Platt, when he was editing the papers of Mr. J. F.

+McLennan. Dr. Durkheim charges me (<i>Folk Lore</i>, December 1903) with

+treating these tabus "vaguely" in <i>Social Origins</i>. I merely referred

+the reader more than once, as in <i>Social Origins</i>, p. 57, Note I, to

+Dr. Durkheim's own exposition, also to M. Reinach, <i>L'Anthropologie</i>,

+x. p. 65. The theory of the sacredness of the blood is not absolutely

+necessary. The totem tabu often excludes all contact with the totem by

+the totemist.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_26_167" id="Footnote_26_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_167"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> The passage will be found in <i>Social Origins</i>, pp.

+166-175.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_27_168" id="Footnote_27_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_168"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Social Origins</i>, pp. 295-301.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_28_169" id="Footnote_28_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_169"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Folk Lore</i>, December 1903, p. 423.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_29_170" id="Footnote_29_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_170"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Vindication of Cameron's Name</i>. "Saints of the

+Covenant," i. p. 251.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_30_171" id="Footnote_30_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_171"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, p. 10, Note 2.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_31_172" id="Footnote_31_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_172"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> J. J. Atkinson. The natives call <i>us</i> "White Men." We do

+not call ourselves "God dams," but Jeanne d'Arc did.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_32_173" id="Footnote_32_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_173"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada</i>, vol. ix., vii. pp. 64, 66.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_33_174" id="Footnote_33_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_174"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada</i>, ut supra, pp. 96, 97.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_34_175" id="Footnote_34_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_175"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 154.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_35_176" id="Footnote_35_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_176"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Blackfoot Lodge Tales</i>, p. 208, 1893.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_36_177" id="Footnote_36_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_177"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 225.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_37_178" id="Footnote_37_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_178"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 131.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_38_179" id="Footnote_38_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_179"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>Central Tribes</i>, p. 638.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_39_180" id="Footnote_39_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_180"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Macbain, <i>Gaelic Etymological Dictionary</i>.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_40_181" id="Footnote_40_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_181"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 154.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_41_182" id="Footnote_41_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_182"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes</i>, pp. 207-210.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_42_183" id="Footnote_42_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_183"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he

+knows no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning

+Mr. Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special

+variety of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that

+analogous names obtain now in certain tribes, <i>e.g.</i> the Yum." (<i>Op.

+cit.</i>, p. 154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were

+sobriquets given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does

+know such cases after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating

+of Yuin names, unless names of individuals derived from their skill

+in catching or spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These

+exist among the more elderly Kunaï. (<i>Op. cit.</i>, p. 738.) But Mr.

+Haddon was not thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of

+group names. On his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because

+wolves and ravens were their chief articles of diet.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_43_184" id="Footnote_43_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_184"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See Turner's <i>Samoa</i>, and Mr. Tylor, <i>J. A. I.</i>, N.S., i.

+p. 142.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_44_185" id="Footnote_44_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_185"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1888, pp. 53, 54. Also volume xiii.

+p. 498. Cf., too <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 89, 488,

+498.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_45_186" id="Footnote_45_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_186"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1888, p. 67.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_46_187" id="Footnote_46_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_187"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Bureau of Ethnology Report</i>, 1892, 1893, Part I. pp. 22,

+23. Howitt, <i>Organisation of Australian Tribes</i>, p. 134 Information

+from Mrs. Langloh Parker. These sources give Menomini, Dieri, Murring,

+Woeworung, and Euahlayi myths, attributing totemic rules and names to

+divine institution.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_47_188" id="Footnote_47_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_188"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Howitt, <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, p. 25.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_48_189" id="Footnote_48_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_189"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, 1888, p. 498. Cf. <i>Native Tribes of

+South-East Australia</i>, pp. 482-484. Mura-Mura, till further notice, are

+mythical ancestors, not reincarnated.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_49_190" id="Footnote_49_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_190"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Making of Religion</i>, p. 232, 1898.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_50_191" id="Footnote_50_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_191"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Assoc. Adv. Science</i>, p. 531, and Note 30, 1902. For

+other discrepant myths, cf. <i>Native Tribes of S.E. Australia</i>, pp. 475,

+482.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_51_192" id="Footnote_51_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_192"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> Grey, <i>Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western

+Australia</i>. That only two of seven totems in one tribe were explained

+is usually overlooked.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_52_193" id="Footnote_52_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_193"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, p. 165, 1880.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII</a></h4>

+

+<h3>RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS</h3>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>How phratries and totem kins were developed&mdash;Local

+animal-named groups would be exogamous&mdash;Children in these

+will bear the group names of their mothers&mdash;Influence of

+tattooing&mdash;Emu <i>local</i> group thus full of persons who

+are Snipes, Lizards, &amp;c&mdash;<i>by maternal descent</i>&mdash;Members

+are Emus <i>by local group name</i>: Snipes, Lizards, &amp;c.,

+by <i>name of descent</i>&mdash;No marriage, however, within

+local group&mdash;Reason, survival of old tabu&mdash;Reply to

+Dr. Durkheim&mdash;The names bring about peaceful relations

+between members of the different local groups&mdash;Tendency

+to peaceful betrothals between men and women of the

+various local groups&mdash;Probable leadership of two strong

+local groups in this arrangement&mdash;Say they are groups

+Eagle Hawk and Crow&mdash;More than two such groups sometimes

+prominent&mdash;Probable that the dual alliance was widely

+Imitated&mdash;The two chief allied local groups become the

+phratries&mdash;Tendency of phratries to die out&mdash;Often

+superseded by matrimonial classes&mdash;Meaning of surviving

+phratry names often lost, and why&mdash;Their meaning known

+in other tribes&mdash;Members, <i>by descent</i>, of various animal

+names, within the old local groups (now phratries),

+become the totem kins of to-day&mdash;Advantages of this

+theory&mdash;Difficulties which it avoids.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>We have perhaps succeeded in showing how totemism my have become a

+belief and a source of institutions: we have shown, at least, that

+granting savage methods of thought, totemism might very naturally have

+come in this way.</p>

+

+<p>Totemism certainly arose in an age when, if descent reckoned, and,

+if names were inherited, it was on the spindle side. "<i>All abnormal

+instances,</i>" writes Mr. Howitt, "<i>I have found to be connected with

+changes in the line of descent</i>. The primitive and complete forms" (of

+totemism) "have uterine descent, and it is in cases where descent

+is counted in the male line that I find the most abnormal forms to

+occur."<a name="FNanchor_1_194" id="FNanchor_1_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_194" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>

+

+<p>As few scholars seriously dispute this opinion of Mr. Howitt, based

+on a very wide experience, and fortified by the almost universal view

+that descent was reckoned, when totemism began, in the female line,

+and as the point is accepted by every author whose ideas I have been

+discussing, we need not criticise hypotheses which assume that totemism

+arose when descent was reckoned in the male line, or that totems arose

+out of personal manitus of males, transferred to the female line.</p>

+

+<p>Now, granting that our system so far may afford a basis of argument, we

+have to show how the phratries and the totem kins within them might be

+logically and naturally developed.</p>

+

+<p>If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of

+Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a

+<i>sacred</i> sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical

+rule would be that of the jealous Sire, "No males to touch the females

+in my camp," with expulsion of adolescent sons. In efflux of time

+that rule, become habitual, would be, "No marriage within the local

+group." Next, let the local groups receive names, such as Emus, Crows,

+Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, "No marriage within the local

+group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe." But, if the primal

+groups were not exogamous, they would become so, as soon as totemic

+myths and tabus were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other

+names of small local groups.</p>

+

+<p>The natural result will be that all the wives among the <i>local</i> groups

+called Snipes will come to bear names other than Snipe, will come

+to be known by the names of the <i>local</i> groups from which they have

+been acquired. These names they will retain, I suggest, in local group

+Snipe, by way of distinction&mdash;as the Emu woman, the Opossum woman, and

+so forth. The Emus know the names of the groups from which they have

+taken women, and it seems probable enough that the women may even have

+borne tattoo marks denoting their original groups, as is now in some

+places the Australian practice. "It probably has been universal," says

+Mr. Haddon.<a name="FNanchor_2_195" id="FNanchor_2_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_195" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

+

+<p>If, then, the stranger women among the Emus are known, in that local

+group, as the Opossum woman, the Snipe woman, the Lizard woman; their

+children in the group might very naturally speak of each other as "the

+Snipe woman's, the Lizard woman's children," or more briefly as "the

+little Snipes," "the young Lizards," and so on. I say "might speak,"

+for though totem names have the advantage of being easily indicated,

+and in practice are often indicated by gesture language, I take it that

+by this time man had evolved language.<a name="FNanchor_3_196" id="FNanchor_3_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_196" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>

+

+<p>In course of time, by this process (which certainly did occur, though

+at how early a stage it came first into being we cannot say), each

+<i>local</i> group becomes heterogeneous. Emu <i>local</i> group is now full of

+members of Snipe, Lizard, and other animal-named members <i>by maternal

+descent</i>. There are thus what Mr. Howitt has called "Major totems"

+(name-giving animals of local groups), and "Minor totems" (various

+animal names of male and female members within, for example, <i>local</i>

+group Emu, these various animal names being acquired <i>by female

+descent</i>). Each member of a local Emu group is now Emu by local group;

+but is Snipe, Lizard, Opossum, Kangaroo, or what not, by <i>name of

+maternal descent</i>.</p>

+

+<p>This theory is no original idea, it is Mr. McLennan's mode of

+accounting for the heterogeneity of the local group. They are not all

+Wolves, for example, where descent is reckoned in the female line, and

+exogamy is the rule. In the local group Wolf are Ravens, Doves, Dogs,

+Cats, what you will, names derived by the children from mothers of

+these names. I do not pretend that I can demonstrate the existence of

+the process, but it accounts for the facts and is not out of harmony

+with human nature. Can any other hypothesis be suggested?</p>

+

+<p>When things have reached this pitch, each local group, <i>if it

+understood the situation as it is now understood among most savages</i>,

+might find wives peacefully in its own circle. Lizard man, in <i>local</i>

+group Emu, might marry Snipe woman also in <i>local</i> group Emu, <i>as far

+as extant totem law now goes</i>. They were both, in fact, members of a

+small local <i>tribe</i> of animal name, with many kins of animal names,

+by female descent, within that tribe. Why then might not Snipe (by

+descent) in Emu <i>local</i> group marry a woman, by descent Lizard, in

+the same Emu <i>local</i> group? Many critics have asked this question,

+including Dr. Durkheim.<a name="FNanchor_4_197" id="FNanchor_4_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_197" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> I had given my answer to the question before

+it was asked,<a name="FNanchor_5_198" id="FNanchor_5_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_198" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> backing my opinion by a statement of Dr. Durkheim

+himself. People of different totems in the same <i>local</i> group (say Emu)

+<i>might</i> have married; but then, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another

+case, "the old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs,

+survives."<a name="FNanchor_6_199" id="FNanchor_6_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_199" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> "Now the old prohibition in this case was that a man of

+the Emu (<i>local</i>) group was not to marry a woman of the Emu (<i>local</i>)

+group. That rule endures, even though the Emu group now contains men

+and women of several distinct and different totem kins," that is to

+say, of different animal-named kins <i>by descent</i>.</p>

+

+<p>I may add that, as soon as speculation about the animal names led to

+the belief in the mystic <i>rapport</i> between the animals and their human

+namesakes, and so led to tabu on the intermarriage of persons of the

+same animal name, the tabu would attach as much to the name-giving

+animal of the <i>local</i> group as to the animals of the kins <i>by descent</i>

+within that <i>local</i> group.</p>

+

+<p>Thus Lizard man, in Emu local group, cannot marry Snipe woman in the

+same. Both are also, by <i>local</i> group name, Emus. He is Emu-Lizard, she

+is Emu-Snipe.</p>

+

+<p>If it be replied that now no regard is paid by the members of a phratry

+to their phratriac animal (where it is known), I answer that the

+necessary <i>poojah</i> is done, by the members of the totem kin of that

+animal, within his phratry, while all do him the grace of not marrying

+within his name.<a name="FNanchor_7_200" id="FNanchor_7_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_200" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> A Lizard man and a Snipe woman in Emu <i>local</i> group

+could not, therefore, yet marry. The members of the local group, though

+of different animal names <i>of descent</i>, had still to ravish brides from

+other hostile <i>local</i> groups.</p>

+

+<p>Each <i>local</i> group was now full of men and women who, <i>by maternal

+descent</i>, bore the same animal names as many members of the other

+<i>local</i> groups. A belief in a mystic <i>rapport</i> between the bearers of

+the animal names and the animals themselves now being developed, Snipe

+and Lizard and Opossum <i>by descent</i>, in Emu <i>local</i> group, must already

+have felt that they were not really strangers and enemies to men of

+the same names <i>by descent</i>, Snipe, Lizard, and Opossum, and of the

+same connection with the same name-giving animals, in Kangaroo <i>local</i>

+group, or any other adjacent <i>local</i> group.</p>

+

+<p>This obvious idea&mdash;human beings who are somehow connected with the

+same animals are also connected with each other&mdash;was necessarily an

+influence in favour of peace between the local groups. In whatever

+<i>local</i> group a Snipe by descent might be, he would come to notice a

+connection between himself and Snipes <i>by descent</i> in all other <i>local</i>

+groups. Consequently men at last arranged, I take it, to exchange

+brides on amicable terms, instead of Snipe <i>by descent</i> risking the

+shedding of kindred blood, that of another Snipe <i>by descent</i>, in the

+mellay of a raid to lift women from another <i>local</i> group.</p>

+

+<p>If two strong local groups, say Emu and Kangaroo, or Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, took the lead in this treaty of alliance and <i>connubium</i>, and if

+the other local groups gradually came into it under their leadership

+(for union would make Eagle Hawk and Crow powerful), or if several

+local groups chose two such groups to head them in a peaceful exchange

+of brides, we have, in these two now united and intermarrying local

+groups of animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, the primal forms of the

+actual phratries of to-day.</p>

+

+<p>But why do we find in a tribe only two phratries? I have asked myself

+and been asked by others. In the first place, in America, we note

+examples of three or more phratries in the same tribe. Again, in

+Australia, we seem to myself to find probable traces of more than two

+phratries in a tribe, traces of what Mr. Frazer styles "sub-phratries,"

+what one may call "submerged phratries" (see Chapter X.). Further, dual

+alliances are the most usual form of such combinations: two strong

+groups, allied and setting the example, would attract the neighbouring

+groups into their circle. Finally, if I am right in thinking that the

+phratriac arrangement arose in a given centre, and was propagated

+by emigrants, and was borrowed by distant tribes (which is a point

+elsewhere discussed), the original model of a dual alliance would

+spread almost universally, while, as has been said, traces of more

+numerous combinations appear to occur.</p>

+

+<p>Except as parties of old to a peaceful arrangement, the phratries, as

+they at present exist (where they exist), have often now no reason for

+existence. Where totems are exogamous, or where totems and matrimonial

+classes exist, the phratry is now an empty survival; having done its

+work it does no more work, and often vanishes. If members of <i>local</i>

+animal-named groups, become fully totemic, had at once understood their

+own position as under the now existing totem law, they could have taken

+wives of different totems <i>of descent</i> each in their own group, without

+any phratries at all. People manage their affairs thus in all totemic

+parts of the world where there are no phratries, though, for what we

+know, phratries may have existed, and vanished, in these places, when

+their task was ended.</p>

+

+<p>Again, phratries die out, we repeat, even in America and Australia. In

+some regions of Australia their place has been taken by the opposed

+matrimonial classes, prohibiting marriage between mothers' and

+sons', fathers' and daughters' generations. That arrangement, as it

+is not found in the most primitive Australian tribes, which have only

+phratries and totems, must be later than phratries and totems. It was

+a later enactment, within the phratry, and, as among the Arunta and

+Wiraidjuri, it has now superseded the phratry. The matrimonial classes,

+originally introduced within each pre-existing phratry, now regulate

+marriage, among Arunta and Wiraidjuri, and the phratry has dropped off,

+its name being unknown, like the flower which has borne its fruit.</p>

+

+<p>Again, in Australia, as has been said, we shall try to show that

+phratries, in many tribes, are perhaps a <i>borrowed</i> institution, not

+an institution independently evolved everywhere. That is rendered

+probable because, among many tribes, the phratry names survive but are

+now meaningless, yet these same phratry names possess, or have recently

+possessed, a meaning in the language of other tribes, from whom the

+institution may apparently (though not necessarily) have been borrowed

+with the foreign names of each phratry.</p>

+

+<p>For all these reasons, phratries seem, in some regions, to be a

+device adopted, by some tribe, or tribes, at a given moment, for a

+given purpose (peace), and borrowed from them by some other tribes,

+or propagated by emigrants into new lands. Men might borrow the

+<i>names</i> of the phratries, or might use other names which were already

+current designations of their own local groups. The purpose of the

+phratry organisation, I argue, may have been the securing of peace

+and alliance, and the movement may have been originated, somewhere in

+Australia, by two powerful local groups of animal name; in one vast

+region known as Eagle Hawk and Crow, Mukwara and Kilpara, and by

+other names of the same meaning. Such I take to have been the mode

+in which phratries arose, out of the alliance and <i>connubium</i> of two

+local groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow; or of more than two groups. Mr.

+Frazer says that the Moquis of Arizona have ten phratries (quoting

+Bourke, <i>Snake Dance</i>, p. 336) and the Wyandots have four; the Mohegans

+have three.<a name="FNanchor_8_201" id="FNanchor_8_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_201" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> These, or other groups, took the lead in recognising

+the situation, namely, that brides might be peacefully exchanged among

+<i>local</i> groups becoming conscious of common kinship in their totems <i>by

+descent</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile, in the various otherwise animal-named members of <i>local</i>

+groups Eagle Hawk and Crow&mdash;in the men and women within <i>local</i> groups

+Eagle Hawk and Crow who were Snipes, Lizards, Opossums, and so on, <i>by

+maternal descent</i>&mdash;we have the forerunners of the totem kins within the

+phratries of to-day. In the same way, members of all other adjacent

+<i>local</i> groups could also come into Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries by

+merely dropping their <i>local</i> group-names, keeping their names by

+<i>descent</i>.</p>

+

+<p>We have not, on this system, to imagine that there were but two

+totem groups in each district, at the beginning (a thing unlikely to

+happen anywhere, still less always and everywhere), and that many of

+their members, hiving off, took new totem names. Our scheme gives us,

+naturally, and on Mr. Darwin's lines, first, many small local groups,

+perhaps in practice exogamous; then these local groups invested with

+animal names; then, the animals become totems, sanctioning exogamy;

+then by exogamy and female descent, each animal-named <i>local</i> group

+becomes full of members of other animal names <i>by descent</i>; then an

+approach to peace among all the groups naturally arises; then pacific

+<i>connubium</i> between them all, at first captained by two leading local

+groups, say Crow and Eagle Hawk (though there is no reason why there

+should not have been more of such alliances in a tribe, and there are

+traces of them),<a name="FNanchor_9_202" id="FNanchor_9_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_202" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> and, lastly, the allies prevailing, the inhabitants

+of a district became an harmonious tribe, with two phratries (late

+<i>local</i> groups), say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and with the other old

+local group-names represented in what are now the totem kins within

+the phratries. This arrangement, in course of time, is perhaps even

+borrowed, foreign phratry names and all, by distant groups hitherto not

+thus organised.</p>

+

+<p>This scheme, it will be observed, is in harmony with what Mr.

+Howitt's knowledge of native life shows him to have occurred. From

+the beginning, in the physical conditions of Australia, no horde or

+communal mob could keep together, for lack of supplies. No assemblage

+"could assume dimensions more than that of a few members," before it

+was broken up by economic causes.<a name="FNanchor_10_203" id="FNanchor_10_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_203" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> There were thus, in a district,

+many small groups, not, as on Dr. Durkheim's theory, just two groups,

+broken out of a larger horde by their unexplained religious devotion

+each to its own god, an animal, say Eagle Hawk for one group, Crow

+for the other. On the other hand, there was now an indefinite number

+of small <i>local</i> groups, each of animal name, each containing members

+of as many names <i>of descent</i> as the local groups from which each

+local group had taken wives. Such groups would now be larger than mere

+hearth-circles, in proportion as improved skill in fishing, net-making,

+spearing, and trapping animals, and in selecting and cooking edible

+vegetables and roots, with improved implements, enabled larger groups

+to subsist in their territorial area. This scheme is manifestly

+consistent with the probable economic and social conditions, while

+the animal group-names are explained by the necessity under which the

+groups lay to differentiate each other by names. The regard later paid

+to the name-giving animals as totems is explained, on the ground of the

+savage theory of the mystical quality of names of unknown origin, names

+also borne by animals, powerful, wise, mysterious creatures.</p>

+

+<p>These processes must have occupied long ages in evolution.</p>

+

+<p>This hypothesis escapes the difficulty as to how an incestuous horde,

+guided by an inspired medicine man, could ever come to see that there

+was such a thing as incest, and that such a thing ought not to be

+tolerated. We also escape Dr. Durkheim's difficulty&mdash;How did two

+hostile sects of animal worshippers arise in the "compact mass" of the

+horde; and how could they, though of one blood, claim separate origins?

+We also see how totem kins could occur within the phratries, without

+needing to urge alternately that such kins both do and do not possess

+a territorial basis. Again, we have not to decide, what we can never

+know, whether man was <i>originally</i> gregarious and promiscuous or not.

+We see that circumstances forced him to live in groups so small that

+the jealous will of the Sire or Sires could enforce exogamy on the

+young members of the camp, a prohibition which the natural conservatism

+of the savage might later extend to the members of the animal-named

+local group, even when heterogeneous. However heterogeneous by descent,

+all members of the local group were, by habitat, of one animal name,

+and when tabus arose in deference to the sacred animal, these tabus

+forbade marriage whether in the animal-named local group, or in the

+animal name of descent.</p>

+

+<p>So far, the theory "marches," and meets all facts known to us, in

+pristine tribes with female descent, phratries, and totem kins, but

+without "matrimonial classes," four or eight. The theory also meets

+facts which have not, till now, been recognised in Australia, and which

+we proceed to state.</p>

+

+

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_194" id="Footnote_1_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_194"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Rep. Reg. Smithsonian Institute</i>, p. 801, 1883.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_195" id="Footnote_2_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_195"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Evolution in Art</i>, pp. 252-257.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_196" id="Footnote_3_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_196"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> "This question, Minna Murdu?" ("What totem?") "can be put

+by gesture language, to which, in the same way, a suitable reply can be

+made." (Mr. Howitt, on the Dieri. <i>Rep. Reg. Smith. Institute</i>, p. 804,

+Note I, 1883.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_197" id="Footnote_4_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_197"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Folk Lore</i>, December 1903.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_198" id="Footnote_5_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_198"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Social Origins</i>, p. 56, Note 1.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_199" id="Footnote_6_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_199"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, v. p. 106, Note I.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_200" id="Footnote_7_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_200"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The Kamilaroi are said to offer exceptions to this rule.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_201" id="Footnote_8_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_201"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Totemism</i>, pp. 60-62. We must remember that American

+writers use the word "phratry" in several quite different senses; we

+cannot always tell what they mean when they use it.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_202" id="Footnote_9_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_202"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> If the Urabunna rules are correctly reported on, they may

+have several "sub-phratries."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_203" id="Footnote_10_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_203"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, xii. p. 497.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII</a></h4>

+

+<h3>A NEW POINT EXPLAINED</h3>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>On our theory, in each phratry there should be a totem kin

+of the phratry name&mdash;If not, fatal to Dr. Durkheim's and

+Mr. Frazer's theories, as well as to ours&mdash;The fact occurs

+in America: why not in Australia?&mdash;Questions asked by Mr.

+Thomas&mdash;The fact, totem kins of phratriac names within

+the phratries, <i>does</i> occur in Australia&mdash;The fact not

+hitherto observed&mdash;Why not observed&mdash;Three causes&mdash;The

+author's conjecture&mdash;Evidence proving the conjecture

+successful&mdash;Myth favouring Mr. Fraser's theory&mdash;Another

+myth states the author's theory&mdash;<i>Mukwara</i> and <i>Kilpara</i>

+remain, as phratry names, among many tribes which give

+other names to Eagle Hawks and Crows&mdash;The Eagle Hawk,

+under another name, is totem in <i>Mukwara</i> (Eagle Hawk)

+phratry&mdash;The Crow, under another name, is a totem

+<i>Kilpara</i> (Crow) phratry&mdash;Thus the position is the same as

+in America&mdash;List of examples in proof&mdash;Barinji, Barkinji.

+Ta-ta-thi, Keramin, Wiraudjuri, and other instances&mdash;Where

+phratry names are lost&mdash;Eagle Hawk and Crow totems are

+still in <i>opposite</i> phratries&mdash;Five examples&mdash;Examples of

+Cockatoo-named phratries, each containing its own Cockatoo

+totem&mdash;Often under new names&mdash;Bee phratries with Bee

+matrimonial classes&mdash;Cases of borrowed phratry and class

+names&mdash;Success of our conjectures&mdash;Practical difficulty

+caused by clash of old and new laws&mdash;Two totem kins cannot

+legally marry&mdash;Difficulty evaded&mdash;These kins change their

+phratries&mdash;Shock to tender consciences&mdash;Change takes the

+line of least resistance&mdash;Example of a change to be given.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>On the theory propounded in the last chapter, the lead in making

+peaceful alliance and <i>connubium</i> between exogamous groups previously

+hostile, was probably taken, and the example was set, or the allies

+were captained, by two or in some cases more of the exogamous

+animal-named local groups themselves. Such leading groups, by our

+theory, in time became the two phratries of the tribe. If this were the

+case, these two kins, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, or, among the Thlinkets

+in America, Wolf and Raven, should be found to-day among the totem

+kins, should exist not only as names of phratries, but as names of

+totem kins <i>in</i> the phratries. If they are not so found, it will prove

+a serious objection, not only to our hypothesis, but to that of Dr.

+Durkheim, and (at one time at least) of Mr. J. G. Frazer. Their theory

+being that two primary totem kins sent off colonies which took new

+totem names, and that the primary kins later became phratries, in the

+existing phratries we should discover totem kins of the phratry names,

+say, totem kin Raven in Raven phratry, and totem kin Wolf in Wolf

+phratry. This phenomenon has been noted in America, but only faintly

+remarked on, or not at all observed, in Australia.</p>

+

+<p>Why should there be this difference, if it does exist, in the savage

+institutions of the two continents? The facts which, on either

+theory&mdash;Dr. Durkheim's or my own&mdash;were to be expected, are observed in

+America; in Australia they have only been noticed in two or three lines

+by Mr. Howitt, which have escaped comment by theorists. When once we

+recognise the importance of Mr. Howitt's remark, that in some phratries

+the animals of phratry names "are also totems," we open a new and

+curious chapter in the history of early institutions.</p>

+

+<p>As to America, both Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim observe that "among the

+Thlinkets and Mohegans, each phratry bears a name which is also the

+name of one of the clans," thus the Thlinkets have a Wolf totem kin

+in Wolf phratry; a Raven totem kin in Raven phratry. Mr. Frazer adds,

+"It seems probable that the names of the Raven and Wolf were the two

+original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards, by subdivision,

+became phratries."<a name="FNanchor_1_204" id="FNanchor_1_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_204" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>

+

+<p>We have seen the objections to this theory of subdivision (Chapter V.

+<i>supra</i>), in discussing the system of Dr. Durkheim, who, by the way,

+gives two entirely different accounts of the Thlinket organisation in

+three successive pages; one version from Mr. Morgan, the other more

+recent, and correct, from Mr. Frazer.<a name="FNanchor_2_205" id="FNanchor_2_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_205" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> Wolf and Raven do not appear

+in Mr. Morgan's version.<a name="FNanchor_3_206" id="FNanchor_3_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_206" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>

+

+<p>If Mr. Frazer's view in 1887 and Dr. Durkheim's are right, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow phratries, say, are in Australia examples of the primary

+original totem kins, and as totem kins they ought to remain (as Raven

+and Wolf do among the Thlinkets), after they become heads of phratries.

+Again, if I am right, the names of the two leading local groups, after

+becoming phratries, should still exist to this day in the phratries, as

+names of totem kins. This is quite obvious, yet except in the Thlinket

+case, the Haida case, and that of the Mohegans, we never (apparently)

+have found&mdash;what we ought always to find&mdash;within the phratries two

+totem kins bearing the same animal names as the phratries bear. Why

+is this? What has become of the two original, or the two leading local

+animal-named groups and totem kins? Nobody seems to have asked this

+very necessary question till quite recently.<a name="FNanchor_4_207" id="FNanchor_4_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_207" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>What has become of the two lost totem kins?</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Thomas's objection to an earlier theory of mine, in which the two

+original totem kins were left in the vague, ought to be given in his

+own words: "Mr. Lang assumes" (in <i>Social Origins</i>) "that the animals

+of the original connubial groups" (phratries) "did not become totems,

+and, consequently, that there were no totem kins corresponding to

+the original groups. This can only have taken place if a rule were

+developed that men of Emu" (local) "group might not marry women of the

+Emu kin, and <i>vice versa</i>. This would involve, however, a new rule

+of exogamy distinct from both group (local) and kin (totem) bars to

+marriage. This must have come about either (a) because the Emu kin

+were regarded as potentially members of the Emu group (an extension of

+group exogamy, the existence of which it would be hard to prove), or

+(b) because the Emu group or Emu kin were (legally) kindred, and as

+such debarred from marrying. ... In either case, on Mr. Lang's theory,

+two whole kins were debarred from marriage or compelled to change

+their totems" (when phratries arose). "I do not know which is less

+improbable."</p>

+

+<p>Certainly the two kins could not change their totems, and certainly

+they would not remain celibate.</p>

+

+<p>Meanwhile the <i>apparent</i> disappearance in Australia of the two

+original, or leading, totem kins, of the same names as the phratries,

+is as great a difficulty to Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old theory

+as to my own, only they did not observe the circumstance.</p>

+

+<p>How vanished the totem kins of the same names as the phratries? I

+answer that they did not vanish at all, and I go on to prove it.

+The main facts are very simple, the totem kins of phratry names in

+Australia are often in their phratries. But at a first glance this is

+not obvious. The facts escape observation for the following reasons:&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>(1) In most totemic communities, except in Australia and in some

+American cases, there are no phratries, and consequently there is no

+possible proof that totem kins of the phratriac names exist, for we do

+not know the names of the lost phratries.</p>

+

+<p>(2) In many Australian cases, such as those of the Wiraidjuri and

+Arunta, the phratries have now no names, and really, as phratries, no

+existence. Dual divisions of the tribes exist, but are known to us by

+the names of the four or eight "matrimonial classes" (a relatively late

+development)<a name="FNanchor_5_208" id="FNanchor_5_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_208" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> into which they are parcelled, as, among the Arunta,

+Panunga, Bukhara, Purula, Kumara.<a name="FNanchor_6_209" id="FNanchor_6_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_209" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>

+

+<p>We cannot therefore say in such cases, that the totem kins of phratriac

+names have vanished, because we do not know how the phratries were

+named; they may have had the names of two extant totem kins, but their

+names are lost.</p>

+

+<p>(3) Again, there are Australian cases, as of the Urabunna and Dieri of

+Central Australia, in which the phratries have names&mdash;Matthurie and

+Kirarawa (Urabunna), or Matteri and Kararu (Dieri)&mdash;but these phratry

+names cannot be, or are not translated. Manifestly, then, the meaning

+of the names may be identical with names of extant totem kins in these

+phratries, may be names of obsolete or almost obsolete sacred meaning,

+originally denoting totems now recognised by other names in the

+everyday language of the tribe.</p>

+

+<p>Confronted by the problem of the two apparently lost totem kins, those

+of the same names as the phratries, I conjectured that phratry names,

+now meaningless in the speech of the tribes where they appear, might

+be really identical in meaning with other names now denoting totem

+animals in the phratries. This conjecture proved to be correct, and I

+proceed to show how my conclusion was reached. The evidence, happily,

+is earlier than scientific discussion of the subject, and is therefore

+unbiassed.</p>

+

+<p>So long ago as 1852 or 1853, Mr. C. G. N. Lockhart, in his Annual

+Report to the Government of New South Wales, recorded a myth of the

+natives on the Lower Darling River, which flows from the north into the

+Murray River, the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria.<a name="FNanchor_7_210" id="FNanchor_7_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_210" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>

+The tribes had the phratries named by Mr. Lockhart <i>Mookwara</i> and

+<i>Keelpara</i>, usually written <i>Mukwara</i> and <i>Kilpara</i>. These were the

+usual intermarrying exogamous phratries. According to the natives,

+Mukwara and Kilpara were the two wives of a prehistoric black fellow,

+"the Eves of the Adam of the Darling," Mr. Lockhart says&mdash;like the

+Hebrew Lilith and Eve, wives of Adam, <i>Lilith being a Serpent woman</i>.

+(If Rachael and Leah are really animal names, they may be old phratry

+names, though I think it highly improbable.)</p>

+

+<p>The children of wife Mukwara married those of wife Kilpara, and <i>vice

+versa</i>, the children taking the mother's name. Next, says the myth, as

+in the theories of Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Frazer, the two stocks, Mukwara

+and Kilpara, subdivided into totem kins, as Kilpara into Emu, Duck,

+&amp;c., Mukwara into Kangaroo, Opossum, &amp;c. (There is perhaps no modern

+theory of the origin of totemism, including my own, which has not been

+somewhere, and to some extent, anticipated by the mythical guesses of

+savages. The Port Fairy tribes, in their myth, take my view, and make

+the phratries arise in the male ancestor and his wife, two Cockatoos

+of various species; the totem kins were brought in by the sons of

+the two Cockatoos marrying women from a distance, of other animal

+parentage, their children keeping the maternal names, as Duck, Snipe,

+and so on. This myth is well inspired, for once!) In the passage of Mr.

+Lockhart, as cited by Mr. Curr, he does not give the translation of the

+names Mukwara and Kilpara. But in Mr. Brough Smyth's <i>Aborigines of

+Victoria</i>, a compilation of evidence published in 1878, we find another

+myth. "The natives of the northern parts of Victoria" believe that the

+makers of the world were "two beings that had severally the forms of

+the Crow and the Eagle Hawk." The Eagle Hawk was <i>Mak-quarra</i>; the Crow

+is <i>Kil-parra</i>.<a name="FNanchor_8_211" id="FNanchor_8_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_211" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>

+

+<p>Again, Mr. Bulmer writes: "The blacks of the Murray"&mdash;the river

+severing northern Victoria from New South Wales&mdash;"are divided into

+two classes" (phratries), "the Mak-quarra, or Eagle, and the Kilparra,

+or Crow. If the man be Mak-quarra, the woman must be Kil-parra," by

+phratry.<a name="FNanchor_9_212" id="FNanchor_9_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_212" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>

+

+<p>One myth (1852-53) explains Mukwara and Kilpara as wives of one man,

+and mothers of the phratries. The other (1878) says that Mukwara was a

+cosmic Eagle Hawk, Kilpara a cosmic Crow. They were on hostile terms,

+like Ormuzd and Ahriman; like the Thlinket phratry-founders, Raven and

+Wolf; and like the name-giving founders of phratries in New Britain, Te

+Kabinana, the author of good, and Te Kovuvura, the author of evil.<a name="FNanchor_10_213" id="FNanchor_10_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_213" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>

+Eagle Hawk and Crow, Kilpara and Mukwara, in one of the myths, made

+peace, one condition being that "the Murray blacks should be divided

+into two classes" (phratries) called Mukwara and Kilpara, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow.<a name="FNanchor_11_214" id="FNanchor_11_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_214" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

+

+<p>Crow and Eagle Hawk, then, were apparently names of hostile groups,

+which, making <i>connubium</i>, became allied phratries.</p>

+

+<p>The evidence thus is that Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk, that Kilpara meant

+Crow, in the language of some tribe which, so far, I have not been able

+to identify in glossaries. Probably the tribe is now extinct. But these

+two names for Eagle Hawk and Crow now denote two phratries in many

+widely separated tribes, which, in common use, <i>employ various quite

+different names for Eagle Hawk and Crow</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Now the point is that, in Mukwara phratry (Eagle Hawk), we almost

+always find, <i>under another name</i>, Eagle Hawk as a totem kin; and in

+Kilpara, Crow, we find, <i>under another name</i>, Crow as a totem kin.

+In many other cases, we cannot translate the phratry names, but, by

+a fortunate chance, the meanings of Kilpara and Mukwara have been

+preserved, and we see that, as in America, so also in Australia,

+phratries contain totem kins representing the phratry animal-name

+givers.</p>

+

+<p>We proceed to give instances.</p>

+

+<p>On the Paroo River, for example, are the Barinji; they call the Eagle

+Hawk "Biliari," or Billiara; their name for Crow is not given<a name="FNanchor_12_215" id="FNanchor_12_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_215" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> But

+among the Barinji, Biliari, the Eagle Hawk, is a totem in the phratry

+called Mukwara, which means Eagle Hawk; Crow is not given, we saw,

+but here at least is the totem kin Eagle Hawk&mdash;Biliari&mdash;in the Eagle

+Hawk phratry, called by the foreign, and, to the Barinji, probably

+meaningless name, "Mukwara" (Mak-quarra).<a name="FNanchor_13_216" id="FNanchor_13_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_216" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> This applies to four

+other tribes.</p>

+

+<p>The Barkinji have the same phratry names, Mukwara and Kilpara, as the

+Barinji. Their totem names are on the same system as those of the

+Ta-ta-thi Among the Ta-ta-thi the light Eagle Hawk is <i>Waip-illi</i>, he

+comes in Mukwarra, that is, in Eagle Hawk, phratry; and <i>Walakili</i>

+(the Crow), among the Ta-ta-thi, comes in Crow (Kilpara) phratry. The

+Wiimbaio, too, have totem Eagle Hawk in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) and totem

+Crow in Kilpara (Crow).</p>

+

+<p>The Keramin tribe live four hundred miles away from the Barinji. They

+have not the same name, Biliari, for the Eagle Hawk. Their name for

+Eagle Hawk is Mundhill. This totem, Eagle Hawk, among the Keramin,

+appears in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara). The Keramin name for Crow is

+Wak. He occurs in Kilpara (Crow) phratry. All is as by my theory it

+ought to be.<a name="FNanchor_14_217" id="FNanchor_14_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_217" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>

+

+<p>None of these tribes has "matrimonial classes," a relatively late

+device, or no such classes are assigned to them by our authorities.

+These tribes are of a type so archaic, that Mr. Howitt has called the

+primitive type, <i>par excellence</i>, "Barkinji."</p>

+

+<p>All this set of tribes have their own names, in their own various

+tongues, for "Eagle Hawk" and "Craw," but all call their phratries by

+the foreign or obsolete names for "Eagle Hawk" and "Crow," namely,

+Mukwara and Kilpara. Occasionally either Crow totem is not given by

+our informants, or Eagle Hawk totem is not given, but Eagle Hawk, when

+given, is always in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), and Crow, when given,

+is always in Crow phratry (Kilpara). Where both Eagle Hawk and Crow

+totems are given, they invariably occur, Eagle Hawk totem in Mukwara

+(Eagle Hawk) phratry, and Crow totem in Kilpara (Crow) phratry.</p>

+

+<p>In the Ngarigo tribe, the phratries are Eagle Hawk and Crow (Merung and

+Yukambruk), but neither fowl is given in the lists of totems, which,

+usually, are not exhaustive. The same fact meets us in the Wolgal

+tribe; the phratries are Malian and Umbe (Eagle Hawk and Crow), but

+neither bird is given as a totem.<a name="FNanchor_15_218" id="FNanchor_15_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_218" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Mr. Spencer, in a letter to me,

+gives, for a tribe adjacent to the Wolgal, the phratries Multu (Eagle

+Hawk), and Umbe (Crow); the totems I do not know. Among the Wiraidjuri

+tribe, Mr. Howitt does not know the phratry names, but the tribe

+have the Kamilaroi class names, and Eagle Hawk and Crow, as usual, in

+the opposite unnamed phratries. Among a sept of the Wiraidjuri on the

+Lachlan River, the phratry names are Mukula and Budthurung. The meaning

+of Mukula is not given, but Budthurung means "Black Duck" and Black

+Duck totem is in Black Duck phratry, Budthurung in Budthurung, as it

+ought to be.<a name="FNanchor_16_219" id="FNanchor_16_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_219" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> Mr. Howitt writes that there is "no explanation" of

+why Budthurung is both a phratry name and a totem name. The fact, we

+see, is usual.</p>

+

+<p>In several cases, where phratry names are lost, or are of unknown

+meaning, Eagle Hawk and Crow occur in <i>opposite</i> exogamous moieties,

+which once had phratry names, or now have phratry names of unknown

+significance. The evidence, then, is that Eagle Hawk and Crow totems,

+over a vast extent of country, have been in Eagle Hawk and Crow

+phratries, while, when they occur in phratries whose names are lost,

+the lost names or untranslatable names <i>may</i> have meant Eagle Hawk and

+Crow. Unluckily the names of the phratries of the central tribes about

+Lake Eyre and south-west&mdash;Kararu and Matteri&mdash;are of unknown meaning:

+such tribes are the Dieri, Urabunna, and their neighbours. We do indeed

+find Kuraru, meaning Eagle Hawk, in a tribe where the phratry name is

+Kararu; and Karawora is also a frequent name for Eagle Hawk in these

+tribes. But then Kurara means Rain, in a cognate tribe; and we must not

+be led into conjectural translations of names, based merely on apparent

+similarities of sound.</p>

+

+<p>At all events, in the Kararu-Matteri phratries, we find Eagle Hawk

+and Crow opposed, appearing in opposite phratries in five cases, just

+as they do in tribes far south.<a name="FNanchor_17_220" id="FNanchor_17_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_220" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> Again, in the Kulin "nation," now

+extinct, we learn that their phratries were Bunjil (Eagle Hawk) and

+Waa (Crow), while of the totems nothing is known.<a name="FNanchor_18_221" id="FNanchor_18_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_221" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> It is obvious

+that several phratry names, capable of being translated, mean these two

+animals, Eagle Hawk and Crow, while two other widespread phratry names,

+Yungaru and Wutaru, appear to be connected with other animals. "The

+symbol of the Yungaru division," says Mr. Bridgman, "is the Alligator,

+and of the Wutaru, the Kangaroo."<a name="FNanchor_19_222" id="FNanchor_19_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_222" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> Mr. Chatfield, however, gives Emu

+or Carpet Snake for Wutaru, and Opossum for Yungaru.<a name="FNanchor_20_223" id="FNanchor_20_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_223" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>

+

+<p>More certain animal names for phratries are Kroki-Kumite;

+Krokitch-Gamutch; Krokitch-Kuputch; Ku-urokeetch-Kappatch;

+Krokage-Kubitch; all of which denote two separate species of cockatoo;

+while these birds, <i>sometimes under other names</i>, are totems in

+the phratries named after them. The tribe may not know the meaning

+of its phratry names. Thus, in tribes east of the Gournditch Mara,

+Kuurokeetch means Long-billed Cockatoo, and Kappatch means Banksian

+Cockatoo, as I understand.<a name="FNanchor_21_224" id="FNanchor_21_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_224" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> But, within the phratries of all the

+Kuurokeetch-Kappatch forms of names, the two Cockatoos also occur

+<i>under other names</i>, as totem kins: such names are Karaal, Wila,

+Wurant, and Garchuka.<a name="FNanchor_22_225" id="FNanchor_22_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_225" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>

+

+<p>In the Annan River tribe, Mr. Howitt gives the phratries as Walar (a

+Bee), and Marla (a Bee), doubtless two Bees of different species.<a name="FNanchor_23_226" id="FNanchor_23_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_226" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>

+In this case two names of matrimonial classes, Walar and Jorro, also

+mean Bee. Other cases of conjectural interpretation of phratry names

+might be given, but where the phratry names can be certainly translated

+they are names of animals, in all Australian cases known to me except

+one. When the phratry names cannot be translated, the reason may be

+that they were originally foreign names, borrowed, with the phratriac

+institution itself, by one tribe from another. Thus if tribes with

+totems Eagle Hawk and Crow (Biliara and Waa, let us say) borrowed the

+phratriac institution from a Mukwara-Kilpara tribe, they might take

+over Mukwara and Kilpara as phratry names, while not knowing, or at

+last forgetting, their meaning.</p>

+

+<p>Borrowing of songs and of religious dances is known to be common in

+the tribes, and it is certain that the Arunta are borrowing four class

+names from the north. Again, several tribes have the Kamilaroi <i>class</i>

+names (Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi), but have not the Kamilaroi <i>phratry</i>

+names, Kupathin and Dilbi. Thus the Wiraidjuri, with Kamilaroi <i>class</i>

+names, have not Kamilaroi <i>phratries</i>, but have Mukula (untranslated),

+and Budthurung (Black Duck). The Wonghibon, with Kamilaroi <i>class</i>

+names, have <i>phratries</i> Ngielbumurra and Mukumurra. On the other

+hand the Kaiabara tribe, far north in Queensland, have the Kamilaroi

+<i>phratry</i> names Dilebi and Kubatine (= Dilbi and Kupathin), but their

+class names are not those of the Kamilaroi.<a name="FNanchor_24_227" id="FNanchor_24_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_227" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>

+

+<p>It may be that some tribes, which had already <i>phratries</i> not of

+the Kamilaroi names, borrowed the Kamilaroi <i>classes</i>, while other

+tribes having the Kamilaroi <i>phratries</i> evolved, or elsewhere borrowed

+<i>classes</i> of names not those of the Kamilaroi.</p>

+

+<p>Again, when the four or eight class system has taken firm hold, doing

+the work of the phratries, tribes often forget the meaning of the

+phratry names, or forget the names themselves. Once more, the phratry

+names may once have designated animals, whose names were changed for

+others, in the course of daily life, or by reason of some taboo. All

+these causes, with the very feeble condition of Australian linguistic

+studies, hamper us in our interpretations of phratry and class names.

+Often the tribes in whose language they originally occurred may be

+extinct. But we have shown that many phratry names are names of

+animals, and that the animals which give names to phratries often

+occur, in Australia as in America, as totems within their own phratries.</p>

+

+<p>We have thus discovered the two lost totem kins!</p>

+

+<p>Thus, if only for once, conjectures made on the strength of a theory

+are proved to be correct by facts later observed. We guessed (i.)

+that in the phratries should be totem-kin animals identical with the

+phratriac animals. We guessed (ii.) that the phratriac names of unknown

+sense might be identical in meaning with the actual everyday names of

+the totem animals. And we guessed (iii.) for reasons of early marriage

+law (as conjectured in our system) that the totem kins of the same

+names as the phratries would be found each in the phratry of its own

+name&mdash;if discovered in Australia at all.</p>

+

+<p>All three conjectures are proved to be correct. The third was implied

+in Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old hypothesis, that there were two

+original groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and that the totem kins were

+segmented out of them, so that each original animal-named group would

+necessarily head its own totemic colonies. But this, in many cases, as

+we have seen, is what it does not do, and another animal of its genus

+heads the opposite phratry.</p>

+

+<p>Not accepting Mr. Frazer's old theory, I anticipated the discovery of

+Eagle Hawk totem kin <i>in</i> Eagle Hawk phratry, and of Crow <i>in</i> Crow

+phratry, for reasons less simple and conspicuous. It has been shown,

+and is obvious that, by exogamy and female descent, each local group of

+animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, would come to contain members of

+every group name <i>except its own</i>. When the men of Crow <i>local</i> group

+had for generations never married a woman of Crow name, and when the

+wives, of other names, within Crow <i>local</i> group had bequeathed these

+other names to their children, there could be, in Crow local group,

+no Crow <i>by descent</i>, nor any Eagle Hawk <i>by descent</i> in Eagle Hawk

+<i>local</i> group.</p>

+

+<p>Suppose that these two local groups, each full of members of other

+animal names derived from other groups by maternal descent, made

+<i>connubium</i>, and became phratries containing totem kins. <i>What, then,

+would be the marriageable status of the two kins which bare the phratry

+names?</i> All Crows would be, as we saw, by my system, in Eagle Hawk

+phratry; all Eagle Hawks would be Crow phratry (or other phratries, or

+"sub-phratries," if these existed). They could not marry, of course,

+within their own phratries, that was utterly out of the question. <i>But,

+also, they could not marry into the opposite phratries, lately local

+groups, because these bore their own old sacred local group names</i>. For

+the the law of the local group had been, "<i>No marriage within the name

+of the local group</i>," "No Crow to marry into local group Crow." Yet

+here is Crow who, by phratry law, cannot marry into his own phratry,

+Eagle Hawk; while, if he marries into phratry Crow, he contravenes

+the old law of "No marriage within the local group of your own name."

+That group, to be sure, is now an element in a new organisation, the

+phratry organisation, but, as Dr. Durkheim says in another case, "The

+old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."<a name="FNanchor_25_228" id="FNanchor_25_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_228" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>

+

+<p>This quandary would necessarily occur, under the new conditions, and in

+the new legal situation created by the erection of the two animal-named

+local groups into phratries.</p>

+

+<p>Two whole totem kins, say Wolf and Raven, or Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+were, in the new conditions, <i>plus</i> the old legal survival, cut off

+from marriage. If they died celibate, their disappearance needs no

+further explanation. But they do not disappear. If they changed their

+totems their descendants are lost under new totem names; but, if

+totems were now fully-blown entities, they could not change their

+totems. They could, however, desert their local tribe, which has no

+<i>tribal</i> "religion" (it sometimes, however, has an animal name), and

+join another set of local groups (as Urabunna and Arunta do constantly

+naturalise themselves among each other, to-day), or, <i>they could simply

+change their phratries</i> (late their local groups). Eagle Hawk totem

+kin, by going into Eagle Hawk phratry, could marry into Crow phratry;

+and Crow totem kin, by going into Crow phratry, could marry into Eagle

+Hawk phratry. This, I suggest, was what they did.</p>

+

+<p>This would entail a shock to tender consciences, as each kin is now

+marrying into the very phratry which had been forbidden to it. But, if

+totems were now full blown, anything, however desperate, was better

+than to change your totem; and after all, Eagle Hawk and Crow were only

+returning each into the new phratry which represented their old local

+group by maternal descent. Thus in America we do find Wolf totem kin,

+among the Thlinkets, in Wolf phratry, and Raven in Raven phratry; with

+Eagle Hawk in Eagle Hawk, Crow in Crow phratries, Cockatoo and Bee

+in Cockatoo and Bee phratries, Black Duck in Black Duck phratry, in

+Australia.</p>

+

+<p>The difficulty, that Crow and Eagle Hawk were now marrying precisely

+where they had been forbidden to marry when phratry law first was

+sketched out, has been brought to my notice. But the weakest must go to

+the wall, and, as soon as the totem became (as Mr. Howitt assures us

+that it has become) nearer, dearer, more intimately a man's own than

+the phratry animal, to the wall, under pressure of circumstances, went

+attachment to the phratry. <i>Il faut se marier</i>, and marriage could

+only be achieved, for totem kins of the phratry names; by a change of

+phratry.</p>

+

+<p>But is the process of totem kins changing their local groups (now

+become phratries) a possible process? Under the new <i>régime</i> of fully

+developed totemism it was possible; more, it was certainly done, in the

+remote past, by individuals, as I proceed to demonstrate.</p>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_204" id="Footnote_1_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_204"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Totemism</i>, p. 62. Cf. McLennan, <i>Studies</i>, Series II. pp.

+369-371.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_205" id="Footnote_2_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_205"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, i. pp. 5-7.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_206" id="Footnote_3_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_206"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> It is not plain what Mr. Frazer meant when he wrote

+(<i>Totemism</i>, p. 63). "Clearly split totems might readily arise from

+single families separating from the clan and expanding into new

+clans." Thus a male of "clan" Pelican has the personal name "Pouch of

+a Pelican." But, under female descent, he could not possibly leave

+the Pelican totem kin, and set up a clan named "Pelican's Pouch." His

+wife, of course, would be of another "clan," say Turtle, his children

+would be Turtles; they could not inherit their father's personal name,

+"Pouch of a Pelican," and set up a Pelican's Pouch clan. The thing

+is unthinkable. "A single family separating from the clan" of female

+descent, would inevitably possess at least (with monogamy) two totem

+names, those of the father and mother, among its members. The event

+might occur with male descent, if the names of individuals ever became

+hereditary exogamous totems, but not otherwise. And we have no evidence

+that the personal name of an individual ever became a hereditary totem

+name of an exogamous clan or kin.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_207" id="Footnote_4_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_207"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> It was first put to me by Mr. N. W. Thomas, in <i>Man</i>,

+January 1904, No. 2.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_208" id="Footnote_5_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_208"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Mr. Howitt affirms that the relative lateness of these

+classes, as sub-divisions of the phratries, is "now positively

+ascertained." (<i>J. A. I.</i>, p. 143, Note. 1885.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_209" id="Footnote_6_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_209"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Spencer and Gillen, <i>passim</i>.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_210" id="Footnote_7_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_210"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Curr, <i>The Australian Race</i>, ii. p. 165. Trubner, London,

+1886.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_211" id="Footnote_8_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_211"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423-424. Mr. Howitt renders Kilpara,

+"Crow," among the Wiimbaio, citing Mr. Bulmer, (<i>Native Tribes of S. E.

+Australia</i>, p. 429.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_212" id="Footnote_9_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_212"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Brough Smyth. i p. 86.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_213" id="Footnote_10_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_213"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Danks, <i>J. A. I.</i>, xviii. 3, pp. 281-282.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_214" id="Footnote_11_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_214"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423, 424.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_215" id="Footnote_12_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_215"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Cameron, <i>J. A. I.</i>, xiv. p. 348. <i>Native Tribes of S-E.

+Australia</i>, p. 99.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_216" id="Footnote_13_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_216"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Biliarinthu</i> is a class name in the Worgaia tribe of

+Central Australia. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 747.)</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_217" id="Footnote_14_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_217"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 98-100.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_218" id="Footnote_15_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_218"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Ibid., p. 102.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_219" id="Footnote_16_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_219"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 107.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_220" id="Footnote_17_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_220"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 91-94.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_221" id="Footnote_18_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_221"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> Ibid., p. 126.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_222" id="Footnote_19_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_222"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, p. 40. 1880.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_223" id="Footnote_20_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_223"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Ibid., p. 41.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_224" id="Footnote_21_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_224"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 125.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_225" id="Footnote_22_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_225"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Ibid., pp. 121-124.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_226" id="Footnote_23_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_226"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Ibid., p. 118.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_24_227" id="Footnote_24_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_227"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 116.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_25_228" id="Footnote_25_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_228"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>L'Année Sociologique</i>, v. p. 106, Note. <i>Social

+Origins</i>, p. 56, Note.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX</a></h4>

+

+<h3>TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION</h3>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>The totemic redistribution&mdash;The same totem is never

+in both phratries&mdash;This cannot be the result of

+accident&mdash;Yet, originally, the same totems must have

+existed in <i>both</i> phratries, on any theory of the origin

+of phratries&mdash;The present state of affairs is the result

+of legislation&mdash;To avoid clash of phratry law and totem

+law, the totems were redistributed&mdash;No totem in both

+phratries&mdash;Recapitulation&mdash;Whole course of totemic

+evolution has been surveyed&mdash;Our theory colligates every

+known fact&mdash;Absence of conjecture in our theory&mdash;All the

+causes are <i>veræ causæ</i>&mdash;Protest against use of such terms

+as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems,"

+"sub-totems"&mdash;The true totem is hereditary, and marks the

+exogamous limit&mdash;No other is genuine.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was

+necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial

+problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed

+conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an

+arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of

+laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members

+of totem kins.</p>

+

+<p>That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had

+become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in

+all the primitive types of tribal organisation: <i>The same totem never

+exists in both phratries</i>.<a name="FNanchor_1_229" id="FNanchor_1_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_229" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This in no way increases, as things

+stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in

+the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more

+recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem

+kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never

+in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.<a name="FNanchor_2_230" id="FNanchor_2_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_230" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>

+Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in

+both of the <i>local</i> groups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus

+if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives

+from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women

+would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle

+Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries,

+representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both

+of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe,

+Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the

+other.</p>

+

+<p>This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the

+first establishment of phratry law, or later.</p>

+

+<p>If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the

+two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it

+remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow

+group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by

+Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose

+new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.</p>

+

+<p>It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of

+the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least,

+in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, by

+<i>phratry</i> law, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his

+own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. By <i>totem</i> law, however, he may

+not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was

+fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged

+so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it

+necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes,

+say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes

+in Crow phratry, or <i>vice versa</i>. They obviously could not change

+their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry,

+the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to

+override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the

+course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many

+phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class

+names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America,

+and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among

+totemists&mdash;(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).</p>

+

+<p>But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have

+decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated

+by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy

+still.</p>

+

+<p>Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as

+we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been

+demonstrated by actual fact, by that <i>re</i>distribution of totem kins in

+the phratries&mdash;never the same totem in both phratries&mdash;which cannot be

+due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that

+nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf.

+Chapter IV.)</p>

+

+<p>It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition

+to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the

+rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem

+being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that

+became a phratry name, including several totem kins.</p>

+

+<p>Now that this feeling&mdash;to which the totem of the kin was far nearer

+and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its

+name&mdash;is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr.

+Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory&mdash;his

+own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our

+terminology, the phratry name) "is <i>general</i>, the totem name is in

+one sense <i>individual</i>, for it is certainly nearer to the individual

+than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he

+belongs."<a name="FNanchor_3_231" id="FNanchor_3_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_231" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to

+be much <i>nearer</i> to the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than

+the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.<a name="FNanchor_4_232" id="FNanchor_4_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_232" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose

+men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and

+we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never

+the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their

+phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on

+my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed

+us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate

+marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.</p>

+

+<p>It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not

+account for the fact that phratriac names&mdash;say Eagle Hawk, Crow&mdash;are

+commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that

+Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."<a name="FNanchor_5_233" id="FNanchor_5_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_233" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>

+

+<p>We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that

+the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing,

+from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk;

+and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions

+very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no

+everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with

+the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other

+names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.</p>

+

+<p>Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole

+course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves

+but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven,

+by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he

+had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons

+and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and

+milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing,

+of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal

+names, which I show to be usual as group <i>sobriquets</i> in ancient Israel

+and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for

+silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be

+signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs,

+whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is

+no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner

+naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring,

+as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this

+day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long

+been forgotten.</p>

+

+<p>It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate

+a mystical <i>rapport</i>, and transcendental connection, between the name

+and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that this <i>rapport</i>

+is exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that

+myths have been invented to explain the <i>rapport</i> which must, it is

+held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases.

+It is no conjecture that the myths explain the <i>rapport</i>, usually,

+as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is

+no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood,

+and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood

+of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas,

+if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an

+inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an

+animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection

+between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one

+animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?</p>

+

+<p>We have thus reached <i>totemism</i>, and we trace its varying forms in

+the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution&mdash;under

+changing conditions&mdash;of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrably

+<i>veræ causæ</i>, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the

+hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.</p>

+

+<p>The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt

+justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning

+of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names

+lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or

+are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic

+anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent,

+become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names

+(names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among

+the isolated Kurnai.</p>

+

+<p>In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members

+of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error

+of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters

+by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or

+individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an

+associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under

+some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron

+animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after

+a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem

+kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one

+totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are

+not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems,"

+"Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying

+totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or

+to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised

+and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later

+devised.</p>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_229" id="Footnote_1_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_229"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_230" id="Footnote_2_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_230"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Cf. <i>Social Origins</i>, pp. 55&mdash;57, in which the author

+fails to discover any mode by which the distribution could occur

+accidentally or automatically.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_231" id="Footnote_3_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_231"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1888, p. 40.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_232" id="Footnote_4_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_232"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_233" id="Footnote_5_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_233"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> N. W. Thomas, <i>Man</i>, January 1904, No. 2.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X</a></h4>

+

+<h3>MATRIMONIAL CLASSES</h3>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>Matrimonial classes&mdash;Their working described&mdash;Prevent

+persons of successive generations from

+intermarrying&mdash;Child and parent unions forbidden in

+tribes without matrimonial classes&mdash;Obscurity caused by

+ignorance of philology&mdash;Meanings of names of classes

+usually unknown&mdash;Mystic names for common objects&mdash;Cases in

+which meaning of class names is known&mdash;They are names of

+animals&mdash;Variations in evidence&mdash;Names of classes from the

+centre to Gulf of Carpentaria&mdash;They appear to be Cloud,

+Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat&mdash;Uncertainty of these

+etymologies&mdash;One totem to one totem marriages&mdash;Obscurity

+of evidence&mdash;Perhaps the so-called "totems" are

+matrimonial classes&mdash;Meaning of names forgotten&mdash;Or

+names tabued&mdash;The classes a deliberately framed

+institution&mdash;Unlike phratries and totem kins&mdash;Theory of

+Herr Cunow&mdash;Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been

+explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi,

+who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to

+a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer

+has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our

+term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into

+its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's

+"sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of

+these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in

+its mother's phratry, which is <i>not</i> its mother's. That a man of class

+Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin

+phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem,

+belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which is <i>not</i> hers, that is,

+belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of

+the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally

+differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally

+forbid their intermarriage.</p>

+

+<p>But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom,

+among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning

+of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among

+the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his

+phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the

+Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes,

+while retaining one result of that organisation&mdash;no parent and child

+marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the

+centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous

+and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in

+the north.</p>

+

+<p>One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of

+their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their

+names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention

+no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia

+could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.</p>

+

+<p>In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names

+of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative

+philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and

+Sanskrit divine names, say, Athênê, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon,

+comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found

+an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was

+disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or

+two, remained impenetrably obscure.</p>

+

+<p>If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a

+copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the

+weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy

+to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of

+Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have

+manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these

+laws have been codified by no Grimm.</p>

+

+<p>As a science, Australian philology does not exist. In 1880 Mr. Fison

+wrote, "It is simply impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of these

+words" (changes of name and grade conferred at secret ceremonies),

+"without a very full knowledge of the native dialects," and without

+strong personal influence with the blacks.... "In all probability

+there are not half-a-dozen men so qualified in the whole Australian

+continent."<a name="FNanchor_1_234" id="FNanchor_1_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_234" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>

+

+<p>The habit of using, in the case of the initiate, mystic terms even for

+the everyday names of animals, greatly complicates the problem. It

+does not appear that most of the recorders of the facts know even one

+native dialect as Dr. Walter Roth knows some dialects of North-West

+Central Queensland. In the south-east, Kamilaroi was seriously

+studied, long ago, by Mr. Threlkeld and Mr. Ridley, who wrote tracts

+in that language. Sir George Grey and Mr. Matthews, with many others,

+have compiled vocabularies, the result of studies of their own, and

+Mr. Curr collected brief glossaries of very many tribes, by aid of

+correspondents without linguistic training.</p>

+

+<p>Into this ignorance as to the meanings of the names of matrimonial

+classes, Mr. Howitt brings a faint little gleam of light In a few

+cases, he thinks, the meaning of class and "sub-class" names is

+ascertained. Among the Kuinmurbura tribe, between Broad Sound and Shoal

+water Bay, the "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes") "were totems."

+By this Mr. Howitt obviously means that the classes bore animal names.

+They meant (i.) the Barrimundi, (ii.) a Hawk, (iii.) Good Water, and

+(iv.) Iguana.<a name="FNanchor_2_235" id="FNanchor_2_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_235" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> For the Annan River tribe, he gives "sub-classes"

+(our "matrimonial classes"), (i.) Eagle Hawk, (ii.) Bee, (iii.)

+Salt-Water-Eagle Hawk, (iv.) Bee.<a name="FNanchor_3_236" id="FNanchor_3_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_236" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> This is not very satisfactory. In

+previous works he gave so many animal names for his "sub-classes," Mr.

+Frazer's "sub-phratries" (our "matrimonial classes"), that Mr. Frazer

+wrote, "It seems to follow that the sub-phratries of the Kamilaroi

+(Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have, or once had, totems also," that is,

+had names derived from animals or other objects.<a name="FNanchor_4_237" id="FNanchor_4_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_237" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt himself at one time appeared to hold that the names of the

+matrimonial classes are often animal names. His phraseology here is

+not very lucid. "The main sections themselves are frequently, probably

+always, distinguished by totems." Here he certainly means that the

+phratries have usually animal names, though we are not told that the

+phratries, as such, treat their name-giving animal, even when they know

+the meaning of its name, "with the decencies of a totem." Mr. Howitt

+goes on, "The probability is that they are all" (that all the classes

+are) "totems."<a name="FNanchor_5_238" id="FNanchor_5_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_238" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> By this Mr. Howitt perhaps intends to say that all

+the "classes" (both the phratries and the matrimonial classes) probably

+have animal or other such names.</p>

+

+<p>Again, the class names of the Kiabara tribe were said to denote four

+animals&mdash;Turtle, Bat, Carpet Snake, Cat.<a name="FNanchor_6_239" id="FNanchor_6_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_239" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> But now (1904) the Kiabara

+class names are given without translation, and the four animals are

+thrown into the list of totems, with Flood Water and Lightning totems

+(which names were previously given as translations of Kubatine and

+Dilebi, the phratry names).<a name="FNanchor_7_240" id="FNanchor_7_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_240" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Doubtless Mr. Howitt has received

+more recent information, but, if we accept what he now gives us, the

+meanings of his "sub-class" names are only ascertained in the cases of

+two tribes, and then are names of animals.</p>

+

+<p>I spent some labour in examining the class names of the tribes studied

+by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, from the Arunta in the centre to the

+Tingilli at Powell's Creek, after which point our authors no longer

+marched due north, but turned east, at a right angle, reaching the

+sea, and the Binbinga, the Mara, and Anula coast tribes, on or near

+the MacArthur River. The class names of these coastal tribes did not

+resemble those of the central tribes. But if Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+had held north by west, in place of turning due east from Newcastle

+Waters, they would have found, as far as the sea at Nichol Bay, four

+classes whose names closely resemble the class names of the central

+tribes, and are reported as Paljarie, or Paliali, or Palyeery (clearly

+the Umbaia and Binbinga Paliarinji), Kimera or Kymurra, (obviously

+Kumara), Banigher, or Bunaka, or Panaka (Panunga, cf. Dieri Kanunka =

+Bush Wallaby),<a name="FNanchor_8_241" id="FNanchor_8_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_241" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and Boorungo, or Paronga.<a name="FNanchor_9_242" id="FNanchor_9_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_242" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>

+

+<p>It thus appears scarcely doubtful that, from the Arunta in the centre,

+to the furthest north, several of the class names are of the same

+linguistic origin, and&mdash;whether by original community of speech, or by

+dint of borrowing&mdash;had once the same significance. Now we can show that

+some of these names, in the dialects of one tribe or another, denote

+objects in nature. Thus Warramunga Tj-<i>upila'</i> (Tj being an affix) at

+least suggests the Dieri totem, <i>Upala</i>, "Cloud." <i>Biliarinthu</i>, in the

+same way, suggests the <i>Barinji Biliari</i>, "Eagle Hawk," or the Umbaia

+Paliarinji. <i>Ungalla</i>, or <i>Thungalla</i>, is Arunta <i>Ungilla</i>, "Crow,"

+the Ungōla, or Ungăla, "Crow" of the Yaroinga and Undekerabina of

+North-West Queensland,<a name="FNanchor_10_243" id="FNanchor_10_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_243" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> while <i>Panunga, Banaka, Panaka,</i> resembles

+Dieri <i>Kanunka</i>&mdash;"Bush Wallaby," or <i>Kanunga</i>, "Kangaroo Rat."</p>

+

+<p>The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to

+class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may

+seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other,

+or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical

+change are obvious. We lay no stress on the "equations" given above,

+but merely offer the suggestion that class names have often been animal

+names, and hint that inquiry should keep this idea in mind.</p>

+

+<p>I do not, then, offer my "equations" as more than guesses in a field

+peculiarly perilous. The word which means "fire" in one tribe, means

+"snake" in another. "What fools these fellows are, they call 'fire'

+'snakes,'" say the tribesmen. However, if we guess right, we find Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Cloud, and Kangaroo Rat, as class names, over an enormous

+extent of Central and Northern Australia.<a name="FNanchor_11_244" id="FNanchor_11_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_244" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

+

+<p>About the deliberate purpose of the classes there can be no doubt. They

+were introduced to bar marriages, not between parents and children, for

+these are forbidden in primitive tribes, but between persons of the

+parental and filial generations. Or the names were given to stereotype

+classes, already existing, but hitherto anonymous, within which

+marriage was already prohibited. To make the distinction permanent,

+it was only necessary to have a linked pair of classes of different

+names in each phratry, the child never taking the maternal class name,

+but always that of the linked class in her phratry (under a system of

+female descent). The names Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, would have served

+the turn as well as any others. If a tribe had two words for young, and

+two for old, these would have served the turn; as</p>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 45%;">Phratry</p>

+

+

+<div class="center">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"><i>Dilby</i></td><td align="left">Jeune.<br />Old.</td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+<p style="margin-left: 45%;">Phratry</p>

+

+<div class="center">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">

+<tr><td align="left"></td><td align="left"><i>Kupathin</i></td><td align="left">Vieux.<br />Young.</td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+

+<p>Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with

+assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we

+guess that this may have been so more generally.</p>

+

+<p>According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say,

+of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or

+rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other

+class" (phratry).<a name="FNanchor_12_245" id="FNanchor_12_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_245" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> But neither in their first nor second volume do

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure

+point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the

+northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another

+special totem."<a name="FNanchor_13_246" id="FNanchor_13_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_246" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> This would seem <i>prima facie</i> to be an almost

+impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among

+tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot

+be obtained.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage

+is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial

+classes.<a name="FNanchor_14_247" id="FNanchor_14_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_247" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry

+names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the

+phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain

+many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin

+with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense,

+and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry

+called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but

+"sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several

+totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements

+as were accessible in 1887.<a name="FNanchor_15_248" id="FNanchor_15_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_248" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> There might conceivably be, in some

+tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal

+names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins.

+With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might

+be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many

+tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry

+names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.</p>

+

+<p>Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem

+names&mdash;two for each phratry&mdash;might be tabued or reserved, and made to

+act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the

+actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem

+kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other

+cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that,

+among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each

+of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition

+exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a

+stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is

+"Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to

+orange or monkey <i>in everyday life</i>. It is an archaic word of the same

+significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving

+object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes

+appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as

+we have shown that some phratry names also are.</p>

+

+<p>For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different

+class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries

+and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal

+and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such

+names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare

+not go, in the present state of our information.</p>

+

+<p>The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed

+institution.</p>

+

+<p>In this respect they seem to differ from the phratry and totem names,

+which, as we have tried to show, are things of long and unconscious

+evolution. But conscious purpose is evident in the institution of

+matrimonial classes. We tentatively suggest that, if their names turn

+out to be usually names of animals and other objects, this occurs

+because animal-named sub-phratries once existed, and were converted

+into the mechanism of the classes; or because the pre-existing

+totemic system of nomenclature was preserved in the development of

+a new institution. Herr Cunow's theory that the class names mean

+"Young," "Old," "Big," "Little" (<i>Kubbi = Kubbura</i>, "young"; <i>Kunibo =

+Kombia</i>, <i>Kumbia, Gumboka</i>, "great or old"), needs a wide and assured

+etymological basis.<a name="FNanchor_16_249" id="FNanchor_16_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_249" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis appears to assume

+that "clans," exogamous, with female descent, are territorial, which

+(see Chapter V.) is not possible.</p>

+

+<p>Whatever their names may mean, the matrimonial classes were instituted

+to prevent marriage between persons of parental and filial generations.</p>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_234" id="Footnote_1_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_234"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, pp. 59, 60.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_235" id="Footnote_2_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_235"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. III.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_236" id="Footnote_3_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_236"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Ibid., p. 118.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_237" id="Footnote_4_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_237"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Totemism</i>, p. 84. Cf. <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, p. 41.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_238" id="Footnote_5_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_238"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, 1885, p. 143. Cf. Note 4.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_239" id="Footnote_6_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_239"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, xiii. pp. 336, 341.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_240" id="Footnote_7_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_240"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 116.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_241" id="Footnote_8_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_241"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, August 1890, p. 38.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_242" id="Footnote_9_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_242"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, p. 36. <i>J. A. I.</i>, ix. pp. 356,

+357. Curr, i. p. 298. <i>Austral. Assoc. Adv. Science</i>, ii. pp. 653. 654.

+<i>Journal Roy. Soc. N.S.W.</i> vol. xxxii. p. 86. R. H. Matthews.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_243" id="Footnote_10_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_243"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Roth, p. 50.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_244" id="Footnote_11_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_244"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Mr. N. W. Thomas helped the chase of these names, without

+claiming any certainty for the "equations."</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_245" id="Footnote_12_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_245"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 176. Citing

+Spencer and Gillen, p. 60.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_246" id="Footnote_13_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_246"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Northern Tribes of Central Australia</i>, p. 71, Note 2.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_247" id="Footnote_14_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_247"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 189-194.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_248" id="Footnote_15_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_248"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Totemism</i>, pp. 64-67.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_249" id="Footnote_16_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_249"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Die Verwandschafts Organisationen der Australneger</i>.

+Stuttgart, 1894.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI</a></h4>

+

+<h3>MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM</h3>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>Mr. Frazer's latest theory&mdash;Closely akin to that of

+Professor Spencer&mdash;Arunta totemism the most archaic&mdash;Proof

+of Arunta primitiveness&mdash;Their ignorance of the facts

+of procreation&mdash;But the more primitive south-eastern

+tribes are not ignorant of the facts&mdash;Proof from Mr.

+Howitt&mdash;Yet south-eastern tribes are subject to Mr.

+Frazer's supposed causes of ignorance&mdash;Mr. Frazer's new

+theory cited&mdash;No account taken of primitive tribes of

+the southern interior&mdash;Similar oversight by Mr. Howitt

+as regards religion&mdash;Examples of this oversight&mdash;Social

+advance does not explain the religion of tribes which have

+not made the social advance&mdash;Theory of borrowing needed by

+Mr. Howitt&mdash;Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+exogamy&mdash;Objections to the suggestion.</p></blockquote>

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<p>Throughout these chapters, when there was occasion to mention the

+totemic theories of Mr. J. G. Frazer, we have spoken of them with

+reserve, as the theory of this or that date. Fortunately his article,

+"The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian

+Aborigines," in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i> (September 1905), enables us

+to report Mr. Frazer's latest, perhaps final, hypothesis. "After years

+of sounding," he says, "our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."</p>

+

+<p>In essence Mr. Frazer's latest hypothesis is that of Professor Baldwin

+Spencer. He accepts <i>Pirrauru</i> as "group marriage," and holds that the

+Arunta retain the most archaic form of totemism now known to exist.

+In Chapter III. we believe ourselves to have proved that <i>Pirrauru</i>

+is not "group marriage"; and that the "classificatory names for

+relationships "do not demonstrate the existence of "group marriage" in

+the relatively near, or of promiscuity in the very distant past.</p>

+

+<p>In Chapter IV. we show that, by Professor Spencer's statement,

+the Arunta are in a highly advanced social state for Australians.

+Inheritance of local office (Alatunjaship) and of the paternal totemic

+ritual goes in the male, not in the female line of descent, which is

+confessedly the more archaic. (Mr. Frazer, however, now thinks this

+point open to doubt.) The institutions are of a <i>local</i> character; and

+the ceremonials are of what Professor Spencer considers the later and

+much more complex type. Arunta totemism, Mr. Spencer shows, depends

+on the idea of ancestral spirits attached to stone <i>churinga nanja</i>,

+amulets of various forms usually inscribed with archaic patterns, and

+these <i>churinga nanja</i>, with this belief about them, are not found

+outside of the Arunta region. Without them, the Arunta system of

+totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer

+says nothing. For these and many other reasons, most of which have been

+urged by Dr. Durkheim, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Marett, and other students, we

+have explained the Arunta system as a late, isolated, and apparently

+unique institution. As the Arunta ceremonials and institutions, with

+inheritance in the male line and local magistracies hereditable in

+the male line, are at the opposite pole from the primitive, while the

+Arunta totemic system reposes on an isolated superstition connected

+with manufactured stone objects, and not elsewhere found in Australia,

+it has seemed vain to regard Arunta totemism as the most archaic.</p>

+

+<p>This, however, is the present hypothesis of Mr. Frazer, as of Mr.

+Spencer, and he adduces a proof of Arunta primitiveness concerning

+which too little was said in our Chapter IV. The Arunta system

+"ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of

+offspring; and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as

+well as the paternal side."<a name="FNanchor_1_250" id="FNanchor_1_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_250" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> The theory "denies implicitly, and the

+natives themselves deny explicitly, that children are the fruit of the

+commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance of natural causation

+cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote."<a name="FNanchor_2_251" id="FNanchor_2_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_251" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>

+

+<p>Now when the Arunta "ignore the tie of blood on the maternal side,"

+they prove too much. They ignore that of which they are not ignorant.

+Not being idiots, they are well aware of the maternal tie of blood;

+but they do not permit it to affect the descent of the totem, which is

+regulated by their isolated superstition, the doctrine of reincarnation

+combined with the <i>churinga nanja</i> belief. Nor do they ignore

+fatherhood, as we saw, in affairs of inheritance of local office and

+totemic rites.</p>

+

+<p>But they <i>do</i> deny that the intercourse of the sexes is the cause of

+birth of children. Here the interesting point is that tribes much more

+primitive, the south-eastern tribes, with female reckoning of descent,

+inheritance in the female line, and no hereditary local moderatorships,

+are perfectly well aware of all that the more advanced Arunta do

+not know. Yet they, quite as much as the Arunta, are subject to the

+causes which, according to Mr. Frazer, produce the Arunta nescience

+of the facts of procreation. That nescience, says Mr. Frazer, "may

+be explained easily enough from the habits and modes of thought of

+savage men." Thus, "first, the sexual act precedes the first symptoms

+of pregnancy by a considerable interval." <i>Je n'en vois pas la

+nécessité.</i> Secondly, savage tribes "allow unrestricted licence of

+intercourse between the sexes under puberty," and thus "familiarise

+him" (the savage) "with sexual unions that are necessarily sterile;

+from which he may not unnaturally conclude that the intercourse of

+the sexes has nothing to do with the birth of offspring." The savage,

+therefore, explains the arrival of children (at least the Arunta does)

+by the entrance of a discarnate ancestral spirit into the woman.</p>

+

+<p>The conspicuous and closing objection to this theory is, that savages

+who are at least as familiar as the Arunta with (1) the alleged

+remoteness in time of the sexual act from the appearance of the first

+symptoms of pregnancy (among them, such an act and the symptoms may

+be synchronous), and (2) with licence before puberty, are not in

+the Arunta state of ignorance. They are under no illusions on these

+interesting points.</p>

+

+<p>The tribes of social organisation much more primitive than that of

+the Arunta, the south-eastern tribes, as a rule, know all about the

+matter. Mr. Howitt says, "these" (south-eastern) "aborigines, even

+while counting descent&mdash;that is, counting the class names&mdash;through the

+mother, never for a moment feel any doubt, according to my experience,

+that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe

+their infantine nurture to their mother."<a name="FNanchor_3_252" id="FNanchor_3_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_252" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Mr. Howitt also quotes

+"the remark made to me in several cases, that a woman is only a nurse

+who takes care of a man's children for him."<a name="FNanchor_4_253" id="FNanchor_4_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_253" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>

+

+<p>Here, then, we have very low savages among whom the causes of savage

+ignorance of procreation, as explained by Mr. Frazer, are present,

+but who, far from being ignorant, take the line of Athene in the

+<i>Eumenides</i> of Æschylus. I give Mr. Raley's translation of the

+passage:&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>"The parent of that which is called her child is not really the

+<i>mother</i> of it, she is but the <i>nurse</i> of the newly conceived fœtus. It

+is the male who is the author of its being, while she, as a stranger

+for a stranger (<i>i.e.</i> no <i>blood relation</i>), preserves the young

+plant...."&mdash;<i>Eumenides</i>, 628-631.</p>

+

+<p>These south-eastern tribes, far more primitive than the Arunta in their

+ceremonials, and in their social organisation, do not entertain that

+dominant factor in Aruntadom, the belief in the perpetual reincarnation

+of the souls of the mythical ancestors of the <i>Alcheringa</i>. That

+belief is a philosophy far from primitive. As each child is, in Arunta

+opinion, a being who has existed from the beginning of things, he is

+not, he cannot be, a creature of man's begetting. Sexual acts, say

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, only, at most, "prepare" a woman for the

+reception of a child&mdash;who is as old as the world! If the Arunta were

+experimental philosophers, and locked a girl up in Danae's tower, so

+that she was never "prepared," they would, perhaps, be surprised if she

+gave birth to a child.</p>

+

+<p>However that may be, the Arunta nescience about reproduction is not

+caused by the facts which, according to Mr. Frazer, are common to them

+with other savages. These facts produce no nescience among the more

+primitive tribes with female descent, simply because these primitive

+tribes do not share the far from primitive Arunta philosophy of eternal

+reincarnation. If the Arunta deny the fact of procreation among the

+lower animals, that is because "the man and his totem are practically

+indistinguishable," as Mr. Frazer says. What is sauce for the goose is

+sauce for the gander.</p>

+

+<p>The proof of Arunta primitiveness, the only proof, has been their

+nescience of the facts of generation. But we have demonstrated that,

+where Mr. Frazer's alleged causes of that nescience are present,

+among the south-eastern tribes, they do not produce it; while among

+the Arunta, it is caused by their system of philosophy, which the

+south-eastern tribes do not possess.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Frazer next applies his idea to the evolution of a new theory of

+the Origin of Totemism. Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has

+its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem

+for each region. These centres, <i>Oknanikilla</i>, are, in myth, and for

+all that I know, in fact, burial-places of the primal ancestors, and in

+each is one, or there may be more, <i>Nanja</i> trees or rocks, permanently

+haunted by ancestral spirits, all of the same totem, whose stone

+amulets, <i>churinga nanja</i>, are lying in or on the ground. When a woman

+feels a living child's part in her being, she knows that it is a spirit

+of an ancestor of the local totem, haunting the <i>Nanja</i>, and that totem

+is allotted to the child when born.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Frazer from these known facts, deduces thus his new theory of the

+Origin of Totemism. It is best to give it in his own words:<a name="FNanchor_5_254" id="FNanchor_5_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_254" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>&mdash;</p>

+

+<blockquote>

+

+<p>"Naturally enough, when she is first aware of the

+mysterious movement within her, the mother fancies that

+something has that very moment passed into her body, and

+it is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain

+what the thing is she should fix upon some object that

+happened to be near her and to engage her attention at the

+critical moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be

+watching a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or

+bathing in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might

+imagine that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed,

+of water, or of a gum-tree, had passed into her, and

+accordingly, that when her child was born, it was really

+a kangaroo, a grass-seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to

+the bodily eye it presented the outward form of a human

+being. Amongst the objects on which her fancy might pitch

+as the cause of her pregnancy we may suppose that the

+last food she had eaten would often be one. If she had

+recently partaken of emu flesh or yams she might suppose

+that the emu or yam, which she had unquestionably taken

+into her body, had, so to say, struck root and grown up in

+her. This last, as perhaps the most natural, might be the

+commonest explanation of pregnancy; and if that was so, we

+can understand why, among the Central Australian tribes,

+if not among totemic tribes all over the world, the great

+majority of totems are edible objects, whether animals or

+plants.<a name="FNanchor_6_255" id="FNanchor_6_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_255" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Now, too, we can fully comprehend why people

+should identify themselves, as totemic tribes commonly

+do, with their totems, to such an extent as to regard

+the man and his totem as practically indistinguishable.

+A man of the emu totem, for example, might say, 'An emu

+entered into my mother at such and such a place and time;

+it grew up in her, and came forth from her. I am that

+emu, therefore I am an emu man. I am practically the same

+as the bird, though to you, perhaps, I may not look like

+it.' And so with all the other totems. On such a view

+it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one

+of his totem species, should regard it with respect and

+affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed

+of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess,

+to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances,

+for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice

+of <i>Intichiuma</i>, that is, magical ceremonies, performed

+by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would

+be a natural development of the original germ or stock

+of totemism.<a name="FNanchor_7_256" id="FNanchor_7_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_256" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> That germ or stock, if my conjecture is

+right, is, in its essence, nothing more or less than an

+early theory of conception, which presented itself to

+savage man at a time when he was still ignorant of the

+true cause of the propagation of the species. This theory

+of conception is, on the principles of savage thought,

+so simple and obvious that it may well have occurred to

+men independently in many parts of the world. Thus we

+could understand the wide prevalence of totemism among

+distant races without being forced to suppose that they

+had borrowed it from each other. Further, the hypothesis

+accounts for one of the most characteristic features of

+totemism, namely, the intermingling in the same community

+of men and women of many different totem stocks. For

+each person's totem would be determined by what may be

+called an accident, that is, by the place where his mother

+happened to be, the occupation in which she was engaged,

+or the last food she had eaten at the time when she first

+felt the child in her womb; and such accidents (and with

+them the totems) would vary considerably in individual

+cases, though the range of variation would necessarily be

+limited by the number of objects open to the observation,

+or conceivable by the imagination, of the tribe. These

+objects would be chiefly the natural features of the

+district, and the kinds of food on which the community

+subsisted; but they might quite well include artificial

+and even imaginary objects, such as boomerangs and

+mythical beasts. Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which

+we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on

+the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the

+savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might

+not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which

+might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the

+mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season.</p>

+

+<p>"If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in

+the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing,

+based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole

+history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first

+place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta

+and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception

+with that of locality, could be derived from this

+hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as

+I shall point out immediately. And in the second place,

+the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in

+its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the

+ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the

+Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present.

+Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and

+simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the

+evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of

+sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."</p></blockquote>

+

+<p>How the totemic spirits became localised, is, Mr. Frazer says, "matter

+of conjecture," and he guesses that, after several women had felt the

+first recognised signs of maternity, "in the same place, and under the

+same circumstances "&mdash;for example, at the moment of seeing a Witchetty

+Grub, or a Laughing Boy&mdash;the site would become an <i>Oknanikilla</i> haunted

+by spirits of the Laughing Boy or Grub totem.<a name="FNanchor_8_257" id="FNanchor_8_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_257" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> The Arunta view is

+different; these places are burial-grounds of men all of this or

+that totem, who have left their <i>churinga nanja</i> there. About these

+essential parts of the system, Mr. Frazer, as has been observed, says

+nothing. His theory I do not criticise, as I have already stated my

+objection to his premises. "The ultimate origin of exogamy ..." he

+says, "remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," but is a matter of

+deliberate institution. The tribes, already totemic, but not exogamous,

+were divided into the two exogamous phratries, and still later into the

+matrimonial classes, which the most pristine tribes do not possess,

+though they do know about procreation, while the more advanced Arunta,

+with classes and loss of phratry names, do not know. In the primitive

+tribes, with no churinga nanja, the totems became hereditary. Among

+the advanced Arunta, with <i>churinga nanja</i>, the totems did not (like

+all other things, including the right to work the paternal totemic

+ritual), become hereditary, though their rites did, which is curious.

+Consequently, Mr. Frazer suggests, the Arunta did not redistribute the

+totems so that one totem never occurs in both exogamous phratries; and

+totems in the region of <i>churinga nanja</i> alone are not exogamous.</p>

+

+<p>Finally the tribes of Central Australia, which we prove to have the

+more advanced ceremonial, system of inheritance, local magistracies

+hereditary in the male line, and the matrimonial classes which

+Mr. Frazer proclaims to be later than the mere phratries of many

+south-eastern tribes&mdash;"are the more backward, and the coastal tribes

+the more progressive."<a name="FNanchor_9_258" id="FNanchor_9_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_258" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>

+

+<p>This is a very hard saying!</p>

+

+<p>It seems to rest either on Mr. Frazer's opinion that the south tribes

+of Queensland, and many on the Upper Murray, Paroo, and Barwan rivers

+are "coastal" ("which is absurd"), or on a failure to take them into

+account. For these tribes, the Barkinji, Ta-Ta-Thai, Barinji, and the

+rest, are the least progressive, and "coastal," of course, they are not.</p>

+

+<p>This apparent failure to take into account the most primitive of all

+the tribes, those on the Murray, Paroo, Darling, Barwan, and other

+rivers, and to overlook even the more advanced Kamilaroi, is exhibited

+by Mr. Howitt, whose example Mr. Frazer copies, in the question of

+Australian religious beliefs.</p>

+

+<p>I quote a passage from Mr. Howitt, which Mr. Frazer re-states in his

+own words. He defines "the part of Australia in which a belief exists

+in an anthropomorphic supernatural being, who lives in the sky, and

+who is supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the

+natives ... That part of Australia which I have indicated as the

+habitat of tribes having that belief" (namely, 'certainly the whole of

+Victoria and of New South Wales up to the eastern boundaries of the

+tribes of the Darling River') "is also the area where there has been

+the advance from group marriage to individual marriage, <i>from descent

+in the female line to that in the male line</i>; where the primitive

+organisation under the class system has been more or less replaced

+by an organisation based on locality&mdash;in fact, where those advances

+have been made to which I have more than once drawn attention in this

+work."<a name="FNanchor_10_259" id="FNanchor_10_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_259" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>

+

+<p>This is an unexpected remark!</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Howitt, in fact, has produced all his examples of tribes with

+descent in the female line, except the Dieri and Urabunna "nations,"

+from the district which he calls "the habitat of tribes in which there

+has been advance ... from descent in the female to that in the male

+line." Apparently all, and certainly most of the south-eastern tribes

+described by him who have not made that advance, cherish the belief in

+the sky-dwelling All Father.</p>

+

+<p>I give examples:&mdash;</p>

+

+

+<div class="center">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" summary="">

+<tr><td align="left">Narrinyeri</td><td align="left">Male descent.</td><td align="left">All Father.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Wiimbaio</td><td align="left">Female descent.</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Wotjobaluk</td><td align="center">" "</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Woeworung</td><td align="left">Male descent.</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Kulin</td><td align="center">" "</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Kurnai</td><td align="center">" "</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Wiradjuri</td><td align="left">Female descent.</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Wathi Wathi</td><td align="center">" "</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Ta-Ta-Thi</td><td align="center">" "</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Kamilaroi</td><td align="center">" "</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Yuin</td><td align="left">Male descent.</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="left">Ngarigo</td><td align="left">Female descent.</td><td align="center">" "</td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+<p>About other tribes Mr. Howitt's information is rather vague, but,

+thanks to Mrs. Langloh Parker, we can add:&mdash;</p>

+

+

+

+<p class="center">Euahlayi &mdash; Female descent &mdash; All Father.</p>

+

+

+<p>Here, then, we have eight tribes with female descent and the All

+Father, against five tribes with male descent and the All Father, in

+the area to which Mr. Howitt assigns "the advance from descent in the

+female line to that in the male line." The tribes with female descent

+occupy much the greater part of the southern interior, not of the

+coastal line, of South-East Australia.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Frazer puts the case thus, "it can hardly be an accidental

+coincidence that, as Dr. Howitt has well pointed out, the same regions

+in which the germs of religion begin to appear have also made some

+progress towards a higher form of social and family life."<a name="FNanchor_11_260" id="FNanchor_11_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_260" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>

+

+<p>But though Dr. Howitt has certainly "pointed it out," his statement

+seems in collision with his own evidence as to the facts. The tribes

+with female descent and the "germs of religion" occupy the greater part

+of the area in which he finds "the advance from descent in the female

+line to that in the male line." He does find that advance, with belief

+in the All Father, in some tribes, mainly coastal, of his area, but

+he also finds the belief in the All Father among "nations" and tribes

+which have not made the "advance"&mdash;in the interior. As the northern

+tribes who have made the "advance" are mainly credited with no All

+Father, it is clear that the "advance" in social and family life has

+no connection with the All Father belief. Mr. Howitt, in saying so,

+overlooks his own collection of evidence. Large tribes and nations, in

+the region described by him, are in that social organisation which he

+justly regards as the least advanced of all, yet they have the "germs

+of religion," which he explains as the results of a social progress

+which they have not made.</p>

+

+<p>In these circumstances Mr. Howitt might perhaps adopt a large theory

+of borrowing. The primitive south-east tribes have not borrowed from

+the remote coastal tribes the usage of male descent; they have not

+borrowed matrimonial classes from the Kamilaroi. But, nevertheless,

+they have borrowed, it may be said, their religion from remote coastal

+tribes. Of course, it is just as easy to guess that the coastal tribes

+have borrowed their Bunjil All Father from the Kamilaroi Baiame, or the

+Mulkari of Queensland.</p>

+

+<p>I have not commented on Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+exogamy. It was the result, he thinks, of a deliberate reformation,

+and its earliest form was the division of the tribe into the two

+phratries. "Exogamy was introduced ... at first to prevent the marriage

+of brothers with sisters, and afterwards" (in the matrimonial classes)

+"to prevent the marriage of parents with children."<a name="FNanchor_12_261" id="FNanchor_12_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_261" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> The motive was

+probably a superstitious fear that such close unions would be harmful,

+in some way, "to the persons immediately concerned," according to "a

+savage superstition to which we have lost the clue." I made the same

+suggestion in <i>Custom and Myth</i> (1884). I added, however, that totemic

+exogamy might be only one aspect of the general totem tabu on eating,

+killing, or touching, &amp;c., an object of the totem name. We seem to

+have found the clue to that superstition, including the blood tabu,

+emphasised by Dr. Durkheim. But, on this showing, the animal patrons

+of phratries and totem kins, with their "religion," are among the

+causes of exogamy, while some unknown superstition, in Mr. Frazer's

+system, may have been the cause. As we have a known superstition, of

+origin already explained, it seems unnecessary to suppose an unknown

+superstition.</p>

+

+<p>Again, if the reformers knew who were brothers and sisters, how can

+they have been promiscuous? Further, the phratriac prohibition includes

+vast numbers of persons who are <i>not</i> brothers and sisters, except

+in the phratry. Sires could prohibit unions of brothers and sisters,

+each in his own hearth circle; the phratriac prohibition is much more

+sweeping, so is the matrimonial class prohibition. Once more, parent

+with child unions do not occur among primitive tribes which have no

+matrimonial classes at all.</p>

+

+<p>For these reasons Mr. Frazer's system does not recommend itself at

+least to persons who cherish a different theory.</p>

+

+<p>He may, perhaps, explain the Kaitish usage, in which totems, though

+not hereditary but acquired in the Arunta manner, remain practically

+exogamous, by suggesting that the Kaitish are imitating the totemic

+exogamy of the rest of the savage world. But this hardly accounts for

+the fact that, among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate

+in one, and another set of totems in the other exogamous moiety of

+the tribe. These facts indicate that the Arunta system is relatively

+recent, and has not yet overcome among the Kaitish the old rule of

+totemic exogamy. Mr. Frazer, too, as has been said, does not touch on

+the concomitance of stone <i>churinga nanja</i> with the Arunta system of

+acquiring totems.</p>

+

+<hr class="r5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_250" id="Footnote_1_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_250"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, September 1905, p. 453.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_251" id="Footnote_2_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_251"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, p. 455; cf. Spencer and Gillen, <i>N.

+T. C. A.</i>, pp. 124 <i>seq.</i>, p. 265.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_252" id="Footnote_3_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_252"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Journal Anthrop. Institute</i>, p. 502 (1882).</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_253" id="Footnote_4_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_253"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 283, 284.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_254" id="Footnote_5_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_254"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, pp. 455-458.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_255" id="Footnote_6_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_255"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> As to the Central Australian totems, see Spencer and

+Gillen, <i>Northern Tribes of Central Australia</i>, Appendix B, pp.

+767-773. Amongst the two hundred and one sorts of totems here

+enumerated, no less than a hundred and sixty-nine or a hundred and

+seventy are eaten.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_256" id="Footnote_7_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_256"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> When some years ago these <i>Intichiuma</i> ceremonies were

+first discovered on a great scale among the Central Australians, I

+was so struck by the importance of the discovery that I was inclined

+to see in these ceremonies the ultimate origin of totemism; and the

+discoverers themselves, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, were disposed

+to take the same view. See Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen, and J. G.

+Frazer, in <i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute</i>, xxviii. (1899),

+pp. 275-286; J. G. Frazer, "The Origin of Totemism," <i>Fortnightly

+Review</i>, April and May, 1899. Further reflection has led me to the

+conclusion that magical ceremonies for the increase or diminution of

+the totems are likely to be a later, though still very early, outgrowth

+of totemism rather than its original root. At the present time these

+magical ceremonies seem to constitute the main function of totemism in

+Central Australia. But this does not prove that they have done so from

+the beginning.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_257" id="Footnote_8_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_257"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, p. 458.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_258" id="Footnote_9_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_258"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, p. 463.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_259" id="Footnote_10_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_259"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Howitt, <i>Native Races of South-East Australia</i>, p. 500.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_260" id="Footnote_11_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_260"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, p. 452.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_261" id="Footnote_12_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_261"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, p. 6l.</p></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+<h4><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></h4>

+

+<h3>SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM</h3>

+<hr class="R5" />

+

+<p>With some American theories of the origin of totemism, I find it

+extremely difficult to deal. They ought not to be neglected, that were

+disrespectful to the valued labours of the school of the American

+"Bureau of Ethnology." But the expositions are scattered in numerous

+Reports, and are scarcely focussed with distinctness. Again, the

+terminology of American inquirers, the technical words which they use,

+differ from those which we employ. That fact would be unimportant if

+they employed their technical terms consistently. Unluckily this is not

+their practice. The terms "clan," "gens," and "phratry" are by them

+used with bewildering inconsistency, and are often interchangeable.

+When "clan" or <i>gens</i>, means, now (i) a collection of <i>gentes</i>, or (2)

+of families, or (3) of phratries, and again (4) "clan" means a totem

+kin with female descent; and again (5) a village community; while a

+phratry may be (1) an exogamous moiety of a tribe, or (2) a "family,"

+or (3) a magical society; and a <i>gens</i> may be (1) a clan, or (2) a

+"family," or (3) an aggregate of families, or (4) a totem kin with

+male descent, or (5) a magical society, while "tribal" and "sub-tribal

+divisions" are vaguely spoken of&mdash;the European student is apt to be

+puzzled! All these varieties of terminology occur too frequently in

+the otherwise most praiseworthy works of some of the American School

+of Anthropologists. I had collected the examples, but to give them at

+length would occupy considerable space, and the facts are only too

+apparent to every reader.<a name="FNanchor_1_262" id="FNanchor_1_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_262" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>

+

+<p>Once more, and this point is of essential importance, the recent

+writers on totemism in America dwell mainly on the institution as

+found among the tribes of the north-west coast of the States and of

+British Columbia. These tribes are so advanced in material civilisation

+that they dwell in village settlements. They have a system of credit

+which looks like a satirical parody of the credit system of the

+civilised world. In some tribes there is a regular organisation by

+ranks, <i>noblesse</i> depending on ancestral wealth.</p>

+

+<p>It seems sanguine to look for the origins of totemism among tribes so

+advanced in material culture. The origin of totemism lies far behind

+the lowest savagery of Australia. It is found in a more primitive

+form among the southern and eastern than in most of the north-western

+American tribes, but the north-western are chiefly studied, for

+example, by Mr. Hill-Tout, and by Dr. Boas. A new difficulty is caused

+by the alleged intermixture of tribes in very different states of

+social organisation. That intermixture, if I understand Mr. Hill-Tout,

+causes some borrowing of institutions among tribes of different

+languages, and different degrees of culture, in the west of British

+Columbia and the adjacent territories. We find, in the north, the

+primitive Australian type of organisation (Thlinket tribe), with

+phratries, totems, and descent in the female line. South of these are

+the Kwakiutl, with descent wavering in a curious fashion between the

+male and female systems. Further south are the Salish tribes, who have

+evolved something like the modern family, reckoning on both sides of

+the house. I, with Mr. McGee of the United States Bureau of Ethnology,

+suppose the Kwakiutl to be moving from the female to the male line

+of descent. In the opinions of Mr. Hill-Tout and Dr. Boas, they are

+moving from the advanced Salish to the primitive Thlinket system,

+under the influence of their primitive neighbours. It is not for me to

+decide this question. But it is unprecedented to find tribes with male

+reverting to female reckoning of descent</p>

+

+<p>Next, Mr. Hill-Tout employs "totem" in various senses. As totems he

+reckons (1) the sacred animals of the tribe; (2) of the religious or

+magical societies (containing persons of many totems of descent); (3)

+of the individual and (4) the hereditary totems of the kin. All these,

+our author says, are, by their original concept, Guardian Spirits. All

+such protective animals, plants, or other objects, which patronise

+and give names to individuals, or kins, or tribes, or societies, are

+"totems," in the opinion of the late Major Powell, and the "American

+School," and are essentially "guardian spirits." All are derived by the

+American theory<a name="FNanchor_2_263" id="FNanchor_2_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_263" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> from the <i>manitu</i>, or guardian, of some individual

+to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired

+dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that

+man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning

+in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory), and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while

+men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society

+"totems" suggested by dreams. These communities may or may not be

+exogamous, they may even be endogamous. By the friends of this theory

+the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as

+"accidental," rather than essential.</p>

+

+<p>Using the word "totem" in this wide sense, or in these many senses,

+which are not ours, it is plain that a man and woman who chance to have

+the same "personal totem," (i) or belong to the same religious society

+with its "totem," (i) or to the same local tribe with its "totem,"

+(3) may marry, and, by this way of looking at the matter, "totems" do

+permit marriage within the totem, and are not exogamous. But we, for

+our part (like Mr. E. B. Tylor, and M. Van Gennep<a name="FNanchor_3_264" id="FNanchor_3_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_264" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>), call none of

+these personal, tribal, or society sacred animals "totems." That term

+we reserve for the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin. Thus it is

+not easy, it is almost impossible, for us to argue with Mr. Hill-Tout,

+as we and he use the term "totem" in utterly different senses.</p>

+

+<p>On his theory there are all sorts of "totems," belonging to individuals

+and to various kinds of associations. The totems hereditary in the kins

+when they are exogamous, are exogamous (on Mr. Hill-Tout's theory)

+because the kins, in certain cases, made a treaty of alliance and

+intermarriage with other kins for purely political purposes. They

+might have made such treaties, and become exogamous, though they had

+no totems, no name-giving animals; and they might have had name-giving

+animals, and yet not made such treaties involving exogamy. Thus totemic

+exogamy is, on this theory, a mere accident: the totem has nothing to

+do with the exogamous rule.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "The totem groups are exogamous not because

+of their common totem, but because of blood relationship. It is

+the blood-tie<a name="FNanchor_4_265" id="FNanchor_4_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_265" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> that bans marriage within the totem group, not the

+common totem. That exogamy and the totem group with female descent go

+together is accidental, and follows from the fact that the totem group

+is always, in Indian theory at least, blood related. Where I believe

+you err is in regarding exogamy as the essential feature of totemism.

+I cannot so regard it. To me it is secondary, and becomes the bar to

+marriage only because it marks kinship by blood, which is the real bar,

+however it may have arisen, and from whatever causes."</p>

+

+<p>Here I am obliged to differ from Mr. Hill-Tout. I know no instance

+in which a tribe with female kin (the most primitive confessedly),

+and with hereditary totems, is not exogamous. Exogamy, then, if an

+accident, must be called an inseparable accident of totemism, with

+female descent, till cases to the contrary are proved to exist. Mr.

+Hill-Tout cites the Arunta case: totems among the Arunta are not

+exogamous. But of that argument we have disposed (see Chapter IV.), and

+it need no longer trouble us.</p>

+

+<p>Again, it is not possible to agree with Mr. Hill-Tout when he writes,

+"It is the blood-tie that bars marriage within the totem group, not

+the common totem." The totem does not by its law prevent marriages of

+blood kin. A man, as far as totem law goes, may marry his daughter by

+blood, a brother may marry his sister on the father's side (with female

+descent), and a man may not marry a woman from a thousand miles away if

+she is of his totem, though she is not of his blood. It is not the real

+blood-tie itself, but the blood-tie as defined and sanctioned by the

+totem, that is not to be violated by marriage within it.</p>

+

+<p>To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal

+or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal

+form, that is <i>his</i> "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his

+descendants, and then it is <i>their</i> "totem"; or his sisters may adopt

+it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem

+of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it

+at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there

+must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals,

+but tribes in America have very few totems. If a man does transmit

+his animal protector, his descendants, lineal or collateral, may

+become exogamous, on the theory, by making other kins treaties of

+intermarriage to secure political alliances; or they may not, just

+as taste or chance direct. All the while, every "totem" of every

+sort, hereditary or not, is, on this theory, a guardian spirit.

+That spiritual entity is the essence of totemism, exogamy is an

+accident&mdash;according to Mr. Hill-Tout.</p>

+

+<p>Such is his theory. It is, perhaps, the result of studying the

+North-West American <i>Sulia</i>, or "personal totem" answering to the

+<i>nyarongs</i> of Borneo, the <i>naguals</i> of the Southern American tribes,

+the <i>yunbeai</i> of the <i>Euahlayi</i> of New South Wales, and the "Bush

+Souls" of West Africa. All of these are, as the Ibans of Borneo imply

+in the term <i>nyarong</i>, "spirit helpers," in animal or material form.

+Some tribes call genuine totems by one name, but call animal familiars

+of an individual by another name. <i>Budjan</i>, among the Wiradjuri, stands

+both for a man's totem, and for the animal familiar which, rduring

+apparently hypnotic suggestion," he receives on being initiated.<a name="FNanchor_5_266" id="FNanchor_5_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_266" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>

+Among the Ibans (but not among the few Australian tribes which have

+<i>yunbeai</i>), the spirit helper may befriend the great-grandchildren of

+its original <i>protégé</i>.<a name="FNanchor_6_267" id="FNanchor_6_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_267" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>

+

+<p>But in no case recorded does this <i>nyarong</i> become the hereditary totem

+of an exogamous kin.</p>

+

+<p>The "spirit helper" does not do that, nor am I aware, on the other

+hand, that the hereditary totem of an exogamous kin is ever, or

+anywhere, regarded as a "tutelary spirit." No such idea has ever

+been found in Australia. Again, if I understand Dr. Boas, among his

+north-western tribes, such as the Thlinket, who have female descent

+and hereditary exogamous totems, the totem is no more regarded as a

+tutelary spirit than it is among the Australians. Of the Kwakiutl

+he says, "The <i>manitu</i>" (that is, the individual's tutelary spirit)

+"was acquired by a mythical ancestor, and the connection has become

+so slight, in many cases, that the tutelary genius of the clan has

+degenerated into a crest."</p>

+

+<p>That the "crest" or totem mark was originally a "tutelary genius"

+among the Thlinket, seems to be merely the hypothesis of Dr. Boas.

+Even among the Kwakiutl, in their transitional state, the totem mark

+now is "in many cases a crest." "This degeneration" (from spirit to

+crest), our author writes, "I take to be due to the influence of the

+northern totemism," such as that of the Thlinket.<a name="FNanchor_7_268" id="FNanchor_7_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_268" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> Thus the Thlinket,

+totemic on Australian primitive lines, do <i>not</i> regard their hereditary

+exogamous totems as "tutelary spirits."<a name="FNanchor_8_269" id="FNanchor_8_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_269" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> No more do the Australians,

+nor the many American totemists who claim descent from the animal which

+is their totem.<a name="FNanchor_9_270" id="FNanchor_9_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_270" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>

+

+<p>The tutelary spirit and the true totem, in my opinion, are utterly

+different things. The American theory that all things (their name is

+legion) called "totems" by the American School are, in origin and

+essence, tutelary spirits, is thus countered by the fact that the

+Australian tribes do not regard their hereditary totems as such; nor

+do many American tribes, even when they are familiar with the idea of

+the tutelary spirits of individuals. The Euahlayi, in Australia for

+instance, call tutelary spirits <i>yunbeai</i>; hereditary totems they call

+by a separate name, <i>Dhe</i>.<a name="FNanchor_10_271" id="FNanchor_10_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_271" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>

+

+<p>The theory that the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin is the

+"spirit helper" or "tutelary genius," acquired by and transmitted by an

+actual ancestor, cannot be proved, for many reasons. We know plenty of

+tribes in which the individual has a "spirit helper," we know none in

+which he bequeaths it <i>as the totem of an exogamous kin</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Again we find, (1) in Australia, tribes with hereditary totems, but

+with no "personal totems," as far as our knowledge goes. Whence, then,

+came Australian hereditary totems? Next, (2) we find tribes with both

+hereditary and "personal totems," but the "personal totems" are never

+hereditable. The "spirit helpers," where they do occur in Australia,

+are either the familiars of wizards (like the witch's cat or hare),

+or are given by wizards to others.<a name="FNanchor_11_272" id="FNanchor_11_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_272" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> Next, (3) we find, in Africa

+and elsewhere, tribes with "personal totems," but with no hereditary

+totems. Why not? For these reasons, the theory that hereditary

+kin-totems are personal tutelary spirits become hereditary, seems a

+highly improbable conjecture. If it were right, genuine totemism, with

+exogamy, might arise in any savage society where "personal totems"

+flourish. But we never find totemism, with exogamy, just coming into

+existence.</p>

+

+<p>To sum up the discussion as far as it has gone, Mr. Hill-Tout had

+maintained (1) that the concept of a ghostly helper is the basis of

+all his varieties of so-called "totems." I have replied that the idea

+of a tutelary spirit makes no part of the Australian, or usually of

+the American "concepts" about the hereditary totems. This is matter of

+certainty.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Hill-Tout next argues that hereditary totems are only "personal

+totems" become hereditary, which may happen, he says, in almost any

+stage of savage society. I have replied, "not <i>plus</i> the totemic law of

+exogamy," and he has answered (3) that the law is casual, and may or

+may not accompany a system of totemic kindred, instancing the Arunta,

+as a negative example. In answer, I have shown that the Arunta case is

+not to the point, that it is an isolated "sport."</p>

+

+<p>I have also remarked frequently, in previous works, that under the

+primitive method of reckoning descent in the female line, an individual

+male cannot bequeath his personal protective animal as a kin-name to

+his descendants, so that the hereditary totem of the kin cannot have

+originated in that way. Mr. Hill-Tout answers that it can, and does,

+originate in that way&mdash;a male founder of a family can, and does, found

+it by bequeathing his personal protective animal to the descendants of

+his sisters, so that it henceforth passes in the female line. I quote

+his reply to my contention that this is not found to occur.<a name="FNanchor_12_273" id="FNanchor_12_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_273" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>

+

+<p>"The main objection brought against this view of the matter by Mr.

+Andrew Lang and others is that the personal totem is not transmissible

+or hereditable. But is not this objection contrary to the facts of the

+case? We have abundant evidence to show that the personal totem <i>is</i>

+transmissible and hereditable. Even among tribes like the Thompson,

+where it was the custom for every one of both sexes to acquire a

+guardian spirit at the period of puberty, we find the totem is in

+some instances hereditable. Teit says, in his detailed account of the

+guardian spirits of the Thompson Indians, that 'the totems of the

+shamans<a name="FNanchor_13_274" id="FNanchor_13_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_274" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> are sometimes inherited directly from the parents'; and

+among those tribes where individual totemism is not so prevalent, as,

+for instance, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, the personal

+totem of a chief or other prominent individual, more particularly if

+that totem has been acquired by means other than the usual dream or

+vision, such as a personal encounter with the object in the forest

+or in the mountains, is commonly inherited and owned by his or her

+posterity. It is but a few weeks ago that I made a special inquiry into

+this subject among some of the Halkomelem tribes of the Lower Fraser.

+'Dr. George,' a noted shaman<a name="FNanchor_14_275" id="FNanchor_14_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_275" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> of the Tcil'Qe'Ek, related to me the

+manner in which his grandfather had acquired their family totem,<a name="FNanchor_15_276" id="FNanchor_15_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_276" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>

+the Bear; and made it perfectly clear that the Bear had been ever since

+the totem of all his grandfather's descendants. The important totem of

+the Sqoiàqî<a name="FNanchor_16_277" id="FNanchor_16_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_277" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> which has members in a dozen different tribes of the

+coast and Lower Fraser Salish, is another case in point. It matters

+little to us <i>how</i> the first possessor of the totem acquired it. We may

+utterly disregard the account of its origin as given by the Indians

+themselves, the main fact for us is, that between a certain object or

+being and a body of people, certain mysterious relations have been

+established, identical with those existing between the individual and

+his personal totem; and <i>that these people trace their descent from and

+are the lineal descendants of the man or woman who first acquired the

+totem</i>. Here is evidence direct and ample of the hereditability of the

+individual totem, and American data abound in it."</p>

+

+<p>All these things occur under the system of male kinship. Even if the

+"personal totem" of a chief or shaman is adopted by his offspring, it

+does not affect my argument, nor are the bearers of the badge thus

+inherited said to constitute an exogamous kin.<a name="FNanchor_17_278" id="FNanchor_17_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_278" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> If they do not, the

+affair is not, in my sense, "totemic" at all. We should be dealing not

+with totemism but with heraldry, as when a man of the name of Lion

+obtains a lion as his crest, and transmits it to his family. Meanwhile

+I do not see "evidence direct and ample," or a shred of evidence,

+<i>that a man's familiar animal is borrowed by his sisters, and handed on

+to their children</i>.</p>

+

+<p>Next, as to that point, Mr. Hill-Tout writes:<a name="FNanchor_18_279" id="FNanchor_18_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_279" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>"To return to Mr. Lang's primary objection, that the evolution of the

+group totem cannot proceed from the personal, individual totem because

+in the more primitive forms of society where totemism originated "male

+ancestors do not found houses or clan names," descent being on the

+female side. As Mr. Lang has laid so much stress upon this argument,

+and is able apart from it to appreciate the force of the evidence

+for the American point of view, if it can be clearly shown that his

+objection has no basis in fact, that his conception of the laws of

+inheritance under matriarchy is faulty, consistency must needs make him

+a convert to the American view. The singular error into which Mr. Lang

+has fallen is in overlooking the fact that male property and rights

+are as hereditable under mother-right as under father-right, the only

+difference being that in the latter case the transmission is <i>directly</i>

+from the father to his offspring, and in the former <i>indirectly</i> from

+the maternal uncle to his sister's children. What is there to prevent

+a man of ability under matriarchy from 'founding a family,' that

+is, acquiring an individual totem which by his personal success and

+prosperity is looked upon as a <i>powerful helper</i>, and therefore worthy

+of regard and reverence? Under mother-right the <i>head</i> of the clan is

+invariably a man, the elder male relative on the maternal side; and

+the clan name is not so much the property of the woman as of her elder

+brother or her conventional 'father,' that is, her maternal uncle. The

+'fathers' of the group, that is, the maternal uncles, are just as much

+the heads and I founders of houses' and clans in the matriarchal state

+as under the more advanced state of patriarchal rule. And that they

+<i>do</i> found family and group totems the evidence from our northern coast

+tribes makes clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.</p>

+

+<p>"The oft-quoted case of the Bear totem among the Tsimshians is a case

+in point, and this is but one of scores that could be cited. The origin

+of this totem came about in the following manner: 'A man was out

+hunting and met a black bear who took him to his home and taught him

+many useful things. After a lengthy stay with the bear the man returned

+home. All the people became afraid of him, he looked and acted so like

+a bear. Some one took him in hand and rubbed him with magic herbs and

+he became a man again. Thereafter whenever he went hunting his friend

+the bear helped him. He <i>built a house and painted the bear on the

+front of it, and his sister made a dancing blanket, the design of which

+represented a bear. Thereafter the descendants of his sister used the

+bear for their crest, and were known as the Bear clan.</i>'<a name="FNanchor_19_280" id="FNanchor_19_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_280" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>

+

+<p>"Who was the 'founder of the family' here, and the source of the clan

+totem? Clearly and indubitably the many and <i>so it invariably was,

+as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems plainly

+shows</i>.<a name="FNanchor_20_281" id="FNanchor_20_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_281" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> It matters not, I may point out, that these myths may

+have been created since the formation of the clans to account for

+their origin, the point for us is that the man was regarded by the

+natives as the 'founder' of the family and clan. The founders of

+families and totem-crests are as invariably men under matriarchy

+as under patriarchy, the essential difference only between the two

+states in this regard being that under one the descent is through the

+'conventional father,' under the other through the 'real or ostensible

+father.' Such being the case, Mr. Lang's chief argument falls to the

+ground, and the position taken by American students as to the origin of

+group-totems is as sound as before."</p>

+

+<p>Now where, outside the region of myth, is there proof that Mr.

+Hill-Tout's processes ever do occur?</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Hill-Tout argues that the founder of the totem kin is "invariably

+the man, as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems

+plainly shows." But myths have no historical authority, and many of

+these myths show the very opposite: in them a beast or other creature

+<i>begets</i> the "clan."<a name="FNanchor_21_282" id="FNanchor_21_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_282" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> To be sure, Mr. Hill-Tout says nothing about

+<i>these</i> myths, or about scores of familiar American myths<a name="FNanchor_22_283" id="FNanchor_22_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_283" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> to the

+very same effect.</p>

+

+<p>Again, as mythical evidence is worthless, Mr. Hill-Tout argues that

+"the man was regarded by the natives themselves as the 'founder' of

+the family or clan." Yes, in some myths, but not in those which Mr.

+Hill-Tout overlooks.</p>

+

+<p>That the natives in some myths regard the man as founder of a totem

+kin under female descent proves nothing at all. Does the Tsimshian Bear

+myth prove that the natives themselves turn into Bears, and become men

+again? Does it even prove that such an occurrence, to-day, would now

+seem normal to them? Nothing is proved, except that <i>in myth-making</i>

+the natives think that this metamorphosis may have occurred in the

+past. In the same way&mdash;when myth-making&mdash;they think that a man might

+convey his badge to his sisters, to be hereditary in the female line.

+To prove his case, Mr. Hill-Tout must show that men actually do thus

+convey their personal protective animals and badges into the female

+line. To that evidence I shall bow.</p>

+

+<p>If I reasoned like our author, I might argue, "The South African tribes

+say that their totems (<i>siboko</i>) arose in nicknames given to them on

+account of known historical incidents, therefore my conjecture that

+totems thus arose, in group names given from without, is corroborated

+by the natives themselves, who testify thus to the actuality of that

+mode of getting tribal names and <i>siboko</i>."<a name="FNanchor_23_284" id="FNanchor_23_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_284" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>

+

+<p>But I, at least, cannot argue thus! The process (<i>my</i> process) does

+not and cannot occur in South African conditions, where tribes of an

+advanced culture have sacred protective animals. The natives have

+merely hit on my own conjecture, as to the remote germ of totemic

+names, and applied it where the process never occurs. The Tsimshians,

+in the same way, are familiar with the adoption of protective animals

+by male individuals. They are also familiar with the descent of

+the kin-totem through females. Like the famous writer on Chinese

+Metaphysics, the Tsimshians "combine their information." A man, they

+say, became a bear, and became a man again. He took the Bear for his

+badge; and to account for the transmission of the badge through women,

+the Tsimshians add that his sister also took and transmitted the Bear

+cognisance, as a hereditary totem. They think this could be done,

+exactly as the Bakwena think that their tribal protective animal, the

+Crocodile, the Baboon, or another, could arise in a nickname, <i>given

+recently</i>. It could not do so, the process is no longer possible, the

+explanation in this case is false, and does not help my theory of the

+origin of totemism. In the same way the Bear myth does not help Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory, unless he can prove that sisters do actually take

+and transmit to their descendants, as exogamous totems, the <i>sulia</i> or

+individual protective animal of their brothers. Of this process I do

+not observe that Mr. Hill-Tout gives a single verifiable example.</p>

+

+<p>As to this argument, Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "I cannot accept your

+criticism on the poor evidence of the Tsimshian accounts of the origin

+of their totem kins. You could not take such a view, I think, if you

+had personal, first-hand knowledge of the Indian mind. Your objections

+apply to 'classic myths,' but not to the accounts of tribes who are

+<i>still</i> in the totemic stage."</p>

+

+<p>I fail to understand the distinction. It is now universally recognised

+that most myths, "classic" or savage (the classic being survivals of

+savage myths), are mere fanciful hypotheses framed to account for

+unexplained facts. Moreover, I am discussing and comparing the myths

+of various savage races, I am not speaking of "classic myths." Savages

+have anticipated us in every one of our hypotheses as to the origin of

+totemism, but, of course, they state their hypotheses in the shape of

+myths, of stories told to account for the facts. Some Australian myths

+favour Mr. Howitt's hypothesis, others favour that of Mr. Spencer, one

+flatters that of Dr. Haddon, one African myth is the fore-runner of

+my theory, and a myth of the Tsimshians anticipates the idea of Mr.

+Hill-Tout. But all these myths are equally valueless as historical

+evidence.</p>

+

+<p>As to heritage under female kin, which I am said not to understand,

+no man reckoning by female kin has hitherto been said to inherit his

+totem <i>from his maternal uncle</i>! A man inherits his totem from his

+mother only, and inherits it if he has no maternal uncles, and never

+had. If a man has a <i>manitu</i>, a <i>nagual</i>, a <i>yunbeai</i>, a <i>nyarong</i>, or

+"personal totem," his sister does not take it from him and hand it to

+her children, or, if this ever occurs, I say once more, we need proof

+of it. A man may inherit "property and rights" from his maternal uncles

+under female kin. But I speak of the totem name, which a man undeniably

+does not inherit from his maternal uncle, while there is no proof

+offered that a woman ever takes such a name from her brother, and hands

+it on to her children. So I repeat that, under the system of reckoning

+in the female line, "male ancestors do not found houses or clan names,"

+or are not proved to do so.</p>

+

+<hr class="tb" />

+

+<p>It is apparent, probably, that a theory of totemism derived in great

+part from the myths and customs of a few advanced tribes, dwelling in

+village communities, and sometimes in possession of the modern family,

+with male kin, is based on facts which are not germane to the matter.

+The origin of totemism must be sought in tribes of much more backward

+culture, and of the confessedly "more primitive" type of organisation

+with female descent To disprove Mr. Hill-Tout's theory is of course

+impossible. There may have been a time when "personal totems" were as

+common among the Australians as they are now rare. There may have been

+a time when an Australian man's sisters adopted, and transmitted, his

+"personal totem," though that is no longer done to our knowledge. It

+may have chanced that stocks, being provided, on Mr. Hill-Tout's plan,

+with tutelary spirits of animal names descending in the female line,

+made marriage treaties, and so became exogamous. Then we should have

+explained totemism, perhaps, but a considerable number of missing facts

+must be discovered and reported before this explanation can be accepted.</p>

+

+<p>Mr. Hill-Tout's scheme, I presume, would work out thus: there are sets

+of human beings, A, B, C, D, E, F. In all of these every man acquires

+an animal, plant, or other friendly object. Their sisters adopt it as a

+name, and hand it on to their children. The stocks are now named after

+the familiar animals, as Grouse, Trout, Deer, Turtle, Buffalo, Salmon,

+and hundreds more. They have hitherto, I presume, married as they

+please, anyhow. But stocks Grouse and Deer think, "We shall be stronger

+if we give our women to each other, and never let a Grouse marry a

+Grouse, or a Deer a Deer." They make this pact, the other stocks,

+Salmon, Turtle, Buffalo, &amp;c., come into it, ranging themselves under

+Deer or Grouse, and now Deer and Grouse are phratries in a tribe with

+the other animals as heads of totem kins in the phratries. The animals

+themselves go on being tutelary spirits, and are highly respected.</p>

+

+<p>This scheme (whether Mr. Hill-Tout would arrange it just thus or not)

+works perfectly well. It explains the origin of exogamy&mdash;not by an

+inexplicable <i>moral</i> reform, and bisection of the horde, but as the

+result of a political alliance. It explains the origin of totemism by

+a theory of animal-shaped tutelary spirits taken on by sisters from

+brothers, and bequeathed by the sisters when they become mothers to

+their children. It explains the origin of phratries, and of totem

+kins in the phratries. It works out all along the line&mdash;if only one

+knew that very low savages deliberately made political alliances; and

+if all low savages had animal-shaped tutelary spirits; and if these

+were known to be adopted from brothers by sisters, and by sisters

+bequeathed, for an eternal possession, to their children; and if these

+transactions, once achieved, were never repeated in each line of female

+descent&mdash;no sister in the next generation taking on her brother's

+personal tutelary animal, and bequeathing it to her children for ever.

+Finally, if savages in general did regard their hereditary totems as

+tutelary spirits, the sketch which I make on Mr. Hill-Tout's lines

+would leave nothing to be desired. But we do not know any of these

+desirable facts.</p>

+

+<p>If I have stated Mr. Hill-Tout's ideas correctly, he agrees with me in

+regarding the tribe as formed by aggregation of many more primitive

+groups. He does not regard the phratries and totem kins as the result

+of the segmentation of a primordial indiscriminate mass or horde,

+split up at the injunction of an inspired medicine man, or by a tribal

+decree. Against our opinion, Mr. Howitt argues that only one writer

+who "has or had a personal acquaintance with the Australian blacks"

+accepts it, the Rev. John Matthew. It is accepted, however, as far as

+"sub-phratries" go (as an alternative hypothesis), by Mr. Hewitt's

+friend, Dr. Fison.<a name="FNanchor_24_285" id="FNanchor_24_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_285" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> But I have given my reasons for not accepting

+Mr. Howitt's doctrine, and I await some reason for his rejection

+of mine. Even authors who have "a personal acquaintance with the

+Australian blacks" should, I venture to think, give their reasons for

+rejecting one and persisting in another theory of "the probabilities

+of the case."<a name="FNanchor_25_286" id="FNanchor_25_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_286" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> I have shown why I think it improbable that a

+postulated prehistoric tribe split itself up, for no alleged reason,

+at the suggestion of a medicine man. Now I am anxious to know why my

+postulated groups should not make marriage alliance for the reason of

+securing peace&mdash;a very sufficient motive for betrothals.</p>

+

+<hr class="R5" />

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_1_262" id="Footnote_1_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_262"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Compare Mr. N. W. Thomas's criticisms of Mr. Hill-Tout, in

+<i>Man</i>, May, June, July 1904.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_2_263" id="Footnote_2_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_263"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> We must not suppose that all American scholars agree with

+the views of the "American School." Major Powell used "totem" in from

+ten to fourteen different meanings.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_3_264" id="Footnote_3_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_264"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Totémisme et Tabou à Madagascar</i>. 1904.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_4_265" id="Footnote_4_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_265"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> A perfectly fictitious blood-tie, when a man Crow is born

+in Victoria, and a woman Crow on the Gulf of Carpentaria.&mdash;A. L.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_5_266" id="Footnote_5_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_266"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Howitt. <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, p. 144.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_6_267" id="Footnote_6_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_267"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> For full details see Messrs. McDougall and Hose, <i>J. A.

+I.</i>, N.S., xxxi pp. 199-201.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_7_268" id="Footnote_7_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_268"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <i>Report of Nat. Mus.</i>, U.S., 1895, p. 336.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_8_269" id="Footnote_8_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_269"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Mr. Hill-Tout differs from my understanding of Dr. Boas's

+remarks.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_9_270" id="Footnote_9_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_270"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Frazer, <i>Totemism</i>, pp. 3-5. Dorman, pp. 231-234.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_10_271" id="Footnote_10_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_271"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_11_272" id="Footnote_11_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_272"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> <i>J. A. I.</i>, vol. xvi. pp. 44, 50, 350. Howitt, <i>Native

+Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 144, 387, 388. MS. of Mrs. Langloh

+Parker.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_12_273" id="Footnote_12_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_273"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada</i>, ix., xi. p. 72.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_13_274" id="Footnote_13_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_274"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> These are not totems, but "familiars," like the witch's

+cat or hare.&mdash;A. L.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_14_275" id="Footnote_14_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_275"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The shaman's sons keep on the shaman business, with the

+paternal familiar. It is not, in my sense, a totem.&mdash;A. L.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_15_276" id="Footnote_15_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_276"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> My italics.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_16_277" id="Footnote_16_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_277"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Brit. Ass.</i>, 1902. <i>Report of Ethnol. Survey of Canada</i>,

+pp. 51-52, 57. A fairy tale about the origin of a society of healing

+and magical influence.&mdash;A. L.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_17_278" id="Footnote_17_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_278"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Mr. Hill-Tout says elsewhere: "Shamans <i>only</i> inherited

+their <i>sulia</i>" (he speaks of these personal totems or <i>sulia</i>) "from

+their fathers; other men had to acquire their own. But this applied

+only to the dream or vision totem or protective spirit." If a man "met

+his ghostly guardian in form of a bear," when hunting, he would take

+it as his "crest" and transmit it. This happened in the case of "Dr.

+George," who inherited his crest and guardian, the Bear, from his

+great-grandfather, who met a bear not in a dream but when hunting. (<i>J.

+A. I.</i>, vol. xxxiv. pp. 326, 327.) Such inheritance, in an advanced

+American tribe of to-day, does not seem to me to corroborate the belief

+that totems among the many primitive tribes of Australia are the result

+of inheriting a personal crest or guardian spirit of a male ancestor.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_18_279" id="Footnote_18_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_279"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Transactions</i>, ix. p. 76.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_19_280" id="Footnote_19_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_280"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Fifth Report on the Physical Characteristics, &amp;c., of

+the N.W. Tribes of Canada</i>, B.A.A.S., p. 24. London, 1889.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_20_281" id="Footnote_20_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_281"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> The myths, in fact, vary; the myth of descent from the

+totem also occurs even in these tribes. (Hartland, <i>Folk Lore</i>, xi. I,

+pp. 60-61. Boas, <i>Nat. Mus. Report</i>, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)&mdash;A. L.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_21_282" id="Footnote_21_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_282"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Cf. Mr. Hartland in <i>Folk Lore</i>, ut supra.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_22_283" id="Footnote_22_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_283"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Frazer, <i>Totemism</i>, pp. 3-5.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_23_284" id="Footnote_23_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_284"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> For the full account of <i>Siboko</i> see Chapter II.,

+<i>supra</i>.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_24_285" id="Footnote_24_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_285"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Kamilaroi and Kurnai</i>, pp. 71, 72.</p></div>

+

+<div class="footnote">

+

+<p><a name="Footnote_25_286" id="Footnote_25_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_286"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Native Tribes of South-East Australia</i>, pp. 143, 144.</p></div>

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+<pre>

+

+

+

+

+

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+</html>

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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

+

+

+Title: The Secret of the Totem

+

+Author: Andrew Lang

+

+Release Date: April 11, 2014 [EBook #45363]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: ASCII

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org

+(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)

+

+

+

+

+

+THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

+

+BY

+

+ANDREW LANG

+

+LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

+

+39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

+

+NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

+

+1905

+

+

+

+

+CONTENTS

+

+

+INTRODUCTION

+

+      I. ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

+     II. METHOD OF INQUIRY

+    III. THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

+     IV. THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

+      V. THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

+     VI. THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

+    VII. RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

+   VIII. A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

+     IX. TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

+      X. MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

+     XI. MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

+

+APPENDIX: AMERICAN THEORIES

+

+

+

+

+INTRODUCTION

+

+

+This book is the natural sequel of _Social Origins and Primal Law_,

+published three years ago. In _Primal Law_, Mr. J. J. Atkinson sought

+for the origin of marriage prohibitions in the social conditions of

+early man, as conceived of by Mr. Darwin. Man, in the opinion of the

+great naturalist, was a jealous animal; the sire, in each group,

+kept all his female mates to himself, expelling his adolescent male

+offspring. From this earliest and very drastic restriction, Mr.

+Atkinson, using the evidence of "avoidances" between kinsfolk in

+savage society, deduced the various prohibitions on sexual unions. His

+ingenious theory has been received with some favour, where it has been

+understood.

+

+Mr. Atkinson said little about totemism, and, in _Social Origins_,

+I offered a theory of the Origin of Totemism; an elaboration of the

+oldest of all scientific theories, that of Garcilasso de la Vega, an

+Inca on the maternal side, the author of the _History of the Incas_.

+Totems, he conceived, arose in the early efforts of human groups to

+differentiate each from the others. Mr. Max Mueller and Dr. Pikler

+set forth the same notion, independently. The "clans," or, as I

+say, "groups," needed differentiation by names, such as are still

+used as personal names by savages, and by names easily expressed in

+pictographs, and easily signalled in gesture language. The origin of

+the group names, or sobriquets, once forgotten, the names, as usual,

+suggested a relation between the various name-giving objects and the

+groups which bore them. That relation was explained by the various

+myths which make the name-giving animals, plants, and other objects,

+mystic kinsmen, patrons, or ancestors of the groups named after them.

+From reflection on this mystic _rapport_ between the objects and the

+human groups of the same names, arose the various superstitions and

+tabus, including that which prohibits unions between men and women of

+the same animal group-name, whether by locality or maternal descent.

+

+Critics objected that such a "trivial accident" as a name could not be

+the germ, or one of the germs of a great social system. But "the name

+goes before everything," as the Scots used to say; and in this book I

+have set forth the great importance of names in early society, a fact

+universally acknowledged by anthropologists.

+

+It was also objected that names given from without would never be

+accepted and gloried in, so I now prove that such names have often been

+accepted and gloried in, even when they are derisive; which, among

+savages, names derived from plants and animals are not; they are rather

+honourable appellations.

+

+So far, I have only fortified my position. But some acute criticisms

+offered in _Man_ by Mr. N. W. Thomas enabled me to detect a weak point

+in my system, as given in _Social Origins_, and so led on to what I

+venture to think not unimportant discoveries regarding the Australian

+social organisations. To Mr. Thomas's researches, which I trust he will

+publish in full, I am much indebted, and he kindly read part of this

+book in type-written MS.

+

+I also owe much to Mrs. Langloh Parker, who generously permitted me to

+read, in her MS., her valuable account of the Euahlayi tribe of New

+South Wales, which is to be published by Messrs. Archibald Constable.

+No student has been so intimately acquainted as this lady with the

+women of an Australian tribe; while the men, in a place where they

+could be certain that they were free from tribal _espionnage_, were

+singularly communicative. Within its limits, Mrs. Langloh Parker's

+book, I think, may be reckoned almost as valuable as those of Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen.

+

+By the irony of fortune, I had no sooner seen my book in print, than

+Mr. J. G. Frazer's chapter on "The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism

+among the Australian Aborigines" (_Fortnightly Review_, September 1905)

+came into my hands. I then discovered that, just when I thought myself

+to have disentangled the ravelled thread of totemism, Mr. Frazer also

+thought, using another metaphor, that his own "plummets had found

+bottom"--a very different bottom. I then wrote Chapter XI., stating my

+objections to his theories. Many of these, mainly objections to the

+hypothesis of the relative primitiveness of the Arunta "nation," had

+often been urged before by others. I was unaware that they had been

+answered, but they have obviously been deemed inadequate. Meanwhile the

+question as between two entirely different solutions of the old mystery

+remains open.

+

+Since critics of my _Social Origins_ often missed my meaning, I am

+forced to suppose that I may in like manner have misconstrued some of

+the opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to

+contest. I have done my best to understand, and shall deeply regret

+any failures of interpretation on my own part.

+

+Necessarily I was unaware that in Mr. Frazer's opinion, as set forth in

+his essay of September 1905, "the common assumption that inheritance

+of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it

+through the father need not hold good." I have throughout argued on

+that assumption, which I understood to be held by Mr. Frazer, as well

+as by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Howitt, and most authorities. If it be correct,

+as I still think it is, it cannot but be fatal to the Arunta claim to

+primitiveness. But Arunta society is, in many points, so obviously

+highly organised, and so confessedly advanced, that I am quite unable

+to accept this tribe as an example of the most archaic state of affairs

+extant. If I am wrong, much of my argument is shaken, and of this it

+is necessary to warn the reader. But a tribe really must be highly

+advanced in organisation, if it can afford to meet and devote four

+months to ceremonials, as it did, in a region said to be relatively

+deficient in natural supplies.

+

+In this book I have been able to use the copious materials of Mr.

+Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in their two recent works. It

+seems arrogant to differ from some of the speculative opinions of these

+distinguished observers, but "we must go where the logos leads us."

+

+I end by thanking Mr. H. J. Ford for his design of Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+heading the totems in their phratries, and betrothing two interesting

+young human members of these divisions.

+

+

+

+

+THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

+

+

+CHAPTER I

+

+ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+      The making of the local tribe of savagery--Earliest known

+      stage of society--Result of complex processes--Elaborate

+      tribal rules--Laws altered deliberately: sometimes

+      borrowed--Existing legislative methods of savages not

+      primitive--The tribe a gradual conquest of culture--The

+      tribe a combination of small pre-tribal kinships--History

+      of progress towards the tribe traceable in surviving

+      institutions--From passion to Law--Rudeness of native

+      culture in Australia--Varieties of social organisation

+      there--I. Tribes with two phratries, totems, female

+      descent--Tribes of this organisation differ as to

+      ceremonies and beliefs--Some beliefs tend to polytheism:

+      others towards monotheism--Some tribes of pristine

+      organisation have totemic magic and _pirrauru_: others

+      have not--The more northern tribes of pristine

+      organisation share the ceremonies and beliefs of central

+      tribes: not so the south-eastern tribes--Second form (a)

+      of social organisation has male descent--Second form (b)

+      has female descent _plus_ "matrimonial classes"--Account

+      of these--Eight-class system--The Arunta nation--Their

+      peculiar form of belief in reincarnation--_Churinga

+      nanja_--Recapitulation--The Euahlayi tribe.

+

+

+The question of the origin of totemism has more than the merely curious

+or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In

+the course of the inquiry we may be able to discern and discriminate

+the relative contributions of unreflecting passion, on one hand, and

+of deliberate reason, on the other, to the structure of the earliest

+extant form of human society. That form is the savage local tribe, as

+known to us in America and in Australia.

+

+Men live in united local communities, relatively large, and carefully

+regimented, before they have learned to domesticate animals, or to obey

+chiefs, or to practise the rudest form of agriculture, or to fashion

+clay into pottery, or to build permanent hovels. Customary law is older

+than any of these things, and the most ancient law which we can observe

+unites a tribe by that system of marriages which expresses itself in

+totemism.

+

+It is plain that the processes of evolution which have resulted in

+the most backward societies known to us, must have been very complex.

+If we reflect that the society of the Australian aborigines presents

+the institution of local tribes, each living peacefully, except for

+occasional internal squabbles, in a large definite tract of country;

+cultivating, on the whole, friendly relations with similar and

+similarly organised tribes; while obeying a most elaborate system of

+rules, it is obvious that these social conditions must be very remote

+from the absolutely primitive.[1] The rules of these tribes regulate

+every detail of private life with a minuteness and a rigour that

+remind us of what the Scottish Cavalier (1652) protested against as

+"the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial Government."

+Yet the tribes have neither presbyters, nor priests, nor kings.

+Their body of customary law, so copious and complex that, to the

+European, it seems as puzzling as algebra is to the savage, has been

+evolved, after a certain early point, by the slow secular action of

+"collective wisdom." We shall find that on this point, early deliberate

+modification of law, there can be no doubt.

+

+The recent personal researches of Mr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen make it certain that tribal affairs, now, among many

+tribes at least, are discussed with the utmost deliberation, and that

+modifications of institutions may be canvassed, adopted, or rejected,

+on the initiative of seniors, local "Headmen," and medicine men.[2] It

+is also certain that tribe borrows from tribe, in the matter of songs,

+dances, and institutions, while members of one tribe are permitted to

+be present at the sacred ceremonials of others, especially when these

+tribes are on intermarrying terms.[3] In such cases, the ceremonials

+of one tribe may affect those of another, the Arunta may influence the

+Urabunna, who borrow their sacred objects or _churinga_ for use in

+their own rites. We even hear of cases in which native religious ideas

+have been propagated by missionaries sent from tribe to tribe.[4]

+

+Thus, conservative as is the savage by nature, he is distinctly capable

+of deliberate modification of his rites, ceremonies, and customary

+laws, and of interchanging ideas on these subjects with neighbouring

+tribes.

+

+All this is true, to-day, and doubtless has long been true.

+

+But at this point we must guard against what we consider a prevalent

+fallacy. The legislative action of the natives, the initiative of local

+Headmen, and Heads of Totems and of "Classes" (social divisions), and

+of medicine men inspired by "some supernatural being, such as Kutchi

+of the Dieri, Bunjil of the Wurunjerri, or Daramulun of the Coast

+Murring,"[5] is only rendered possible by the existence, to-day, of

+social conditions which cannot be primitive. To-day the Tribe, with

+its innumerable rules, and its common faith in Kutchi or Daramulun,

+with its recognised local or social Headmen, with its regulations for

+dealing with other tribes, and with its heralds or messengers, is an

+institution "in being." But, necessarily, this was not always so; the

+Tribe itself is a great "conquest of culture," and that conquest must

+have been made very slowly.

+

+The prevalent fallacy, then, is to take unconsciously for granted

+that the people was, from the beginning, regimented into tribes, or

+existed in "hordes" already as capable as actual tribes of deliberative

+assemblies and legislative action, and that, in these hordes, a certain

+law, "the universal basis of their social system, was brought about by

+intention," as Mr. Howitt believes.[6]

+

+The law in question, "the universal basis of their social system,"

+was nothing less than a rule compelling people who had hitherto been

+promiscuous in their unions, to array themselves into a pair of tribal

+divisions, in which no member might marry another member of the same

+division, but must marry a member of the opposite division. The mere

+idea of such an act of legislation, for which no motive is assigned

+(and no motive is conceivable) postulates the pre-existence of a

+community like the Tribe of to-day, with powers to legislate, and to

+secure obedience for its legislative acts. This postulate cannot be

+granted, it refracts the institutions of to-day on a past state of

+society which, in all probability, could possess no such institutions.

+The "chaotic horde" of the hypothesis could not allot to various human

+groups the duty of working magic (to take an instance) for the good of

+various articles of the common food supply, nor could it establish

+a new and drastic rule, suddenly regulating sexual unions which had

+previously been utterly unregulated.

+

+Human history does not show us a relatively large mass segregating

+itself into smaller communities. It shows us small communities

+aggregating into larger combinations, the village into the city, the

+European tribes into the kingdom, the kingdoms into the nation, the

+nation into the empire. The Tribe itself, in savage society, is a

+combination of small kins, or sets of persons of various degrees of

+status; these kins have not been legislatively segregated out of a

+pre-existing horde having powers of legislation. The idea of such a

+legislative primeval horde has been unconsciously borrowed from the

+actual Tribe of experience to-day.

+

+That tribe is not primitive, far from it, but is very old.

+

+Tribal collective wisdom, when once the tribe was evolved, has

+probably been at work, in unrecorded ages, over all the world, and in

+most places seems, up to a certain point, to have followed much the

+same strange course. The path does not march straight to any point

+predetermined by man, but loops, and zigzags, and retreats, and returns

+on itself, like the course of a river beset by rocks and shoals, and

+parcelled into wandering streams, and lagging in morasses. Yet the

+river reaches the sea, and the loops and links of the path, frayed by

+innumerable generations of early men, led at last to the haven of the

+civilised Family, and the Family Peace.

+

+The history of the progress must necessarily be written in the

+strange characters of savage institutions, and in these odd and

+elaborate regulations which alarm the incurious mind under the names

+of "Phratries," "Totems," "Matrimonial Classes," "Pirrauru," and

+"Piraungaru." In these, as in some Maya or Easter Island inscription,

+graven in bizarre signs, lies the early social history of Man. We pore

+over the characters, turning them this way and that, deciphering a mark

+here and there, but unable to agree on any coherent rendering of the

+whole, so that some scholars deem the problems insoluble--and most are

+at odds among themselves.

+

+Possibly we can at last present a coherent translation of the record

+which lies half concealed and half revealed in the savage institutions

+with their uncouth names, and can trace the course of an evolution

+which, beginning in natural passions, emotions, and superstitions,

+reached a rudimentary social law. That law, again, from a period far

+behind our historical knowledge, has been deliberately modified by men,

+much as a Bill in Parliament is modified by amendments and compromises

+into an Act. The industry of students who examine the customs of the

+remotest races has accumulated a body of evidence in which the various

+ways out of early totemic society towards the civilised conception of

+the family may be distinctly traced.

+

+Meanwhile we are concerned rather with the way into totemism out of a

+prior non-totemic social condition, and with the development of the

+various stages of totemic society in Australia. The natives of that

+country, when unspoiled by European influences, are almost on one

+level as to material culture. Some tribes have rather better and more

+permanent shelters than others; some have less inadequate canoes than

+the rest; some drape themselves against cold weather in the skins of

+beasts, while others go bare; but all are non-agricultural hunting

+wanderers, without domesticated animals, without priests, and without

+chiefs on the level of those of the old Highland clans. They are

+ignorant of pottery, a fact which marks the very lowest culture; they

+know not the bow and arrow; their implements of stone vary from the

+polished "neolithic" to the rough-hewn "palaeolithic" type: a man will

+use either sort as occasion serves.

+

+While everyday life and its implements are thus rude, there are great

+varieties of social organisation, of ceremonial institutions, and of

+what, among Europeans, would be called speculative and religious ideas,

+expressing themselves in myths and rites.

+

+Taking social organisation first, we begin with what all inquirers

+(except one or two who wrote before the recent great contributions to

+knowledge appeared) acknowledge to be the most pristine type extant

+Each tribe of this type is in two intermarrying divisions (which we

+call "exogamous moieties," or "phratries"), and each phratry bears

+a name which, when it can be translated, is, as a rule, that of an

+animal.[7] We shall show later why the meaning of the names has often

+been lost. Take the animal names of the phratries to be Emu and

+Kangaroo, no man of the Emu phratry may marry a woman of the same

+phratry, he must marry out of his phratry ("exogamy"); nor may a man

+of the Kangaroo phratry marry a woman of the same. Kangaroo phratry

+must marry into Emu, and Emu into Kangaroo. The phratry names in each

+case are, in the more primitive types of the organisation (which alone

+we are now considering) inherited from the mother.[8] A man of the Emu

+phratry marries a woman of the Kangaroo phratry, and to that phratry

+her children belong. Thus members of either phratry must be found in

+any casual knot or company of natives. Within each phratry there are,

+again, kinships also known by hereditary names of animals or plants.

+Thus, in Emu phratry, there may be kins called, say, Emu, Opossum,

+Wallaby, Grub, and others; in the Kangaroo phratry _different_ names

+prevail, such as Kangaroos, Lizards, Dingoes, Cockatoos, and others.

+The name-giving animals, in this case, are called by us "totems," and

+the human kins which bear their names are called "totem kins." No man

+or woman may marry a person of his or her own totem. But this, in fact,

+as matters stand in Australia, puts no fresh bar on marriage, because

+(except in four or five tribes of the Centre) if a man marries out

+of his phratry he must necessarily marry out of his totem kin, since

+there are no members of his totem name in the phratry into which he

+must marry. In America, in cases where there are no phratries, and

+universally, where totems exist without phratries, marriage between

+persons of the same totem is forbidden.

+

+The organisation of the more primitive tribes presents only the two

+exogamous moieties or phratries in each tribe and the totem kins in the

+phratries. We have Crow phratry and Eagle Hawk phratry, and, within

+Crow phratry, Crow totem kin,[9] with other totem kins; within Eagle

+Hawk phratry, Eagle Hawk totem kin, with other totem kins, which are

+never of the same names as those in Crow phratry.

+

+This we call the primitive type, all the other organisations are the

+result of advances on and modifications of this organisation. It also

+occurs in America,[10] where, however, the phratry is seldom extant,

+though it does exist occasionally, and is known to have existed among

+the Iroquois and to have decayed.

+

+On examining Mr. Howitt's map[11] it will be seen that this type of

+social organisation extends, or has extended, from Mount Gambier, by

+the sea, in the extreme south, past Lake Eyre, to some distance beyond

+Cooper's Creek or the Barcoo River, and even across the Diamantina

+River in Queensland. But it is far from being the case that all tribes

+with this pristine organisation possess identical ceremonies and ideas.

+On the other hand, from the southern borders of Lake Eyre, northwards,

+the tribes of this social organisation have peculiar ceremonies,

+unknown in the south and east, but usual further north and west. They

+initiate young men with the rites of circumcision or subincision (a

+cruel process unknown outside of Australia), or with both. In the

+south-east the knocking out of a front tooth takes the place of these

+bloody ordeals. The Lake Eyre tribes, again, do not, like those south

+and east of them, hold by, and inculcate at the rites, "the belief as

+to the existence of a great supernatural anthropomorphic Being, by

+whom the ceremonies were first instituted, and who still communicates

+with mankind through the medicine men, his servants."[12] Their myths

+rather repose on the idea of beings previous to man, "the prototypes

+of, but more powerful in magic than the native tribes. These beings, if

+they did not create man, at least perfected him from some unformed and

+scarcely human creatures."[13]

+

+Thus, the more northern tribes of primitive tribal organisation (say

+the Dieri and their congeners) have beliefs which might ripen into

+the Greek mythology of gods and Titans, while the faith of the tribes

+of the same social organisation, further south by east, might develop

+into a rude form of Hebrew monotheism, and the two myths may co-exist,

+and often do. The northern tribes about Lake Eyre, and the central and

+north tribes, work co-operative magic for the behoof of their totem

+animals, as part of the common food supply, a rite unknown to the south

+and east. They also practise a custom (_Pirrauru_) of allotting men

+and women, married or unmarried, as paramours to each other, after a

+symbolic ceremony. This arrangement also is unknown in the south and

+east, and even north by west, though almost everywhere there is sexual

+licence at certain ceremonial meetings. It is thus plain that the more

+northern tribes of the primitive organisation described, differ from

+their southern and eastern neighbours (i.) in their most important

+initiatory rites, (ii.) in some of their myths or beliefs,[14] (iii.)

+in their totemic magic, and (iv.) in their allotment of permanent

+paramours. In the first three points these northern tribes of primitive

+type resemble, not the south-eastern tribes of the same social

+type, but the more socially advanced central, western, and northern

+"nations," with whom some of them are in touch and even intermarry.

+It is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that all tribes of the primitive

+tribal organisation are _solidaires_ as to marriage, ceremonial rites,

+and beliefs.

+

+It is difficult to say which is the second type of tribal organisation.

+We have in Victoria, in a triangle with its apex on the Murray River,

+the organisation already described (1), but here descent is reckoned

+in the male, not in the female line. This implies some social advance:

+social institutions, with male descent of the totem name, are certain

+to become _local_, rather than totemistic. The Kangaroos, deriving the

+totem name from the father, are a local clan, in some cases, like the

+MacIans in Glencoe. The Kangaroo name prevails in the locality. This

+cannot occur, obviously, when the names are derived from mothers, and

+the women go to the husband's district. We may call the organisation

+thus described (2a), and as (2b) we should reckon the organisation

+which prevails, as a rule, on the east of Southern Australia, in

+Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern

+coast-line (with a gap in the centre of the coast-line), to the eastern

+limits of (1). Here we find (2b) a great set of tribes having female

+descent, but each individual belongs not only to one of two phratries,

+and to a totem, but also to a "Matrimonial Class." In each phratry

+there are two such classes. Among the Kamilaroi, in phratry Dilbi, are

+"classes" named Muri (male) and Kubi (male). In phratry Kupathin are

+Ipai (male) and Kumbo (male), while the women bear the feminine forms

+of these names. Their meaning is usually unknown, but in two or three

+tribes, where the meaning of the class names is known with certainty,

+they denote animals.

+

+The arrangement works thus, a man of phratry Dilbi, and of matrimonial

+class Muri, may not marry any woman that he chooses, in the other

+phratry, Kupathin. He can only marry a Kubatha, that is, a female of

+the class Kumbo. Their children, female descent prevailing, are of

+Kupathin _phratry_, and of the mother's totem, but do not belong to the

+_class_ either of father (Muri) or of mother (Kumbo). _They must belong

+to the other class within her phratry_, namely Ipai. This rule applies

+throughout; thus, if a man of phratry Dilbi, and of Kubi class, marries

+a woman of Ipai class in phratry Kupathin, their children are neither

+of class Kubi nor of class Ipai, but of class Kumbo, the linked or

+sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.

+

+Suppose for the sake of argument that the class names denote, or once

+denoted animals, so that, say--

+

+In phratry

+                { Muri = Turtle.

+   _Dilbi_ { Kubi = Bat.

+

+While in phratry

+                   { Ipai  = Carpet Snake.

+   _Kupathin_ { Kumbo = Native Cat.

+

+It is obvious that male Turtle would marry female Cat, and (with

+maternal descent) their children would, by class name, be Carpet

+Snakes. Bat would marry Carpet Snake, and their children would, by

+class name, be Cats. Persons of each generation would thus belong to

+classes of different animal names for ever, and no one might marry into

+either his or her own phratry, his or her own totem, or his or her own

+generation, that is, into his or her own class. It is exactly (where

+the classes bear animal names) as if two _generations_ had totems.

+The mothers of Muri class in Dilbi would have Turtle, the mothers in

+Kupathin (Ipai) would have Carpet Snake. Their children, in Kupathin,

+would have Cat. Not only the phratries and the totem kins, but each

+successive generation, would thus be delimited by bearing an animal

+name, and marriage would be forbidden between all persons not of

+different animal-named phratries, different animal-named totem kins,

+and different animal-named generations. In many cases, we repeat, the

+names of the phratries and of the classes have not yet been translated,

+and the meanings are unknown to the natives themselves. That the class

+names were originally animal names is a mere hypothesis, based on few

+examples.

+

+Say I am of phratry Crow, of totem Lizard, of generation and

+matrimonial class Turtle; then I must marry only a woman of phratry

+Eagle Hawk, of any totem in Eagle Hawk phratry,[15] and of generation

+and class name Cat. Our children, with female descent, will be of

+phratry Eagle Hawk, of totem the mother's, and of generation and class

+name Carpet Snake. _Their_ children will be of phratry Crow, of totem

+the mother's, and of generation and class name Cat again; and so on

+for ever. Each generation in a phratry has its class name, and may

+not marry within that name. The next generation has the other class

+name, and may not marry within that. Assuming that phratry names,

+totem names, and generation names are always names of animals (or of

+other objects in nature), the laws would amount, we repeat, simply to

+this: No person may marry another person who, by phratry, or totem,

+or generation, owns the same hereditary animal name or other name

+as himself or herself. Moreover no one may marry a person (where

+matrimonial classes exist) who bears the same class or generation name

+as his mother or father.

+

+In practice the rules are thus quite simple, mistake is

+impossible--complicated as the arrangements look on paper. Where

+totem and phratry names only exist, a man has merely to ask a woman,

+"What is your phratry name?" If it is his own, an amour is forbidden.

+Where phratry names are obsolete, and classes exist, he has only to

+ask, "What is your class name?" If it is that of either class in

+his own phratry of the tribe, to love is to break a sacred law. It

+is not necessary, as a rule, even to ask the totem name. What looks

+so perplexing is in essence, and in practical working, of extreme

+simplicity. But some tribes have deliberately modified the rules, to

+facilitate marriage.

+

+The conspicuous practical result of the Class arrangement (not

+primitive), is that just as totem law makes it impossible for a person

+to marry a sister or brother uterine, so Class law makes a marriage

+between father and daughter, mother and son, impossible.[16] But such

+marriages never occur in Australian tribes of pristine organisation

+(1) which have no class names, no collective names for successive

+generations. The origin of these class or generation names is a problem

+which will be discussed later.

+

+Such is the Class system where it exists in tribes with female descent.

+It has often led to the loss and disappearance of the phratry names,

+which are forgotten, since the two sets of opposed class names do the

+phratry work.

+

+We have next (3) the same arrangements with descent reckoned in the

+male line. This prevails on the south-east coast, from Hervey River to

+Warwick. In Gippsland, and in a section round Melbourne, there were

+"anomalous" arrangements which need not now detain us; the archaic

+systems tended to die out altogether.

+

+All these south central (Dieri), southern, and eastern tribes may

+be studied in Mr. Howitt's book, already cited, which contains the

+result of forty years' work, the information being collected partly by

+personal research and partly through many correspondents. Mr. Howitt

+has viewed the initiatory ceremonies of more than one tribe, and is

+familiar with their inmost secrets.

+

+For the tribes of the centre and north we must consult two books, the

+fruits of the personal researches of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, M.A., F.R.S.,

+Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne, and of Mr. F. J.

+Gillen, Sub-Protector of Aborigines, South Australia.[17] For many

+years Mr. Gillen has been in the confidence of the tribes, and he and

+Mr. Spencer have passed many months in the wilds, being admitted to

+view the most secret ceremonies, and being initiated into the myths of

+the people. Their photographs of natives are numerous and excellent.

+

+These observers begin in the south centre, where Mr. Howitt leaves off

+in his northerly researches, and go north. They start with the Urabunna

+tribe, north-east of Lake Eyre, congeners of Mr. Howitt's Dieri, and

+speaking a dialect akin to theirs, while the tribe intermarry marry

+with the Arunta (whose own dialect has points in common with theirs)

+of the centre of the continent These Urabunna are apparently in the

+form of social organisation which we style primitive (No. 1), but there

+are said, rather vaguely, to be more restrictions on marriage than is

+usual, people of one totem in Kiraru phratry being restricted to people

+of one totem in Matteri phratry.[18]

+

+They have phratries, totem kins, apparently no matrimonial classes

+(some of their rules are imperfectly ascertained), and they reckon

+descent in the female line. But, like the Dieri (and unlike the tribes

+of the south and east), they practise subincision; they have, or are

+said to have, no belief in "a supernatural anthropomorphic great

+Being"; they believe in "old semi-human ancestors," who scattered about

+spirits, which are perpetually reincarnated in new members of the

+tribe; they practise totemic magic; and they cultivate the Dieri custom

+of allotting paramours. Thus, by social organisation, they attach

+themselves to the south-eastern tribes (1), but, like the Dieri, and

+even more so (for, unlike the Dieri, they believe in reincarnation),

+they agree in ceremonies, and in the general idea of their totemic

+magic, rites, and mythical ideas, with tribes who, as regards social

+organisation, are in state (4), reckon descent in the male line, and

+possess, not _four_, but _eight_ matrimonial classes.

+

+This institution of eight classes is developing in the Arunta "nation,"

+the people of the precise centre of Australia, who march with, and

+intermarry with, the Urabunna; at least the names for the second set of

+four matrimonial classes, making eight in all, are reaching the Arunta

+from the northern tribes. All the way further north to the Gulf of

+Carpentaria, male descent and eight classes prevail, with subincision,

+prolonged and complex ceremonials, the belief in reincarnation of

+primal semi-human, semi-bestial ancestors, and the absence (except

+in the Kaitish tribe, next the Arunta) of any known belief in what

+Mr. Howitt calls the "All Father." Totemic magic also is prevalent,

+dwindling as you approach the north-east coast. In consequence of

+reckoning in the male line (which necessarily causes most of the

+dwellers in a group to be of the same totem), _local_ organisation is

+more advanced in these tribes than in the south and east.

+

+We next speak of social organisation (5), namely, that of the Arunta

+and Kaitish tribes, which is without example in any other known totemic

+society all over the world. The Arunta and Kaitish not only believe,

+like most northern and western tribes, in the perpetual reincarnation

+of ancestral spirits, but they, and they alone, hold that each such

+spirit, during discarnate intervals, resides in, or is mainly attached

+to, a decorated kind of stone amulet, called _churinga nanja_. These

+objects, with this myth, are not recorded as existing among other

+"nations." When a child is born, its friends hunt for its ancestral

+stone amulet in the place where its mother thinks that she conceived

+it, and around the nearest _rendezvous_ of discarnate _local_ totemic

+souls, all of one totem only. The amulet and the _local_ totemic

+centre, with its haunted _nanja_ rock or tree, determine the totem

+of the child. Thus, unlike all other totemists, the Arunta do not

+inherit their totems either from father or mother, or both. Totems are

+determined by _local_ accident. Not being hereditary, they are not

+exogamous: here, and here alone, they do not regulate marriage. Men

+may, and do, marry women of their own totem, and their child's totem

+may neither be that of its father nor of its mother. The members of

+totem groups are really members of societies, which co-operatively

+work magic for the good of the totems. The question arises, Is this

+the primitive form of totemism? We shall later discuss that question

+(Chapter IV.).

+

+Meanwhile we conceive the various types of social organisation to

+begin with the south-eastern phratries, totems, and female reckoning

+of descent (1) to advance to these _plus_ male descent (2a), and to

+these with female descent and four matrimonial classes (2b). Next

+we place (3) that four-class system with male descent; next (4) the

+north-western system of male descent with _eight_ matrimonial classes,

+and last (as anomalous in some respects), (5) the Arunta-Kaitish system

+of male descent, eight classes, and non-hereditary non-exogamous totems.

+

+As regards ceremonial and belief, we place (1) the tribes south

+and east of the Dieri. (2) The Dieri. (3) The Urabunna, and north,

+central, and western tribes. (4) The Arunta. The Dieri and Urabunna we

+regard (at least the Dieri) as pristine in social organisation, with

+peculiarities all their own, but in ceremonial and belief more closely

+attached to the central, north, and west than to the south-eastern

+tribes. As concerns the bloody rites, Mr. Howitt inclines to the belief

+(corroborated by legends, whatever their value) that "a northern origin

+must ultimately be assigned to these ceremonies."[19] It is natural to

+assume that the more cruel initiatory rites are the more archaic, and

+that the tribes which practise them are the more pristine. But this is

+not our opinion nor that of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. The older rite

+is the mere knocking out of front teeth (also used by the Masai of East

+Central Africa). This rite, in Central Australia, "has lost its old

+meaning, its place has been taken by other rites."[20] ... Increased

+cruelty accompanies social advance in this instance. In another matter

+innovation comes from the north. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen are of the

+opinion that "changes in totemic matters have been slowly passing down

+from north to south." The eight classes, in place of four classes, are

+known as a matter of fact to have actually "reached the Arunta from the

+north, and at the present moment are spreading south-wards."[21]

+

+Again, a feebler form of the reincarnation belief, namely, that

+souls of the young who die uninitiated are reincarnated, occurs in

+the Euahlayi tribe of north-western New South Wales.[22] Whether the

+Euahlayi belief came from the north, in a limited way, or whether it

+is the germinal state of the northern belief, is uncertain. It is

+plain that if bloody rites and eight classes may come down from the

+north, totemic magic and the faith in reincarnation may also have

+done so, and thus modified the rites and "religious" opinions of

+the Dieri and Urabunna, who are said still to be, socially, in the

+most pristine state, that of phratries and female descent, without

+matrimonial classes.[23] It is also obvious that if the Kaitish faith

+in a sky-dweller (rare in northern tribes) be a "sport," and if the

+Arunta _churinga nanja, plus_ non-hereditary and non-exogamous

+totems, be a "sport," the Dieri and Urabunna custom, too, of solemnly

+allotted _permanent_ paramours may be a thing of isolated and special

+development, not a survival of an age of "group marriage."

+

+

+[1] Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 41. 1904.

+

+[2] Cf. for example Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central

+Australia_, p. 26. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp.

+88, 89.

+

+[3] Howitt, _ut supra_, pp. 511, 513.

+

+[4] Hale, _U.S. Exploring Expedition_, p. 410. 1846.

+

+[5] Howitt, _ut supra_, p. 89.

+

+[6] Op. cit., p. 89.

+

+[7] There are exceptions, or at least one exception is known to the

+rule of animal names for phratries, a point to which we shall return.

+Dr. Roth (_N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56) suggests that

+the phratry names Wutaru and Pakuta mean One and Two (cf. p. 26).

+For Wutaru and Yungaru, however, interpretations indicating names

+of animals are given, diversely, by Mr. Bridgman and Mr. Chatfield,

+_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 40, 41.

+

+[8] That reckoning descent in the female line, _among totemists_,

+is earlier than reckoning in the male line, Mr. Howitt, Mr. Tylor,

+Dr. Durkheim, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, with Mr. J. G. Frazer,

+till recently, are agreed. Starcke says "usually the female line only

+appears in connection with the Kobong (totem) groups," and he holds the

+eccentric opinion that totems are relatively late, and that the tribes

+with none are the more primitive! (_The Primitive Family_, p. 26,

+1896.) This writer calls Mr. Howitt "a missionary."

+

+[9] That this is the case will be proved later; the fact has hitherto

+escaped observation.

+

+[10] Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 6l. Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 90, 94

+_et seq_.

+

+[11] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_. Macmillan, 1904.

+

+[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 640. For examples, pp.

+528-535.

+

+[13] Ibid., p. 487.

+

+[14] That is, on our present information. It is very unusual for

+orthodox adhesion to one set of myths to prevail.

+

+[15] Sometimes members of one totem are said to be restricted to

+marriage with members of only one other totem.

+

+[16] Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 284, citing

+Mr. J. G. Frazer.

+

+[17] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 1899. _Northern Tribes of

+Central Australia_, 1904. Macmillan.

+

+[18] Cf. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 188-189.

+_Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 60.

+

+[19] Howitt, _op. cit_., p. 676, _N.T._, p. 20.

+

+[20] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 214. The same opinion is

+stated as very probable in _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p.

+329.

+

+[21] _N. T._, p. 20.

+

+[22] Mrs. Langloh Parker's M.S.

+

+[23] I am uncertain as to this point among the Urabunna, as will appear

+later.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II

+

+METHOD OF INQUIRY

+

+

+      Method of inquiry--Errors to be avoided--Origin of

+      totemism not to be looked for among the "sports" of

+      socially advanced tribes--Nor among tribes of male

+      reckoning of descent--Nor in the myths explanatory

+      of origin of totemism--Myths of origin of heraldic

+      bearings compared--Tribes in state of ancestor-worship:

+      their totemic myths cannot be true--Case of Bantu

+      myths (African)--Their myth implies ancestor-worship

+      --Another African myth derives _tribal_ totems from

+      tribal nicknames--No totemic myths are of any historic

+      value--The use of conjecture--Every theory must start

+      from conjecture--Two possible conjectures as to earliest

+      men gregarious (the horde), or lonely sire, female mates,

+      and off-spring--Five possible conjectures as to the

+      animal names of kinships in relation to early society and

+      exogamy--Theory of the author; of Professor Spencer; of

+      Dr. Durkheim; of Mr. Hill-Tout; of Mr. Howitt--Note on

+      McLennan's theory of exogamy.

+

+

+We have now given the essential facts in the problem of early society

+as it exists in various forms among the most isolated and pristine

+peoples extant. It has been shown that the sets of seniority (classes),

+the exogamous moieties (phratries), and the kinships in each tribe bear

+names which, when translated, are usually found to denote animals.

+Especially the names of the totem kindreds, and of the totems, are

+commonly names of animals or plants. If we can discover why this is

+so, we are near the discovery of the origin of totemism. Meanwhile we

+offer some remarks as to the method to be pursued in the search for a

+theory which will colligate all the facts in the case, and explain the

+origin of totemic society. In the first place certain needful warnings

+must be given, certain reefs which usually wreck efforts to construct

+a satisfactory hypothesis must be marked.

+

+First, it will be vain to look for the origin of totemism either

+among advanced and therefore non-pristine Australian types of tribal

+organisation, or among peoples not Australian, who are infinitely more

+forward than the Australians in the arts of life, and in the possession

+of property. Such progressive peoples may present many interesting

+social phenomena, but, as regards pure _primitive_ totemism, they dwell

+on "fragments of a broken world." The totemic fragments, among them,

+are twisted and shattered strata, with fantastic features which cannot

+be primordial, but are metamorphic. Accounts of these societies are

+often puzzling, and the strange confused terms used by the reporters,

+especially in America, frequently make them unintelligible.

+

+The learned, who are curious in these matters, would have saved

+themselves much time and labour had they kept two conspicuous facts

+before their eyes.

+

+(1) It is useless to look for the _origins_ of totemism among the

+peculiarities and "sports" which always attend the decadence of

+totemism, consequent on the change from female to male lineage, as Mr.

+Howitt, our leader in these researches, has always insisted. To search

+for the beginnings among late and abnormal phenomena, things isolated,

+done in a corner, and not found among the tribal organisations of the

+earliest types, is to follow a trail sure to be misleading.

+

+(2) The second warning is to be inferred from the first. It is waste

+of time to seek for the origin of totemism in anything--an animal

+name, a sacred animal, a paternal soul tenanting an animal--which is

+inherited from its first owner, he being an individual ancestor male.

+Such inheritance implies the existence of reckoning descent in the male

+line, and totemism conspicuously began in, and is least contaminated

+in, tribes who reckon descent in the female line.

+

+Another stone of stumbling comes from the same logical formation.

+The error is, to look for origins in myths about origins, told among

+advanced or early societies. If a people has advanced far in material

+culture, if it is agricultural, breeds cattle, and works the metals,

+of course it cannot be primitive. However, it may retain vestiges of

+totemism, and, if it does, it will explain them by a story, a myth of

+its own, just as modern families, and even cities, have their myths to

+account for the origin, now forgotten, of their armorial bearings, or

+crests--the dagger in the city shield, the skene of the Skenes, the

+sawn tree of the Hamiltons, the lyon of the Stuarts.

+

+Now an agricultural, metallurgic people, with male descent, in the

+middle barbarism, will explain its survivals of totemism by a myth

+natural in its intellectual and social condition; but not natural

+in the condition of the homeless nomad hunters, among whom totemism

+arose. For example, we have no reason to suspect that when totemism

+began men had a highly developed religion of ancestor-worship. Such a

+religion has not yet been evolved in Australia, where the names of the

+dead are usually tabooed, where there is hardly a trace of prayers,

+hardly a trace of offerings to the dead, and none of offerings to

+animals.[1] The more pristine Australians, therefore, do not explain

+their totems as containing the souls of ancestral spirits. On the

+other hand, when the Bantu tribes of Southern Africa--agricultural,

+with settled villages, with kings, and with many of the crafts, such

+as metallurgy--explain the origin of their _tribal_ names derived

+from animals on the lines of their religion--ancestor-worship--their

+explanation may be neglected as far as our present purpose is

+concerned. It is only their theory, only the myth which, in their

+intellectual and religious condition, they are bound to tell, and it

+can throw no light on the origin of sacred animals.

+

+The Bantu local _tribes_, according to Mr. M'Call Theal, have _Siboko_,

+that is, name-giving animals. The tribesmen will not kill, or eat, or

+touch, "or in any way come into contact with" their _Siboko_, if they

+can avoid doing so. A man, asked "What do you dance?" replies by giving

+the name of his _Siboko_, which is, or once was, honoured in mystic or

+magical dances.

+

+"When a division of a tribe took place, each section retained the same

+ancestral animal," and men thus trace dispersed segments of their

+tribe, or they thus account for the existence of other tribes of the

+same Siboko as themselves.

+

+Things being in this condition, an ancestor-worshipping people has to

+explain the circumstances by a myth. Being an ancestor-worshipping

+people, the Bantu explain the circumstance, as they were certain to do,

+by a myth of ancestral spirits. "Each tribe regarded some particular

+animal as the one selected by the ghosts of its kindred, and therefore

+looked upon it as sacred."

+

+It should be superfluous to say that the Bantu myth cannot possibly

+throw any tight on the real origin of totemism. The Bantu,

+ancestor-worshippers of great piety, find themselves saddled with

+sacred tribal _Siboko_; why, they know not. So they naturally invent

+the fable that the _Siboko_, which are sacred, are sacred because they

+are the shrines of what to them are really sacred, namely, ancestral

+spirits.[2] But they also cherish another totally different myth to

+explain their _Siboko_.

+

+We now give this South African myth, which explains tribal _Siboko_,

+and their origin, not on the lines of ancestor-worship, but, rather to

+my annoyance, on the lines of my own theory of the Origin of Totems!

+

+On December 9, 1879, the Rev. Roger Price, of Mole-pole, in the

+northern Bakuena country, wrote as follows to Mr. W. G. Stow,

+Geological Survey, South Africa. He gives the myth which is told to

+account for the _Siboko_ or tribal sacred and name-giving animal of the

+Bahurutshe--Baboons. (These animal names in this part of Africa denote

+_local tribes_, not totem kins within a local tribe.)

+

+"Tradition says that about the time the separation took place between

+the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena, _Baboons_ entered the gardens of

+the Bahurutshe and ate their pumpkins, before the proper time for

+commencing to eat the fruits of the new year. The Bahurutshe were

+unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken off and

+nibbled should be wasted, and ate them accordingly. This act is said to

+have led to the Bahurutshe being called Buchwene, Baboon people--which"

+(namely, the Baboon) "is their _Siboko_ to this day--and their having

+the precedence ever afterwards in the matter of taking the first bite

+of the new year's fruits. If this be the true explanation," adds Mr.

+Price, "it is evident that what is now used as a term of honour was

+once a term of reproach. The Bakuena, too, are said to owe their

+_Siboko_ (the Crocodile) to the fact that their people once ate an ox

+which had been killed by a crocodile."

+

+Mr. Price, therefore, is strongly inclined to think "that the _Siboko_

+of all the tribes was originally a kind of nickname or term of

+reproach, but," he adds, "there is a good deal of mystery about the

+whole thing."

+

+On this point Mr. Stow, to whom Mr. Price wrote the letter just cited,

+remarks in his MS.: "From the foregoing facts it would seem possible

+that the origin of the _Siboko_ among these tribes arose from some

+sobriquet that had been given to them, and that, in course of time,

+as their superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed,

+these tribal symbols became objects of veneration and superstitious

+awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign influence

+averted...."[3]

+

+Here it will be seen that these South African tribes account for their

+_Siboko_ now by the myth deriving the sacredness of the tribal animal

+from ancestor-worship, as reported by Mr. Theal, and again by nicknames

+given to the tribes on account of certain undignified incidents.

+

+This latter theory is very like my own as stated in _Social Origins_,

+and to be set forth and reinforced later in this work. But the theory,

+as held by the Bahurutsche and Bakuena, does not help to confirm mine

+in the slightest degree. Among these very advanced African tribes,

+the _Siboko_ or _tribal_ sacred animal, is the animal of the local

+_tribe_, not, as in pure totemism, of the scattered exogamous kin. It

+is probably a lingering remnant of totemism. The totem of the most

+powerful _local_ group in a tribe having descent through males,

+appears to have become the _Siboko_ of the whole tribe, while the other

+totems have died out. It is not probable that a nickname of remembered

+origin, given in recent times to a tribe of relatively advanced

+civilisation, should, as the myth asserts, not only have become a name

+of honour, but should have founded tribal animal-worship.

+

+It was in a low state of culture no longer found on earth, that I

+conceive the animal names of groups not yet totemic, names of origin no

+longer remembered, to have arisen and become the germ of totemism.

+

+Myths of the origin of totemism, in short, are of absolutely no

+historic value. _Siboko_ no longer arise in the manner postulated by

+these African myths; these myths are not based on experience any more

+than is the Tsimshian myth of the Bear Totem, to be criticised later

+in a chapter on American Totemism. We are to be on our guard, then,

+against looking for the origins of totemism among the myths of peoples

+of relatively advanced culture, such as the village-dwelling Indians

+of the north-west coast of America. We must not look for origins among

+tribes, even if otherwise pristine, who reckon by male descent. We must

+look on all savage myths of origins merely as savage hypotheses, which,

+in fact, usually agree with one or other of our scientific modern

+hypotheses, but yield them no corroboration.

+

+On the common fallacy of regarding the tribe of to-day, with its

+relative powers, as primitive, we have spoken in Chapter I.

+

+By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far beyond

+our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we must have

+recourse as regards this matter to conjecture.

+

+Here a word might be said as to the method of conjecture about

+institutions of which the origins are concealed "in the dark backward

+and abysm of time."

+

+There are conjectures and conjectures! None is capable in every detail

+of historical demonstration, but one guess may explain all the known

+facts, and others may explain few or none. We are dealing with human

+affairs--they whose groups first answered to animal group-names were

+men as much as we are. They had reason; they had human language, spoken

+or by gesture, and human passions. That conjecture, therefore, which

+deals with the first totemists as men, men with plenty of human nature,

+is better than any rival guess which runs contrary to human nature as

+known in our experience of man, savage, barbaric, or civilised.

+

+Once more, a set of guesses which are consistent with themselves is

+better than a set of guesses which can be shown to be even ludicrously

+self-contradictory. If any guess, again, colligates all the known

+facts, if any conjectural system will "march," will meet every known

+circumstance in the face, manifestly it is a better system than one

+which stumbles, breaks down, evades giving an answer to the problems,

+says that they are insoluble, is in contradiction with itself, and does

+not even try to colligate all the known facts. A consistent system,

+unmarred by self-contradictions; in accordance with known human nature;

+in accordance, too, with recognised rules of evolution, and of logic;

+and co-ordinating all known facts, if it is tried on them, cannot be

+dismissed with the remark that "there are plenty of other possible

+guesses."

+

+Our method must be--having already stated the facts as they present

+themselves in the most primitive organisation of the most archaic

+society extant--to enumerate all the possible conjectures which have

+been logically (or even illogically) made as to the origin of the

+institutions before us.

+

+All theories as to how these institutions arose, must rest, primarily,

+on a basis of conjecture as to the original social character of man.

+Nowhere do we see absolutely _primitive_ man, and a totemic system in

+the making. The processes of evolution must have been very gradually

+developed in the course of distant ages, but our conjecture as to the

+nature, in each case, of the processes must be in accordance with what

+is known of human nature. Conjecture, too, has its logical limitations.

+

+We must first make our choice, therefore, between the guess that the

+earliest human beings lived in very small groups (as, in everyday life,

+the natives of Australia are in many cases still compelled to do by the

+precarious nature of their food supplies), or the guess that earliest

+man was gregarious, and dwelt in a promiscuous horde with no sort of

+restraint. One or other view must be correct.

+

+On the former guess (men originally lived in very small groups), the

+probable mutual hostility of group to rival group, the authority of the

+strongest male in each group, and the passions of jealousy, love, and

+hate, must inevitably have produced _some_ rudimentary restrictions on

+absolute archaic freedom. Some people would be prevented from doing

+some things, they must have been checked by the hand of the stronger;

+and from the habit of restraint customary rules would arise. The

+advocates of the alternative conjecture--that man was gregarious, and

+utterly promiscuous--take it for granted (it seems to me) that the

+older and stronger males established no rudimentary restrictions on

+the freedom of the affections, but allowed the young males to share

+with them the females in the horde, and that they permitted both

+sexes to go entirely as they pleased, till, for some unknown reason

+and by some unknown authority, the horde was bisected into exogamous

+moieties (phratries), and after somehow developing totem kins (unless

+animal-named magical groups had been previously developed, on purpose

+to work magic), became a tribe with two phratries.

+

+It is not even necessary for us to deny that the ancestors of man were

+_originally_ communal and gregarious. What we deem to be impossible is

+that, till man had developed into something more like himself, as we

+know him, than an animal without jealousy, and ignorant of anything

+prejudicial to any one's interests in promiscuous unions, he could

+begin to evolve his actual tribal institutions. This is also the

+opinion of Mr. Howitt, as we shall see later.

+

+Thus whoever tries to disengage the evolutionary processes which

+produced the existing society of Australia must commence by making his

+choice between the two conjectures--early man gregarious, promiscuous,

+and anarchist; or early man unsociable, fierce, bullying, and jealous.

+A _via media_ is attempted, however, by Mr. Howitt, to which we shall

+return.

+

+Next, it is clear and certain that some human beliefs about the

+animals which give their names, in known cases, to the two large

+exogamous divisions of the tribe (phratries), and about the other

+animals which give names to the totem kins, and, in one or two cases,

+to the matrimonial classes, must be, in some way, connected with the

+prohibitions to marry, first within the phratries, then, perhaps,

+within the totem kins, then within the Classes (or within the same

+generation).

+

+Thus there are here five courses which conjecture can logically take.

+

+(a) Members of certain recognised human groups already married

+habitually out of their group into other groups, _before_ the animal

+names (now totem names) were given to the groups. The names came later

+and merely marked, at first, and then sanctioned, the limits within

+which marriage had already been forbidden while the groups were still

+nameless.

+

+Or (b) the animal names of the phratries and totem kins existed

+(perhaps as denoting groups which worked magic for the behoof of each

+animal) _before_ marriage was forbidden within their limits. Later, for

+some reason, prohibitions were enacted.

+

+Or (c) at one time there were no marriage regulations at all, but

+these arose when, apparently for some religious reason, a hitherto

+undivided communal horde split into two sections, each of which revered

+a different name-giving animal as their "god" (totem), claimed descent

+from it, and, out of respect to their "god," did not marry any of

+those who professed its faith, and were called by its name, but always

+married persons of _another_ name and "god."

+

+Or (d) men were at first in groups, intermarrying within the group.

+These groups received names from animals and other objects, because

+individual men adopted animal "familiars," as Bear, Elk, Duck, Potato,

+Pine-tree. The sisters of the men next adopted these animal or

+vegetable "familiars," or protective creatures, from their brothers,

+and bequeathed them, by female descent, to their children. These

+children became groups bearing such names as Bear, Potato, Duck, and

+so on. These groups made treaties of marriage with each other, for

+political reasons of acquiring strength by union. The treaties declared

+that Duck should never marry Duck, but always Elk, and _vice versa_.

+This was exogamy, instituted for political purposes, to use the word

+"political" proleptically.

+

+Or (e) men were at first in a promiscuous incestuous horde, but,

+perceiving the evils of this condition (whatever these evils might be

+taken to be), they divided it into two halves, of which one must never

+marry within itself, but always in the other. To these divisions animal

+names were given; they are the phratries. They threw off colonies, or

+accepted other groups, which took new animal names, and are now the

+totem kins.

+

+Finally, in (f) conjectures (a) and (c) may be combined thus: groups

+of men, still nameless as groups, had for certain reasons the habit of

+not marrying within themselves; but, after receiving animal names, they

+developed an idea that the animal of each group was its kinsman, and

+that, for a certain superstitious reason, it was even more wrong than

+it had been before, to marry "within the blood" of the animal, as, for

+Emu to marry Emu. Or (f2) the small groups did marry within themselves

+till, _after_ receiving animal names, they evolved the superstition

+that such marriage was a sin against the animals, and so became

+exogamous.

+

+On the point of the original state of society conjecture seems to be

+limited to this field of possible choices. At least I am acquainted

+with no theory hitherto propounded, which does not set out from one

+or other of these conjectural bases. We must not attack each other's

+ideas merely because they start from conjectures: they can start in

+no other way. Our method must be to discover which conjecture, as it

+is developed, most consistently and successfully colligates all the

+ascertained facts and best endures the touchstone of logic.

+

+Of the hypotheses enumerated above, the system to be advocated here is

+that marked (f 1 and 2). Men, whatever their brutal ancestors may have

+done, when they became men indeed, lived originally in small anonymous

+local groups, and had, for a reason to be given, the habit of selecting

+female mates from groups _not_ their own. Or, if they had not this

+habit they developed the rule, after the previously anonymous local

+groups had received animal names, and after the name-giving animals

+came to receive the measure of respect at present given to them as

+totems.

+

+The second hypothesis (b) (that the animal names of the groups were

+originally those of societies which worked magic, each for an animal,

+and that the prohibition on marriage was _later_ introduced) has been

+suggested by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and is

+accepted by Mr. Howitt.

+

+The third conjecture (c) (man originally promiscuous, but ceasing to

+be so from religious respect for the totem, or "god") is that of Dr.

+Durkheim.

+

+The fourth theory (d) is that of Mr. Hill-Tout.[4]

+

+The fifth theory (e) was that of Mr. Howitt. He now adopts the similar

+theory of Mr. Spencer (b).

+

+

+[1] The Dieri tribe do pray to the Mura-Mura, or _mythical_ ancestors,

+but not, apparently, to the _remembered_ dead.

+

+[2] "Totemism, South Africa," J. G. Frazer, _Man_, 1901, No. III.

+Mr. Frazer does not, of course, adopt the Bantu myth as settling the

+question.

+

+[3] Stow, MSS., 820. I owe the extract to Miss C. G. Burne.

+

+[4] I have not included the theory of Dr. Westermarck, in the _History

+of Human Marriage_, because that work is written without any reference

+to totemism.

+

+

+NOTE

+

+      I have not included the theory of Mr. J. F. McLennan, the

+      founder of all research into totemism. In his opinion,

+      totemism, that is, the possession by different stocks of

+      different name-giving animals, "is older than exogamy in

+      all cases." That is, as Mr. Robertson Smith explains, "it

+      is easy to see that exogamy necessarily presupposes the

+      existence of a system of kinship which took no account

+      of degrees, but only of participation in a common stock.

+      Such an idea as this could not be conceived by savages

+      in an abstract form; it must necessarily have had a

+      concrete expression, or rather must have been thought

+      under a concrete and tangible form, and that form seems

+      to have been always supplied by totemism." (_Kinship and

+      Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 189, 1885). This means

+      that, before they were exogamous, men existed in groups

+      of animal name, as Ravens, Wolves, Ants, and so on. When

+      they became conscious of kinship, and resolved to marry

+      out of the kin, or stock, they fixed the name, say Raven,

+      Wolf, or what not, as the limit within which there must

+      be no marriage. But Mr. McLennan's theory as to why they

+      determined to take no wives within the stock and name, has

+      never been accepted. (See Westermarck, _History of Human

+      Marriage_, pp. 311-314.)

+

+      Mr. McLennan supposed that female infanticide made women

+      scarce in each group, and that therefore they stole each

+      other's girls, and, finally, abstained from their own.

+      But the objections to this hypothesis are infinite and

+      obvious. At one time Mr. McLennan thought that tattooing

+      was the origin of totemism. Members of each group tattooed

+      the semblance of an animal on their flesh--but, as far as

+      I am aware, he did not ask why they adopted this practice.

+      Manifestly a sense of some special connection between the

+      animal and the group must have been prior to the marking

+      of the members of the group with the effigy of the animal.

+      What gave rise to this belief in the connection? (See

+      Chapter VI., criticism of Dr. Pikler). Mr, McLennan merely

+      mentioned to me, in conversation, this idea, which he

+      later abandoned. It had previously occurred to Garcilasso

+      de la Vega that the _germ_ of totemism was to be found in

+      the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which

+      is the theory to be urged later, the _names_ being the

+      instruments of differentiation.

+

+      Mr. A. K. Keane, as in Mr. McLennan's abandoned

+      conjecture, and as in the theory of Dr. Pikler, makes

+      totemism arise in "heraldic badges," "a mere device for

+      distinguishing one individual from another, one family or

+      clan group from another ... the personal or family name

+      precedes the totem, which grows out of it." (Ethnology,

+      pp. 9, II).

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III

+

+THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

+

+

+      Why did man, if once promiscuous, regulate the relations

+      of the sexes?--Theory of Professor Spencer--Animal-named

+      magical societies were prior to regulation of

+      marriage--Theory of Mr. Howitt--Regulations introduced by

+      inspired medicine man--His motives unknown--The theory

+      postulates the pristine existence of the organised tribe

+      of to-day, and of belief in the All Father--Reasons

+      for holding that men were originally promiscuous: (1)

+      So-called survival of so-called "group marriage"; (2)

+      Inclusive names of human relationships--Betrothals

+      not denied--A form of marriage--Mitigated by

+      _Pirauru_--Allotment of paramours at feasts--Is

+      _Pirauru_ a survival of group marriage?--Or a rare case

+      of limitation of custom of feasts of license--Examples

+      of such saturnalia--Fiji, Arunta, Urabunna,

+      Dieri--Degrees of license--Argument against the author's

+      opinion--Laws of incest older than marriage--Names of

+      relationships--Indicate tribal status, not degrees of

+      consanguinity--Fallacy exposed--Starcke _versus_ Morgan's

+      theory of primal promiscuity--Dr. Durkheim on Choctaw

+      names of relationships--A man cannot regard his second

+      cousin as his mother--Dr. Fison on anomalous terms of

+      relationship--Grandfathers and grandsons call each other

+      "brothers"--_Noa_ denotes a man's wife and also all

+      women whom he might legally wed--Proof that terms of

+      relationship do not denote consanguinity--The _Pirrauru_

+      custom implies previous marriage, and is not logically

+      thinkable without it--Descriptions of _Pirrauru_--The

+      _Kandri_ ceremony merely modifies pre-existing

+      marriage--_Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage"--Is found

+      only in tribes of the Matteri Kiraru phratries--Not found

+      in south-eastern tribes--Mr. Howitt's "survivals" do not

+      mean "group marriage."

+

+

+In the theories which postulate that man began in a communal horde,

+with no idea of regulating sexual unions at all--because, having no

+notion of consanguinity, or of harm in consanguine marriages, he saw

+nothing to regulate--the initial difficulty is, how did he ever come

+to change his nature and to see that a rule must be made, as made it

+has been? Mr. Howitt endeavours (if I grasp his meaning) to show

+how man did at last see it, and therefore bisected the horde into

+intermarrying phratries. Mr. Spencer has only asserted that, while man

+saw nothing to regulate in marriages, he evolved an organisation, that

+of the phratries and classes, which did come, somehow, to regulate

+them. Dr. Durkheim takes it, that man if he was originally promiscuous,

+later regulated marriages out of respect to his totems, which were his

+gods. Mr. Hill-Tout supposes that the exogamous rules were made for

+"political" reasons.

+

+The theories of Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer differed from each other,

+originally, only in so far as that Mr. Spencer supposes animal-named

+_magical societies_ (now totemic) to have arisen _before_ man regulated

+marriage in any way; whereas this conception of animal-named groups

+not bound by totemic restrictions on marriage had not occurred to Mr.

+Howitt or any other inquirer, except Mr. J. G. Frazer, who evolved

+it independently. Mr. Spencer's theory in this matter rests entirely

+on his discovery, among the Arunta, in Central Australia, of totems

+marking magical societies, but not regulating marriage, and on his

+inference that, in the beginning, animal-named groups were everywhere

+mere magical societies. To work co-operative magic was their primary

+function. To that opinion Mr. Howitt has now come in, and he adds that

+"the division of the tribe" (into the two primary exogamous moieties

+or phratries, or "classes") "was made with intent to regulate the

+relations of the sexes."[1] On one point, we repeat, namely, _why_

+division was made, Mr. Spencer utters no certain sound, nor does Mr.

+Howitt explicitly tell us for what reason sexual relations, hitherto

+unregulated, were supposed to need regulation. He conceives that there

+is "a widespread belief in the supernatural origin of the practice,"

+but that explains nothing.[2]

+

+Thus Mr. Howitt postulates the existence of a "tribe," divided

+into animal-named magical societies, and promiscuous. The tribe

+has "medicine men" who see visions. One of these men, conceiving,

+no one knows why, that it would be an excellent thing to regulate

+the relations of the sexes, announces to his fellow-men that he has

+received from a supernatural being a command to do so. If they approve,

+they declare the supernatural message "to the assembled headmen at one

+of the ceremonial meetings," the tribe obeys, and divides itself into

+the two primary exogamous moieties or phratries.[3] Mr. Howitt thus

+postulates the existence of the organised tribe, with its prophets, its

+"All Father" (such as Daramulun), its magical societies, its recognised

+headmen, and its public meetings for ceremonial and legislation, all in

+full swing, before the relations of the sexes are in any way regulated.

+

+On reflection, Mr. Howitt may find difficulties in this postulate.

+Meanwhile, we ask what made the very original medicine man, the Moses

+of the tribe, think of the new and drastic command which he brought

+down from the local Sinai? Why did this thinker suppose that the

+relations of the sexes ought to be regulated? Perhaps the idea was the

+inspiration of a dream. Mr. Spencer, acquainted chiefly with tribes who

+have no All Father, has not advanced this theory.

+

+The reasons given for supposing that the "tribe" was originally

+promiscuous are partly based (a) on the actual condition as regards

+individual marriage of some Australian tribes, mainly Dieri and

+Urabunna, with their congeners. These tribes, it is argued, are now

+no longer absolutely promiscuous, but men and women are divided into

+intermarriageable sets, so that all women of a certain status in Emu

+phratry are, or their predecessors have been, actual wives of all

+men of the corresponding status in Kangaroo phratry. The only bar

+to absolute promiscuity is that of the phratries (established by

+legislation on this theory), and of certain by-laws, of relatively

+recent institution. The names for human relationships (father, mother,

+son, daughter, brother, sister), again, (b) are, it is argued, such as

+"group marriage," and "group marriage" alone, would inevitably produce.

+All women of a certain status are my "mothers," all men of a certain

+status are my "fathers," all women of another status are my "sisters,"

+all of another are my "wives," and so on. Thus Mr. Spencer is able

+to say that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in

+practice in the Urabunna tribe" at the present day.[4]

+

+This, however, does not mean that among many such tribes a man is not

+betrothed to a special woman, and does not marry that woman, with

+certain filthy initiatory "rites," contravening the usual rules of

+intercourse.[5] Nor is it denied that such man and wife habitually

+cohabit, and that the man, by hunting and fishing, provides for the

+wife and all her children, and recognises them as his own.

+

+It is meant that each man has only a certain set of nubile women

+open to him (_Nupa_, or _Noa_, or _Unawa_), and that out of these,

+in addition to his allotted bride, an uncertain number of women are

+assigned to him and to others, mainly at tribal festivals, as paramours

+(_Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_), by their elder brothers, or the heads of

+totem kins, or the seniors of the Urabunna tribe. "This relationship

+is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe

+are gathered together to perform important ceremonies."[6] One woman

+may, on different occasions, be allotted as _Piraungaru_ to different

+men, one man to different women. Occasionally, though rarely, the

+regular husband (he who marries the wife by filthy "rites") resists the

+allotting of his wife to another man, and then "there is a fight."

+

+The question is, does this Urabunna custom of _Piraungaru_ (the

+existence of which in some tribes is not denied) represent a survival

+of a primary stage in which all men of a certain social and phratriac

+status were all alike husbands to all women of the corresponding status

+(group, or rather _status_, marriage); and was _that_, in turn, a

+survival of the anarchy of the horde, in which there were no grades at

+all, but anarchic promiscuity?

+

+That is the opinion of believers in "the primary undivided horde," and

+in "group marriage," or rather "status marriage."

+

+Or is this _Piraungaru_ custom, as we think more probable, an organised

+and circumscribed and isolated legalisation, among a few tribes, of

+the utterly unbridled license practised by many savages on festive

+occasions corresponding to the Persian feast of the Sacaea, and to the

+Roman Saturnalia?[7]

+

+The _Piraungaru_ allotments are made, as a rule, at great licentious

+meetings, but among the Urabunna, though they break the rules

+of individual marriage, they do not break the tribal rules of

+incest. By these rules the _Piraungaru_ men and women must be legal

+intermarriageable persons (_Nupa_); their regulated paramourship is

+not, by tribal law, what we, or the natives, deem "incestuous." On the

+other hand, at Fijian seasons of license, even the relationship of

+brother and sister--the most sacred of all to a savage--is purposely

+profaned. Brothers and sisters are "intentionally coupled" at the feast

+of license called _Nanga_. The object is to have "a regular burst,"

+and deliberately violate every law. Men and women "publicly practised

+unmentionable abominations."[8]

+

+The Fijians are infinitely above the Urabunna in civilisation, being an

+agricultural people. Their Nanga feast is also called Mbaki--"harvest"

+Yet the Fijians, though more civilised, far exceed the license of

+the _Piraungaru_ custom of the Urabunna, not only permitting, but

+enjoining, the extremest form of incest.

+

+The Arunta, again, neighbours of the Urabunna, though said to have

+more of "individual marriage" than they, in seasons of license go

+much beyond the Urabunna, though not so far as the Fijians. Women, at

+certain large meetings, "are told off ... and with the exception of

+men who stand in the relation of actual Uther, brother, or sons, they

+are, for the time being, common property to _all_ the men present on

+the corroboree ground." Women are thus handed over to men "whom, under

+ordinary circumstances, they may not even speak to or go near."[9]

+Every known rule, except that which forbids the closest incest as

+understood by ourselves, is deliberately and purposely reversed[10]

+by the Arunta on certain occasions. Another example will be produced

+later, that of the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna.

+

+We suggest, then, that these three grades of license--the Urabunna,

+adulterous, but more or less permanent, and limited by rules and

+by tribal and modern laws of incest; the Arunta, not permanent,

+adulterous, and tribally incestuous, limited only by our own ideas of

+the worst kinds of incest; and the Fijian, not permanent, adulterous,

+and of an incestuous character not only unlimited by laws, but rather

+limited by the desire to break the most sacred laws--are all of the

+same kind. They are not, we suggest, survivals of "group marriage," or

+of a period of perfect promiscuity in everyday life, though that they

+commemorate such a fancied period is the Arunta myth, just as the Roman

+myth averred that the Saturnalia commemorated the anarchy of the Golden

+Age.

+

+                  "In Saturn's time

+Such mixture was not held a crime."

+

+The Golden Age of promiscuity is, of course, reported, not in an

+historical tradition recording a fact, but in a myth invented to

+explain the feasts of license. Men find that they have institutions,

+they argue that they must once have been without institutions, they

+make myths about ancestors or gods who introduced institutions, they

+invent the Golden Age, when there were none, and, on occasion, revert

+for a day or a week to that happy ideal. The periods of license cannot

+be true commemorative functions, continued in pious memory of a time of

+anarchy since institutions began.

+

+But of the three types, Urabunna, Arunta, Fijian, the Urabunna, except

+in its degree of permanence, is the least licentious, least invades

+law, and it is a curious question why incest increases at these feasts

+as culture advances, up to a certain point. The law invaded by the

+Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom is not the tribal law of incest, nor

+the modern law of incest, but the law of the sanctity of individual

+marriage. It may therefore be argued (as against my own opinion) that

+the sanctity of individual marriage is still merely a nascent idea

+among the Urabunna, an idea which is recent, and so can be set aside

+easily; whereas the tribal laws of incest are strong with the strength

+of immemorial antiquity, and therefore must have already existed in a

+past age when there was no individual marriage at all. On this showing

+we have, first, the communal undivided horde; next, the horde bisected

+into groups which must not marry within each other (phratries), though

+_why_ this arrangement was made and submitted to nobody can guess with

+any plausibility. By this time all females of phratry A might not only

+marry any man of phratry B, but were, according to the hypothesis, by

+theory and by practice, _all_ wives of _all_ men of phratry B. Next, as

+to-day, a man of B married a woman of A, with or without the existing

+offensive rites, but his tenure of her is still so insecure and recent

+that it is set aside, to a great extent, by the _Piraungaru_ or

+_Pirauru_ custom, itself a proof and survival of "group marriage," and

+of communal promiscuity in the past. Such is the argument for "group

+marriage," which may be advanced against my opinion, or thus, if I did

+not hold my opinion, I would state the argument.

+

+This licentious custom, whether called _Piraungaru_ or by other names,

+is, with the tribal names for human relationships, the only basis of

+the belief in the primal promiscuous horde. Now, as to these names of

+relationships, we may repeat the adverse arguments already advanced by

+us in _Social Origins_, pp. 99-103. "Whatever the original sense of

+the names, they all now denote seniority and customary legal status in

+the tribe, with the reciprocal duties, rights, and avoidances.... The

+friends of group and communal marriage keep unconsciously forgetting,

+at this point of their argument, that _our_ ideas of sister, brother,

+father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at

+certain other points of their argument) with the native terms,

+which _include_, indeed, but do not _denote_ these relationships as

+understood by us.... We cannot say 'our word "son" must not be thought

+of when we try to understand the native term of relationship which

+includes sons--in _our_ sense,' and next aver that 'sons, in _our_

+sense, are regarded [or spoken of] as real sons of the group, not of

+the individual, because of a past [or present] stage of promiscuity

+which made real paternity undiscoverable.'"

+

+Manifestly there lurks a fallacy in alternately using "sons," for

+example, in our sense, and then in the tribal sense, which includes

+both fatherhood, or sonship, in our sense, and also tribal status and

+duties. "The terms, in addition to their usual and generally accepted

+signification of relationship by blood, express a class or group

+relation quite independent of it."[11]

+

+Thus the tribal names may result from an expanded use of earlier names

+of blood relationship, or names of tribal status may now be applied

+to include persons who are within degrees of blood relationship. In

+the latter case, how do we know that a tribe with its degrees of

+status is primitive? Starcke thinks that Mr. Morgan's use of terms of

+relationship as proof of "communal marriage" is "a wild dream, if not

+the delirium of fever." "The nomenclature was in every respect the

+faithful reflection of the juridical relations which arose between

+the nearest kinsfolk of each tribe. Individuals who were, according

+to the legal point of view, on the same level with the speaker,

+received the same designation. The other categories of kinship were

+formally developed out of this standpoint." The system of names for

+relationships "affords no warrant" for Mr. Morgan's theory of primitive

+promiscuity.[12]

+

+Similar arguments against inferring collective marriage in the

+past from existing tribal terms of relationship are urged by Dr.

+Durkheim.[13] He writes, taking an American case of names of

+relationship, as against Professor Kohler: "We see that the (Choctaw)

+word _Inoha_ (mother) applies indifferently to all the women of my

+mother's group, from the oldest to the youngest. The term thus defines

+its own meaning: it applies to all the women of the family (or clan?)

+into which my father has married. Doubtless it is rather hard to

+understand how the same term can apply to so many different people.

+But certain it is, that the word cannot awake, in men's minds, any

+idea of _descent_, in the usual sense of the word. For a man cannot

+seriously regard his second cousin as his mother, even virtual. _The

+vocabulary of relationships must therefore express something other

+than relations of consanguinity, properly so-called...._ Relationship

+and consanguinity are very different things ... relationship being

+essentially constituted by certain legal and moral obligations, which

+society imposes on certain individuals."[14]

+

+The whole passage should be read, but its sense is that which I have

+already tried to express; and Dr. Durkheim says, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than an _ultima ratio_" (a last

+resource), "intended to enable us to envisage these strange customs;

+but it is impossible to overlook all the difficulties which it raises."

+

+An analogous explanation of the wide use of certain terms of

+relationship has been given by Dr. Fison, of whom Mr. Howitt writes,

+"Much of what I have done is equally his."[15] Dr. Fison says, "All

+men of the same generation who bear the same totem are tribally

+brothers, though they may belong to different and widely separated

+tribes. Here we find an explanation of certain apparently anomalous

+terms of relationship. Thus, in some tribes the paternal grandson

+and his grandfather call one another 'elder brother' and 'younger

+brother' respectively. These persons are of the same totem."[16] "Many

+other designations" in Mr. Morgan's Tables of Terms of Relationship

+"admit of a similar solution."[17] The terms do not denote degrees of

+blood relationship, but of brotherhood in the totem (or phratry, or

+matrimonial class). It is so, too, with the Choctaw term for Mother.

+Every one knows who his mother, in our sense, is: the Choctaw term

+denotes a tribal status.

+

+If it be said that, because a man calls his wife his _Noa_, and also

+calls all women whom he might have married his _Noa_, therefore all

+these women, in past times, would have been his wives; it might as

+well be said that all the women whom he calls "mother" would, in times

+past, have collaborated in giving birth to him. As far as these terms

+indicate relationship, "a man is the younger brother of his maternal

+grandmother," and the maternal grandfather of his second cousin![18]

+The terms do not denote relationship in blood, clearly, but something

+quite different.

+

+The custom of _Piraungaru_, or _Pirrauru_, and cases of license at

+festivals, and the names for tribal relations, are, we repeat, the

+only arguments in favour of the theory of the communal horde.[19] We

+have shown that the terms of relationship do not necessarily help the

+theory. That theory, again, is invalidated by its inability to account

+for the origin of the rules forbidding marriage between persons of the

+same phratry (for it does not tell us _why_ the original medicine man

+conceived the idea of regulations), or even to account for the origin

+of the phratriac divisions.

+

+But why, on our system, can the _Piraungaru_ custom break the rule of

+individual marriage more easily than the law prohibiting incest? Why it

+can do so on the theory of pristine promiscuity we have explained (p.

+41, _supra_).

+

+We reply that individual marriage has not, among savages, any

+"religious" sanction; it is protected by no form of the phratry or

+totem tabu; by no god, such as Hymen; but rests, as from the first it

+rested, on the character and strength of the possessor of the woman or

+women, and falls into abeyance if he does not choose to exert it. If

+the males of the Urabunna have so far departed from the natural animal

+instincts as usually (with exceptions) to prefer to relax their tenure

+of women, being tempted by the bribe of a legalised change of partners

+all round, they exhibit, not a primitive, but a rather advanced type of

+human nature. The moral poet sings:--

+

+"Of _Whist_ or _Cribbage_ mark the amusing Game,

+The _Partners_ changing, but the _Sport_ the same,

+Then see one Man with one unceasing Wife,

+Play the long Rubber of connubial Life."[20]

+

+This is the "platform" of the Urabunna and Dieri, as it is of the

+old Cicisbeism in Italy, and of a section of modern "smart society,"

+especially at the end of the _ancien regime_ in France. Man may fall

+into this way of thinking, just as, in Greece, he actually legalised

+unnatural passions by a ceremony of union. "That one practice, in many

+countries, became systematised," as Mr. J. F. McLennan wrote to Mr.

+Darwin.[21]

+

+This is not the only example of a legalised aberration from nature,

+or from second nature. Abhorrence of incest has become a law of

+second nature, among savage as among civilised men. But Dr. Durkheim

+publishes a long list of legalised aberrations from the laws of incest

+among Hebrews, Arabs, Phoenicians, Greeks, Slavonic peoples, Medes,

+Persians, Egyptians, Cambodians, and Peruvians.[22] If these things,

+these monstrous aberrations, can be legalised "in the green tree," why

+should not jealousy fall into a kind of legalised abeyance among the

+Urabunna, under the law of partner-shifting? The _Piraungaru_ custom

+does not prove that earliest man was not ferociously jealous; it merely

+shows that certain tribes have reached a stage in which jealousy is, at

+present, more or less suppressed in favour of legalised license.

+

+We catch the Urabunna and Dieri at a moment of development in which

+the abandonment of strict possession of a wife is compensated for by

+a legalised system of changing partners, enduring after the feast of

+license is over. But even so, a man is responsible, as father, for the

+children of his actual wife, not for the children of his _Piraungaru_

+paramours. For these their actual husbands (_Tippa Malku_) are

+responsible.

+

+Mr. Howitt says, in his earlier account of this institution, that among

+the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna, the men and women who are made

+_Pirauru_ are not consulted. The heads of the tribe do not ask whether

+they fancy each other or not. "The time is one of festivity, feasting,

+and amusement," only too obviously! "Dancing is carried on." "A man

+can always exercise marital rights towards his _Pirauru_, if they

+meet when her _Noa_ (real husband) is absent, but he cannot take her

+away from him unless by his consent," except at the feasts. But the

+husband usually consents. "In spite of all this arrangement, most of

+the quarrels among the Dieri arise out of this _Pirauru_ practice....

+"A son or daughter regards the real husband (_Noa_) of his mother as

+his _Apiri Muria_, or "real father"; his mother's _Pirauru_ is only his

+_Apiri Waka_, or "little father." At certain feasts of license, such

+as intertribal marriages, "no jealous feeling is allowed under penalty

+of strangling, but it crops up afterwards, and occasions many bloody

+affrays."[23] Thus jealousy is not easily kept in abeyance by customary

+law.

+

+The idea of such a change of partners is human, not animal, and the

+more of a brute the ancestor of man was the less could he dream, in

+times truly primitive, of _Piraungaru_ as a permanent arrangement. Men,

+in a few tribes, declined into it, and are capable of passing out of

+it, like the Urabunna or Dieri man, who either retains so much of the

+animal, or is rising so far towards the Homeric standard, as to fight

+rather than let his wife be allotted to another man, or at least to

+thump that other man afterwards.

+

+The Dieri case of the feast of license, just mentioned, is notable.

+"The various _Piraurus_ (paramours) are allotted to each other by

+the great council of the tribe, after which their names are formally

+announced to the assembled people on the evening of the ceremony of

+circumcision, during which there is for a time a general license

+permitted between all those who have been thus allotted to each other."

+But persons of the same totem among the Dieri may not be _Piraurus_

+to each other, nor may near relations as we reckon kinship, including

+cousins on both sides.

+

+In this arrangement Mr. Howitt sees "a form of group marriage," while

+I see tribe-regulated license, certainly much less lawless than that

+of the more advanced Fijians or the Arunta. Mr. Howitt did not state

+that the _Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_ unions are preceded (as marriage is)

+by any ceremony, unless the reading the banns, so to speak, by public

+proclamation among the Dieri is a ceremony.[24] Now he has discovered a

+ceremony as symbolic as our wedding ring (1904).

+

+Little light, if any, is thrown on these customs of legalised license

+by philology. Mr. Howitt thought that _Pirauru_ may be derived from

+_Pira_, "the moon," and _Uru_, "circular." The tribal feasts of

+license are held at the full moon, but I am not aware that, by the

+natives, people are deemed peculiarly "moonstruck," or lunatic, at

+that season. If Urabunna _Piraungaru_ is linguistically connected with

+Dieri _Pirauru_, then both _Piraungaru_ and _Pirauru_ may mean "Full

+Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to

+me!"[25]

+

+Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes the _Noa_ of a man most frequently by

+being betrothed to him when she is a mere infant.... In certain cases

+she is given by the Great Council, as a reward for some meritorious

+act on his part." "None but the brave deserve the fair," and this is

+"individual marriage," though the woman who is wedded to one man may be

+legally allotted as Full Mooner, or _Pirauru_, to several. "The right

+of the _Noa_ overrides that of the _Pirauru_. Thus a man cannot claim

+a woman who is _Pirauru_ to him when her _Noa_ is present in the camp,

+excepting by his consent." The husband generally yields, he shares

+equivalent privileges. "Such cases, however, are the frequent causes of

+jealousies and fights."[26]

+

+This evidence does not seem, on the whole, to force upon us the

+conclusion that the Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom, or any of these

+customs, any more than the custom of polyandry, or of legalised

+incest in higher societies, is a survival of "group marriage"--all

+men of certain social grades being actual husbands of all women of

+the corresponding grades--while again that is a survival of gradeless

+promiscuity. We shall disprove that theory. Rather, the _Piraungaru_

+custom appears to be a limited concession to the taste, certainly a

+human taste, for partner-changing--_which can only manifest itself

+where regular partnerships already exist_. Jealousy among these tribes

+is in a state of modified abeyance: like nature herself, and second

+nature, where, among civilised peoples, things unnatural, or contrary

+to the horror of incest, have been systematically legalised.

+

+I have so far given Mr. Howitt's account of _Pirrauru_ (the name is now

+so written by him) among the Dieri, as it appeared in his works, prior

+to 1904. In that year he published his _Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia_, which contains additional details of essential importance

+(pp. 179-187). A woman becomes _Tippa Malku_,[27] or affianced,[28]

+to one man only, _before_ she becomes _Pirrauru_, or what Mr. Howitt

+calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She

+is never the _Pirrauru_ of all the men who are _Noa_ to her, that is,

+intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a

+symbolic ceremony, as a _Pirrauru_ to one or more men, who are _Noa_

+to her. At first, while a child, or at least while a maiden, she is

+betrothed (there are varieties of modes) to one individual male. She

+may ask her husband to let her take on another man as _Pirrauru_;

+"should he refuse to do this she must put up with it." If he consents,

+other men make two adjacent ridges of sand, and level them into one

+larger ridge, while a man, usually the selected lover, pours sand from

+the ridge over the upper part of his thighs, "buries the _Pirrauru_ in

+the sand." (The phrase does not suggest that _Pirrauru_ means "Full

+Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop

+wives (exchange their _Noa_ as _Pirraurus_), and also when "the whole

+of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already

+_Pirrauru_, are _reallotted_," a term which suggests the temporary

+character of the unions.

+

+I am ready to allow that the _Kandri_ ceremony, a symbol of recognised

+union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian

+_Ghandarva_ rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified

+union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which

+is arranged subsequent to the _Tippa Malku_ ceremony of permanent

+betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt,

+subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one

+woman to one man in the _Tippa Malku_ arrangement. That arrangement

+is demonstrably more primitive than _Pirrauru_, for _Pirrauru_ is

+unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of

+_Tippa Malku_.

+

+This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage"

+(I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All

+persons legally intermarriageable (_Noa_), under phratry law, were

+originally, he holds, _ipso facto_, married. Consequently the _Kandri_

+custom could not make them _more_ married than they then actually were.

+In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial

+comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not

+_Noa_, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the _Kandri_

+ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons

+who are already _Tippa Malku_ (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal

+paramours in certain other wedded or _Tippa Malku_ women, and in men

+either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification

+of individual _Tippa Malku_, _Pirrauru_ is impossible, and its

+existence is unthinkable.[29]

+

+_Pirrauru_ is a modification of marriage (_Tippa Malku_), _Tippa

+Malku_ is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a

+_Tippa Malku_ husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to

+himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his

+intended _fiancee_.[30] The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his

+_Pirrauru_ woman away from her _Tippa Malku_ husband "unless by his

+consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times"--feasts, in fact, of

+license. _Pirrauru_ secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the

+seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless

+and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these _Pirrauru_ "in

+commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property

+and social influence. What do the _Tippa Malku_ husbands say to this

+arrangement?

+

+As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group

+marries another group, the _Pirrauru_ literally heap hot coals on

+each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the

+"group" as _Pirrauru_. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled

+(_Nulina_). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri,

+praises _Pirrauru_ for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One

+does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's

+wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy,

+checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying,

+but _Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is

+involved. _Pirrauru may_ (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live

+together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote

+from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.

+

+You may call _Pirrauru_ a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a

+later modification of a prior _Tippa Malku_ wedlock, it cannot be cited

+as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all

+female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is

+called "group marriage."[31]

+

+If _Pirrauru_ were primitive, it might be looked for among these

+southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social

+organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent

+institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the

+All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or,

+at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri

+belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, _Pirrauru_ is

+no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta

+and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri,

+Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, _Pirrauru_ cannot

+claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to

+"individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain,

+prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln

+and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and

+Urabunna phratry names, _Matteri_ and _Kararu_, exist.[32] Having

+identical phratry names (or one phratry name identical, as among the

+Kunandaburi), whether by borrowing or by original community of language

+and institutions: all these tribes southward to the sea from Lake Eyre

+may possess, or may have possessed, _Pirrauru_.

+

+Among the most pristine of all tribes, in the south by east, however,

+_Pirrauru_ is not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the

+Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find no _Pirrauru_.

+But Mr. Howitt notes other practices which are taken by him to be mere

+rudimentary survivals of "group marriage." They are (i.) exchange of

+wives at feasts of marriage, or in view of impending misfortune, as

+when shipwrecked mariners break into the stores, and are "working at

+the rum and the gin." These are feasts of license, not survivals of

+"group marriage" nor of _Pirrauru_. (ii.) The _jus primae noctis_,

+enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all,

+nor is it a survival of _Pirrauru_. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia,"

+"almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost

+promiscuous and very rare) nor _Pirrauru_. (iv.) Seven brothers have

+one wife. This is adelphic polyandry, Mr. Howitt calls it "group

+marriage." (v.) "A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife

+of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by the

+clan." If this is "group marriage" (there is no "group" concerned)

+there was group marriage in ancient Rome.[33] This, I think, is all

+that Mr. Howitt has to show for "group marriage" and _Pirrauru_ among

+the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.

+

+The manner in which _Tippa Malku_ betrothals are arranged deserves

+attention. They who "give this woman away," and they who give away her

+bride-groom also, are the brothers of the mothers of the pair, or the

+mothers themselves may arrange the matter.[34]

+

+Mr. Howitt, on this point, observes that, if the past can be judged of

+by the present, "I should say that the practice of betrothal, which

+is universal in Australia, must have produced a feeling of individual

+proprietary right over the women so promised." Manifestly Mr. Howitt

+is putting the plough before the oxen. It is because certain kinsfolk

+have an acknowledged "proprietary right" over the woman that they can

+betroth her to a man: it is not because they can betroth her to a man

+that they have "a feeling of individual proprietary right over her."

+I give my coppers away to a crossing-sweeper, or exchange them for

+commodities, because I have an individual proprietary right over these

+coins. I have not acquired the feeling of individual proprietary right

+over the pence by dint of observing that I do give them away or buy

+things with them.

+

+The proprietary rights of mothers, maternal uncles, or any other

+kinsfolk over girls must, of course, have been existing and generally

+acknowledged before these kinsfolk could exercise the said rights of

+giving away. But, in a promiscuous horde, before marriage existed, how

+could anybody know what persons had proprietary rights over what other

+persons?[35]

+

+Mr. Howitt here adds that the "practice of betrothal ..." (or perhaps

+he means that "the feeling of individual proprietary right"?) "when

+accentuated by the _Tippa Malku_ marriage, must also tend to overthrow

+the _Pirrauru_ marriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have

+proved, that if there were no _Tippa Malku_ marriage there could be no

+_Pirrauru_ to overthrow.

+

+As to the _Pirrauru_ or _Piraungaru_ custom, moreover, Mr. Howitt

+has himself candidly observed that, on his theory, it "ought rather

+to have been perpetuated than abandoned" (so it _is_ abandoned)

+"under conditions of environment" (such as more abundant food) "which

+permitted the _Pirrauru_ group to remain together on one spot,

+instead of being compelled by the exigencies of existence to separate

+into lesser groups having the Noa" (or regular) "marriage."[36] So

+_Pirrauru_ don't live in "groups"!

+

+As a fact, the more that supplies, in some regions, as on the south

+coast, permit relatively large groups to coexist, the less is their

+marital license; while, on the other hand, the less favourable the

+conditions of supply (as in the Barkinji region), the less do we hear

+of _Pirrauru_, or anything of the kind, except among tribes of the

+Kiraru and Matteri phratries. For these reasons, _Pirrauru_ unions

+appear to mark an isolated moment in culture, not to be a survival of

+universal pristine promiscuity. They are almost always associated,

+in their inception, with seasons of frolic and lust, and with large

+assemblages, rather than with the usual course of everyday existence.

+

+For the reasons here stated, it does not seem that Australian

+institutions yield any evidence for primitive promiscuity.

+

+

+

+[1] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 89.

+

+[2] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 90.

+

+[3] _Loc. cit._ Mr. Howitt says "classes," but we adhere to the term

+"phratries."

+

+[4] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

+

+[5] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 92-98.

+

+[6] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

+

+[7] For a large account of these customs see _The Golden Bough_, second

+edition.

+

+[8] Fison, J.A.I., xiv. p. 28.

+

+[9] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 97.

+

+[10] Ibid., p. 111.

+

+[11] Roth, _N.W.C. Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56.

+

+[12] Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, p. 207.

+

+[13] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. pp. 313-316.

+

+[14] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. p. 315.

+

+[15] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, xiv.

+

+[16] Can Dr. Fison mean of the same matrimonial class?

+

+[17] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 166, 167.

+

+[18] _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 163. Pointed out by Mr.

+N. W. Thomas.

+

+[19] The participation of many men in the _jus primae noctis_ is open

+to various explanations.

+

+[20] _Poetry of the Antijacobin._

+

+[21] _Studies in Ancient History_, ii. p. 52.

+

+[22] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i., pp.38, 39, 62.

+

+[23] _J. A. I._, pp. 56-60, August 1890.

+

+[24] Howitt, _J. A. I._, August 1890, pp. 55-58.

+

+[25] What the Dieri call _Pirauru_ (legalised paramour) the adjacent

+Kunan-daburi tribe call _Dilpa Mali_. In this tribe the individual

+husband or individual wife (that is, the real wife or husband) is

+styled _Nubaia_, in Dieri _Noa_, in Urabunna _Nupa_. Husband's brother,

+sister's husband, wife's sister, and brother's wife are all _Nubaia

+Kodimali_ in Kunandabori, and are all _Noa_ in Dieri. What _Dilpa

+Mali_ (legalised paramour, or "accessory wife or husband") means in

+Kunandabori Mr. Howitt does not know. But he learns that _Kodi Mali_

+(applied to _Pirauru_) means "_not_ Nubaia," that is, "_not_ legal

+individual husband or wife." If we knew what Dilpa means in Dilpa Mali

+(legalised paramour of either sex), we should know more than we are apt

+to do in the present state of Australian philology.

+

+At Port Lincoln a man calls his own wife _Yung Ara_, that of his

+brother _Karteti_ (_Trans. Phil. Soc. Vic._, v. 180). What do these

+words mean?--_Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, pp.

+804-806.

+

+[26] _Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, p. 807.

+

+[27] _Tippa_, in one tongue, _Malku_ in another, denote the tassel

+which is a man's full dress suit.

+

+[28] Mr. Howitt says that the pair are _Tippa Malku_ "for the time

+being" (p. 179), though the association seems to be permanent. May

+girls Tippa Malku--"sealed" to a man--have relations with other men

+before their actual marriage, and with what men? We are not told, but a

+girl cannot be a _Pirrauru_ before she is _Tippa Malku_. If _Pirrauru_

+"arises through the exchange by brothers of their _wives_" (p. 181),

+how can an unmarried man who has no wife become a _Pirrauru_? He

+does. When _Pirrauru_ people are "re-allotted" (p. 182), does the old

+connection persist, or is it broken, or is it merely in being for the

+festive occasion? How does the jealousy of the _Pirrauru_, which is

+great, like the change? These questions, and many more, are asked by

+Mr. N. W. Thomas.

+

+[29] Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual husbands

+and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and _Pirrauru_

+were devised to limit Tom, Dick, and Harry, &c., to Jane, Mary, and

+Susan, &c., all these men being _Pirrauru_ to all these women, and

+_vice versa_. Next, Tippa Malku was devised, limiting Jane to Tom,

+but _Pirrauru_ was retained, to modify that limitation. Anybody is

+welcome to this mode of making _Pirrauru_ logically thinkable, without

+prior _Tippa Malku_: if he thinks that the arrangement is logically

+thinkable, which I do not.

+

+[30] Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could not possess

+the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised, which, before

+marriage existed, it could not be.

+

+[31] I have here had the advantage of using a MS. note by Mr. N. W.

+Thomas.

+

+[32] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 191.

+

+[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 195, 217, 219, 224,

+260.

+

+[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 177, 178.

+

+[35] Ibid., p. 283.

+

+[36] _J. A. I._, xiii. p. 34.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV

+

+THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

+

+

+      How could man, if promiscuous, cease to be so?--Opinion

+      of Mr. Howitt--Ethical training in groups very small, by

+      reason of economic conditions--Likes and dislikes--Love

+      and jealousy--Distinctions and restrictions--Origin of

+      restrictions not explained by Professor Spencer--His

+      account of the Arunta--Among them the totem does not

+      regulate marriage, is not exogamous, denotes a magical

+      society--Causes of this unique state of things--Male

+      descent: doctrine of reincarnation, belief in

+      spirit-haunted stone _churinga nanja_--Mr. Spencer thinks

+      Arunta totemism pristine--This opinion contested--How

+      Arunta totemism ceased to regulate marriage--Result

+      of isolated belief in _churinga nanja_--Contradictory

+      Arunta myths--Arunta totemism impossible in tribes

+      with female descent--Case of the Urabunna--Origin of

+      _churinga nanja_ belief--Sacred stone objects in New

+      South Wales--Present Arunta belief perhaps based on myths

+      explanatory of stone amulets of unknown meaning--Proof

+      that the more northern tribes never held the Arunta belief

+      in _churinga nanja_--Traces of Arunta ideas among the

+      Euahlayi--Possible traces of a belief in a sky-dwelling

+      being among southern Arunta--Mr. Gillen's "great Ulthaana

+      of the heavens"--How arose the magic-working animal-named

+      Arunta societies?--Not found in the south-east--Mr.

+      Spencer's theory that they do survive--Criticism of his

+      evidence--Recapitulation--Arunta totemism not primitive

+      but modified.

+

+

+Next we have to ask how, granting the hypothesis of the promiscuous

+horde, man ceased to be promiscuous. It will be seen that, on a theory

+of Mr. Howitt's, man was, in fact, far on the way of ceasing to be

+promiscuous or a "horde's man," before he introduced the moral reform

+of bisecting his horde into phratries, for the purpose of preventing

+brother with sister marriages. Till unions were permanent, and kin

+recognised, things impossible in a state of promiscuity, nobody could

+dream of forbidding brother and sister marriage, because nobody could

+know who was brother or sister to whom. Now, Mr. Howitt does indicate

+a way in which man might cease to be promiscuous, before any sage

+invented the system of exogamous phratries.

+

+He writes,[1] "I start ... from the assumption that there was once an

+undivided commune ... I do not desire to be understood as maintaining

+that it implies necessarily the assumption of complete communism

+between the sexes. Assuming that the former physical conditions of the

+Australian continent were much as they are now, complete communism

+always existing would, I think, be an impossibility. The character of

+the country, the necessity of hunting for food, and of removing from

+one spot to another in search of game and of vegetable food, would

+necessarily cause any undivided commune, _when it assumed dimensions of

+more than that of a few members, to break up_, under the necessities

+of existence, into two or more communes of similar constitution to

+itself. In addition to this it has become evident to me, after a long

+acquaintance with the Australian savage, that, in the past as now,

+individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, although

+there was the admitted common right between certain groups of the

+commune, in practice these rights would either not be exercised by

+reason of various causes, or would remain in abeyance, so far as the

+separated but allied undivided communes were concerned, until on great

+ceremonial occasions, or where certain periodical gatherings for

+food purposes reunited temporarily all the segments of the original

+community. In short, so far as the evidence goes at present, I am

+inclined to regard the probable condition of the undivided commune as

+being well represented now by what occurs when on certain occasions the

+modified divided communes reunite."[2]

+

+What occurs in these festive assemblies among certain central and

+northern tribes, as we have seen, is a legalised and restricted change

+of wives all round, with disregard, in some cases, of some of the

+tribal rules against incest. On Mr. Howitt's theory the undivided

+communal horde must always have been, as I have urged, dividing itself,

+owing to lack of supplies. It would be a very small group, continually

+broken up, and intercourse of the sexes even in that group, must

+have been restrained by jealousy, based on the asserted existence of

+individual "likes" and "dislikes." These restrictions, again, must have

+led to some idea that the man usually associated with, and responsible

+for feeding, and protecting, and correcting the woman and her children,

+was just the man who "liked" her, the man whom she "liked," and the man

+who "disliked" other men if they wooed her.

+

+But that state of things is not an undivided communal horde at all! It

+is much more akin to the state of things in which I take marriage rules

+to have arisen.

+

+We may suppose, then, that early moral distinctions and restrictions

+grew up among the practically "family" groups of everyday life, as

+described by Mr. Howitt, and we need not discuss again the question

+whether, at this very early period, there existed a community exactly

+like the local tribe of to-day in every respect--except that marriage

+was utterly unregulated, till an inspired medicine man promulgated the

+law of exogamy, his own invention.

+

+Mr. Howitt began his long and invaluable studies of these problems as

+a disciple of Mr. Lewis Morgan. That scholar was a warm partisan of

+the primeval horde, of group marriage, and (at times) of a reformatory

+movement. These ideas, first admitted to Mr. Howitt's mind, have

+remained with him, but he has seen clearly that the whole theory needed

+at least that essential modification which his practical knowledge of

+savage life has enabled him to make. He does not seem to me to hold

+that the promiscuous horde suddenly, for no reason, reformed itself:

+his reformers had previous ethical training in a state of daily life

+which is not that of the hypothetical horde. But he still clings to the

+horde, tiny as it must have been, as the source of a tradition of a

+brief-lived period of promiscuity. This faith is but the "after-image"

+left in his mental processes by the glow of Mr. Morgan's theory, but

+the faith is confirmed by his view of the terms of relationship, and of

+the _Piraungaru_, _Pirrauru_, and similar customs. We have shown, in

+the last chapter, that the terms and the customs are not necessarily

+proofs of promiscuity in the past, but may be otherwise interpreted

+with logical consistency, and in conformity with human nature.

+

+The statement of Mr. Howitt shows how the communal horde of the

+hypothesis might come to see that it needed moral reformation. In

+daily life, by Mr. Howitt's theory, it had practically ceased to be a

+communal horde before the medicine man was inspired to reform it. The

+hypothesis of Professor Baldwin Spencer resembles that of Mr. Howitt,

+but, unlike his (as it used to stand), accounts for the existence

+of animal-named sets of people within the phratries. Mr. Spencer,

+starting from the present social condition of the Arunta "nation" or

+group of tribes (Arunta, Kaitish, Ilpirra, Unmatjera), supposes that

+these tribes retain pristine traits, once universal, but now confined

+to them. The peculiar pristine traits, by the theory, are (1) the

+existence of animal-named local societies for magical purposes. The

+members of each local group worked magic for their name-giving animal

+or plant, but any one might marry a woman of his own group name, Eagle

+Hawk, Cockatoo, and the like, while these names were not inherited,

+either from father or mother, and did not denote a bond of kinship.

+Mr. Spencer, then, supposes the horde to have been composed of such

+magical societies, at a very remote date, before sexual relations were

+regulated by any law. Later, in some fashion, and for some reason

+which Mr. Spencer does not profess to explain, "there was felt the

+need of some form of organisation, and this gradually resulted in the

+development of exogamous groups."[3] These "exogamous groups," among

+the Arunta, are now the four or eight "matrimonial classes," as among

+other tribes of northern Australia. These tribes, as a rule, have

+phratries, but the Arunta have lost even the phratry names.

+

+Mr. Spencer's theory thus explains the existence of animal-named

+groups--as co-operative magical societies, for breeding the animals or

+plants--but does not explain how exogamy arose, or why, everywhere,

+except among the Arunta, all the animal or plant named sets of people

+are kinships, and are exogamous, while they are neither the one or

+the other among the Arunta. Either the Arunta groups have once been

+exogamous totem kinships, and have ceased to be so, becoming magical

+societies; or such animal-named sets of people have, everywhere, first

+been magical societies, and later become exogamous totem kinships. Mr.

+Spencer holds the latter view, we hold the former, believing that the

+Arunta have once been in the universal state of totemic exogamy, and

+that, by a perfectly intelligible process, their animal-named groups

+have become magical societies, no longer exogamous kinships. We can

+show how the old exogamous totem kinship, among the Arunta, became

+a magical society, not regulating sexual relations; but we cannot

+imagine how all totemic mankind, if they began with magical societies

+in an unregulated horde, should have everywhere, except among the

+Arunta, conspired to convert these magical societies into kinships

+with exogamy. If the social organisation of the Arunta were peculiarly

+primitive, if their beliefs and ceremonials were of the most archaic

+type, there might be some ground for Mr. Spencer's opinion. But Mr.

+Hartland justly says that all the beliefs and institutions of the

+Arunta "point in the same direction, namely, that the Arunta are the

+most advanced and not the most primitive of the Central Australian

+tribes."[4]

+

+The Arunta, a tribe so advanced that it has forgotten its phratry

+names, has male kinship, eight matrimonial classes, and _local_ totem

+groups, with Headmen hereditary in the male line, and so cannot

+possibly be called "primitive," as regards organisation. If, then,

+the tribe possesses a peculiar institution, contravening what is

+universally practised, the natural inference is that the Arunta

+institution, being absolutely isolated and unique, as far as its

+non-exogamy goes, in an advanced tribe, is a local freak or "sport,"

+like many others which exist. This inference seems to be corroborated

+when we discover, as we do at a glance, the peculiar conditions without

+which the Arunta organisation is physically impossible. These essential

+and indispensable conditions are admitted by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+to be:--

+

+1. Male reckoning of descent--which is found in very many tribes where

+totems are exogamous--as everywhere.

+

+2. Local totem groups, which are a result of male reckoning of descent.

+These also are found in many other tribes where, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous.

+

+3. The belief that the spirits of the primal ancestors of the

+"Dream-Time" (_Alcheringa_)--creatures evolved out of various animal

+shapes into human form--are constantly reincarnated in new-born

+children. This belief is found in all the northern tribes with male

+descent; and among the Urabunna, who have female descent--but among all

+these tribes totems are exogamous, as everywhere.

+

+4. The Arunta and Kaitish, with two or three minor neighbouring tribes,

+believe that spirits desiring incarnation, all of one totem in each

+case, reside "at certain definite spots." So do the Urabunna believe,

+but at each of these spots, in Urabunna land, there may be spirits _of

+several different totems._[5] Among the Urabunna, as everywhere, totems

+are exogamous. None of these four conditions, nor all of them, can

+produce the Arunta totemic non-exogamy.

+

+Finally (5) the Arunta and Kaitish, and they alone, believe not only

+that the spirits desiring reincarnation reside at certain definite

+spots, and not only that the spirits there are, in each case, _all

+of one totem_ (which is essential), but also that these spirits are

+most closely associated with objects of stone, inscribed with archaic

+markings (_churinga nanja_), which the spirits have dropped in these

+places--the scenes where the ancestors died (_Oknanikilla_). These

+stone objects, and this belief in their connection with ancestral

+spirits, are found in the Arunta region alone, and are the determining

+cause, or inseparable accident at least, of the non-exogamy of Arunta

+totemism, as will be fully explained later.

+

+Not one of these five conditions is reported by Mr. Howitt among

+the primitive south-eastern tribes, and the fifth is found only in

+Aruntadom. Yet Mr. Spencer regards as the earliest form of totemism

+extant that Arunta form, which requires four conditions, not found in

+the tribes of primitive organisation, and a fifth, which is peculiar to

+the Arunta "nation" alone.

+

+That the Arunta tribe, whether shut off from all others or not (as

+a matter of fact it is not), should alone (while advanced in all

+respects, including marriage and ceremonials) have retained a belief

+which, though called primitive, is unknown among primitive tribes,

+seems a singularly paradoxical hypothesis. Meanwhile the cause of the

+Arunta peculiarity--non-exogamous totems--is recognised by Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen, who also declare that the cause is isolated. They

+say "it is the idea of spirit individuals associated with _churinga_"

+(manufactured objects of stone), "and resident in certain definite

+spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the

+Arunta tribe."[6]

+

+Again, they inform us that the _churinga_ belief, and the existence of

+stone _churinga_, are things isolated. "In the Worgaia tribe, which

+inhabits the country to the north-east of the Kaitish" (neighbours of

+the Arunta), "we meet, so far as we have been able to discover, with

+the last traces of the _churinga_--that is, of the _churinga_ with its

+meaning and significance, as known to us in the true central tribes,

+as associated with the spirits of _Alcheringa_ ancestors" (mythical

+beings, supposed to be constantly reincarnated).[7] Thus, "the present

+totemic system of the Arunta tribe,"--in which, contrary to universal

+rule, persons of the same totem may inter-marry--reposes on a belief

+associated with certain manufactured articles of stone, and neither the

+belief nor the stone objects are discovered beyond a certain limited

+region. It is proper to add that the regretted Mr. David Carnegie

+found, at Family Wells, in the desert of Central Australia, two stone

+objects, one plain, the other rudely marked with concentric circles,

+which resemble _churinga nanja_. He mentions two others found and

+thrown away by Colonel Warburton. The meaning or use of these objects

+was not ascertained.[8]

+

+We differ from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they think that

+this peculiar and isolated belief, held by four or five tribes of

+confessedly advanced social organisation and ceremonials (a belief only

+possible under advanced social organisation), is the pristine form of

+totemism, out of which all totemists, however primitive, have found

+their way except the Arunta "nation" alone. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+write: "... the only conclusion which it seems possible to arrive at

+is that in the more northern tribes" (which have no churinga nanja,

+no _stone_ churinga), "the churinga represent the surviving relics of

+a time when the beliefs among those tribes were similar to those which

+now exist among the Arunta. It is more easy to imagine a change which

+shall lead from the present Arunta or Kaitish belief to that which

+exists among the Warramunga, than it is to imagine one which shall

+lead from the Warramunga to the Arunta."[9] Now among the Warramunga,

+as everywhere, the division of the totems between the two (exogamous)

+moieties is complete, "and, with very few exceptions indeed, the

+children follow the father."[10] (These exceptions are not explained.)

+Among the Kaitish the same totems occur among both exogamous moieties,

+so persons of the same totem _can_ intermarry, but "it is a very rare

+thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself."[11]

+

+The obvious conclusion is the reverse of that which our authors think

+"alone possible." The Kaitish have adopted the Arunta _churinga nanja_

+usage which introduces the same totem into both exogamous moieties,

+but, unlike the Arunta, they have not yet discarded the old universal

+rule, "No marriage within the totem." It is not absolutely forbidden,

+but it scarcely ever occurs. The Kaitish, as regards exogamy and

+religion, are a link between the primitive south-eastern tribes and the

+Arunta.

+

+We go on to show in detail how Arunta totems alone ceased to be

+exogamous, and to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+been, and never can have been, in the present Arunta condition. Among

+the Arunta, in the classes, none of them his own, into which alone a

+man may marry, there are plenty of women of his own totem. Thus, in

+marrying a woman of his totem, but not of his set of classes, a man

+does not break the law of Arunta exogamy. Now how does it happen that a

+totem may be in both sets of exogamous classes among the Arunta alone

+of mankind? Was this always the case from the beginning?

+

+It is, naturally, our opinion that among the Arunta, as everywhere

+else, matters were originally, or not much later, so arranged that

+the same totem never appeared in both phratries, or, afterwards, when

+phratries were lost, in both opposed sets of two or four exogamous

+matrimonial classes. The only objection to this theory is that

+the Arunta themselves believe it, and mention the circumstance in

+their myths. These myths cannot be historical reminiscences of the

+"Dream-Time," which never existed. But even a myth may deviate into

+truth, especially as the Arunta must know that in other tribes the same

+totem never occurs in both phratries, and are clever enough to see that

+their method needs explanation as being an exception to general rule;

+and that, even now, "the great majority of any one totem belong to one

+moiety of the tribe." So they say that originally all Witchetty Grubs,

+for instance, were in the Bulthara-Panunga moiety (as most Grubs still

+are to this day), while all Emus were in the opposite exogamous moiety

+(Purula-Kumura). But, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "owing to the

+system according to which totem names are" (_now_) "acquired, it is

+always possible for a man to be, say, a Purula or a Kumura, and yet a

+Witchetty; or, on the other hand, a Bulthara or a Panunga, and yet an

+Emu."[12] The present system of acquiring totem names has transferred

+the totems into both exogamous moieties, and so has made it possible

+to marry within the totem name.

+

+This suggests that, in native opinion or conjecture, Arunta totems,

+like all others, were once exogamous; no totem ever occurred originally

+in both exogamous moieties. It also indicates that, in the opinion

+of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, they only ceased to be exogamous when

+the present method of acquiring totem names, an unique method, was

+introduced. Happily, to prove the historical worthlessness of Arunta

+legendary myth, the tribe has a contradictory legend. The same totem,

+according to this fable, occurred in both exogamous moieties, even

+in the mythic Dream-Time (_Alcheringa_); by this fable the natives

+explain (what needs explaining) how the same totem does occur in _both_

+exogamous moieties to-day, and so is not exogamous.[13]

+

+This is nonsense, just as the other contradictory myth was conjecture.

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have themselves explained why the same totem

+may _now_ occur in both moieties, and so be non-exogamous. The unique

+phenomenon is due to the actual and unique method of acquiring totem

+names.[14] Thus the modern method is not primitive. These passages are

+very instructive.

+

+The Arunta have been so long in the relatively advanced state of

+_local_ totemism that their myths do not look behind it. A group,

+whether stationary or migratory, in the myths of the Dream-Time (the

+_Alcheringa_) always consists of persons of the same totem, with

+occasional visitors of other totems. The myths, we repeat, reflect the

+present state of local totem groups back on the past.

+

+The myths allege (here the isolated superstition comes in) that

+the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_ died, or "went into the

+ground" at certain now haunted spots, marked by rocks or trees, which

+may be called "mortuary local totem-centres"--in native speech,

+_Oknanikilla_[15] Trees or rocks arose to mark the spot where the

+ancestors, all of one totem in each case, went into the ground. These

+trees or rocks are called _Nanja_. Thereabouts the dying ancestors

+deposited possessions peculiar to Aruntadom, their stone amulets, or

+_churinga nanja_, with what are now read as totemic incised marks.

+Their spirits, all of one totem in each case, haunt the _Nanja_ rock or

+tree, and are especially attached to these stone amulets,[16] called

+_churinga nanja_. The spirits discarnate await a chance of entering

+into women, and being reborn. When a child comes to the birth, the

+mother, whatever her own or her husband's totem may be, names the

+spot where she supposes that she conceived the child, and the child's

+_Nanja_ tree or rock is that in the _Oknanikilla_, or mortuary local

+totem-centre nearest to the place where the child was conceived. Its

+male kin hunt for the _churinga_, or stone amulet, there deposited

+by the dying _Alcheringa_ ancestor; if they find it, it becomes the

+child's _churinga_, for he is merely the ancestor spirit reborn. He

+(or she) "comes into his own"; his _Nanja_ tree or rock, his _churinga

+nanja_, and his original totem, which may be, and often is, neither

+that of his father or mother.

+

+Thus inheriting his own old _Nanja_ tree and _churinga_, and totem,

+_the child is not necessarily of his father's or mothers but is of

+his own old original totem_, say Grub, or Hakea Flower, or Kangaroo,

+or Frog. His totem is thus not inherited, we repeat, as elsewhere,

+from either parent, but is derived, by the accident of his place of

+conception, from the _local_ totem, from the totemic ghosts (all

+of one totem) haunting the particular mortuary totem centre, or

+_Oknanikilla_, where he was conceived. His totem may thus be in _both_

+of the exogamous moieties, and for that reason alone is not exogamous.

+To take an example. A woman, by totem Cat, has a husband by totem

+Iguana. She conceives a child, and believes that she conceived it in a

+certain district. The local totem of that district is the Grub, Grub

+ghosts haunt the region; the child, therefore, is a Grub. He inherits

+his exogamous class, say Bukhara, from his father, and he must marry

+a woman of Class Kumara. But she may also be a Grub, for her totem,

+like his, has been acquired (like his, not by inheritance, but) by the

+accident that her mother conceived her in a Grub district. Thus, and

+thus only, are totems not exogamous among the Arunta. They are not

+inherited from either parent.

+

+It is probable that, after male descent came in, the Arunta and Kaitish

+at first inherited their totems from their fathers, as among all other

+tribes with male descent. This appears to be proved by the fact that

+they still do inherit, from their fathers, totemic rites, and the power

+of doing totemic mummeries for their fathers' totems, even when, by

+the accident of their places of conception, they do not inherit their

+fathers' totems. When they did inherit the paternal totem, they were,

+doubtless, totemically exogamous, like all other tribes with either

+male or female descent.

+

+One simple argument upsets the claim of Arunta totems to be primitive.

+In no tribe with female descent can a district have its _local_ totem,

+as among the Arunta. A district can only have a local totem if the

+majority of the living people, and of the haunting ghosts of the

+dead, are of one totem only. But this (setting aside the occasional

+results of an isolated Urabunna superstition) can only occur under male

+reckoning of descent, which confessedly is not primitive. In a region

+where reckoning in the female line exists a woman could not say, "I

+conceived my child in Grub district, the country of totem Grub"--for

+such a country there is not and cannot be. Consequently, among the

+Urabunna as everywhere with reckoning of descent in the female line,

+every child is of its mother's totem.

+

+Let us examine other tribes who, like the Arunta, have the theory of

+reincarnation, but whose totems are, as elsewhere, exogamous, unlike

+those of the Arunta. The Urabunna have female descent, and their myth

+about the origin of totemic ancestors approximates to that of the

+Arunta, but, unlike the Arunta fable, does not produce, or account

+for, non-exogamy in totems. Things began, say the Urabunna, by the

+appearance of a few creatures half human, half bestial or vegetable.

+They had miraculous powers, and dropped spirits which tenanted lizards,

+snakes, and so on, all over the district. These spirits later became

+incarnated in human beings of the Lizard, Snake, or other totem, and

+are constantly being reincarnated. The two Urabunna phratries were

+originally a green and a brown snake: the Green Snake said to the

+Brown Snake, "I am Kirarawa, you are Matthurie"--the phratry names.

+It does not appear that these names now mean Green Snake and Brown

+Snake, though they may once have had these significations. The spirits

+left about by these snakes, like all the other such spirits (_mai

+aurli_) keep on being incarnated, and, when incarnated, the children

+bear the totem name of their mothers in each case. A Green Snake

+woman is entered by a spirit, which she bears as a Green Snake child.

+The accident of the locality in which the child was conceived does

+not affect his totem, so Urabunna totems remain in their own proper

+phratries, and therefore, by phratry law, are exogamous, as everywhere,

+except among the Arunta.[17]

+

+This arrangement is merely the usual arrangement, with female descent A

+woman's child is of the woman's totem. Believing in reincarnation, the

+Urabunna merely adapt that belief to the facts. With female descent an

+Emu woman's child is Emu. If a tribe has male descent, an Emu father's

+child is Emu. With female descent, a spirit has entered an Emu woman

+and been born Emu: with male descent, a spirit has entered the wife of

+an Emu man, and, by inheritance from his father, is Emu. Yet Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen think that the Arunta and Kaitish rule--demanding

+the non-primitive male descent, local groups, local ghosts all of one

+totem, and _churinga_ stones of the mark of that totem (all of which

+are indispensable), "is probably the simplest and most primitive."[18]

+

+Most primitive, by our author's own statement, the Arunta method cannot

+be, for, as they show, it demands male descent, local totemism, and the

+peculiar belief about manufactured stone _churinga_. But they think it

+"most simple," because the Urabunna have a complicated myth, which,

+however, in no way affects the result, namely, that each child takes

+its mother's totem. Each spirit, according to the myth, changes its

+phratry and sex, and, necessarily, its totem, at each reincarnation,

+but that does not affect the result. Each child, as in all tribes with

+female descent, is still of its mother's totem.[19] No _churinga nanja_

+cause an anomaly among the Urabunna, for the _churinga nanja_, and the

+belief about them, among the Urabunna do not exist.

+

+The Urabunna myth, adapted to male descent, occurs in all the northern

+tribes, from the northern bounds of the Kaitish to the sea, which have

+no stone _churinga nanja_; and in all of them totems are exogamous,

+because they never occur in both phratries, being uninfluenced by the

+Arunta _churinga_ belief. They cannot, for they are duly inherited

+from the father, and they are so inherited because the tribes have not

+the exceptional _Churinga Nanja_ creed, attaching the spirit to the

+amulet of a local totem group, which fixes--by the accident of place of

+conception--the totem of each child.

+

+The Arunta non-exogamous totems, in Australia, as we saw, are only

+found where _stone churinga nanja_ are in use; these amulets being

+peculiarly the residence of the spirits of totemic ancestors.

+

+The origin of that belief is obscure. It could not arise in the

+present condition of Arunta or Kaitish affairs, for, now, every stone

+_churinga_ in the tribe has already its recognised legal owner, and,

+on the death of an owner, or the extinction of a local totem group,

+the _churinga_ are not left lying about to be found on or in the

+earth, but pass by a definite rule of inheritance; and they are all

+carefully warded and frequently examined, in Ertnatu-lunga, or sacred

+storehouses.[20] Thus stone _churinga nanja_, to-day, are not left

+lying about on the surface, or buried in graves, like those which, on

+the birth of each Arunta child, are sought for, and sometimes found, at

+the local totem-centre, and near the _Nanja_ tree or rock, where the

+child was conceived. There _churinga nanja_ must have been _buried_,

+of old, if our authors correctly say that the mythical ancestors "went

+into the ground, each carrying his _churinga_ with him."[21] Again we

+read, "Many of the _churinga_ were placed _in_ the ground, some natural

+object again marking the spot." The spot was always marked by some

+natural object, such as a tree or rock.[22]

+

+Though our authors tell us that they know Arunta natives who, on the

+birth of a child, have sought for and found his _churinga nanja_ near

+the _Nanja_ rock or tree next to the place where he was conceived, they

+do not say that the _churinga_ are found by digging.[23] If they are,

+or if the _Oknanikilla_ really are ancient burying-places (about which

+we are told nothing), the association of the _churinga nanja_ with the

+ghost of the man in whose grave it is buried would be easily explained.

+But the impression left is that the stone _churinga nanja_ found after

+search are discovered on the surface, dropped there by the spirit when

+about to be reincarnated.[24]

+

+Here a curious fact may be filed for reference. Stone amulets,

+fashioned and decorated by man, are not known to be in use south of

+the Arunta region. But a cousin of my own, Mr. William Lang, found a

+stone object not unlike one figured by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,

+on his station near Cooma, New South Wales. The decoration was of

+the rectilineal type prevalent in that region. Mr. Lang knew nothing

+of the Arunta _churinga_ till I drew his attention to the subject.

+He then visited the Sydney Museum, and found several stone objects,

+"banana-shaped," exactly like the specimen (wooden?), one out of five

+known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and published by them in their

+first work (p. 150). The New South Wales ornament, however, was always

+rectilineal. The articles appear to be obsolete among the tribes of

+New South Wales. It is said that they were erected of old round graves

+of the dead. Whites call them "grave stones." Careful articles on

+these decorated stone objects of New South Wales have been written by

+Mr. W. R. Harper and Mr. Graham Officer.[25] As a rule, they are not

+banana-shaped or crescentine, but are in the form of enormous stone

+cigars. They used to be placed, twelve or thirteen of them, on graves,

+and their weight, averaging about 3 lbs. to 4 lbs., makes them less

+portable than most of the _churinga_ of the Arunta. It does not seem

+at all probable that Arunta stone _churinga_ were ever erected round

+graves, but excavations at _Oknanikilla_, if they could be executed

+without a shock to Arunta sentiment, might throw some light on the

+subject.

+

+In my opinion, the _churinga_ found at _Oknanikilla_ by the Arunta may

+have had no such original significance as is now attached to them. The

+belief may be a mere myth, explaining the sense of objects found and

+not understood--relics, as the myth itself avers, of an earlier race,

+the _Alcheringa_ folk. The only information about those New South Wales

+decorated cigar-shaped and banana-shaped stone objects which could be

+got out of a local black was: "All same as bloody brand." He meant,

+conceivably, that the incised markings were totem marks, I think, and

+in that sense the marks on Arunta stone _churinga_ are now interpreted.

+

+It would not be surprising if the Arunta--supposing that they possessed

+the belief in "spirit trees," and the belief in reincarnation, and then

+found, near the _Nanja_ trees or rocks, the stone amulets or "grave

+stones" of some earlier occupants of the region--evolved the myth that

+ancestral souls, connected with the spirit trees, abode especially

+in these decorated stones, common enough in American and European

+neolithic sites.

+

+This is, of course, a mere conjecture. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+agree with us when they say: "It is this idea of spirit individuals

+associated with _churinga_, and resident in certain definite spots,

+that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta

+tribes."[26]

+

+Three facts are now apparent. The Arunta (i) must have reckoned in

+the male line for a very long time, otherwise their myths would not

+take local totem-centres for granted as a primeval fact, since such

+centres can only occur and exist under male reckoning of descent; in

+cases where the husbands do not go to the wives' region of abode. (2)

+The myth that totemic _local_ ghosts are reincarnated cannot be older

+than _local_ totem-centres, for it is their old local totem-centres

+that the totemic ghosts do haunt. The spots are strewn with their old

+totem-marked _churinga_. The myths make the wandering groups of fabled

+ancestors all of one totem, because, by male reckoning, they could be

+little else till the _churinga_ superstition arose and scattered totems

+about at random in the population.

+

+Again, (3) even local totemism, _plus_ the belief in the reincarnation

+of primary ancestral spirits, did not produce the non-exogamy of

+totems, till it was reinforced by the unique Arunta belief in the stone

+_churinga nanja._

+

+The totemism of the Arunta, then, was originally like that of their

+neighbours, exogamous, till the stone _churinga nanja_ became the

+centre of a myth which introduces the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties among the Arunta, where it has broken down the old exogamous

+totemic rule. Among the Kaitish, as we saw, the rule is still surviving

+in general practice.

+

+We now proceed to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never

+passed through the present Arunta state of belief and customary law.

+

+Suppose that the Arunta to-day dropped their _churinga nanja_ belief,

+and allowed the totem name to be inherited through the father, as

+the right to work the ceremonies of the totem still is inherited by

+sons who do not inherit the totem itself. What would follow? Why,

+totems among the Arunta would still be non-exogamous, for the existing

+_churinga nanja_ belief has brought the same totems into both exogamous

+moieties, and there they would remain, after they came to be inherited

+in the male line. In the same way, if the northern tribes had once

+been in the Arunta state of belief, their totems would still be in

+both exogamous moieties, and would not regulate marriage. But this is

+not the case. These tribes, therefore, have never been in the present

+Arunta condition. _Q.E.D_.

+

+The Arunta belief is, obviously, an elaboration of the belief in

+reincarnation, not held, as far as is known, by the Dieri, but held by

+the Urabunna, and by all tribes from the Urabunna northwards to the

+sea. Mr. Howitt does not mention the belief among the south-eastern

+tribes. But there is a kind of tendency towards it among the Euahlayi

+of north-west New South Wales, reported on by Mrs. Langloh Parker

+(MS.). This tribe reckons in the female line, has phratries, and uses

+the class names (four), but not the phratry names of the Kamilaroi.

+Each individual has a _Minngah tree_ haunted by spirits unattached.

+Medicine men have _Minngah_ rocks. These answer to the Arunta _Nanja_

+(Warramunga, _Mungai_) trees and rocks in mortuary local totem-centres.

+But the _Minngah_-tree spirits do not seek reincarnation. Only spirits

+of persons dying young, before initiation, are reincarnated. Fresh

+souls for new bodies are made by the Crow and the Moon. These spirits,

+when "made," hang in the boughs of the _coolabah_ tree only, not round

+_Minngah_ trees or rocks.

+

+I think it possible, or even probable, that ideas like those of the

+Euahlayi exist among the southern Arunta and elsewhere. Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen give a Kaitish myth of two men "who arose from _churinga_,"

+and heard Atnatu (the Kaitish sky-dwelling being, the father of some

+men) making, in the sky, a noise with his _churinga_ (the wooden bull

+roarer).[27] Now, I have seen the statement, on which I lay no stress,

+that in extreme south-west Aruntadom a sky-dwelling Emu-footed being

+lost two stone _churinga_. Out of one sprang a man, out of the other a

+woman. They had offspring, "but not by begetting."

+

+Among the tribes with the reincarnation belief connubial relations

+are supposed only to "prepare the mother for the reception and birth

+also of an already formed spirit child."[28] This apparent ignorance

+of physical facts, not found among the south-eastern tribes, is a

+corollary from the reincarnation belief, or from the other belief that

+spirit children are "made" by some non-human being. (Cf. Chapter XI.)

+

+To continue with the statement as to the southern Arunta, the

+sky-dwelling being "has laid germs of the little boys in the mistletoe

+branches, germs of little girls among the split stones ... such a germ

+of a child enters a woman by the hip." Now among the Euahlayi, when the

+spirit children made by the Crow and the Moon are weary of waiting to

+be reincarnated, they are changed into mistletoe branches.

+

+I do not insist on the alleged sky-dwelling being of these Arunta, for

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (in their two books) have not found him,

+and Mr. Howitt thinks that his name arises from a misunderstanding.

+Kempe, a missionary of 1883, speaks of "Altjira, 'god,' who gives the

+children."[29] Altjira, "god," may be a mistake, based on the root of

+_Alcheringa_ or _Altjiringa_, "dream." On the other hand, Mr. Gillen

+himself credits the Arunta with a belief in a sky-dwelling being, and

+with a creed incompatible with the faith in reincarnation, as, in tins

+Anunta myth, human souls are not reincarnated. This information we

+quote.

+

+"ULTHAANA

+

+"The sky is said to be inhabited by three persons, a gigantic man with

+an immense foot shaped like that of an emu, a woman, and a child who

+never develops beyond childhood. The man is called Ulthaana, meaning

+'spirit.' When a native dies his spirit is said to ascend to the

+home of the great Ulthaana, where it remains for a short time; the

+Ulthaana then throws it into the Saltwater (sea) [these natives have

+no personal knowledge of the sea], from whence it is rescued by two

+benevolent but lesser Ulthaana who perpetually reside on the seashore,

+apparently merely for the purpose of rescuing spirits who have been

+subject to the inhospitable treatment of the great Ulthaana of the

+heavens (alkirra). Henceforth the spirit of the dead man lives with the

+lesser Ulthaana."[30] Is it possible that Mr. Gillen's "Great Ulthaana

+of the Heavens, alkirra," is Kempe's Altjira? Or can he be a native

+modification of Kempe's own theology? Probably not.

+

+In any case the Arunta of Mr. Gillen who do not believe in

+reincarnation cannot possibly, it would seem, possess the Arunta form

+of totemism. It is only natural that varieties of myth and belief

+should exist, and it is asserted that there is a myth among the Arunta

+of the extreme south-west section about a sky-dwelling being, who,

+like the Crow and the Moon of Euahlayi belief, makes spirit children,

+and places them in the mistletoe boughs. The story that the first man

+and woman sprang from two of this being's lost _churinga_, again, is

+matched by the Kaitish story of two men who rose from _churinga_. The

+Arunta described by Mr. Gillen, they whose souls dwell with "the lesser

+Ulthaana," no more believe in reincarnation than do the south-eastern

+tribes. These variants in belief and myth usually occur among savages.

+

+The Arunta add to the reincarnation myth, the peculiarity of mortuary

+local totem-centres, and of the attachment of the spirit to a stone

+_churinga_ inscribed with the marks of that totem, and from these

+peculiar ideas--as much isolated as the peculiar ideas of the Urabunna

+or the Euahlayi--arises the non-exogamous character of Arunta totemism.

+No _one_, out of such varying freaks of belief, can be regarded as

+primitive, more than another, but the Arunta variant, for the reason

+repeatedly given, cannot possibly be primitive.

+

+The Arunta totems are not only non-exogamous: their actual _raison

+d'etre_, to-day, is to exist as the objects of magical co-operative

+societies, fostering the totem plants and animals as articles of tribal

+food supply. Mr. Spencer thinks this the primary purpose of totem

+societies, everywhere. Now we have not, as yet, been told _why_ each

+society took to doing magic for this or that animal or other thing in

+nature. They cannot have been "charged with" this duty, except by some

+central authority. As there did not yet exist, by the hypothesis, so

+much as a tribe with phratries, what can this central authority have

+been? If it existed, on what principle did it select, out of the horde,

+groups to become magical societies? Were they groups of kin, or groups

+of associates by contiguity? On what principle could the choice of

+departments of nature to be controlled by each group, be determined

+by the central authority? Had the groups already distinguishing

+names--Emu, Eagle Hawk, Opossum, &c.--how did these names arise, and

+did these names determine the department of nature for which each

+group was allotted to do magic? Or did authority give to each group a

+magical department, and did the nature of that department determine the

+group-name, such as Frogs, Grubs, Hakea Trees?

+

+Or was there no formal distribution, no sudden organisation, no central

+authority? Did a casual knot of men, or a firm of wizards, say, "Let

+_us_ do magic for the Kangaroo, and get more Kangaroos to eat"? Was

+their success so great and enviable that other casual knots of men or

+firms of wizards followed their example? And, in this case, why do

+Arunta totemists not eat their totems freely? Is it because they think

+that to do so would frighten the totems, and make them recalcitrant

+to their magic? But that cannot be the case if their success, while

+they worked their magic on their own account, was great, enviable, and

+generally imitated. And, if it was not, why was it imitated? Next,

+how, among the magical societies, was exogamy introduced? Mr. Spencer

+writes: "Our knowledge of the natives leads us to the opinion that

+this really took place; that the exogamic groups were deliberately

+introduced _so as to regulate marital regulations_." This was, then, a

+Marriage Reform Act. However, Mr. Spencer hastens to add that he cannot

+conceive a motive for the Marriage Reform Act. "We do not mean that

+the regulations had anything whatever to do with the idea of incest,

+or of any harm accruing from the union of individuals who were regarded

+as too nearly related."[31]

+

+We have shown that no such ideas could occur to the supposed

+promiscuous horde, who knew not that there is such a thing as

+procreation, but supposed that, like the stars in Caliban's philosophy,

+children "came otherwise." Yet the "exogamic system" does nothing

+but prohibit certain marriages, and "it is quite possible that the

+exogamic groups were deliberately introduced so as to regulate marital

+relations."[32]

+

+Mr. Spencer's theory is, then, that there was a horde with magical

+totemic societies, how evolved we cannot guess. Across that came the

+arrangement of classes to regulate marriage, as it does, but the

+ancestors who possibly introduced it had, he says, no idea that there

+was any moral or material harm in unregulated marriages. Then why did

+they regulate them?

+

+The hypothetical horde of the kind which we have described had no

+_marriage_ relations, and had no possible reason for regulating

+intersexual relations.

+

+It is true that reformatory movements in marriage law are actually

+being purposefully introduced, among tribes which, possessing

+already such laws, of unknown origin, to reform, have deduced from

+these laws themselves that there is a right and wrong in matters of

+sex. Certainly, too, much of savage marriage law is of ancient and

+purposeful institution. But the question is, not how moral laws, once

+developed, might be improved; but how a tabu law against sexual

+relations between near kin could even be so much as dreamed of by

+members of a communal horde, who bad do idea of kin, and could not

+possibly tell who was akin to whom. _Ce n'est que le premier pas qui

+coute!_ We must account for _le premier pas_.

+

+Again, the _Intichiuma_, or co-operative totemic magic, of the

+Arunta, regarded by our authors as "primary," is nowhere reported of

+the tribes of the south and east. Mr. Howitt asserts its absence.

+The lack of record, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "is no proof

+that these ceremonies did not exist" If they did, bow could they

+escape the knowledge of Mr. Howitt, an initiated man?[33] As a fact,

+when you leave the centre, and reach the _north_ sea-coast, totemic

+magic dwindles, and nearly disappears. Among the coast tribes of

+the north, the _Intichiuma_ magic is "very slightly developed." Its

+faint existence is "doubtless to be associated with the fact that

+they inhabit country where the food supply and general conditions of

+life are more favourable than in the central area of the continent

+which is the home of these ceremonies." But surely the regions of

+the south and east, where there is no _Intichiuma_, are also better

+in supply and general conditions than the centre. Why then should

+the apparent absence of _Intichiuma_ in the south and east be due to

+want of observation and record, while the "very slight development"

+of _Intichiuma_ on the north coast is otherwise explained, namely, by

+conditions--which also exist in the south!

+

+Moreover, co-operative and totemic magic is most elaborately organised

+among the Sioux, Dakotah, Omaha, and other American tribes, where

+supplies are infinitely better than in any part of Australia,[34]

+and agriculture has there, as in Europe, a copious magic. Magic, as

+a well-known fact, is most and best organised in the most advanced

+non-scientific societies. In Australia it is most organised in the

+centre, and dwindles as you move either north, south, or east. This

+implies that, socially, the centre is in this respect most advanced and

+least primitive; while magic, partly totemic, is highly organised in

+the much more prosperous islands of the Torres Straits, and in America.

+

+It is true that Collins (1798), a very early observer, saw east-coast

+natives performing ceremonies connected with Kangaroos, in one of which

+a Kangaroo hunt was imitated. Collins believed that this was imitative

+magic of a familiar kind, done to secure success in the chase. In

+_Magic and Religion_, p. 100, I express the same opinion. But Messrs.

+Spencer and Gillen write, as to the magic observed by Collins, "There

+can be little doubt but that these ceremonies, so closely similar

+in their nature to those now performed by the central natives, were

+totemic in their origin"--they may be regarded as "clear evidence of

+the existence of these totemic ceremonies ... in a tribe living right

+on the eastern coast."[35]

+

+Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe

+(i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of

+grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of _totemic_

+ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance,

+not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the

+number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and

+to do _that_ is the aim of the _Intichiuma_.[36] The hunt dances

+seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation

+ceremony.[37] In the Emu _Intichiuma_ of the Arunta the Emus are

+represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed

+to see the imitators of the fowls.[38] The ceremonies reported by

+Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course

+were not allowed to see."[39]

+

+Apparently we have _not_ "clear evidence" that Collins saw

+_Intichiuma_, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr.

+Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.

+

+It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to

+believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain

+animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact,

+we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes

+outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice

+most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America

+and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of

+supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development

+of _Intichiuma_ on the north coast of Australia.

+

+I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of

+the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The

+country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many

+ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months,

+while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting

+which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and

+bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does

+Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names,

+deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the

+belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names

+had a special _rapport_ with the name-giving animals or plants. This

+_rapport_ was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and

+for the good of the tribe, which is singularly _solidaire_.

+

+We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions

+cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism

+of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat

+our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly

+_late_ system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other

+northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and

+nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties,

+denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing

+to the isolated belief in reincarnation of _local_ ghosts, attached

+to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere,

+by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because

+of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem,

+does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites.

+Totemism is thus _en pleine decadence_ among the Arunta, from whom,

+consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.

+

+

+NOTE

+

+      The Arunta legends of the _Alcheringa_ usually describe

+      the various wandering groups, all, in each case, of one

+      totem, as living exclusively for long periods on their own

+      totems, plants, or animals. This cannot be historically

+      true; many plants, and such animals as grubs, are in

+      season for but a brief time. On the other hand, we meet a

+      legend of women of the Quail totem who lived exclusively,

+      not on quails, but on grass seeds.[40] Again, in only one

+      case are men of the _Achilpa_, or Wild Cat totem, said

+      to have eaten anything, and what they ate was the Hakea

+      flower. Later they became Plum men, _Ulpmerka_, but are

+      not said to have eaten plums. In a note (Note I, p. 219)

+      Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that "Wild Cat men are

+      represented constantly as feeding on plums." They are

+      never said to have eaten their own totem, the Wild Cat,

+      which is forbidden to all Arunta, though old men may

+      eat a little of it Reasons, not totemic, are given for

+      the avoidance.[41] We are not told anything about the

+      _Intichiuma_ or magical rites for the increase of the Wild

+      Cat, which is not eaten. Are they performed by men of the

+      Wild Cat totem? The old men of the totem might eat very

+      sparingly of the Wild Cat, at their _Intichiuma_, but

+      certainly the members of other totems who were present

+      would not eat at all. The use of a Wild Cat _Intichiuma_

+      is not obvious: there is no desire to propagate the animal

+      as an article of food.

+

+[1] _J. A. I._, xii. p. 497. Cf. Native Tribes of South-East Australia,

+PP. 173, 174.

+

+[2] I neglected to observe this important passage when reviewing Mr.

+Howitt's ideas in _Social Origins_.

+

+[3] _J. A. I._, N.S., i. pp. 284, 285.

+

+[4] _Folk Lore_, December 1904, p. 473. For Mr. Spencer's assertion

+that the Aninta social type is advanced, see _Central Tribes_; cf. p.

+211. For the probable advanced and relatively recent character of their

+initiatory ceremonies, see _Central Tribes_, p. 217; _Northern Tribes_,

+p. 329.

+

+[5] _Northern Tribes_, p. 147.

+

+[6] _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[7] _Northern Tribes_, p. 274.

+

+[8] _J. A. I._, August 1898, pp. 20, 21.

+

+[9] _Northern Tribes_, p. 281.

+

+[10] Ibid., p. 175.

+

+[11] Ibid.

+

+[12] _Central Tribes_, pp. 125, 126.

+

+[13] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 151, 152.

+

+[14] _Central Tribes_, pp. 125, 126.

+

+[15] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[16] Ibid., p. 150. Figures of the objects are given.

+

+[17] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 145-148.

+

+[18] Ibid., p. 174.

+

+[19] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 146, 149.

+

+[20] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, pp. 153-155.

+

+[21] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 123.

+

+[22] _Op. cit_., p. 124.

+

+[23] _Op. cit_., p. 132.

+

+[24] The _churinga_ here spoken of are a kind of stone amulets, of very

+various shapes, marked with such archaic patterns of cups, concentric

+circles or half circles, and other devices as are found on rock

+surfaces in our islands, in India, and generally all over the world,

+as in New Caledonia. The same marks occur on small plaques of slate or

+schist, in Portuguese neolithic sites, in palaeolithic sites, and in

+Scotland, where Dr. Munro regards them as not of genuine antiquity.

+See _Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia_, Gongora y Martinez,

+Madrid, 1868, p. 109; _Antiguedades Monumentaes do Algarve_, vol. ii.

+pp. 429-462, Estacio da Veiga, Lisbon, 1887; _Portugalia_, i. Part IV.,

+Severo and Brenha, 1903; _Magic and Religion_ (A. L.), pp. 246-256,

+1901. For a palaeolithic bone object, exactly like an Arunta _churinga_,

+see Hoernes, _Der Diluviale Mensch in Europa_, p. 138, 1903. It does

+not follow, of course, that these objects in Europe were ever connected

+with a belief like that of the Arunta. The things were probably

+talismans of one sort or another.

+

+[25] _Proceedings_, Linnaean Society of New South Wales, 1898, vol.

+xxiii. part 3, and vol. xxvi. p. 238.

+

+[26] _Op. cit_., p. 123.

+

+[27] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 272, 373.

+

+[28] _Central Tribes_, p. 265.

+

+[29] Geographical Society of Halle, _Proceedings_, 1883, p. 53.

+

+[30] Notes on Some Manners and Customs of the Aborigines of the

+_McDonnell Ranges_, belonging to the _Arunta Tribe_. Gillen, _Horn

+Expedition_, iv. p. 183.

+

+[31] _J. A. I._, N.S., p. 278.

+

+[32] Ibid., i. pp. 284, 285. Dr. Roth has conjectured that phratries

+were introduced "by a process of natural selection" to regulate the

+food supply. But how did they come to regulate marriage? (_Aborigines

+of North-West Central Queensland_, pp. 69, 70.)

+

+[33] See _Northern Tribes_, pp. xiii, xiv, 173.

+

+[34] Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology. Siouan Cults. Bureau of Ethnology_,

+1881-1882, pp. 238, 239; 1889-1890, p. 537. Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 24.

+For Torres Islands, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. pp. 5-17.

+

+[35] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 224, 225.

+

+[36] Spencer and Gillen, p. 169.

+

+[37] _Natives of South-East Australia_, p. 545.

+

+[38] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 182, 183.

+

+[39] _Northern Tribes_, p. 225.

+

+[40] _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 417.

+

+[41] Ibid., p. 168.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V

+

+THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

+

+

+      Theories of Dr. Durkheim--Was man originally

+      promiscuous?--Difficulty of ascertaining Dr. Durkheim's

+      opinion--Apparent contradictions--Origin of totemism--A

+      horde, which did not prohibit incest, splits into two

+      "primary clans"--These are hostile--Each has an animal

+      god, and its members are of the blood of the god,

+      consubstantial with him--Therefore may not intermarry

+      within his blood--Hence exogamy--These gods, or totems,

+      "cannot be changed at will"--Questions as to how these

+      beliefs arise--Why does the united horde choose different

+      gods?--Why only two such gods?--Uncertainty as to whether

+      Dr. Durkheim believes in the incestuous horde--Theory of

+      "collective marriage," a "last resource"--The "primary

+      clans" said to have "no territorial basis"--Later it

+      is assumed that they do have territorial bases--Which

+      they overpopulate--Colonies sent forth--These take new

+      totems--Proof that an exogamous "clan" has no territorial

+      basis--And cannot send out "clan" colonies--Colonies

+      can only be _tribal_--No proof that a "clan" ever

+      does change its totem--Dr. Durkheim's defence of

+      one of his apparent inconsistencies--Reply to his

+      defence--Mr. Frazer's theory (1887) that a totemic "clan"

+      throws off other clans of new totems, and becomes a

+      phratry--Objections to this theory--The facts are opposed

+      to it--Examples--Recapitulation--Eight objections to Dr.

+      Durkheim's theory.

+

+

+Dr. Durkheim, Professor of Sociology in the University of Bordeaux,

+has displayed much acuteness in his destructive analysis of the Arunta

+claims to possess a primitive form of totemism.[1] He has also given

+the fullest and most original explanation of the reason why, granting

+that groups of early men had each a special regard for a particular

+animal or plant, whose name they bore, they tabooed marriage within

+that name.[2]

+

+With these and other merits the system of Dr. Durkheim, as unfolded at

+intervals in his periodical (_L'Annee Sociologique_, 1898-1904), has,

+I shall try to show, certain drawbacks, at least as we possess it at

+present, for it has not yet appeared in the form of a book. As to the

+point which in this discussion we have taken first, throughout, it is

+not easy to be certain about the Professor's exact opinion. What was

+the condition of human society _before_ totemic exogamy was evolved?

+Dr. Durkheim writes, "Many facts tend to prove that, at the beginning

+of societies of men, incest was not forbidden. Nothing authorises us

+to suppose that incest was prohibited before each horde (_peuplade_)

+divided itself into two primitive 'clans,' at least" (namely, what we

+now call "phratries"), "for the first form of the prohibition known to

+us, exogamy, everywhere appears as correlative to this organisation,

+and certainly this is not primitive. Society must have formed a compact

+and undivided mass before bisecting itself into two distinct groups,

+and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature" (of relationships)

+"confirm this hypothesis."[3]

+

+So far this is the ordinary theory. An undivided promiscuous horde,

+for reasons of moral reformation, or any other reason, splits itself

+into two exogamous "clans," or germs of the phratries. These, when they

+cease to be hostile (as they were on Dr. Durkheim's but not on Mr.

+Howitt's theory), peacefully intermarry, and become the phratries in a

+local tribe.

+

+Why did the supposed compact horde thus divide itself into two distinct

+hostile "clans," each, on Dr. Durkheim's theory, claiming descent from

+a different animal, the totem of each "clan"? Why were two bodies in

+the same horde claiming two different animal ancestors? Why were the

+two divisions in a common horde mutually hostile? That they _were_

+originally hostile appears when our author says that, at a given stage

+of advance, "the different totemic groups were _no longer_ strangers or

+enemies, one of the other."[4] Marriages, at this early period, must

+necessarily have been made by warlike capture, for the two groups were

+hostile, were exogamous, and, being hostile, would not barter brides

+peacefully. Women, therefore, we take it, could only be obtained for

+each group by acts of war. "Ages passed before the exchange of women

+became peaceful and regular. What vendettas, what bloodshed, what

+laborious negotiations were for long the result of this _regime_!"[5]

+

+But why were they exogamous, these two primary groups formed by the

+bisection of a previously undivided incestuous horde? Why could not

+each of the two groups marry its own women? There must have been a time

+when they were not exogamous, and could marry their own women, for

+they were only exogamous, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, because they were

+totemic, and they did not begin by being totemic. The totem, says Dr.

+Durkheim, in explanation of exogamy, is a "god" who is in each member

+of his group while they are in him. He is blood of their blood and soul

+of their soul.[6] This being so--as it is wrong to shed the blood of

+our kindred--a man of totem Emu, say, may not marry a maid of, say,

+totem Emu; he must seek a bride from the only other group apparently

+at this stage accessible, that is a maid of, say, totem Kangaroo.

+Presently all Kangaroos of a generation must have been Emus by female

+descent; all Emus, Kangaroos; for the names were inherited through

+women. The clans were thus inextricably blended, and neither had a

+separate territory, a point to be remembered.

+

+Manifestly the strange superstitious metaphysics of totemism must have

+occupied a long time in evolution. The sacredness of the totem is the

+result of a primitive "religiosity," Dr. Durkheim says, which existed

+before gods or other mythological personages had been developed. There

+is supposed by early man (according to our author) to be a kind of

+universal element of power, dreadful and divine, which attaches to

+some things more than to others, to some men more than to others, and

+to all women in their relations with men.[7] This mystic something

+(rather like the _Mana_ of the Maories, and the _Wakan_ of many North

+American tribes) is believed by each group (if I correctly understand

+Dr. Durkheim) to concentrate itself in their name-giving animal, their

+totem.[8] All tabu, all blood tabu, has in the totem animal its centre

+and shrine, in the opinion of each group. Human kinship, of Emu man to

+Emu woman, is, if I understand rightly, a corollary from their common

+kinship with the Emu bird; or rather the _sacredness_ of their kinship,

+not to be violated by marriage, is thus derived; an opinion which I

+share.

+

+How all this came to be so; _why_ each of two "clans" in one horde

+chose, or acquired, a given animal as the centre of the mysterious

+sacred atmosphere, Dr. Durkheim has not, so far, told us. Yet surely

+there must have been a reason for selecting two special animals, one

+for each of the two "clans," as _the_ tabu, _the_ totem, _the_ god.

+Moreover, as such a strange belief cannot be an innate idea of the

+human mind, and as this belief, with its corollaries, is, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory, the sole origin of exogamy, there must have been

+a time when men, not having the belief, were not exogamous, and when

+their sexual relations were wholly unregulated. They only came under

+regulation after two "clans" of people, in a horde, took to revering

+two different sacred animals, according to Dr. Durkheim.

+

+The totem, he says, is not only the god, but the ancestor of the

+"clan," and this ancestor, says Dr. Durkheim, is not a species--animal

+or vegetable--but is such or such an individual Emu or Kangaroo. This

+individual Emu or Kangaroo, however, is not alive, he is a creature of

+fancy; he is a "mythical being, whence came forth at once all the human

+members of the 'clan,' and the plants or animals of the totem species.

+Within him exist, potentially, the animal species and the human 'clan'

+of the same name."[9]

+

+"Thus," Dr. Durkheim goes on, "the totemic being is immanent in the

+clan, he is incarnate in each individual member of the clan, and dwells

+in their blood. He is himself that blood. But, while he is an ancestor,

+he is also a god, he is the object of a veritable cult; he is the

+centre of the clan's religion.... Therefore there is a god in each

+individual member of the clan (for the entire god is in each), and, as

+he lives in the blood, the blood is divine. When the blood flows, the

+god is shed" (_le dieu se repand_).

+

+All this, of course, was the belief (if ever it was the belief) when

+totemism was in its early bloom and vigour, for to-day a black will

+shoot his totem, but not sitting; and will eat it if he can get nothing

+else, and Mr. Howitt mentions cases in which he will eat his totem

+if another man bags it.[10] The Euahlayi, with female kin, eat their

+totems, after a ceremony in which the tabu is removed.[11] Totemism

+is thus decadent to-day. But "a totem is not a thing which men think

+they can dispose of at their will, at least so long as totemic beliefs

+are still in vigour.... A totem, in short, is not a mere name, but

+before all and above all, he is a religious principle, which is one and

+consubstantial with the person in whom it has its dwelling-place; it

+makes part of his personality. One can no more change one's totem than

+one can change one's soul...."[12] He is speaking of Arunta society on

+the eve of a change from female to male reckoning of descent.

+

+So far, the theory of Dr. Durkheim is that in a compact communal

+horde, where incest was not prohibited, one "clan" or division took to

+adoring, say, the Eagle Hawk, another set the Crow; to claiming descent

+each from their bird; to regarding his blood as tabu; to seizing

+wives only from the other "clan"; and, finally, to making peaceful

+intermarriages, each, exclusively, only from the other set, Eagle Hawk

+from Crow, Crow from Eagle Hawk. We do not learn why half the horde

+adored one, and the other half another animal. If the disruption of the

+horde produced two such "clans," "at least," there may have been other

+"clans," sets equally primal, as Lizard, Ant, Wallaby, Grub. About

+these we hear nothing more in the theory; the two "primary clans" alone

+are here spoken of as original, and are obviously the result of a mere

+conjecture, to explain the two phratries of animal name, familiar in

+our experience.

+

+No attempt is made to explain either why members of the _same_ horde

+chose _separate_ animal gods; or why--unless because of consequent

+religious differences--the two "clans," previously united, were now

+hostile; or why there were at first only two such religious hostile

+"clans"; or, if there were more, what became of the others.

+

+Meanwhile, we are not even sure that Dr. Durkheim does believe in a

+primary incestuous horde, when "Society must have formed a compact

+undivided mass ... before splitting into two distinct groups, and some

+of Morgan's tables of nomenclature corroborate this hypothesis."[13]

+It is true that Dr. Durkheim makes this assertion. But, in the same

+volume (i. p. 332), Dr. Durkheim tells us that Mr. Morgan's theory of

+obligatory promiscuity (a theory based, as we saw in Chapter II., on

+the terms of relationship) "seems to us to be definitely refuted."

+Again, Mr. Morgan, like Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer, regarded the

+savage terms for relationships as one proof of "group marriage,"

+or "collective marriage," including unions of the nearest of kin.

+(Compare our Chapter III.) But Dr. Durkheim writes, "The hypothesis of

+collective marriage has never been more than a last resource, intended

+to enable us to envisage these strange customs: but it is impossible

+to overlook all the difficulties which it raises ... this improbable

+conception."[14]

+

+Is it possible that, after many times reading the learned Professor's

+work, I misunderstand him? With profound regret I gather that he does

+not believe in the theory of "obligatory promiscuity" in an undivided

+horde, which I have supposed to be the basis of his system; a horde

+"in which there is nothing to show that incest was forbidden." That

+incest, in Mr. Morgan's theory, was "obligatory," I cannot suppose,

+because, if nobody knew who was akin to whom, nothing could compel a

+man to marry his own sister or daughter. I am obliged to fear that I

+do not understand what is meant. For Dr. Durkheim made society begin

+in a united solid _peuplade_, in which "there is no reason to suppose

+that incest was forbidden," and as proof he cited some of Mr. Morgan's

+tables of relationships. He then gave his theory of how exogamy was

+introduced into the "compact undivided mass." He next appears to reject

+this "mass," and Morgan's argument for its existence. Is there an

+inconsistency, or do I merely fail to understand Dr. Durkheim?

+

+Let us, however, take Dr. Durkheim's theory of a horde with

+"permissive" incest, split, for some reason, into two distinct hostile

+"clans" worshipping each its own "god," an animal; each occupying

+a different territory; reckoning by female kin; exogamous, and

+intermarrying. Such communities, exogamous, intermarrying, and with

+female descent, Dr. Durkheim uniformly styles "primary clans," or

+"elementary totemic groups."[15] It is obvious that they constitute,

+when once thoroughly amalgamated by exogamy and peaceful intermarriage,

+_a local tribe_, with a definite joint territory, and without _clan_

+territory. At every hearth, through the whole tribal domain, both

+clans are present; the male mates are, say, Eagle Hawks, the women and

+children are Crows, or _vice versa_. Neither "clan" as such "has any

+longer a territorial basis." "The clan," says Dr. Durkheim, "has no

+territorial basis." "The clan is an amorphous group, a floating mass,

+with no very defined individuality; its contours, especially, have no

+material marks on the soil."[16] This is as true as it is obvious.

+The clans, when once thoroughly intermixed, and with members of each

+clan present, as father, mother, and children, by every hearth, can,

+as clans, have no local limits, no territorial boundaries, and Dr.

+Durkheim maintains this fact Indeed, he distinguishes the clan from the

+tribe as being _non-territorial_.[17]

+

+Yet though he thus asserts what every one must see to be true, his

+whole theory of the origin of the totem kins ("secondary clans")

+within the phratries, and his theory (as we shall show later) of the

+matrimonial classes, rests on the contradictory of his averment. He

+then takes the line that the exogamous clans with female descent do, or

+did, possess definite separate territorial bases, which seems contrary

+to the passage where he says that they do not![18] He has reversed his

+position.

+

+We first gave Dr. Durkheim's statement as to how the totem kins (which

+he calls "secondary clans") came to exist within the phratries.

+

+"When a clan increases beyond a certain measure, its population cannot

+exist within the same space: it therefore throws off colonies, which,

+as they no longer occupy the same habitat with, nor share the interests

+of the original group from which they emerged, end by taking a totem

+which is all their own: thenceforth they constitute new clans."[19]

+Again, "the phratry is a primary clan, which, as it develops, has been

+led to segment itself into a certain number of secondary clans, which

+retain their sentiment of community and of solidarity."[20]

+

+All this is (as far as I can see), by Dr. Durkheim's own previous

+statement, impossible. A totemic clan, exogamous, with female descent,

+cannot, as a clan, overflow its limits of "space," for, as a clan,

+he tells us, it "has no territorial basis," no material assigned

+frontier, marked on the soil.[21] "One cannot say at what precise point

+of space it begins, or where it ends." The members of one "clan" are

+indissolubly blended with the members of the other "clan," in the local

+tribe. This point, always overlooked by the partisans of a theory that

+the various totem kins are segments of "a primary clan," can be made

+plain. By the hypothesis there are two "clans" before us, of which

+Eagle Hawk (male) always marries Crow (female), their children being

+Crows, and Crow (male) always marries Eagle Hawk (female), the children

+being Eagle Hawks. The _tribal_ territory is over-populated (the _clan_

+has no territory). A _tribal_ decree is therefore passed, that clan

+Eagle Hawk must "segment itself," and go to new lands. This decree

+means that a portion of clan Eagle Hawk must emigrate. Let, then,

+Eagle Hawk men, women, and children, to the amount of half of the clan,

+be selected to emigrate. They go forth to seek new abodes. In doing so

+the Eagle Hawk men leave their Crow wives at home; the Eagle Hawk women

+leave their Crow children, and Crow husbands; the Eagle Hawk children

+leave their Crow fathers. Not a man or woman in the segmented portion

+of clan Eagle Hawk can now have a wife or a husband, for they can only

+marry Crows. They all die out! Such is the result of segmenting clan

+Eagle Hawk.

+

+Yet the thing can be managed in no other way, for, if the emigrant

+Eagle Hawk men take with them their Crow wives and children, they

+cannot marry (unless men marry their daughters, Crows) when they

+become widowers, and unless Crow brothers marry Crow sisters, which is

+forbidden. Moreover, _this_ plan necessitates a segmentation, not of

+_clan_ Eagle Hawk, but of the _tribe_, which is composed of both Crows

+and Eagle Hawks. These conspicuous facts demolish the whole theory of

+the segmentation of a "clan" into a new clan which takes a new totem,

+though it would need two.

+

+Moreover, why should a tribal colony of two blended clans take, as

+would be absolutely necessary, two new totem names at all? We know not

+one example of change of totem name in Australia.[22] Their old totems

+were their gods, their flesh, their blood, their vital energies, by

+Dr. Durkheim's own definition. "The members of a clan literally deem

+themselves of one flesh, of one blood, and the blood is that of the

+mythic being" (the totem) "from which they are all descended."[23]

+How and _why_ then, should emigrants from "clans," say Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, change their gods, their blood, their flesh, their souls? To

+imagine that totems or even the descent of totems can be changed, by

+legislation, from the female to the male line, is, says Dr. Durkheim,

+"to forget that the totem is not a thing which men think they can

+dispose of at will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."[24]

+

+Our author goes on: "A totem, in fact, is not a mere name, it is, above

+all and before all, a religious principle, one with the individual in

+whom it dwells; and part of his personality. One can no more change his

+totem, than he can change his soul...."

+

+In that case, how did the supposed colonies thrown off by a segmented

+clan, manage to change their totems, as they did, on Dr. Durkheim's

+theory?[25] They lived in the early vigour of totemic beliefs, and

+during that blooming age of totemism, says Dr. Durkheim, "the totem is

+not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will," and yet, on

+his theory, they did dispose of it, they took new totems.[26]

+

+The supposed process seems to me doubly impossible by Dr. Durkheim's

+premises. A "clan," exogamous, with female kin, cannot overflow its

+territory, for it has confessedly, as a "clan," no delimitations of

+territory. Consequently a clan cannot throw off a colony (only a

+tribe can do that); therefore, as there can be no "clan" colony, the

+tribal colony cannot change its one totem, _for it has two_. Moreover,

+Dr. Durkheim says that there can be no such cavalier treatment of the

+totem: "Tant du moins que les croyances totemiques sont encore en

+vigueur." Yet he also says that the totems were thus cavalierly treated

+when totemic beliefs were in vigour.

+

+Dr. Durkheim, however, might reply: "A tribe with two 'clans' can throw

+off colonies, each colony necessarily consisting of members of both

+clans, and these can change their two totems." That might pass, if he

+had not said that, while totemic beliefs are in vigour, men cannot

+dispose of the totem, "a part of their personalities," at their will.

+

+One argument, based on certain facts, has been advanced to show

+that the totem kins in the phratries are really the result of the

+segmentation of a "clan" into new clans with new totems. This argument,

+however, breaks down on a careful examination of the facts on which it

+is based, though I did not see that when I wrote _Social Origins_, p.

+59, Note 1. The chief circumstance appealed to is this. The Mohegans

+in America have three phratries: (1) WOLF, with totem kins Wolf, Bear,

+Dog, Opossum; (2) TURKEY, with totem kins Turkey, Crane, Chicken;

+(3) TURTLE, with totem kins Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle,

+Yellow Eel. "Here we are almost forced to conclude," wrote Mr. Frazer

+in 1887, "that the Turtle phratry was originally a Turtle clan which

+subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a

+particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clan may have been a

+later subdivision."[27]

+

+Mr. Frazer has apparently abandoned this position, but it seems to

+have escaped his observation, and the observation of Dr. Durkheim, who

+follows him here, that in several cases given by himself the various

+species of totem animals are _not_ grouped (as they ought to be on the

+hypothesis of subdivision) under the headship of one totem of their own

+kind--like the three sorts of Turtle in the Mohegan Turtle phratry--but

+quite the reverse. They are found in the opposite phratry, under an

+animal not of their species.

+

+Thus Mr. Dawson, cited by Mr. Frazer, gives for a Western Victoria

+tribe, now I believe extinct:--

+

+      _Phratry A_.

+  Totem kins:

+    _Long-billed Cockatoo_.

+    Pelican.

+

+      _Phratry B_.

+  Totem kins:

+    _Banksian Cockatoo_.

+    Boa Snake.

+    Quail.

+

+The two cockatoos are, we see, in _opposite phratries_, not in the

+same, as they should be by Mr. Frazer's theory.[28]

+

+This is a curious case, and is explained by a myth. Mr. Dawson, the

+recorder of the case (1881) was a scrupulous inquirer, and remarks

+that it is of the utmost importance to be able to converse with the

+natives in their own language. His daughter, who made the inquiries,

+was intimately acquainted with the dialects of the tribes in the Port

+Fairy district. The natives collaborated "with the most scrupulous

+honesty." The tribes had an otiose great Being, Pirmeheeal, or Mam

+Yungraak, called also Peep Ghnatnaen, that is, "Father Ours." He is

+a gigantic kindly man, living above the clouds. Thunder is his voice.

+"He is seldom mentioned, but always with respect."[29] This Being,

+however, did not institute exogamy. The mortal ancestor of the race

+"was by descent a Kuurokeetch, or Long-billed Cockatoo." His wife was a

+female Kappatch (Kappaheear), or Banksian Cockatoo. These two birds now

+head opposite phratries. Their children could not intermarry, so they

+brought in "strange flesh"--alien wives--whence, by female descent,

+came from abroad the other totem kins, Pelican, Boa Snake, and Quail.

+Pelican appears to be in Long-billed Cockatoo phratry; Boa Snake in

+Banksian Cockatoo phratry. At least these pairs may not intermarry.

+Quail, as if both a phratry and a totem kin by itself, may intermarry

+with any of the other four, while only three kins are open to each

+of the other four.[30] In this instance a Cockatoo phratry has not

+subdivided into Cockatoo totem kins, but two species of Cockatoos head

+opposite phratries, and are also totem kins in their own phratries.

+

+In the same way, in the now extinct Mount Gambier tribe, the phratries

+are Kumi and Kroki. Black Cockatoo (Wila) is in Kroki; in Kumi is Black

+Crestless Cockatoo (Karaal).[31] By Mr. Frazer's theory, which he

+probably no longer holds, a Cockatoo primary totem kin would throw off

+other kins, named after various other species of Cockatoo, and become a

+Cockatoo phratry, with several Cockatoo totem kins. The reverse is the

+fact: the two Cockatoos are in opposite phratries.

+

+Again, among the Ta-ta-thi tribe, two species of Eagle Hawk occur as

+totems. One is in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), the other is in Crow

+phratry (_Kilpara_). This could not have occurred through Eagle Hawk

+"clan" splitting into other clans, named after other species of Eagle

+Hawk.[32]

+

+In the Kamilaroi phratries two species of Kangaroos occur as totem

+kins, but the two Kangaroo totem kins are in opposite phratries.[33]

+

+If Mr. Frazer's old view were correct, both species of Kangaroo would

+be in the same phratry, like the various kinds of Turtle in the Mohegan

+Turtle phratry. Again, in the Wakelbura tribe, in Queensland, there are

+Large Bee and Small or Black Bee _in opposite phratries_.[34]

+

+On Mr. Frazer's old theory, we saw, a phratry is a totem kin which

+split into more kins, having for totems the various species of the

+original totem animal. These, as the two sorts of Bees, Cockatoos,

+Kangaroos, and so on, would on this theory always be in the same

+phratry, like the various kinds of Mohegan Turtles. But Mr. Frazer

+himself has collected and published evidence to prove that this is far

+from being usually the case; the reverse is often the case. Thus the

+argument derived from the Mohegan instance of the Turtle phratry is

+invalidated by the opposite and more numerous facts. The case of the

+Mohegan Turtle phratry, with various species of Turtles for totem kins

+within it, is again countered in America, by the case of the Wyandot

+Indians. They have four phratries. If these have names, the names are

+not given. But the first phratry contains _Striped Turtle_, Bear, and

+Deer. The second contains _Highland Turtle, Black Turtle_, and _Smooth

+Large Turtle_. If this phratry was formed by the splitting of Highland

+Turtle into Black and Smooth Turtles, why is Striped Turtle in the

+opposite phratry?[35] The Wyandots, in Ohio, were village dwellers,

+with female reckoning of lineage and exogamy. If they married out of

+the tribe, the alien was adopted into a totem kin of the other tribe,

+apparently changing his totem, though this is not distinctly stated.[36]

+

+Thus Dr. Durkheim's theory of the segmentation of a primary totem

+"clan" into other "clans" of other totems is not aided by the facts

+of the Mohegan case, which are unusual. We more frequently find

+that animals of different species of the same genus are in opposite

+phratries than in the same phratry. Again, a totem kin (with female

+descent) cannot, we repeat, overpopulate its territory, for, as Dr.

+Durkheim says, an exogamous clan with female descent has no territorial

+basis. Nor can it segment itself without also segmenting its linked

+totem kin or kins, which merely means segmenting the local tribe. If

+that were done, there is no reason why the members of the two old

+"clans" in the new colony should change their totems. Moreover, in Dr.

+Durkheim's theory that cannot be done "while totemic beliefs are in

+vigour."

+

+To recapitulate our objections to Dr. Durkheim's theory, we say

+(i.) that it represents human society as in a perpetual state of

+segmentation and resegmentation, like the Scottish Kirk in the many

+secessions of bodies which again split up into new seceding bodies.

+First, we have a _peuplade_, or horde, apparently (though I am not

+quite sure of the Doctor's meaning) permitted to be promiscuous in

+matters of sex. (ii.) That horde, for no obvious reason, splits into

+at least two "clans"--we never hear in this affair of more than the

+two. These two new segments select each a certain animal as the focus

+of a mysterious impersonal power. On what grounds the selection was

+made, and why, if they wanted an animal "god," the whole horde could

+not have fixed on the same animal, we are not informed. The animals

+were their "ancestors"--half the horde believed in one ancestor, half

+in another. The two halves of the one horde now became hostile to each

+other, whether because of their divergence of opinion about ancestry or

+for some other reason, (iii.) Their ideas about their animal god made

+it impossible for members of the same half-horde to intermarry, (iv.)

+Being hostile, they had to take wives from each other by acts of war.

+(v.) Each half-horde was now an exogamous totem kin, a "primary clan,"

+reckoning descent on the female side. As thus constituted, "no clan has

+a territorial basis": it is an amorphous group, a floating mass. As

+such, no clan can overflow its territorial limits, for it has none.

+

+(vi.) But here a fresh process of segmentation occurs. The clan _does_

+overflow its territory, though it has none, and, going into new lands,

+takes a new totem, though this has been declared impossible; "the

+totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will, at

+least while totemic beliefs are in vigour." Thus the old "clans" have

+overflowed their territorial limits, though "clans" have none, and

+segments have wandered away and changed their totems, though, in the

+vigour of totemic ideas, men do not think that they can dispose of

+their totems at will, (vii.) In changing their totems, they, of course,

+change their blood, but, strange to say, they still recognise their

+relationship to persons not of their blood, men of totems not theirs,

+namely, the two primary clans from which they seceded. Therefore they

+cannot marry with members of their old primary clans, though these are

+of other totems, therefore, _ex hypothesi_, of different blood from

+themselves, (viii.) The primary clans, as relations all round grow

+pacific, become the phratries of a tribe, and the various colonies

+which had split off from a primary clan become totem kins in phratries.

+But such colonies of a "clan" with exogamy and female descent are

+impossible.

+

+If these arguments are held to prove the inadequacy of Dr. Durkheim's

+hypothesis, we may bring forward our own.[37]

+

+

+[1] _L'Annee Sociologique_ v. pp. 82-141.

+

+[2] Ibid., i. pp. 35-57.

+

+[3] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. pp. 62, 63.

+

+[4] Dr. Durkheim here introduces a theory of Arunta totemic magic.

+As he justly says, the co-operative principle--each group in a tribe

+doing magic for the good of all the other groups--cannot be primitive.

+The object of the magic, he thinks, was to maintain in good condition

+the totems, which are the gods, of the groups, and, indeed, "the

+condition of their existence." Later, ideas altered, ancestral souls,

+reincarnated, were the source of life, but the totemic magic survived

+with a new purpose, as Magical Co-operative Stores. But why have the

+more primitive tribes no totem magic? (_L'Annee Sociologique_, v. pp.

+117, 118, 119.)

+

+[5] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. p. 64.

+

+[6] Ibid., pp. 51, 52.

+

+[7] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. pp. 38-57.

+

+[8] Ibid., i. pp. 38-53; v. pp. 87, 88. "Le caractere sacre est d'abord

+diffus dans les choses avant de se concretiser sous la forme des

+personalites determines."

+

+[9] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. p. 51, and Note I.

+

+[10] For other rules see Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, pp.

+320-328.

+

+[11] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[12] _L'Annee Sociologique_, v. pp. 110, 111.

+

+[13] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. p. 63.

+

+[14] i. _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. p. 318.

+

+[15] _L'Annee Sociologique_, v. pp. 91, 92.

+

+[16] Ibid., i. p. 20.

+

+[17] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[18] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[19] L'Annee Sociologique, i. p. 6.

+

+[20] Ibid., v. p. 91.

+

+[21] Ibid., i. p. 20. The thing would only be possible if the two

+"clans" were not yet exogamous and intermarrying; but then they would

+not be "clans," by the definition!

+

+[22] In _Natives of South-East Australia_, pp. 215, 216, we hear on

+the evidence of "Wonghi informants" that members of the totems are

+allowed to change totems, "to meet marriage difficulties," and because

+in different ports of the tribal territory different animals, which

+act as totems, are scarce. The tribe, haring matrimonial classes, is

+not pristine, and, if the report be accurate, totemic ideas, from Dr.

+Durkheim's point of view, cannot be "still in their vigour."

+

+[23] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. p. 51.

+

+[24] Ibid., V. p. 110.

+

+[25] Ibid., i. p. 6.

+

+[26] In _Folk Lore_, March 1904, I criticised what I regard as an

+inconsistency in this part of Dr. Durkheim's theory. I here cite his

+reply textually, from _Folk Lore_, June 1904, pp. 215-216.

+

+REPONSE A M. LANG.

+

+"Dans le _Folk Lore_ de Mars, M. Lang, sous pretexte de se defendre

+contre mes critiques, m'attaque directement. Je suis donc oblige,

+a mon grand regret, de demander l'hospitalite du _Folk Lore_ pour

+les quelques observations qui suivent. Afin d'abreger le debat, je

+n'examinerai pas si M. Lang s'est justifie ou non de mes critiques, et

+me borne a repondre a celle qu'il m'a adressee.

+

+"M. Lang me reproche d'avoir renie ma propre theorie sur la nature du

+totem. J'aurais (L'Annee Sociologique, i. pp. 6 et 52) dit qu'un clan

+peut changer de totem et, dans la meme periodique (v. pp. 110, 111),

+j'aurais etabli qu'un tel changement est impossible. En realite, la

+seconde opinion qui m'est ainsi attribuee n'est pas la mienne et je ne

+l'ai pas exprimee.

+

+"En effet, je n'ai pas dit que groupes et individus ne pouvaient

+jamais changer de totem, mail, ce qui est tout autre chose, que _le

+principe de filiation totemique, la maniere dont le totem est repute

+se transmettre des parents aux enfants ne pouvait etre modifiee par

+mesure legislative, par simple convention_. Je cite les expressions que

+j'ai employees et que tait M. Lang: "Tant que, d'apres les croyances

+regnantes, le totem de l'enfant etait regarde comme une emanation

+du totem de la mere, il n'y avait pas de mesure legislative qui put

+faire qu'il en fut autrement." Et plus bas ("Les croyances totemiques)

+ne permettaient pas que _le mode_ de transmission du totem put etre

+modifie d'un coup, par un acte de la volonte collective." Il est

+clair, en effet, que si l'on croit fermement que l'esprit totemique

+de l'enfant est determine par la fait de la conception, il n'y a pas

+de legislation qui puisse decider qu'a partir d'un certain moment il

+aura lieu de telle facon et non de telle autre. Mais mon assertion

+ne porte que sur ce cas particulier. Et des changements de totems

+restent possibles dans d'autres conditions comme celles dont il est

+question dans le Tome I. de _L'Annee Sociologique_. J'ajoute que meme

+ces changements n'ont jamais lieu, a mon sens, par mesure legislative.

+J'ai, il est vrai, compare un changement de totem a un changement

+d'ame. Mais ces changements d'ames n'ont rien d'impossible (pour

+l'homme primitif) dans les conditions determinees. Seulement, ils ne

+sauraient avoir lieu par decret; or, c'est tout ce que signifiaient

+les quatre ou cinq mots incrimines par M. Lang. Leur sens est tres

+clairement determine par tout le contexte comme je viens de le montrer.

+En tout cas, apres les explications qui precedent, appuyees sur des

+textes, il ne saurait y avoir de doute sur ma pensee, et je considere

+par suite le debat comme clos. E. DURKHEIM."

+

+It distresses me that I am unable to understand Dr. Durkheim's defence.

+He does say (_L'An. Soc._ i. p. 6) that the colonies of "clans" too

+populous "to exist within their space" "end by taking a totem which

+is all their own, and thenceforth constitute new clans." He also does

+say that "the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of

+at their will,... at least so long as totemic beliefs are in vigour"

+(_L'An. Soc._ v. p. 110). But his hypothetical colonies _did_ "dispose

+of" their old totems "at their will," and took new totems "all their

+own," and that while "totemic beliefs were in their vigour." I was

+saying nothing about _le principe de filiation totemique_, nor was Dr.

+Durkheim when he spoke of clan colonies changing their totems. I print

+Dr. Durkheim's defence as others, more acute than myself, may find it

+satisfactory.]

+

+[27] Totemism, p. 62, 1887.

+

+[28] Totemism, p. 65, citing Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 26 _et

+seq_.

+

+[29] Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 49.

+

+[30] Ibid., pp. 26, 27.

+

+[31] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 168. Totemism, p. 85.

+

+[32] _J. A. I._, xiv. p. 349. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,

+p. 100. I do not know certainly whether Mr. Howitt now translates

+_Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_ as Eagle Hawk and Crow.

+

+[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 104.

+

+[34] Totemism, p. 85. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,

+p. 112.

+

+[35] Powell, Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, p. 60.

+

+[36] Op. cit., p. 68.

+

+[37] I have excised a criticism of Dr. Durkheim's theory of the modus

+by which "primary clans" segmented into secondary clans (_L'Annee

+Sociologique_, vi. pp. 7-34), because, since a clan, exogamous and

+with female reckoning of descent, cannot conceivably segment itself,

+as we have proved, my other arguments are as superfluous as they are

+numerous.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI

+

+THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

+

+

+      Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social

+      condition--Either men lived in male communities, each

+      with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living

+      alone with his female mates and children--His adolescent

+      sons he drove away--The latter view accepted--It

+      involves practical exogamy--Misunderstood by M. Salomon

+      Reinach--Same results would follow as soon as totems were

+      evolved--Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men,

+      of _the names_ of natural objects--Mr. Howitt states this

+      opinion--Savage belief in magical _rapport_ between men

+      and things of the same name--Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys

+      died for this fact--Theory of Dr. Pikler--Totemism arises

+      in the need of names to be represented in pictographs--But

+      the pictograph is later than the name--Examples of magic

+      of names--Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin

+      between themselves and objects of the same names--These

+      objects regarded with reverence--Hence totemic exogamy

+      merely one aspect of the general totem name--Group

+      names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members

+      of other local groups--Proof that such names may be

+      accepted and gloried in--Cases of _tribal_ names given

+      from without and accepted--Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of

+      names--His objection to our theory answered--Mr. Howitt's

+      objections answered--American and Celtic cases of derisive

+      nicknames accepted--Two Australian totem names certainly

+      sobriquets--Religious aspect of totemism--Results from a

+      divine decree--Other myths--Recapitulation.

+

+

+The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of

+kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and

+for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the

+kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be.

+Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two

+"phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No

+system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in

+the preceding critical chapters.

+

+In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have

+been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis

+as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career.

+Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's

+knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves

+that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt

+inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting

+methods must have forced men to live in _small_ separate groups. The

+members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and

+dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the

+associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for

+and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons,

+and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups

+necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could

+be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal

+horde of theory.

+

+Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his

+opinion as to their social condition.

+

+He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy

+of all Male Quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse in a state of

+Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the

+stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now

+exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in

+small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful,

+with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b)

+he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several

+wives, like the Gorilla--for all the natives agree that bat one adult

+male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes

+place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the

+others, establishes himself as head of the community.

+

+"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at

+last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding

+within the limits of the same family."[1]

+

+There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and

+the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all

+_compelled_ to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the

+case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own

+daughters.

+

+Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second

+hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so

+very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his

+women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.

+

+There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of

+male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),[2]

+and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to

+the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community

+would end in his second--given the jealousy and brutality and animal

+passions of early man, as postulated by him.

+

+On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small

+"family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose

+harem contains _all_ the young females in the group, would be

+necessarily exogamous in practice--for the younger male members. The

+sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and

+such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could,

+similar communities.

+

+With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now

+_conscious_, would become, "No marriage within this group of

+contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various

+"family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives,

+and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other

+similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was

+obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr.

+Atkinson, in his _Primal Law_.)[3]

+

+If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal

+state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional

+conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., _supra_), would still

+keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed

+communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the

+jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by

+preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This

+would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual

+separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can

+have no certainty.[4] Young males would thus be obliged to win mates,

+probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were

+so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as

+the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy,"

+No marriage within the totem name and blood."

+

+The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been

+sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group

+possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one

+blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr.

+Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred

+totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there

+must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us)

+that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that,

+or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek

+for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with

+animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the

+various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer

+remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of

+particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem

+possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed _the

+names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of

+totemism?_"[5] The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer

+which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for

+instance, need not have yet been developed.

+

+In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show

+that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal,

+unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly

+intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or

+early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief

+in a specially close and mystical _rapport_ between the totem animal or

+plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in

+that _rapport_ arise?

+

+Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the

+_name_ of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that

+name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief

+in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu,

+and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism

+begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.

+

+It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this--that the

+community of name, if it existed, _and if its origin were unknown_,

+would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection

+between all who bore it, men or beasts--can have escaped the notice of

+any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with

+its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted

+forty-two pages of his _Golden Bough_[6] to the record of examples of

+this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to

+the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time,

+not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that

+part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever

+you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on

+Welsh Fairies.[7] This opinion rests on philological analysis of the

+Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.[8] But, if

+the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul,

+then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There

+we have the _rapport_ between man and totemic animal for which we are

+seeking.

+

+Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage

+belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and

+things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same

+thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same

+name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That

+is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed

+when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets

+of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.

+

+This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the

+names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.[9] Men, says

+Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender

+schriftlich fixierbarer _Name_ von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They

+wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these

+communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the

+pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect,

+on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian

+villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.

+

+This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Mueller.[10] Mr. Max Mueller

+wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, _then_ (ii.) a clan name, then

+(iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name

+of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's

+theory.[11]

+

+It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use

+_before_, not as Mr. Max Mueller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems

+to think, _after_ its pictorial representation, "the clan mark."

+A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used

+the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late

+institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting

+up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart,"

+or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the

+scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He

+does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the

+signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must

+have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch,

+or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to

+understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture

+language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism

+certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die _Folge_ der Schriftart,

+der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."[12]

+

+The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before

+the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this

+advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of

+pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without

+writing, a _tribal_ name, such at least as are the _tribal_ names of

+the men who say _Wonghi_ or _Kamil_ when they mean "No," or of other

+tribes when they mean "What?"

+

+Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the _naming_," and here

+we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the

+naming is a consequence of the primitive _schriftteknik_," a result of

+the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known

+by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear,

+before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint,

+as [symbol], or of the Rain-cloud, as [symbol] or of the

+Bear's-foot, as [symbol] [13]

+

+So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; _naming is_ indeed the

+original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs

+which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not

+possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and

+accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,[14] in ages of

+philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a

+material connection between things and their names," and, in the same

+way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was

+an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving

+animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the

+name-giving animal.[15]

+

+Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion,

+but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for

+discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably,

+in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.[16]

+

+Thus, given a set of local groups[17] known by the names of Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were

+intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was,

+in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed

+mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name,

+is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical

+properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader

+has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already

+cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.

+

+In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, _Aritna

+Churinga_, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never

+to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group."

+To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as

+the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."[18]

+

+These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all

+students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in _Social

+Origins_. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather,

+for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for

+granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat

+that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in

+a mystic and transcendental connection of _rapport_. Other Australian

+examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically

+injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough

+Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this

+superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names

+to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the

+groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition

+about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would

+be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge

+of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have

+carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few

+American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but

+every one knows the real names.

+

+He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge

+to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known

+to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the

+full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal

+the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private

+essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all

+groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr.

+Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"[19] that is,

+with injurious intentions towards the person.

+

+Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally

+the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close

+must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides

+the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr.

+Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what

+beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of

+injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was

+"haunted by the impression that I had met examples."[20] Mr. Howitt,

+we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But

+it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only

+punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an

+enemy's totem.

+

+An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep _his_

+intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city

+of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course

+his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance,

+because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally

+known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some

+enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner--in other

+words, use it as an incantation."[21]

+

+Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic _rapport_

+between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be

+familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his

+secret name.

+

+This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as

+groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how

+they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was

+quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves,

+"What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals

+whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most

+important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the

+savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this

+assertion?

+

+Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and

+their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious

+acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such

+speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths,

+they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise

+nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving

+animals, the connection indicated by the name.

+

+Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably

+unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother

+and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may

+not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the

+Arunta are said not to understand them),[22] but the facts of blood

+connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape

+no human beings.[23] As savages undeniably do not draw the line between

+beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do,

+it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group

+name, and therefore _solidaire_ with the group, was united with it, as

+the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by

+the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother,

+or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and

+regard for the animal.

+

+Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally

+diffused beliefs about the _wakan_ or _mana_, or mystically sacred

+quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various

+totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its

+blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry

+a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any

+blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon

+clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So

+strong is the intertotemic avoidance.[24] The belief grew to the pitch

+that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (Greek: chresthai gynaiki),

+and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was

+established.[25]

+

+Unessential to my system is the question, _how_ the groups got animal

+names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got

+them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking,

+indicated an essential and mystic _rapport_ between each group and

+its name-giving animal. No more than these three things--a group

+animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection

+between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in

+the blood superstitions--was needed to give rise to all the totemic

+creeds and practices, including exogamy.

+

+Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups

+is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various

+myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would

+not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name

+denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between

+themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.

+

+In _Social Origins_ I ventured a guess as to how the group names first

+arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.[26] I showed

+that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and

+I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as

+in France--Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney--Starlings,

+Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names

+of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as

+Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyaenas,

+Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural

+England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be

+totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that

+animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "_not_ Eaters of"

+this or that.[27] I thus established the prevalence in human nature,

+among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In

+Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the

+inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or

+another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once

+attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will

+be discovered.

+

+I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the

+existence in the European class least modified by education of the

+tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle

+even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among

+individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not

+alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull,

+and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot,

+of course, _prove_ that their group animal-names were given thus from

+without, but the process is undeniably a _vera causa_, and does operate

+as we show.

+

+As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne

+by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."[28]

+Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory

+on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the

+difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for

+themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but

+why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one

+group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name

+for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks,"

+"barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders,

+and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We"

+are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men"--in

+their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not

+"we"), and we are something else to them; _we_ are not _they_; we all

+need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders,

+differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity

+felt in everyday life.

+

+That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and

+even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated

+in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from

+without), and in _Les Gueux, Huguenots,_ Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers,

+Cameronians ("_that nickname_," cries Patrick Walker (1720),

+"why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a

+nickname?")[29] I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland

+clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive

+nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given,

+accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.

+

+Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations,"

+that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the

+Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for

+"No," such as _Kamil_ (Kamilaroi), _Wira_ (Wirajuri), _Wonghi_ (Wonghi

+tribe), _Kabi_ (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were

+given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted

+from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi

+tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It

+is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to

+them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the

+tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."[30]

+There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do

+the French call themselves _Oui Oui_? Not much I but the natives of New

+Caledonia call them _Oui Oui_.[31]

+

+Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no

+reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without.

+Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and

+_wakan_, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among

+savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names

+were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood

+by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among

+the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in

+or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the

+savage ideas about animals.

+

+Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr.

+Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on

+"Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of

+mine. He says, "To adopt or _receive_ the name of an animal or plant,

+or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with

+the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to

+become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is

+exactly my own opinion. The very early groups _received_ animal names,

+I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed

+themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under

+the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a

+very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give

+many examples of the process from America.[32]

+

+It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely,

+that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But

+he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory.

+His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I

+prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I

+do _not_ prove that the villagers--styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows,

+and so on--accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice

+in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the

+modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very

+much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were

+cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names

+survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them

+gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are

+not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names

+and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to

+savages.

+

+A native of Dingley Dell may call all natives of Muggleton

+"Potato-grubs," and the Muggleton people, from time immemorial, may

+have called the Dingley Dell folk "Rooks." But, not being savages, they

+do not think--as Mr. Hill-Tout's savages do--that "to receive the name

+of an animal is to be under its protection, to become one with it in

+a very special and mysterious sense," and they do not, like savages,

+think nobly of grubs and rooks. The distinction is obvious, except to

+critics. Mr. Hill-Tout thus accepts my premises as regards savages

+and their ideas about names, but rejects my conclusion, because modern

+villagers do not reason like savages! As to villagers, my evidence

+was only meant to show the wide diffusion, from ancient Israel to the

+Orkneys, of the habit of giving animal names to village groups. For

+evidence of the effect which that habit would have on savages, I have

+now cited Mr. Hill-Tout himself. He has merely misunderstood a very

+plain argument,[33] which he advanced as representing his own opinion

+(pp. 64-66). But then Mr. Hill-Tout has a counter theory.

+

+Is my argument intelligible? A modern villager resents the bawling out

+of "Mouse" as he passes, Mouse being the collective nickname of his

+village, because he does not think nobly of Mice. The savage does think

+nobly of all animals, and so has no reason for resenting, but rather

+for glorying in, his totem name, whether Mouse or Lion. These facts

+were plainly asserted in _Social Origins_, p. 169, to no avail.

+

+Mr. Howitt, in his turn, does not approve of my idea, thus stated by

+him, that "the plant and animal names would be impressed upon each

+group from without, and some of them would stick, would be stereotyped,

+and each group would come to answer to its nickname." He replies--

+

+"To me, judging of the possible feelings of the ancestors of the

+Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most

+improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have

+given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which

+such names have been adopted."[34] Mr. Howitt, of course, could not

+possibly find kinships now adopting animal and other such names given

+from without, because all kinships where totemism exists have got such

+names already, and with the names a sacred body of customs. But does he

+suppose that the many local tribes calling themselves by their word for

+"No" (as _Kabi, Kamil, Wonghi,_ and so on), originally gave these names

+to themselves, saying, "We are the people who, when we mean 'No,' say

+'Wonghi'"? That seems to me hardly credible! Much more probably tribes

+who used Kamil or Kabi for "No" gave the name of _Wonghi_ to a tribe

+who used _Wonghi_ in place of their _Kamil_ or _Kabi_. In that case the

+tribes, as tribes, have adopted names given from without.

+

+Again, I consider that the feelings of that noble savage, the Red

+Indian, are at least as sensitive to insult as those of Mr. Howitt's

+blacks. Now it so happens that the Blackfoot Indians of North America,

+who apparently have passed out of totemism, have "_gentes_, a _gens_

+being a body of consanguineal kinsmen in the male line," writes Mr. G.

+B. Grinnell.[35] These clans, no longer totemic, needed names, and some

+of their names, at least, are most insulting nicknames. Thus we have

+Naked Dogs, Skunks, They Don't Laugh, Buffalo Dung, All Crazy Dogs,

+Fat Roasters, and--Liars! No men ever gave such names to their own

+community. In a diagram of the arrangement of these clans in camp, made

+about 1850, we find the _gentes_ of the Pi-kun'-I under such pretty

+titles as we have given.[36]

+

+To return from America to Australia, the Narrinyeri tribe, like the

+Sioux and Blackfeet, have reckoning of descent in the male line,

+and, like the Sioux, have local settlements (called "clans" by Mr.

+Howitt), and these local settlements have names. Does Mr. Howitt think

+it likely that one such "clan" called itself "Where shall we go?" and

+another called itself "Gone over there"?[37] These look to me like

+names given by other groups. Tribes, local groups ("clans"), and totem

+kins having names already, I cannot expect to show Mr. Howitt the names

+of such sets of people in the act of being given from without and

+accepted. But, as regards individuals, they "often have what may be

+called a nickname, arising from some strongly marked feature in their

+figures, or from fancied resemblance to some animal or plant."[38] The

+individuals "answer to" such nicknames, I suppose, but they cannot

+evolve, in a lifetime, respect for the plant or animal that yields the

+nickname, because they cannot forget how they come to bear it.

+

+Obvious at a glance as such replies to such objections are, it seems

+that they have not occurred to the objectors.

+

+If we want to discover clans adopting and glorying in names which are

+certainly, in origin, derisive nicknames, we find Clan Diarmaid, whose

+name, Campbell, means "Wry Mouth,"[38] and Clan Cameron, whose name

+means "Crooked Nose."[39] Moreover, South African tribes believe that

+tribal _siboko_, as Baboon and Alligator, may, and did, arise out of

+nicknames; for, as we have seen, their myths assert that nicknames are

+the origin of such tribal and now honourable names. I cannot prove, of

+course, that the process of adopting a name given from without occurred

+among prehistoric men, but I have demonstrated that, among all sorts

+and conditions of men in our experience, the process is a _vera causa_.

+

+Dismissing my theory, Mr. Howitt, in place of it, "could more easily

+imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed

+the idea of relationship with animals, or even with plants."[40] They

+might; a man, as in the case given, might dream of a lace lizard, and

+believe that he was one. He might even be named, as an individual,

+"Lace Lizard," but that does not help us. Totem names, as Mr. Fison

+insists, are, and always were, group names. But Mr. Howitt "gets no

+forrarder," if he means that the children of his Lace Lizard become a

+totem kin of Lace Lizards, for under a system of female descent the

+man's children would not be Lace Lizards. Does Mr. Howitt know of a

+single instance in a tribe with female kin where the children of a man

+who, on dream evidence, believed himself to be a Kangaroo, were styled

+Kangaroos? He must adopt the line of saying that, while totemism was

+being evolved, women did the dreaming of being Hakea flowers, Witchetty

+Grubs, Kangaroos, Emus, and so forth, and bequeathed the names to their

+children. But he will not find that process going on in any known

+instance, I fear.

+

+The processes of my hypothesis, though necessarily conjectural, are

+at least _verae causae_, are in human nature, as we know it. A curious

+new example of totems, certainly based on sobriquets not derived from

+animals, occurs among the Warramanga tribe of Central Australia.

+One totem kin is merely called "The Men" (_Kati_), the name which,

+in dozens of cases, a tribe gives to itself. Another totem kin is

+called "The Laughing Boys" (_Thaballa_), a name which is obviously

+a nickname, and not given from within. The _Thaballa_ have found it

+necessary to evolve a myth about descent from a giggling boy and his

+giggling playmates, and to practise magic for their behoof, as they are

+supposed not to be dead. All this has clearly been done by the Laughing

+Boy totem kin merely to keep themselves in line with other totem kins

+named from lower animal form.[41] _This_ totem name can have been

+nothing but a group nickname.[42]

+

+I have next to explain the nature of the superstitious regard paid by

+totemists to their name-giving animals.

+

+My guess, says Dr. Durkheim, is "difficult for those who know the

+religious character of the totem, the cult of which it is our object to

+explain. How could a sobriquet become the centre of a regular religious

+system?"

+

+Dr. Durkheim calls the system "religious," and adds that I "leave on

+one side this religious aspect of totemism: but to do so is to leave on

+one side the essential factor in the phenomenon to be explained."

+

+Now, as a matter of fact, I left no element of Australian totemism "on

+one side." I mentioned every totemic tabu and magical practice that

+was known to me. But I do not (it is really a mere question of words)

+describe the beliefs as "religious." Dr. Durkheim does; he describes

+them, as we saw, almost in the terms of the Creed of St. Athanasius.

+But I find, in Australia, no case of such religious usages as praying

+to, or feeding, or burying, the totem. Such really "religious" rites

+are performed, in Samoa, for example, where an animal, once probably a

+totem, is now regarded as the shrine or vehicle of an ancestral spirit,

+who has become a kind of god,[43] and, in Egypt, the animal gods had

+once, it seems all but certain, been totems. In Australia, to be sure,

+two totems, Eagle Hawk and Crow, were creators, in some myths. So far,

+totemic conceptions may be called "religious" conceptions, more or

+less, and if Dr. Durkheim likes to call totems "gods," as he does, he

+has a right to do so. The difference here, then, is one of terminology.

+

+We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really

+religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr.

+Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the

+aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that

+is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after

+animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed,

+nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these

+divisions _and the assumption of the animal names_, were in consequence

+of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil,

+given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."[44] "Any tradition

+of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes

+it to a supernatural agency."[45] Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence

+(always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious"

+character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the

+decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees

+given by Zeus to Minos.

+

+Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in

+_Social Origins_, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being

+or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby

+giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction.

+Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained

+the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a

+veritable religious system."[46]

+

+As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal

+institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the

+Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales.

+Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away,

+but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word

+Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few

+words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I

+think, a previous community of language.

+

+Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution

+of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back

+here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was

+a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about

+Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of

+his body--even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had

+a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he

+gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every

+one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men

+and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must

+never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far

+apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further

+confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the

+totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual

+totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the _wirreenuns_

+(sorcerers or medicine men), called his _yunbeai_, any hurt to which

+injures him, and which he may never eat--his hereditary totem he may."

+

+In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.

+

+Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the

+decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite

+other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the

+effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate

+marriage.[47] Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "_in the plural form_

+Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."[48] In fact, in

+the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the _Alcheringa_ men

+of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine,

+partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many

+mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual

+to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind

+of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.[49]

+

+Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the

+sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that _he_

+(Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in

+question.

+

+Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely

+decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or _Alcheringa_ female

+Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in

+an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up

+and went away as human beings in every direction."[50]

+

+Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes

+exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only

+be imagined by men living under exogamy already.

+

+In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth

+of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth

+is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul

+is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes

+hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The

+Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the

+souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children.

+As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor

+of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was

+evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they

+have a cult, obtain,... more or less religious. All these facts are

+universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess

+that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection

+between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually

+were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr.

+Frazer's _Totemism_.

+

+In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural

+cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so

+called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small

+fish, and a very small opossum." _These are but two out of seven kins,

+in one Australian tribe_. In the other five cases the totem kins,

+according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of

+course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.[51]

+

+_Enfin_, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic

+tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it

+matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They

+certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to

+explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term,

+"religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of

+totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving

+animals of groups, we next turn.

+

+So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of

+distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These

+became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten.

+The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between

+animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature

+of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men

+and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, _with

+animals_, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From

+these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.

+

+The nature and origin of the supposed connection or _rapport_ between

+each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way

+consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and

+with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern

+times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert

+Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that

+the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and

+Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or

+Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded

+a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay

+family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the

+MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat,

+in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the

+conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic,

+from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The

+Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, _the

+badge of a group, not of an individual_.... And even if it were first

+given to an individual, his family, _i.e._ his children, could not

+inherit it from him."[52] These are words of gold.

+

+

+[1] Darwin, _Descent of Man_, it pp. 361-363. 1871.

+

+[2] I do not extend conjecture to a period when "our human or

+half-human ancestors" may hare had a rutting season, like stags. Cf.

+Westermarck, _History of Human Marriage_, pp. 27, 28.

+

+[3] Here I cannot but remark on the almost insuperable difficulty of

+getting savants to understand an unfamiliar idea. M. Salomon Reinach

+writes, "Another theory (Atkinson, Letourneau) explains exogamy as

+the result of the sexual jealousy of the male, chief of the primitive

+group. (Cf. _L'Annee Sociologique_, 1904, pp. 407, 434.) He is supposed

+to have tabooed all the women of the clan, reserving them for himself.

+This conception of a chief not only polygamous but _omnigamous_"

+(_pasigamous_ must be meant!) "is founded on no known ethnological

+fact." (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 161, Note I, 1905.) Mr.

+Atkinson does not speak of a "clan" at all. The "clan," in French,

+American, and some English anthropologists' terminology, is a totem

+kin with exogamy and female reckoning of descent. Mr. Atkinson speaks,

+in the first instance, of "family groups," "the cyclopean family," and

+a sire with his female mates and children. Such a sire is no more and

+no less "omnigamous" than a Turk in his harem, except that, as his

+condition is "semi-brutish," his daughters (as in Panama, in 1699) are

+not tabooed to him. Ethnology cannot now find this state of things of

+course; it is a theory of Mr. Darwin's, based on the known habits of

+the higher mammals.

+

+[4] See Mr. Crawley's "_The Mystic Rose_" for this theory of sexual

+taboo.

+

+[5] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 153.

+

+[6] _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 404-446.

+

+[7] _Nineteenth Century_, xxx. p. 566 sq.

+

+[8] See examples in "Cupid and Psyche," in my _Custom and Myth_, and

+Mr. Clodd's _Tom Tid Tot_, pp. 91-93.

+

+[9] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_. Von Dr. Julius Pikler, Professor der

+Rechtsphilosophie an der Universitaet Budapest. K. Koffmann, Berlin,

+_s.a._ Apparently of 1900. This tract, "The Origin of Totemism,"

+written in 1899, did not come to my knowledge till after this chapter

+was drafted.

+

+[10] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, i. p. 201.

+

+[11] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 141, 142.

+

+[12] _Ursprung des Totemismus_, p. 7.

+

+[13] See Colonel Mallery on Pictographs, _Report of Bureau of

+Ethnology_, 1888-1889, pp. 56-61.

+

+[14] "From two inscriptions found at Elensis it appears that the names

+of the priests were committed to the depths of the sea, probably they

+were engraved on tablets of bronze or lead, and thrown into deep water

+in the Gulf of Salamis. ... A clearer illustration of the confusion

+between the incorporeal and the corporeal, between the name and its

+material embodiment, could hardly be found than in this practice of

+civilised Greece." (_Golden Bough_, 2, i p. 441.) Cf. Budge, _Egyptian

+Magic_, pp. 160-162, 1901. "The Egyptians regarded the creation as the

+result of the utterance of the name of the god Neb-er-tcher by himself

+Isis could not do her will on him till she learned the _name_ of the

+god Ra." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us that the great sky-dwelling

+Being of the Kaitish tribe "made himself and gave himself his name." He

+made himself very inadequately, according to the myth, which may rest

+on a false etymology, and the meaning of his name is not pretty, but

+it would not surprise one if, by uttering his name, he made himself.

+(_Northern Tribes_, p. 498.)

+

+[15] _Der Ursprung des Totemismus_, pp. 10, 11.

+

+[16] _Social Origins_, p. 138.

+

+[17] I am sure to be told that in Chapter III. I declared _local_

+totem groups to be the result of reckoning in the male line, and not

+primitive, and that, here, I make the primitive animal-named group

+local. My reply is that in this passage I am not speaking of _totem_

+groups, but of _local groups bearing animal names_, a very different

+thing. A group may have borne an animal name long before it evolved

+totemic beliefs about the animal, and recognised it as a totem. No

+group that was _not_ local could get a name to itself, at this early

+stage of the proceedings. The "local habitation" precedes the "name."

+

+[18] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 139.

+

+[19] _J. A. I._, p. 53, August 1888.

+

+[20] _Social Origins_, pp. 145, 146, and Note 1.

+

+[21] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 51. _South-Eastern Tribes_, p. 736.

+

+[22] Other tribes decidedly do understand. Can the _Churinga nanja_

+and reincarnation beliefs have set up nescience of obvious facts among

+the Arunta? "The children originate solely from the male parent, and

+only owe their infantine nurture to the mother," according to certain

+Australian tribes _with female descent_. (Howitt, _J. A. I._, 1882, p.

+502. _South-Eastern Tribes_, pp. 283, 284. So, too, the Euahlayi. Mrs.

+Langloh Parker's MS.)

+

+[23] Cf. _Golden Bough_, 2, i. pp. 360-362.

+

+[24] Dalton, _Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 254.

+

+[25] On this point of the blood tabu see Dr. Durkheim, _L'Annee

+Sociologique_, i. pp. 47-57. Also M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, vol.

+x. p. 65. The point was laid before me long ago by Mr. Arthur Platt,

+when he was editing the papers of Mr. J. F. McLennan. Dr. Durkheim

+charges me (_Folk Lore_, December 1903) with treating these tabus

+"vaguely" in _Social Origins_. I merely referred the reader more than

+once, as in _Social Origins_, p. 57, Note I, to Dr. Durkheim's own

+exposition, also to M. Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, x. p. 65. The theory

+of the sacredness of the blood is not absolutely necessary. The totem

+tabu often excludes all contact with the totem by the totemist.

+

+[26] The passage will be found in _Social Origins_, pp. 166-175.

+

+[27] _Social Origins_, pp. 295-301.

+

+[28] _Folk Lore_, December 1903, p. 423.

+

+[29] _Vindication of Cameron's Name_. "Saints of the Covenant," i. p.

+251.

+

+[30] _Northern Tribes_, p. 10, Note 2.

+

+[31] J. J. Atkinson. The natives call _us_ "White Men." We do not call

+ourselves "God dams," but Jeanne d'Arc did.

+

+[32] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, vol. ix., vii. pp. 64, 66.

+

+[33] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ut supra, pp. 96, 97.

+

+[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.

+

+[35] _Blackfoot Lodge Tales_, p. 208, 1893.

+

+[36] _Op. cit._, p. 225.

+

+[37] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 131.

+

+[38] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, p. 638.

+

+[39] Macbain, _Gaelic Etymological Dictionary_.

+

+[40] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 154.

+

+[41] _Northern Tribes_, pp. 207-210.

+

+[42] I am unable to understand how Mr. Howitt can say that he knows

+no Australian case of such nicknames being adopted. Mentioning Mr.

+Haddon's theory that groups were named each after its special variety

+of food, he says "this receives support from the fact that analogous

+names obtain now in certain tribes, _e.g._ the Yum." (_Op. cit._, p.

+154.) I understand Mr. Haddon to mean that these names were sobriquets

+given from without and accepted. If so, Mr. Howitt does know such cases

+after all. Unluckily he gives no instances in treating of Yuin names,

+unless names of individuals derived from their skill in catching or

+spearing this or that bird or fish are intended. These exist among

+the more elderly Kunai. (_Op. cit._, p. 738.) But Mr. Haddon was not

+thinking of such individual names of senior men, but of group names. On

+his theory Wolves and Ravens were so styled because wolves and ravens

+were their chief articles of diet.

+

+[43] See Turner's _Samoa_, and Mr. Tylor, _J. A. I._, N.S., i. p. 142.

+

+[44] _J. A. I._, August 1888, pp. 53, 54. Also volume xiii. p. 498.

+Cf., too _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 89, 488, 498.

+

+[45] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 67.

+

+[46] _Bureau of Ethnology Report_, 1892, 1893, Part I. pp. 22, 23.

+Howitt, _Organisation of Australian Tribes_, p. 134 Information from

+Mrs. Langloh Parker. These sources give Menomini, Dieri, Murring,

+Woeworung, and Euahlayi myths, attributing totemic rules and names to

+divine institution.

+

+[47] Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 25.

+

+[48] _J. A. I._, 1888, p. 498. Cf. _Native Tribes of South-East

+Australia_, pp. 482-484. Mura-Mura, till further notice, are mythical

+ancestors, not reincarnated.

+

+[49] _Making of Religion_, p. 232, 1898.

+

+[50] _Assoc. Adv. Science_, p. 531, and Note 30, 1902. For other

+discrepant myths, cf. _Native Tribes of S.E. Australia_, pp. 475, 482.

+

+[51] Grey, _Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-Western Australia_.

+That only two of seven totems in one tribe were explained is usually

+overlooked.

+

+[52] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 165, 1880.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII

+

+RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

+

+

+      How phratries and totem kins were developed--Local

+      animal-named groups would be exogamous--Children in these

+      will bear the group names of their mothers--Influence of

+      tattooing--Emu _local_ group thus full of persons who

+      are Snipes, Lizards, &c--_by maternal descent_--Members

+      are Emus _by local group name_: Snipes, Lizards, &c,

+      by _name of descent_--No marriage, however, within

+      local group--Reason, survival of old tabu--Reply to

+      Dr. Durkheim--The names bring about peaceful relations

+      between members of the different local groups--Tendency

+      to peaceful betrothals between men and women of the

+      various local groups--Probable leadership of two strong

+      local groups in this arrangement--Say they are groups

+      Eagle Hawk and Crow--More than two such groups sometimes

+      prominent--Probable that the dual alliance was widely

+      Imitated--The two chief allied local groups become the

+      phratries--Tendency of phratries to die out--Often

+      superseded by matrimonial classes--Meaning of surviving

+      phratry names often lost, and why--Their meaning known

+      in other tribes--Members, _by descent_, of various animal

+      names, within the old local groups (now phratries),

+      become the totem kins of to-day--Advantages of this

+      theory--Difficulties which it avoids.

+

+

+We have perhaps succeeded in showing how totemism my have become a

+belief and a source of institutions: we have shown, at least, that

+granting savage methods of thought, totemism might very naturally have

+come in this way.

+

+Totemism certainly arose in an age when, if descent reckoned, and,

+if names were inherited, it was on the spindle side. "_All abnormal

+instances,_" writes Mr. Howitt, "_I have found to be connected with

+changes in the line of descent_. The primitive and complete forms" (of

+totemism) "have uterine descent, and it is in cases where descent

+is counted in the male line that I find the most abnormal forms to

+occur."[1]

+

+As few scholars seriously dispute this opinion of Mr. Howitt, based

+on a very wide experience, and fortified by the almost universal view

+that descent was reckoned, when totemism began, in the female line,

+and as the point is accepted by every author whose ideas I have been

+discussing, we need not criticise hypotheses which assume that totemism

+arose when descent was reckoned in the male line, or that totems arose

+out of personal manitus of males, transferred to the female line.

+

+Now, granting that our system so far may afford a basis of argument, we

+have to show how the phratries and the totem kins within them might be

+logically and naturally developed.

+

+If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of

+Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a

+_sacred_ sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical

+rule would be that of the jealous Sire, "No males to touch the females

+in my camp," with expulsion of adolescent sons. In efflux of time

+that rule, become habitual, would be, "No marriage within the local

+group." Next, let the local groups receive names, such as Emus, Crows,

+Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, "No marriage within the local

+group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe." But, if the primal

+groups were not exogamous, they would become so, as soon as totemic

+myths and tabus were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other

+names of small local groups.

+

+The natural result will be that all the wives among the _local_ groups

+called Snipes will come to bear names other than Snipe, will come

+to be known by the names of the _local_ groups from which they have

+been acquired. These names they will retain, I suggest, in local group

+Snipe, by way of distinction--as the Emu woman, the Opossum woman, and

+so forth. The Emus know the names of the groups from which they have

+taken women, and it seems probable enough that the women may even have

+borne tattoo marks denoting their original groups, as is now in some

+places the Australian practice. "It probably has been universal," says

+Mr. Haddon.[2]

+

+If, then, the stranger women among the Emus are known, in that local

+group, as the Opossum woman, the Snipe woman, the Lizard woman; their

+children in the group might very naturally speak of each other as "the

+Snipe woman's, the Lizard woman's children," or more briefly as "the

+little Snipes," "the young Lizards," and so on. I say "might speak,"

+for though totem names have the advantage of being easily indicated,

+and in practice are often indicated by gesture language, I take it that

+by this time man had evolved language.[3]

+

+In course of time, by this process (which certainly did occur, though

+at how early a stage it came first into being we cannot say), each

+_local_ group becomes heterogeneous. Emu _local_ group is now full of

+members of Snipe, Lizard, and other animal-named members _by maternal

+descent_. There are thus what Mr. Howitt has called "Major totems"

+(name-giving animals of local groups), and "Minor totems" (various

+animal names of male and female members within, for example, _local_

+group Emu, these various animal names being acquired _by female

+descent_). Each member of a local Emu group is now Emu by local group;

+but is Snipe, Lizard, Opossum, Kangaroo, or what not, by _name of

+maternal descent_.

+

+This theory is no original idea, it is Mr. McLennan's mode of

+accounting for the heterogeneity of the local group. They are not all

+Wolves, for example, where descent is reckoned in the female line, and

+exogamy is the rule. In the local group Wolf are Ravens, Doves, Dogs,

+Cats, what you will, names derived by the children from mothers of

+these names. I do not pretend that I can demonstrate the existence of

+the process, but it accounts for the facts and is not out of harmony

+with human nature. Can any other hypothesis be suggested?

+

+When things have reached this pitch, each local group, _if it

+understood the situation as it is now understood among most savages_,

+might find wives peacefully in its own circle. Lizard man, in _local_

+group Emu, might marry Snipe woman also in _local_ group Emu, _as far

+as extant totem law now goes_. They were both, in fact, members of a

+small local _tribe_ of animal name, with many kins of animal names,

+by female descent, within that tribe. Why then might not Snipe (by

+descent) in Emu _local_ group marry a woman, by descent Lizard, in

+the same Emu _local_ group? Many critics have asked this question,

+including Dr. Durkheim.[4] I had given my answer to the question before

+it was asked,[5] backing my opinion by a statement of Dr. Durkheim

+himself. People of different totems in the same _local_ group (say Emu)

+_might_ have married; but then, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another

+case, "the old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs,

+survives."[6] "Now the old prohibition in this case was that a man of

+the Emu (_local_) group was not to marry a woman of the Emu (_local_)

+group. That rule endures, even though the Emu group now contains men

+and women of several distinct and different totem kins," that is to

+say, of different animal-named kins _by descent_.

+

+I may add that, as soon as speculation about the animal names led to

+the belief in the mystic _rapport_ between the animals and their human

+namesakes, and so led to tabu on the intermarriage of persons of the

+same animal name, the tabu would attach as much to the name-giving

+animal of the _local_ group as to the animals of the kins _by descent_

+within that _local_ group.

+

+Thus Lizard man, in Emu local group, cannot marry Snipe woman in the

+same. Both are also, by _local_ group name, Emus. He is Emu-Lizard, she

+is Emu-Snipe.

+

+If it be replied that now no regard is paid by the members of a phratry

+to their phratriac animal (where it is known), I answer that the

+necessary _poojah_ is done, by the members of the totem kin of that

+animal, within his phratry, while all do him the grace of not marrying

+within his name.[7] A Lizard man and a Snipe woman in Emu _local_ group

+could not, therefore, yet marry. The members of the local group, though

+of different animal names _of descent_, had still to ravish brides from

+other hostile _local_ groups.

+

+Each _local_ group was now full of men and women who, _by maternal

+descent_, bore the same animal names as many members of the other

+_local_ groups. A belief in a mystic _rapport_ between the bearers of

+the animal names and the animals themselves now being developed, Snipe

+and Lizard and Opossum _by descent_, in Emu _local_ group, must already

+have felt that they were not really strangers and enemies to men of

+the same names _by descent_, Snipe, Lizard, and Opossum, and of the

+same connection with the same name-giving animals, in Kangaroo _local_

+group, or any other adjacent _local_ group.

+

+This obvious idea--human beings who are somehow connected with the

+same animals are also connected with each other--was necessarily an

+influence in favour of peace between the local groups. In whatever

+_local_ group a Snipe by descent might be, he would come to notice a

+connection between himself and Snipes _by descent_ in all other _local_

+groups. Consequently men at last arranged, I take it, to exchange

+brides on amicable terms, instead of Snipe _by descent_ risking the

+shedding of kindred blood, that of another Snipe _by descent_, in the

+mellay of a raid to lift women from another _local_ group.

+

+If two strong local groups, say Emu and Kangaroo, or Eagle Hawk and

+Crow, took the lead in this treaty of alliance and _connubium_, and if

+the other local groups gradually came into it under their leadership

+(for union would make Eagle Hawk and Crow powerful), or if several

+local groups chose two such groups to head them in a peaceful exchange

+of brides, we have, in these two now united and intermarrying local

+groups of animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, the primal forms of the

+actual phratries of to-day.

+

+But why do we find in a tribe only two phratries? I have asked myself

+and been asked by others. In the first place, in America, we note

+examples of three or more phratries in the same tribe. Again, in

+Australia, we seem to myself to find probable traces of more than two

+phratries in a tribe, traces of what Mr. Frazer styles "sub-phratries,"

+what one may call "submerged phratries" (see Chapter X.). Further, dual

+alliances are the most usual form of such combinations: two strong

+groups, allied and setting the example, would attract the neighbouring

+groups into their circle. Finally, if I am right in thinking that the

+phratriac arrangement arose in a given centre, and was propagated

+by emigrants, and was borrowed by distant tribes (which is a point

+elsewhere discussed), the original model of a dual alliance would

+spread almost universally, while, as has been said, traces of more

+numerous combinations appear to occur.

+

+Except as parties of old to a peaceful arrangement, the phratries, as

+they at present exist (where they exist), have often now no reason for

+existence. Where totems are exogamous, or where totems and matrimonial

+classes exist, the phratry is now an empty survival; having done its

+work it does no more work, and often vanishes. If members of _local_

+animal-named groups, become fully totemic, had at once understood their

+own position as under the now existing totem law, they could have taken

+wives of different totems _of descent_ each in their own group, without

+any phratries at all. People manage their affairs thus in all totemic

+parts of the world where there are no phratries, though, for what we

+know, phratries may have existed, and vanished, in these places, when

+their task was ended.

+

+Again, phratries die out, we repeat, even in America and Australia. In

+some regions of Australia their place has been taken by the opposed

+matrimonial classes, prohibiting marriage between mothers' and

+sons', fathers' and daughters' generations. That arrangement, as it

+is not found in the most primitive Australian tribes, which have only

+phratries and totems, must be later than phratries and totems. It was

+a later enactment, within the phratry, and, as among the Arunta and

+Wiraidjuri, it has now superseded the phratry. The matrimonial classes,

+originally introduced within each pre-existing phratry, now regulate

+marriage, among Arunta and Wiraidjuri, and the phratry has dropped off,

+its name being unknown, like the flower which has borne its fruit.

+

+Again, in Australia, as has been said, we shall try to show that

+phratries, in many tribes, are perhaps a _borrowed_ institution, not

+an institution independently evolved everywhere. That is rendered

+probable because, among many tribes, the phratry names survive but are

+now meaningless, yet these same phratry names possess, or have recently

+possessed, a meaning in the language of other tribes, from whom the

+institution may apparently (though not necessarily) have been borrowed

+with the foreign names of each phratry.

+

+For all these reasons, phratries seem, in some regions, to be a

+device adopted, by some tribe, or tribes, at a given moment, for a

+given purpose (peace), and borrowed from them by some other tribes,

+or propagated by emigrants into new lands. Men might borrow the

+_names_ of the phratries, or might use other names which were already

+current designations of their own local groups. The purpose of the

+phratry organisation, I argue, may have been the securing of peace

+and alliance, and the movement may have been originated, somewhere in

+Australia, by two powerful local groups of animal name; in one vast

+region known as Eagle Hawk and Crow, Mukwara and Kilpara, and by

+other names of the same meaning. Such I take to have been the mode

+in which phratries arose, out of the alliance and _connubium_ of two

+local groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow; or of more than two groups. Mr.

+Frazer says that the Moquis of Arizona have ten phratries (quoting

+Bourke, _Snake Dance_, p. 336) and the Wyandots have four; the Mohegans

+have three.[8] These, or other groups, took the lead in recognising

+the situation, namely, that brides might be peacefully exchanged among

+_local_ groups becoming conscious of common kinship in their totems _by

+descent_.

+

+Meanwhile, in the various otherwise animal-named members of _local_

+groups Eagle Hawk and Crow--in the men and women within _local_ groups

+Eagle Hawk and Crow who were Snipes, Lizards, Opossums, and so on, _by

+maternal descent_--we have the forerunners of the totem kins within the

+phratries of to-day. In the same way, members of all other adjacent

+_local_ groups could also come into Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries by

+merely dropping their _local_ group-names, keeping their names by

+_descent_.

+

+We have not, on this system, to imagine that there were but two

+totem groups in each district, at the beginning (a thing unlikely to

+happen anywhere, still less always and everywhere), and that many of

+their members, hiving off, took new totem names. Our scheme gives us,

+naturally, and on Mr. Darwin's lines, first, many small local groups,

+perhaps in practice exogamous; then these local groups invested with

+animal names; then, the animals become totems, sanctioning exogamy;

+then by exogamy and female descent, each animal-named _local_ group

+becomes full of members of other animal names _by descent_; then an

+approach to peace among all the groups naturally arises; then pacific

+_connubium_ between them all, at first captained by two leading local

+groups, say Crow and Eagle Hawk (though there is no reason why there

+should not have been more of such alliances in a tribe, and there are

+traces of them),[9] and, lastly, the allies prevailing, the inhabitants

+of a district became an harmonious tribe, with two phratries (late

+_local_ groups), say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and with the other old

+local group-names represented in what are now the totem kins within

+the phratries. This arrangement, in course of time, is perhaps even

+borrowed, foreign phratry names and all, by distant groups hitherto not

+thus organised.

+

+This scheme, it will be observed, is in harmony with what Mr.

+Howitt's knowledge of native life shows him to have occurred. From

+the beginning, in the physical conditions of Australia, no horde or

+communal mob could keep together, for lack of supplies. No assemblage

+"could assume dimensions more than that of a few members," before it

+was broken up by economic causes.[10] There were thus, in a district,

+many small groups, not, as on Dr. Durkheim's theory, just two groups,

+broken out of a larger horde by their unexplained religious devotion

+each to its own god, an animal, say Eagle Hawk for one group, Crow

+for the other. On the other hand, there was now an indefinite number

+of small _local_ groups, each of animal name, each containing members

+of as many names _of descent_ as the local groups from which each

+local group had taken wives. Such groups would now be larger than mere

+hearth-circles, in proportion as improved skill in fishing, net-making,

+spearing, and trapping animals, and in selecting and cooking edible

+vegetables and roots, with improved implements, enabled larger groups

+to subsist in their territorial area. This scheme is manifestly

+consistent with the probable economic and social conditions, while

+the animal group-names are explained by the necessity under which the

+groups lay to differentiate each other by names. The regard later paid

+to the name-giving animals as totems is explained, on the ground of the

+savage theory of the mystical quality of names of unknown origin, names

+also borne by animals, powerful, wise, mysterious creatures.

+

+These processes must have occupied long ages in evolution.

+

+This hypothesis escapes the difficulty as to how an incestuous horde,

+guided by an inspired medicine man, could ever come to see that there

+was such a thing as incest, and that such a thing ought not to be

+tolerated. We also escape Dr. Durkheim's difficulty--How did two

+hostile sects of animal worshippers arise in the "compact mass" of the

+horde; and how could they, though of one blood, claim separate origins?

+We also see how totem kins could occur within the phratries, without

+needing to urge alternately that such kins both do and do not possess

+a territorial basis. Again, we have not to decide, what we can never

+know, whether man was _originally_ gregarious and promiscuous or not.

+We see that circumstances forced him to live in groups so small that

+the jealous will of the Sire or Sires could enforce exogamy on the

+young members of the camp, a prohibition which the natural conservatism

+of the savage might later extend to the members of the animal-named

+local group, even when heterogeneous. However heterogeneous by descent,

+all members of the local group were, by habitat, of one animal name,

+and when tabus arose in deference to the sacred animal, these tabus

+forbade marriage whether in the animal-named local group, or in the

+animal name of descent.

+

+So far, the theory "marches," and meets all facts known to us, in

+pristine tribes with female descent, phratries, and totem kins, but

+without "matrimonial classes," four or eight. The theory also meets

+facts which have not, till now, been recognised in Australia, and which

+we proceed to state.

+

+

+

+[1] _Rep. Reg. Smithsonian Institute_, p. 801, 1883.

+

+[2] _Evolution in Art_, pp. 252-257.

+

+[3] "This question, Minna Murdu?" ("What totem?") "can be put by

+gesture language, to which, in the same way, a suitable reply can be

+made." (Mr. Howitt, on the Dieri. _Rep. Reg. Smith. Institute_, p. 804,

+Note I, 1883.)

+

+[4] _Folk Lore_, December 1903.

+

+[5] _Social Origins_, p. 56, Note 1.

+

+[6] _L'Annee Sociologique_, v. p. 106, Note I.

+

+[7] The Kamilaroi are said to offer exceptions to this rule.

+

+[8] _Totemism_, pp. 60-62. We must remember that American writers use

+the word "phratry" in several quite different senses; we cannot always

+tell what they mean when they use it.

+

+[9] If the Urabunna rules are correctly reported on, they may have

+several "sub-phratries."

+

+[10] _J. A. I._, xii. p. 497.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII

+

+A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

+

+

+      On our theory, in each phratry there should be a totem kin

+      of the phratry name--If not, fatal to Dr. Durkheim's and

+      Mr. Frazer's theories, as well as to ours--The fact occurs

+      in America: why not in Australia?--Questions asked by Mr.

+      Thomas--The fact, totem kins of phratriac names within

+      the phratries, _does_ occur in Australia--The fact not

+      hitherto observed--Why not observed--Three causes--The

+      author's conjecture--Evidence proving the conjecture

+      successful--Myth favouring Mr. Fraser's theory--Another

+      myth states the author's theory--_Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_

+      remain, as phratry names, among many tribes which give

+      other names to Eagle Hawks and Crows--The Eagle Hawk,

+      under another name, is totem in _Mukwara_ (Eagle Hawk)

+      phratry--The Crow, under another name, is a totem

+      _Kilpara_ (Crow) phratry--Thus the position is the same as

+      in America--List of examples in proof--Barinji, Barkinji.

+      Ta-ta-thi, Keramin, Wiraudjuri, and other instances--Where

+      phratry names are lost--Eagle Hawk and Crow totems are

+      still in _opposite_ phratries--Five examples--Examples of

+      Cockatoo-named phratries, each containing its own Cockatoo

+      totem--Often under new names--Bee phratries with Bee

+      matrimonial classes--Cases of borrowed phratry and class

+      names--Success of our conjectures--Practical difficulty

+      caused by clash of old and new laws--Two totem kins cannot

+      legally marry--Difficulty evaded--These kins change their

+      phratries--Shock to tender consciences--Change takes the

+      line of least resistance--Example of a change to be given.

+

+

+On the theory propounded in the last chapter, the lead in making

+peaceful alliance and _connubium_ between exogamous groups previously

+hostile, was probably taken, and the example was set, or the allies

+were captained, by two or in some cases more of the exogamous

+animal-named local groups themselves. Such leading groups, by our

+theory, in time became the two phratries of the tribe. If this were the

+case, these two kins, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, or, among the Thlinkets

+in America, Wolf and Raven, should be found to-day among the totem

+kins, should exist not only as names of phratries, but as names of

+totem kins _in_ the phratries. If they are not so found, it will prove

+a serious objection, not only to our hypothesis, but to that of Dr.

+Durkheim, and (at one time at least) of Mr. J. G. Frazer. Their theory

+being that two primary totem kins sent off colonies which took new

+totem names, and that the primary kins later became phratries, in the

+existing phratries we should discover totem kins of the phratry names,

+say, totem kin Raven in Raven phratry, and totem kin Wolf in Wolf

+phratry. This phenomenon has been noted in America, but only faintly

+remarked on, or not at all observed, in Australia.

+

+Why should there be this difference, if it does exist, in the savage

+institutions of the two continents? The facts which, on either

+theory--Dr. Durkheim's or my own--were to be expected, are observed in

+America; in Australia they have only been noticed in two or three lines

+by Mr. Howitt, which have escaped comment by theorists. When once we

+recognise the importance of Mr. Howitt's remark, that in some phratries

+the animals of phratry names "are also totems," we open a new and

+curious chapter in the history of early institutions.

+

+As to America, both Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim observe that "among the

+Thlinkets and Mohegans, each phratry bears a name which is also the

+name of one of the clans," thus the Thlinkets have a Wolf totem kin

+in Wolf phratry; a Raven totem kin in Raven phratry. Mr. Frazer adds,

+"It seems probable that the names of the Raven and Wolf were the two

+original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards, by subdivision,

+became phratries."[1]

+

+We have seen the objections to this theory of subdivision (Chapter V.

+_supra_), in discussing the system of Dr. Durkheim, who, by the way,

+gives two entirely different accounts of the Thlinket organisation in

+three successive pages; one version from Mr. Morgan, the other more

+recent, and correct, from Mr. Frazer.[2] Wolf and Raven do not appear

+in Mr. Morgan's version.[3]

+

+If Mr. Frazer's view in 1887 and Dr. Durkheim's are right, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow phratries, say, are in Australia examples of the primary

+original totem kins, and as totem kins they ought to remain (as Raven

+and Wolf do among the Thlinkets), after they become heads of phratries.

+Again, if I am right, the names of the two leading local groups, after

+becoming phratries, should still exist to this day in the phratries, as

+names of totem kins. This is quite obvious, yet except in the Thlinket

+case, the Haida case, and that of the Mohegans, we never (apparently)

+have found--what we ought always to find--within the phratries two

+totem kins bearing the same animal names as the phratries bear. Why

+is this? What has become of the two original, or the two leading local

+animal-named groups and totem kins? Nobody seems to have asked this

+very necessary question till quite recently.[4]

+

+What has become of the two lost totem kins?

+

+Mr. Thomas's objection to an earlier theory of mine, in which the two

+original totem kins were left in the vague, ought to be given in his

+own words: "Mr. Lang assumes" (in _Social Origins_) "that the animals

+of the original connubial groups" (phratries) "did not become totems,

+and, consequently, that there were no totem kins corresponding to

+the original groups. This can only have taken place if a rule were

+developed that men of Emu" (local) "group might not marry women of the

+Emu kin, and _vice versa_. This would involve, however, a new rule

+of exogamy distinct from both group (local) and kin (totem) bars to

+marriage. This must have come about either (a) because the Emu kin

+were regarded as potentially members of the Emu group (an extension of

+group exogamy, the existence of which it would be hard to prove), or

+(b) because the Emu group or Emu kin were (legally) kindred, and as

+such debarred from marrying. ... In either case, on Mr. Lang's theory,

+two whole kins were debarred from marriage or compelled to change

+their totems" (when phratries arose). "I do not know which is less

+improbable."

+

+Certainly the two kins could not change their totems, and certainly

+they would not remain celibate.

+

+Meanwhile the _apparent_ disappearance in Australia of the two

+original, or leading, totem kins, of the same names as the phratries,

+is as great a difficulty to Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old theory

+as to my own, only they did not observe the circumstance.

+

+How vanished the totem kins of the same names as the phratries? I

+answer that they did not vanish at all, and I go on to prove it.

+The main facts are very simple, the totem kins of phratry names in

+Australia are often in their phratries. But at a first glance this is

+not obvious. The facts escape observation for the following reasons:--

+

+(1) In most totemic communities, except in Australia and in some

+American cases, there are no phratries, and consequently there is no

+possible proof that totem kins of the phratriac names exist, for we do

+not know the names of the lost phratries.

+

+(2) In many Australian cases, such as those of the Wiraidjuri and

+Arunta, the phratries have now no names, and really, as phratries, no

+existence. Dual divisions of the tribes exist, but are known to us by

+the names of the four or eight "matrimonial classes" (a relatively late

+development)[5] into which they are parcelled, as, among the Arunta,

+Panunga, Bukhara, Purula, Kumara.[6]

+

+We cannot therefore say in such cases, that the totem kins of phratriac

+names have vanished, because we do not know how the phratries were

+named; they may have had the names of two extant totem kins, but their

+names are lost.

+

+(3) Again, there are Australian cases, as of the Urabunna and Dieri of

+Central Australia, in which the phratries have names--Matthurie and

+Kirarawa (Urabunna), or Matteri and Kararu (Dieri)--but these phratry

+names cannot be, or are not translated. Manifestly, then, the meaning

+of the names may be identical with names of extant totem kins in these

+phratries, may be names of obsolete or almost obsolete sacred meaning,

+originally denoting totems now recognised by other names in the

+everyday language of the tribe.

+

+Confronted by the problem of the two apparently lost totem kins, those

+of the same names as the phratries, I conjectured that phratry names,

+now meaningless in the speech of the tribes where they appear, might

+be really identical in meaning with other names now denoting totem

+animals in the phratries. This conjecture proved to be correct, and I

+proceed to show how my conclusion was reached. The evidence, happily,

+is earlier than scientific discussion of the subject, and is therefore

+unbiassed.

+

+So long ago as 1852 or 1853, Mr. C. G. N. Lockhart, in his Annual

+Report to the Government of New South Wales, recorded a myth of the

+natives on the Lower Darling River, which flows from the north into the

+Murray River, the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria.[7]

+The tribes had the phratries named by Mr. Lockhart _Mookwara_ and

+_Keelpara_, usually written _Mukwara_ and _Kilpara_. These were the

+usual intermarrying exogamous phratries. According to the natives,

+Mukwara and Kilpara were the two wives of a prehistoric black fellow,

+"the Eves of the Adam of the Darling," Mr. Lockhart says--like the

+Hebrew Lilith and Eve, wives of Adam, _Lilith being a Serpent woman_.

+(If Rachael and Leah are really animal names, they may be old phratry

+names, though I think it highly improbable.)

+

+The children of wife Mukwara married those of wife Kilpara, and _vice

+versa_, the children taking the mother's name. Next, says the myth, as

+in the theories of Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Frazer, the two stocks, Mukwara

+and Kilpara, subdivided into totem kins, as Kilpara into Emu, Duck,

+&c., Mukwara into Kangaroo, Opossum, &c. (There is perhaps no modern

+theory of the origin of totemism, including my own, which has not been

+somewhere, and to some extent, anticipated by the mythical guesses of

+savages. The Port Fairy tribes, in their myth, take my view, and make

+the phratries arise in the male ancestor and his wife, two Cockatoos

+of various species; the totem kins were brought in by the sons of

+the two Cockatoos marrying women from a distance, of other animal

+parentage, their children keeping the maternal names, as Duck, Snipe,

+and so on. This myth is well inspired, for once!) In the passage of Mr.

+Lockhart, as cited by Mr. Curr, he does not give the translation of the

+names Mukwara and Kilpara. But in Mr. Brough Smyth's _Aborigines of

+Victoria_, a compilation of evidence published in 1878, we find another

+myth. "The natives of the northern parts of Victoria" believe that the

+makers of the world were "two beings that had severally the forms of

+the Crow and the Eagle Hawk." The Eagle Hawk was _Mak-quarra_; the Crow

+is _Kil-parra_.[8]

+

+Again, Mr. Bulmer writes: "The blacks of the Murray"--the river

+severing northern Victoria from New South Wales--"are divided into

+two classes" (phratries), "the Mak-quarra, or Eagle, and the Kilparra,

+or Crow. If the man be Mak-quarra, the woman must be Kil-parra," by

+phratry.[9]

+

+One myth (1852-53) explains Mukwara and Kilpara as wives of one man,

+and mothers of the phratries. The other (1878) says that Mukwara was a

+cosmic Eagle Hawk, Kilpara a cosmic Crow. They were on hostile terms,

+like Ormuzd and Ahriman; like the Thlinket phratry-founders, Raven and

+Wolf; and like the name-giving founders of phratries in New Britain, Te

+Kabinana, the author of good, and Te Kovuvura, the author of evil.[10]

+Eagle Hawk and Crow, Kilpara and Mukwara, in one of the myths, made

+peace, one condition being that "the Murray blacks should be divided

+into two classes" (phratries) called Mukwara and Kilpara, Eagle Hawk

+and Crow.[11]

+

+Crow and Eagle Hawk, then, were apparently names of hostile groups,

+which, making _connubium_, became allied phratries.

+

+The evidence thus is that Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk, that Kilpara meant

+Crow, in the language of some tribe which, so far, I have not been able

+to identify in glossaries. Probably the tribe is now extinct. But these

+two names for Eagle Hawk and Crow now denote two phratries in many

+widely separated tribes, which, in common use, _employ various quite

+different names for Eagle Hawk and Crow_.

+

+Now the point is that, in Mukwara phratry (Eagle Hawk), we almost

+always find, _under another name_, Eagle Hawk as a totem kin; and in

+Kilpara, Crow, we find, _under another name_, Crow as a totem kin.

+In many other cases, we cannot translate the phratry names, but, by

+a fortunate chance, the meanings of Kilpara and Mukwara have been

+preserved, and we see that, as in America, so also in Australia,

+phratries contain totem kins representing the phratry animal-name

+givers.

+

+We proceed to give instances.

+

+On the Paroo River, for example, are the Barinji; they call the Eagle

+Hawk "Biliari," or Billiara; their name for Crow is not given[12] But

+among the Barinji, Biliari, the Eagle Hawk, is a totem in the phratry

+called Mukwara, which means Eagle Hawk; Crow is not given, we saw,

+but here at least is the totem kin Eagle Hawk--Biliari--in the Eagle

+Hawk phratry, called by the foreign, and, to the Barinji, probably

+meaningless name, "Mukwara" (Mak-quarra).[13] This applies to four

+other tribes.

+

+The Barkinji have the same phratry names, Mukwara and Kilpara, as the

+Barinji. Their totem names are on the same system as those of the

+Ta-ta-thi Among the Ta-ta-thi the light Eagle Hawk is _Waip-illi_, he

+comes in Mukwarra, that is, in Eagle Hawk, phratry; and _Walakili_

+(the Crow), among the Ta-ta-thi, comes in Crow (Kilpara) phratry. The

+Wiimbaio, too, have totem Eagle Hawk in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) and totem

+Crow in Kilpara (Crow).

+

+The Keramin tribe live four hundred miles away from the Barinji. They

+have not the same name, Biliari, for the Eagle Hawk. Their name for

+Eagle Hawk is Mundhill. This totem, Eagle Hawk, among the Keramin,

+appears in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara). The Keramin name for Crow is

+Wak. He occurs in Kilpara (Crow) phratry. All is as by my theory it

+ought to be.[14]

+

+None of these tribes has "matrimonial classes," a relatively late

+device, or no such classes are assigned to them by our authorities.

+These tribes are of a type so archaic, that Mr. Howitt has called the

+primitive type, _par excellence_, "Barkinji."

+

+All this set of tribes have their own names, in their own various

+tongues, for "Eagle Hawk" and "Craw," but all call their phratries by

+the foreign or obsolete names for "Eagle Hawk" and "Crow," namely,

+Mukwara and Kilpara. Occasionally either Crow totem is not given by

+our informants, or Eagle Hawk totem is not given, but Eagle Hawk, when

+given, is always in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), and Crow, when given,

+is always in Crow phratry (Kilpara). Where both Eagle Hawk and Crow

+totems are given, they invariably occur, Eagle Hawk totem in Mukwara

+(Eagle Hawk) phratry, and Crow totem in Kilpara (Crow) phratry.

+

+In the Ngarigo tribe, the phratries are Eagle Hawk and Crow (Merung and

+Yukambruk), but neither fowl is given in the lists of totems, which,

+usually, are not exhaustive. The same fact meets us in the Wolgal

+tribe; the phratries are Malian and Umbe (Eagle Hawk and Crow), but

+neither bird is given as a totem.[15] Mr. Spencer, in a letter to me,

+gives, for a tribe adjacent to the Wolgal, the phratries Multu (Eagle

+Hawk), and Umbe (Crow); the totems I do not know. Among the Wiraidjuri

+tribe, Mr. Howitt does not know the phratry names, but the tribe

+have the Kamilaroi class names, and Eagle Hawk and Crow, as usual, in

+the opposite unnamed phratries. Among a sept of the Wiraidjuri on the

+Lachlan River, the phratry names are Mukula and Budthurung. The meaning

+of Mukula is not given, but Budthurung means "Black Duck" and Black

+Duck totem is in Black Duck phratry, Budthurung in Budthurung, as it

+ought to be.[16] Mr. Howitt writes that there is "no explanation" of

+why Budthurung is both a phratry name and a totem name. The fact, we

+see, is usual.

+

+In several cases, where phratry names are lost, or are of unknown

+meaning, Eagle Hawk and Crow occur in _opposite_ exogamous moieties,

+which once had phratry names, or now have phratry names of unknown

+significance. The evidence, then, is that Eagle Hawk and Crow totems,

+over a vast extent of country, have been in Eagle Hawk and Crow

+phratries, while, when they occur in phratries whose names are lost,

+the lost names or untranslatable names _may_ have meant Eagle Hawk and

+Crow. Unluckily the names of the phratries of the central tribes about

+Lake Eyre and south-west--Kararu and Matteri--are of unknown meaning:

+such tribes are the Dieri, Urabunna, and their neighbours. We do indeed

+find Kuraru, meaning Eagle Hawk, in a tribe where the phratry name is

+Kararu; and Karawora is also a frequent name for Eagle Hawk in these

+tribes. But then Kurara means Rain, in a cognate tribe; and we must not

+be led into conjectural translations of names, based merely on apparent

+similarities of sound.

+

+At all events, in the Kararu-Matteri phratries, we find Eagle Hawk

+and Crow opposed, appearing in opposite phratries in five cases, just

+as they do in tribes far south.[17] Again, in the Kulin "nation," now

+extinct, we learn that their phratries were Bunjil (Eagle Hawk) and

+Waa (Crow), while of the totems nothing is known.[18] It is obvious

+that several phratry names, capable of being translated, mean these two

+animals, Eagle Hawk and Crow, while two other widespread phratry names,

+Yungaru and Wutaru, appear to be connected with other animals. "The

+symbol of the Yungaru division," says Mr. Bridgman, "is the Alligator,

+and of the Wutaru, the Kangaroo."[19] Mr. Chatfield, however, gives Emu

+or Carpet Snake for Wutaru, and Opossum for Yungaru.[20]

+

+More certain animal names for phratries are Kroki-Kumite;

+Krokitch-Gamutch; Krokitch-Kuputch; Ku-urokeetch-Kappatch;

+Krokage-Kubitch; all of which denote two separate species of cockatoo;

+while these birds, _sometimes under other names_, are totems in

+the phratries named after them. The tribe may not know the meaning

+of its phratry names. Thus, in tribes east of the Gournditch Mara,

+Kuurokeetch means Long-billed Cockatoo, and Kappatch means Banksian

+Cockatoo, as I understand.[21] But, within the phratries of all the

+Kuurokeetch-Kappatch forms of names, the two Cockatoos also occur

+_under other names_, as totem kins: such names are Karaal, Wila,

+Wurant, and Garchuka.[22]

+

+In the Annan River tribe, Mr. Howitt gives the phratries as Walar (a

+Bee), and Marla (a Bee), doubtless two Bees of different species.[23]

+In this case two names of matrimonial classes, Walar and Jorro, also

+mean Bee. Other cases of conjectural interpretation of phratry names

+might be given, but where the phratry names can be certainly translated

+they are names of animals, in all Australian cases known to me except

+one. When the phratry names cannot be translated, the reason may be

+that they were originally foreign names, borrowed, with the phratriac

+institution itself, by one tribe from another. Thus if tribes with

+totems Eagle Hawk and Crow (Biliara and Waa, let us say) borrowed the

+phratriac institution from a Mukwara-Kilpara tribe, they might take

+over Mukwara and Kilpara as phratry names, while not knowing, or at

+last forgetting, their meaning.

+

+Borrowing of songs and of religious dances is known to be common in

+the tribes, and it is certain that the Arunta are borrowing four class

+names from the north. Again, several tribes have the Kamilaroi _class_

+names (Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi), but have not the Kamilaroi _phratry_

+names, Kupathin and Dilbi. Thus the Wiraidjuri, with Kamilaroi _class_

+names, have not Kamilaroi _phratries_, but have Mukula (untranslated),

+and Budthurung (Black Duck). The Wonghibon, with Kamilaroi _class_

+names, have _phratries_ Ngielbumurra and Mukumurra. On the other

+hand the Kaiabara tribe, far north in Queensland, have the Kamilaroi

+_phratry_ names Dilebi and Kubatine (= Dilbi and Kupathin), but their

+class names are not those of the Kamilaroi.[24]

+

+It may be that some tribes, which had already _phratries_ not of

+the Kamilaroi names, borrowed the Kamilaroi _classes_, while other

+tribes having the Kamilaroi _phratries_ evolved, or elsewhere borrowed

+_classes_ of names not those of the Kamilaroi.

+

+Again, when the four or eight class system has taken firm hold, doing

+the work of the phratries, tribes often forget the meaning of the

+phratry names, or forget the names themselves. Once more, the phratry

+names may once have designated animals, whose names were changed for

+others, in the course of daily life, or by reason of some taboo. All

+these causes, with the very feeble condition of Australian linguistic

+studies, hamper us in our interpretations of phratry and class names.

+Often the tribes in whose language they originally occurred may be

+extinct. But we have shown that many phratry names are names of

+animals, and that the animals which give names to phratries often

+occur, in Australia as in America, as totems within their own phratries.

+

+We have thus discovered the two lost totem kins!

+

+Thus, if only for once, conjectures made on the strength of a theory

+are proved to be correct by facts later observed. We guessed (i.)

+that in the phratries should be totem-kin animals identical with the

+phratriac animals. We guessed (ii.) that the phratriac names of unknown

+sense might be identical in meaning with the actual everyday names of

+the totem animals. And we guessed (iii.) for reasons of early marriage

+law (as conjectured in our system) that the totem kins of the same

+names as the phratries would be found each in the phratry of its own

+name--if discovered in Australia at all.

+

+All three conjectures are proved to be correct. The third was implied

+in Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old hypothesis, that there were two

+original groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and that the totem kins were

+segmented out of them, so that each original animal-named group would

+necessarily head its own totemic colonies. But this, in many cases, as

+we have seen, is what it does not do, and another animal of its genus

+heads the opposite phratry.

+

+Not accepting Mr. Frazer's old theory, I anticipated the discovery of

+Eagle Hawk totem kin _in_ Eagle Hawk phratry, and of Crow _in_ Crow

+phratry, for reasons less simple and conspicuous. It has been shown,

+and is obvious that, by exogamy and female descent, each local group of

+animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, would come to contain members of

+every group name _except its own_. When the men of Crow _local_ group

+had for generations never married a woman of Crow name, and when the

+wives, of other names, within Crow _local_ group had bequeathed these

+other names to their children, there could be, in Crow local group,

+no Crow _by descent_, nor any Eagle Hawk _by descent_ in Eagle Hawk

+_local_ group.

+

+Suppose that these two local groups, each full of members of other

+animal names derived from other groups by maternal descent, made

+_connubium_, and became phratries containing totem kins. _What, then,

+would be the marriageable status of the two kins which bare the phratry

+names?_ All Crows would be, as we saw, by my system, in Eagle Hawk

+phratry; all Eagle Hawks would be Crow phratry (or other phratries, or

+"sub-phratries," if these existed). They could not marry, of course,

+within their own phratries, that was utterly out of the question. _But,

+also, they could not marry into the opposite phratries, lately local

+groups, because these bore their own old sacred local group names_. For

+the the law of the local group had been, "_No marriage within the name

+of the local group_," "No Crow to marry into local group Crow." Yet

+here is Crow who, by phratry law, cannot marry into his own phratry,

+Eagle Hawk; while, if he marries into phratry Crow, he contravenes

+the old law of "No marriage within the local group of your own name."

+That group, to be sure, is now an element in a new organisation, the

+phratry organisation, but, as Dr. Durkheim says in another case, "The

+old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."[25]

+

+This quandary would necessarily occur, under the new conditions, and in

+the new legal situation created by the erection of the two animal-named

+local groups into phratries.

+

+Two whole totem kins, say Wolf and Raven, or Eagle Hawk and Crow,

+were, in the new conditions, _plus_ the old legal survival, cut off

+from marriage. If they died celibate, their disappearance needs no

+further explanation. But they do not disappear. If they changed their

+totems their descendants are lost under new totem names; but, if

+totems were now fully-blown entities, they could not change their

+totems. They could, however, desert their local tribe, which has no

+_tribal_ "religion" (it sometimes, however, has an animal name), and

+join another set of local groups (as Urabunna and Arunta do constantly

+naturalise themselves among each other, to-day), or, _they could simply

+change their phratries_ (late their local groups). Eagle Hawk totem

+kin, by going into Eagle Hawk phratry, could marry into Crow phratry;

+and Crow totem kin, by going into Crow phratry, could marry into Eagle

+Hawk phratry. This, I suggest, was what they did.

+

+This would entail a shock to tender consciences, as each kin is now

+marrying into the very phratry which had been forbidden to it. But, if

+totems were now full blown, anything, however desperate, was better

+than to change your totem; and after all, Eagle Hawk and Crow were only

+returning each into the new phratry which represented their old local

+group by maternal descent. Thus in America we do find Wolf totem kin,

+among the Thlinkets, in Wolf phratry, and Raven in Raven phratry; with

+Eagle Hawk in Eagle Hawk, Crow in Crow phratries, Cockatoo and Bee

+in Cockatoo and Bee phratries, Black Duck in Black Duck phratry, in

+Australia.

+

+The difficulty, that Crow and Eagle Hawk were now marrying precisely

+where they had been forbidden to marry when phratry law first was

+sketched out, has been brought to my notice. But the weakest must go to

+the wall, and, as soon as the totem became (as Mr. Howitt assures us

+that it has become) nearer, dearer, more intimately a man's own than

+the phratry animal, to the wall, under pressure of circumstances, went

+attachment to the phratry. _Il faut se marier_, and marriage could

+only be achieved, for totem kins of the phratry names; by a change of

+phratry.

+

+But is the process of totem kins changing their local groups (now

+become phratries) a possible process? Under the new _regime_ of fully

+developed totemism it was possible; more, it was certainly done, in the

+remote past, by individuals, as I proceed to demonstrate.

+

+

+

+[1] _Totemism_, p. 62. Cf. McLennan, _Studies_, Series II. pp. 369-371.

+

+[2] _L'Annee Sociologique_, i. pp. 5-7.

+

+[3] It is not plain what Mr. Frazer meant when he wrote (_Totemism_,

+p. 63). "Clearly split totems might readily arise from single families

+separating from the clan and expanding into new clans." Thus a male of

+"clan" Pelican has the personal name "Pouch of a Pelican." But, under

+female descent, he could not possibly leave the Pelican totem kin,

+and set up a clan named "Pelican's Pouch." His wife, of course, would

+be of another "clan," say Turtle, his children would be Turtles; they

+could not inherit their father's personal name, "Pouch of a Pelican,"

+and set up a Pelican's Pouch clan. The thing is unthinkable. "A single

+family separating from the clan" of female descent, would inevitably

+possess at least (with monogamy) two totem names, those of the father

+and mother, among its members. The event might occur with male descent,

+if the names of individuals ever became hereditary exogamous totems,

+but not otherwise. And we have no evidence that the personal name of an

+individual ever became a hereditary totem name of an exogamous clan or

+kin.

+

+[4] It was first put to me by Mr. N. W. Thomas, in _Man_, January 1904,

+No. 2.

+

+[5] Mr. Howitt affirms that the relative lateness of these classes, as

+sub-divisions of the phratries, is "now positively ascertained." (_J.

+A. I._, p. 143, Note. 1885.)

+

+[6] Spencer and Gillen, _passim_.

+

+[7] Curr, _The Australian Race_, ii. p. 165. Trubner, London, 1886.

+

+[8] Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423-424. Mr. Howitt renders Kilpara, "Crow,"

+among the Wiimbaio, citing Mr. Bulmer, (_Native Tribes of S. E.

+Australia_, p. 429.)

+

+[9] Brough Smyth. i p. 86.

+

+[10] Danks, _J. A. I._, xviii. 3, pp. 281-282.

+

+[11] Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423, 424.

+

+[12] Cameron, _J. A. I._, xiv. p. 348. _Native Tribes of S-E.

+Australia_, p. 99.

+

+[13] _Biliarinthu_ is a class name in the Worgaia tribe of Central

+Australia. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 747.)

+

+[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 98-100.

+

+[15] Ibid., p. 102.

+

+[16] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 107.

+

+[17] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 91-94.

+

+[18] Ibid., p. 126.

+

+[19] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 40. 1880.

+

+[20] Ibid., p. 41.

+

+[21] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 125.

+

+[22] Ibid., pp. 121-124.

+

+[23] Ibid., p. 118.

+

+[24] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.

+

+[25] _L'Annee Sociologique_, v. p. 106, Note. _Social Origins_, p. 56,

+Note.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX

+

+TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

+

+

+      The totemic redistribution--The same totem is never

+      in both phratries--This cannot be the result of

+      accident--Yet, originally, the same totems must have

+      existed in _both_ phratries, on any theory of the origin

+      of phratries--The present state of affairs is the result

+      of legislation--To avoid clash of phratry law and totem

+      law, the totems were redistributed--No totem in both

+      phratries--Recapitulation--Whole course of totemic

+      evolution has been surveyed--Our theory colligates every

+      known fact--Absence of conjecture in our theory--All the

+      causes are _verae causae_--Protest against use of such terms

+      as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems,"

+      "sub-totems"--The true totem is hereditary, and marks the

+      exogamous limit--No other is genuine.

+

+

+That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was

+necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial

+problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed

+conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an

+arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of

+laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members

+of totem kins.

+

+That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had

+become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in

+all the primitive types of tribal organisation: _The same totem never

+exists in both phratries_.[1] This in no way increases, as things

+stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in

+the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more

+recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem

+kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never

+in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.[2]

+Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in

+both of the _local_ groups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus

+if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives

+from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women

+would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle

+Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries,

+representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both

+of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe,

+Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the

+other.

+

+This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the

+first establishment of phratry law, or later.

+

+If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the

+two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it

+remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow

+group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by

+Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose

+new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.

+

+It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of

+the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least,

+in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, by

+_phratry_ law, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his

+own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. By _totem_ law, however, he may

+not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was

+fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged

+so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it

+necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes,

+say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes

+in Crow phratry, or _vice versa_. They obviously could not change

+their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry,

+the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to

+override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the

+course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many

+phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class

+names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America,

+and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among

+totemists--(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).

+

+But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have

+decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated

+by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy

+still.

+

+Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as

+we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been

+demonstrated by actual fact, by that _re_distribution of totem kins in

+the phratries--never the same totem in both phratries--which cannot be

+due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that

+nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf.

+Chapter IV.)

+

+It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition

+to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the

+rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem

+being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that

+became a phratry name, including several totem kins.

+

+Now that this feeling--to which the totem of the kin was far nearer

+and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its

+name--is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr.

+Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory--his

+own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our

+terminology, the phratry name) "is _general_, the totem name is in

+one sense _individual_, for it is certainly nearer to the individual

+than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he

+belongs."[3] Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to

+be much _nearer_ to the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than

+the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.[4]

+

+As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose

+men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and

+we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never

+the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their

+phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on

+my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed

+us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate

+marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.

+

+It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not

+account for the fact that phratriac names--say Eagle Hawk, Crow--are

+commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that

+Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."[5]

+

+We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that

+the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing,

+from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk;

+and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions

+very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no

+everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with

+the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other

+names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.

+

+Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole

+course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves

+but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven,

+by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he

+had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons

+and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and

+milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing,

+of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal

+names, which I show to be usual as group _sobriquets_ in ancient Israel

+and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for

+silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be

+signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs,

+whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is

+no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner

+naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring,

+as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this

+day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long

+been forgotten.

+

+It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate

+a mystical _rapport_, and transcendental connection, between the name

+and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that this _rapport_

+is exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that

+myths have been invented to explain the _rapport_ which must, it is

+held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases.

+It is no conjecture that the myths explain the _rapport_, usually,

+as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is

+no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood,

+and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood

+of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas,

+if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an

+inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an

+animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection

+between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one

+animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?

+

+We have thus reached _totemism_, and we trace its varying forms in

+the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution--under

+changing conditions--of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrably

+_verae causae_, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the

+hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.

+

+The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt

+justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning

+of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names

+lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or

+are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic

+anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent,

+become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names

+(names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among

+the isolated Kurnai.

+

+In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members

+of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error

+of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters

+by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or

+individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an

+associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under

+some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron

+animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after

+a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem

+kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one

+totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are

+not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems,"

+"Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying

+totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or

+to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised

+and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later

+devised.

+

+

+[1] The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.

+

+[2] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 55--57, in which the author fails to

+discover any mode by which the distribution could occur accidentally or

+automatically.

+

+[3] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 40.

+

+[4] Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.

+

+[5] N. W. Thomas, _Man_, January 1904, No. 2.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X

+

+MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

+

+

+      Matrimonial classes--Their working described--Prevent

+      persons of successive generations from

+      intermarrying--Child and parent unions forbidden in

+      tribes without matrimonial classes--Obscurity caused by

+      ignorance of philology--Meanings of names of classes

+      usually unknown--Mystic names for common objects--Cases in

+      which meaning of class names is known--They are names of

+      animals--Variations in evidence--Names of classes from the

+      centre to Gulf of Carpentaria--They appear to be Cloud,

+      Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat--Uncertainty of these

+      etymologies--One totem to one totem marriages--Obscurity

+      of evidence--Perhaps the so-called "totems" are

+      matrimonial classes--Meaning of names forgotten--Or

+      names tabued--The classes a deliberately framed

+      institution--Unlike phratries and totem kins--Theory of

+      Herr Cunow--Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.

+

+

+The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been

+explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi,

+who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to

+a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer

+has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our

+term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into

+its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's

+"sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of

+these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in

+its mother's phratry, which is _not_ its mother's. That a man of class

+Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin

+phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem,

+belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which is _not_ hers, that is,

+belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of

+the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally

+differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally

+forbid their intermarriage.

+

+But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom,

+among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning

+of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among

+the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his

+phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the

+Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes,

+while retaining one result of that organisation--no parent and child

+marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the

+centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous

+and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in

+the north.

+

+One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of

+their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their

+names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention

+no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia

+could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.

+

+In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names

+of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative

+philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and

+Sanskrit divine names, say, Athene, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon,

+comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found

+an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was

+disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or

+two, remained impenetrably obscure.

+

+If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a

+copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the

+weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy

+to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of

+Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have

+manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these

+laws have been codified by no Grimm.

+

+As a science, Australian philology does not exist. In 1880 Mr. Fison

+wrote, "It is simply impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of these

+words" (changes of name and grade conferred at secret ceremonies),

+"without a very full knowledge of the native dialects," and without

+strong personal influence with the blacks.... "In all probability

+there are not half-a-dozen men so qualified in the whole Australian

+continent."[1]

+

+The habit of using, in the case of the initiate, mystic terms even for

+the everyday names of animals, greatly complicates the problem. It

+does not appear that most of the recorders of the facts know even one

+native dialect as Dr. Walter Roth knows some dialects of North-West

+Central Queensland. In the south-east, Kamilaroi was seriously

+studied, long ago, by Mr. Threlkeld and Mr. Ridley, who wrote tracts

+in that language. Sir George Grey and Mr. Matthews, with many others,

+have compiled vocabularies, the result of studies of their own, and

+Mr. Curr collected brief glossaries of very many tribes, by aid of

+correspondents without linguistic training.

+

+Into this ignorance as to the meanings of the names of matrimonial

+classes, Mr. Howitt brings a faint little gleam of light In a few

+cases, he thinks, the meaning of class and "sub-class" names is

+ascertained. Among the Kuinmurbura tribe, between Broad Sound and Shoal

+water Bay, the "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes") "were totems."

+By this Mr. Howitt obviously means that the classes bore animal names.

+They meant (i.) the Barrimundi, (ii.) a Hawk, (iii.) Good Water, and

+(iv.) Iguana.[2] For the Annan River tribe, he gives "sub-classes"

+(our "matrimonial classes"), (i.) Eagle Hawk, (ii.) Bee, (iii.)

+Salt-Water-Eagle Hawk, (iv.) Bee.[3] This is not very satisfactory. In

+previous works he gave so many animal names for his "sub-classes," Mr.

+Frazer's "sub-phratries" (our "matrimonial classes"), that Mr. Frazer

+wrote, "It seems to follow that the sub-phratries of the Kamilaroi

+(Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have, or once had, totems also," that is,

+had names derived from animals or other objects.[4]

+

+Mr. Howitt himself at one time appeared to hold that the names of the

+matrimonial classes are often animal names. His phraseology here is

+not very lucid. "The main sections themselves are frequently, probably

+always, distinguished by totems." Here he certainly means that the

+phratries have usually animal names, though we are not told that the

+phratries, as such, treat their name-giving animal, even when they know

+the meaning of its name, "with the decencies of a totem." Mr. Howitt

+goes on, "The probability is that they are all" (that all the classes

+are) "totems."[5] By this Mr. Howitt perhaps intends to say that all

+the "classes" (both the phratries and the matrimonial classes) probably

+have animal or other such names.

+

+Again, the class names of the Kiabara tribe were said to denote four

+animals--Turtle, Bat, Carpet Snake, Cat.[6] But now (1904) the Kiabara

+class names are given without translation, and the four animals are

+thrown into the list of totems, with Flood Water and Lightning totems

+(which names were previously given as translations of Kubatine and

+Dilebi, the phratry names).[7] Doubtless Mr. Howitt has received

+more recent information, but, if we accept what he now gives us, the

+meanings of his "sub-class" names are only ascertained in the cases of

+two tribes, and then are names of animals.

+

+I spent some labour in examining the class names of the tribes studied

+by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, from the Arunta in the centre to the

+Tingilli at Powell's Creek, after which point our authors no longer

+marched due north, but turned east, at a right angle, reaching the

+sea, and the Binbinga, the Mara, and Anula coast tribes, on or near

+the MacArthur River. The class names of these coastal tribes did not

+resemble those of the central tribes. But if Messrs. Spencer and Gillen

+had held north by west, in place of turning due east from Newcastle

+Waters, they would have found, as far as the sea at Nichol Bay, four

+classes whose names closely resemble the class names of the central

+tribes, and are reported as Paljarie, or Paliali, or Palyeery (clearly

+the Umbaia and Binbinga Paliarinji), Kimera or Kymurra, (obviously

+Kumara), Banigher, or Bunaka, or Panaka (Panunga, cf. Dieri Kanunka =

+Bush Wallaby),[8] and Boorungo, or Paronga.[9]

+

+It thus appears scarcely doubtful that, from the Arunta in the centre,

+to the furthest north, several of the class names are of the same

+linguistic origin, and--whether by original community of speech, or by

+dint of borrowing--had once the same significance. Now we can show that

+some of these names, in the dialects of one tribe or another, denote

+objects in nature. Thus Warramunga Tj-_upila'_ (Tj being an affix) at

+least suggests the Dieri totem, _Upala_, "Cloud." _Biliarinthu_, in the

+same way, suggests the _Barinji Biliari_, "Eagle Hawk," or the Umbaia

+Paliarinji. _Ungalla_, or _Thungalla_, is Arunta _Ungilla_, "Crow,"

+the Ungola, or Ungala, "Crow" of the Yaroinga and Undekerabina of

+North-West Queensland,[10] while _Panunga, Banaka, Panaka,_ resembles

+Dieri _Kanunka_--"Bush Wallaby," or _Kanunga_, "Kangaroo Rat."

+

+The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to

+class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may

+seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other,

+or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical

+change are obvious. We lay no stress on the "equations" given above,

+but merely offer the suggestion that class names have often been animal

+names, and hint that inquiry should keep this idea in mind.

+

+I do not, then, offer my "equations" as more than guesses in a field

+peculiarly perilous. The word which means "fire" in one tribe, means

+"snake" in another. "What fools these fellows are, they call 'fire'

+'snakes,'" say the tribesmen. However, if we guess right, we find Eagle

+Hawk, Crow, Cloud, and Kangaroo Rat, as class names, over an enormous

+extent of Central and Northern Australia.[11]

+

+About the deliberate purpose of the classes there can be no doubt. They

+were introduced to bar marriages, not between parents and children, for

+these are forbidden in primitive tribes, but between persons of the

+parental and filial generations. Or the names were given to stereotype

+classes, already existing, but hitherto anonymous, within which

+marriage was already prohibited. To make the distinction permanent,

+it was only necessary to have a linked pair of classes of different

+names in each phratry, the child never taking the maternal class name,

+but always that of the linked class in her phratry (under a system of

+female descent). The names Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, would have served

+the turn as well as any others. If a tribe had two words for young, and

+two for old, these would have served the turn; as

+

+Phratry { Jeune. _Dilbi_ { Old.

+

+Phratry

+

+_Kupatkin_ { Vieux. { Young.

+

+

+Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with

+assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we

+guess that this may have been so more generally.

+

+According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say,

+of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or

+rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other

+class" (phratry).[12] But neither in their first nor second volume do

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure

+point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the

+northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another

+special totem."[13] This would seem _prima facie_ to be an almost

+impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among

+tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer

+and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot

+be obtained.

+

+Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage

+is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial

+classes.[14] Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry

+names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the

+phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain

+many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin

+with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense,

+and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry

+called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but

+"sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several

+totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements

+as were accessible in 1887.[15] There might conceivably be, in some

+tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal

+names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins.

+With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might

+be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many

+tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry

+names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.

+

+Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem

+names--two for each phratry--might be tabued or reserved, and made to

+act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the

+actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem

+kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other

+cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that,

+among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each

+of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition

+exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a

+stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is

+"Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to

+orange or monkey _in everyday life_. It is an archaic word of the same

+significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving

+object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes

+appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as

+we have shown that some phratry names also are.

+

+For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different

+class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries

+and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal

+and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such

+names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare

+not go, in the present state of our information.

+

+The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed

+institution.

+

+In this respect they seem to differ from the phratry and totem names,

+which, as we have tried to show, are things of long and unconscious

+evolution. But conscious purpose is evident in the institution of

+matrimonial classes. We tentatively suggest that, if their names turn

+out to be usually names of animals and other objects, this occurs

+because animal-named sub-phratries once existed, and were converted

+into the mechanism of the classes; or because the pre-existing

+totemic system of nomenclature was preserved in the development of

+a new institution. Herr Cunow's theory that the class names mean

+"Young," "Old," "Big," "Little" (_Kubbi = Kubbura_, "young"; _Kunibo =

+Kombia_, _Kumbia, Gumboka_, "great or old"), needs a wide and assured

+etymological basis.[16] Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis appears to assume

+that "clans," exogamous, with female descent, are territorial, which

+(see Chapter V.) is not possible.

+

+Whatever their names may mean, the matrimonial classes were instituted

+to prevent marriage between persons of parental and filial generations.

+

+

+[1] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 59, 60.

+

+[2] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. III.

+

+[3] Ibid., p. 118.

+

+[4] _Totemism_, p. 84. Cf. _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 41.

+

+[5] _J. A. I._, 1885, p. 143. Cf. Note 4.

+

+[6] _J. A. I._, xiii. pp. 336, 341.

+

+[7] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.

+

+[8] _J. A. I._, August 1890, p. 38.

+

+[9] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 36. _J. A. I._, ix. pp. 356, 357. Curr,

+i. p. 298. _Austral. Assoc. Adv. Science_, ii. pp. 653. 654. _Journal

+Roy. Soc. N.S.W._ vol. xxxii. p. 86. R. H. Matthews.

+

+[10] Roth, p. 50.

+

+[11] Mr. N. W. Thomas helped the chase of these names, without claiming

+any certainty for the "equations."

+

+[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 176. Citing Spencer

+end Gillen, p. 60.

+

+[13] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 71, Note 2.

+

+[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 189-194.

+

+[15] _Totemism_, pp. 64-67.

+

+[16] _Die Verwandschafts Organisationen der Australneger_. Stuttgart,

+1894.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER XI

+

+MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+      Mr. Frazer's latest theory--Closely akin to that of

+      Professor Spencer--Arunta totemism the most archaic--Proof

+      of Arunta primitiveness--Their ignorance of the facts

+      of procreation--But the more primitive south-eastern

+      tribes are not ignorant of the facts--Proof from Mr.

+      Howitt--Yet south-eastern tribes are subject to Mr.

+      Frazer's supposed causes of ignorance--Mr. Frazer's new

+      theory cited--No account taken of primitive tribes of

+      the southern interior--Similar oversight by Mr. Howitt

+      as regards religion--Examples of this oversight--Social

+      advance does not explain the religion of tribes which have

+      not made the social advance--Theory of borrowing needed by

+      Mr. Howitt--Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+      exogamy--Objections to the suggestion.

+

+

+Throughout these chapters, when there was occasion to mention the

+totemic theories of Mr. J. G. Frazer, we have spoken of them with

+reserve, as the theory of this or that date. Fortunately his article,

+"The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian

+Aborigines," in the _Fortnightly Review_ (September 1905), enables us

+to report Mr. Frazer's latest, perhaps final, hypothesis. "After years

+of sounding," he says, "our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

+

+In essence Mr. Frazer's latest hypothesis is that of Professor Baldwin

+Spencer. He accepts _Pirrauru_ as "group marriage," and holds that the

+Arunta retain the most archaic form of totemism now known to exist.

+In Chapter III. we believe ourselves to have proved that _Pirrauru_

+is not "group marriage"; and that the "classificatory names for

+relationships "do not demonstrate the existence of "group marriage" in

+the relatively near, or of promiscuity in the very distant past.

+

+In Chapter IV. we show that, by Professor Spencer's statement,

+the Arunta are in a highly advanced social state for Australians.

+Inheritance of local office (Alatunjaship) and of the paternal totemic

+ritual goes in the male, not in the female line of descent, which is

+confessedly the more archaic. (Mr. Frazer, however, now thinks this

+point open to doubt.) The institutions are of a _local_ character; and

+the ceremonials are of what Professor Spencer considers the later and

+much more complex type. Arunta totemism, Mr. Spencer shows, depends

+on the idea of ancestral spirits attached to stone _churinga nanja_,

+amulets of various forms usually inscribed with archaic patterns, and

+these _churinga nanja_, with this belief about them, are not found

+outside of the Arunta region. Without them, the Arunta system of

+totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer

+says nothing. For these and many other reasons, most of which have been

+urged by Dr. Durkheim, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Marett, and other students, we

+have explained the Arunta system as a late, isolated, and apparently

+unique institution. As the Arunta ceremonials and institutions, with

+inheritance in the male line and local magistracies hereditable in

+the male line, are at the opposite pole from the primitive, while the

+Arunta totemic system reposes on an isolated superstition connected

+with manufactured stone objects, and not elsewhere found in Australia,

+it has seemed vain to regard Arunta totemism as the most archaic.

+

+This, however, is the present hypothesis of Mr. Frazer, as of Mr.

+Spencer, and he adduces a proof of Arunta primitiveness concerning

+which too little was said in our Chapter IV. The Arunta system

+"ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of

+offspring; and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as

+well as the paternal side."[1] The theory "denies implicitly, and the

+natives themselves deny explicitly, that children are the fruit of the

+commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance of natural causation

+cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote."[2]

+

+Now when the Arunta "ignore the tie of blood on the maternal side,"

+they prove too much. They ignore that of which they are not ignorant.

+Not being idiots, they are well aware of the maternal tie of blood;

+but they do not permit it to affect the descent of the totem, which is

+regulated by their isolated superstition, the doctrine of reincarnation

+combined with the _churinga nanja_ belief. Nor do they ignore

+fatherhood, as we saw, in affairs of inheritance of local office and

+totemic rites.

+

+But they _do_ deny that the intercourse of the sexes is the cause of

+birth of children. Here the interesting point is that tribes much more

+primitive, the south-eastern tribes, with female reckoning of descent,

+inheritance in the female line, and no hereditary local moderatorships,

+are perfectly well aware of all that the more advanced Arunta do

+not know. Yet they, quite as much as the Arunta, are subject to the

+causes which, according to Mr. Frazer, produce the Arunta nescience

+of the facts of procreation. That nescience, says Mr. Frazer, "may

+be explained easily enough from the habits and modes of thought of

+savage men." Thus, "first, the sexual act precedes the first symptoms

+of pregnancy by a considerable interval." _Je n'en vois pas la

+necessite._ Secondly, savage tribes "allow unrestricted licence of

+intercourse between the sexes under puberty," and thus "familiarise

+him" (the savage) "with sexual unions that are necessarily sterile;

+from which he may not unnaturally conclude that the intercourse of

+the sexes has nothing to do with the birth of offspring." The savage,

+therefore, explains the arrival of children (at least the Arunta does)

+by the entrance of a discarnate ancestral spirit into the woman.

+

+The conspicuous and closing objection to this theory is, that savages

+who are at least as familiar as the Arunta with (1) the alleged

+remoteness in time of the sexual act from the appearance of the first

+symptoms of pregnancy (among them, such an act and the symptoms may

+be synchronous), and (2) with licence before puberty, are not in

+the Arunta state of ignorance. They are under no illusions on these

+interesting points.

+

+The tribes of social organisation much more primitive than that of

+the Arunta, the south-eastern tribes, as a rule, know all about the

+matter. Mr. Howitt says, "these" (south-eastern) "aborigines, even

+while counting descent--that is, counting the class names--through the

+mother, never for a moment feel any doubt, according to my experience,

+that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe

+their infantine nurture to their mother."[3] Mr. Howitt also quotes

+"the remark made to me in several cases, that a woman is only a nurse

+who takes care of a man's children for him."[4]

+

+Here, then, we have very low savages among whom the causes of savage

+ignorance of procreation, as explained by Mr. Frazer, are present,

+but who, far from being ignorant, take the line of Athene in the

+_Eumenides_ of AEschylus. I give Mr. Raley's translation of the

+passage:--

+

+"The parent of that which is called her child is not really the

+_mother_ of it, she is but the _nurse_ of the newly conceived foetus. It

+is the male who is the author of its being, while she, as a stranger

+for a stranger (_i.e._ no _blood relation_), preserves the young

+plant...."--_Eumenides_, 628-631.

+

+These south-eastern tribes, far more primitive than the Arunta in their

+ceremonials, and in their social organisation, do not entertain that

+dominant factor in Aruntadom, the belief in the perpetual reincarnation

+of the souls of the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_. That

+belief is a philosophy far from primitive. As each child is, in Arunta

+opinion, a being who has existed from the beginning of things, he is

+not, he cannot be, a creature of man's begetting. Sexual acts, say

+Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, only, at most, "prepare" a woman for the

+reception of a child--who is as old as the world! If the Arunta were

+experimental philosophers, and locked a girl up in Danae's tower, so

+that she was never "prepared," they would, perhaps, be surprised if she

+gave birth to a child.

+

+However that may be, the Arunta nescience about reproduction is not

+caused by the facts which, according to Mr. Frazer, are common to them

+with other savages. These facts produce no nescience among the more

+primitive tribes with female descent, simply because these primitive

+tribes do not share the far from primitive Arunta philosophy of eternal

+reincarnation. If the Arunta deny the fact of procreation among the

+lower animals, that is because "the man and his totem are practically

+indistinguishable," as Mr. Frazer says. What is sauce for the goose is

+sauce for the gander.

+

+The proof of Arunta primitiveness, the only proof, has been their

+nescience of the facts of generation. But we have demonstrated that,

+where Mr. Frazer's alleged causes of that nescience are present,

+among the south-eastern tribes, they do not produce it; while among

+the Arunta, it is caused by their system of philosophy, which the

+south-eastern tribes do not possess.

+

+Mr. Frazer next applies his idea to the evolution of a new theory of

+the Origin of Totemism. Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has

+its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem

+for each region. These centres, _Oknanikilla_, are, in myth, and for

+all that I know, in fact, burial-places of the primal ancestors, and in

+each is one, or there may be more, _Nanja_ trees or rocks, permanently

+haunted by ancestral spirits, all of the same totem, whose stone

+amulets, _churinga nanja_, are lying in or on the ground. When a woman

+feels a living child's part in her being, she knows that it is a spirit

+of an ancestor of the local totem, haunting the _Nanja_, and that totem

+is allotted to the child when born.

+

+Mr. Frazer from these known facts, deduces thus his new theory of the

+Origin of Totemism. It is best to give it in his own words:[5]--

+

+      "Naturally enough, when she is first aware of the

+      mysterious movement within her, the mother fancies that

+      something has that very moment passed into her body, and

+      it is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain

+      what the thing is she should fix upon some object that

+      happened to be near her and to engage her attention at the

+      critical moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be

+      watching a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or

+      bathing in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might

+      imagine that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed,

+      of water, or of a gum-tree, had passed into her, and

+      accordingly, that when her child was born, it was really

+      a kangaroo, a grass-seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to

+      the bodily eye it presented the outward form of a human

+      being. Amongst the objects on which her fancy might pitch

+      as the cause of her pregnancy we may suppose that the

+      last food she had eaten would often be one. If she had

+      recently partaken of emu flesh or yams she might suppose

+      that the emu or yam, which she had unquestionably taken

+      into her body, had, so to say, struck root and grown up in

+      her. This last, as perhaps the most natural, might be the

+      commonest explanation of pregnancy; and if that was so, we

+      can understand why, among the Central Australian tribes,

+      if not among totemic tribes all over the world, the great

+      majority of totems are edible objects, whether animals or

+      plants.[6] Now, too, we can fully comprehend why people

+      should identify themselves, as totemic tribes commonly

+      do, with their totems, to such an extent as to regard

+      the man and his totem as practically indistinguishable.

+      A man of the emu totem, for example, might say, 'An emu

+      entered into my mother at such and such a place and time;

+      it grew up in her, and came forth from her. I am that

+      emu, therefore I am an emu man. I am practically the same

+      as the bird, though to you, perhaps, I may not look like

+      it.' And so with all the other totems. On such a view

+      it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one

+      of his totem species, should regard it with respect and

+      affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed

+      of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess,

+      to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances,

+      for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice

+      of _Intichiuma_, that is, magical ceremonies, performed

+      by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would

+      be a natural development of the original germ or stock

+      of totemism.[7] That germ or stock, if my conjecture is

+      right, is, in its essence, nothing more or less than an

+      early theory of conception, which presented itself to

+      savage man at a time when he was still ignorant of the

+      true cause of the propagation of the species. This theory

+      of conception is, on the principles of savage thought,

+      so simple and obvious that it may well have occurred to

+      men independently in many parts of the world. Thus we

+      could understand the wide prevalence of totemism among

+      distant races without being forced to suppose that they

+      had borrowed it from each other. Further, the hypothesis

+      accounts for one of the most characteristic features of

+      totemism, namely, the intermingling in the same community

+      of men and women of many different totem stocks. For

+      each person's totem would be determined by what may be

+      called an accident, that is, by the place where his mother

+      happened to be, the occupation in which she was engaged,

+      or the last food she had eaten at the time when she first

+      felt the child in her womb; and such accidents (and with

+      them the totems) would vary considerably in individual

+      cases, though the range of variation would necessarily be

+      limited by the number of objects open to the observation,

+      or conceivable by the imagination, of the tribe. These

+      objects would be chiefly the natural features of the

+      district, and the kinds of food on which the community

+      subsisted; but they might quite well include artificial

+      and even imaginary objects, such as boomerangs and

+      mythical beasts. Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which

+      we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on

+      the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the

+      savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might

+      not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which

+      might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the

+      mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season.

+

+      "If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in

+      the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing,

+      based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole

+      history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first

+      place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta

+      and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception

+      with that of locality, could be derived from this

+      hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as

+      I shall point out immediately. And in the second place,

+      the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in

+      its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the

+      ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the

+      Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present.

+      Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and

+      simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the

+      evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of

+      sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

+

+How the totemic spirits became localised, is, Mr. Frazer says, "matter

+of conjecture," and he guesses that, after several women had felt the

+first recognised signs of maternity, "in the same place, and under the

+same circumstances "--for example, at the moment of seeing a Witchetty

+Grub, or a Laughing Boy--the site would become an _Oknanikilla_ haunted

+by spirits of the Laughing Boy or Grub totem.[8] The Arunta view is

+different; these places are burial-grounds of men all of this or

+that totem, who have left their _churinga nanja_ there. About these

+essential parts of the system, Mr. Frazer, as has been observed, says

+nothing. His theory I do not criticise, as I have already stated my

+objection to his premises. "The ultimate origin of exogamy ..." he

+says, "remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," but is a matter of

+deliberate institution. The tribes, already totemic, but not exogamous,

+were divided into the two exogamous phratries, and still later into the

+matrimonial classes, which the most pristine tribes do not possess,

+though they do know about procreation, while the more advanced Arunta,

+with classes and loss of phratry names, do not know. In the primitive

+tribes, with no churinga nanja, the totems became hereditary. Among

+the advanced Arunta, with _churinga nanja_, the totems did not (like

+all other things, including the right to work the paternal totemic

+ritual), become hereditary, though their rites did, which is curious.

+Consequently, Mr. Frazer suggests, the Arunta did not redistribute the

+totems so that one totem never occurs in both exogamous phratries; and

+totems in the region of _churinga nanja_ alone are not exogamous.

+

+Finally the tribes of Central Australia, which we prove to have the

+more advanced ceremonial, system of inheritance, local magistracies

+hereditary in the male line, and the matrimonial classes which

+Mr. Frazer proclaims to be later than the mere phratries of many

+south-eastern tribes--"are the more backward, and the coastal tribes

+the more progressive."[9]

+

+This is a very hard saying!

+

+It seems to rest either on Mr. Frazer's opinion that the south tribes

+of Queensland, and many on the Upper Murray, Paroo, and Barwan rivers

+are "coastal" ("which is absurd"), or on a failure to take them into

+account. For these tribes, the Barkinji, Ta-Ta-Thai, Barinji, and the

+rest, are the least progressive, and "coastal," of course, they are not.

+

+This apparent failure to take into account the most primitive of all

+the tribes, those on the Murray, Paroo, Darling, Barwan, and other

+rivers, and to overlook even the more advanced Kamilaroi, is exhibited

+by Mr. Howitt, whose example Mr. Frazer copies, in the question of

+Australian religious beliefs.

+

+I quote a passage from Mr. Howitt, which Mr. Frazer re-states in his

+own words. He defines "the part of Australia in which a belief exists

+in an anthropomorphic supernatural being, who lives in the sky, and

+who is supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the

+natives ... That part of Australia which I have indicated as the

+habitat of tribes having that belief" (namely, 'certainly the whole of

+Victoria and of New South Wales up to the eastern boundaries of the

+tribes of the Darling River') "is also the area where there has been

+the advance from group marriage to individual marriage, _from descent

+in the female line to that in the male line_; where the primitive

+organisation under the class system has been more or less replaced

+by an organisation based on locality--in fact, where those advances

+have been made to which I have more than once drawn attention in this

+work."[10]

+

+This is an unexpected remark!

+

+Mr. Howitt, in fact, has produced all his examples of tribes with

+descent in the female line, except the Dieri and Urabunna "nations,"

+from the district which he calls "the habitat of tribes in which there

+has been advance ... from descent in the female to that in the male

+line." Apparently all, and certainly most of the south-eastern tribes

+described by him who have not made that advance, cherish the belief in

+the sky-dwelling All Father.

+

+I give examples:--

+

+Narrinyeri          Male descent.        All Father.

+Wiimbaio            Female descent.          "

+Wotjobaluk              " "                  "

+Woeworung           Male descent.            "

+Kulin                   " "                  "

+Kurnai                  " "                  "

+Wiradjuri           Female descent.          "

+Wathi Wathi             " "                  "

+Ta-Ta-Thi               " "                  "

+Kamilaroi               " "                  "

+Yuin                Male descent.            "

+Ngarigo             Female descent.          "

+

+About other tribes Mr. Howitt's information is rather vague, but,

+thanks to Mrs. Langloh Parker, we can add:--

+

+_Euahlayi_     Female descent       All Father.

+

+Here, then, we have eight tribes with female descent and the All

+Father, against five tribes with male descent and the All Father, in

+the area to which Mr. Howitt assigns "the advance from descent in the

+female line to that in the male line." The tribes with female descent

+occupy much the greater part of the southern interior, not of the

+coastal line, of South-East Australia.

+

+Mr. Frazer puts the case thus, "it can hardly be an accidental

+coincidence that, as Dr. Howitt has well pointed out, the same regions

+in which the germs of religion begin to appear have also made some

+progress towards a higher form of social and family life."[11]

+

+But though Dr. Howitt has certainly "pointed it out," his statement

+seems in collision with his own evidence as to the facts. The tribes

+with female descent and the "germs of religion" occupy the greater part

+of the area in which he finds "the advance from descent in the female

+line to that in the male line." He does find that advance, with belief

+in the All Father, in some tribes, mainly coastal, of his area, but

+he also finds the belief in the All Father among "nations" and tribes

+which have not made the "advance"--in the interior. As the northern

+tribes who have made the "advance" are mainly credited with no All

+Father, it is clear that the "advance" in social and family life has

+no connection with the All Father belief. Mr. Howitt, in saying so,

+overlooks his own collection of evidence. Large tribes and nations, in

+the region described by him, are in that social organisation which he

+justly regards as the least advanced of all, yet they have the "germs

+of religion," which he explains as the results of a social progress

+which they have not made.

+

+In these circumstances Mr. Howitt might perhaps adopt a large theory

+of borrowing. The primitive south-east tribes have not borrowed from

+the remote coastal tribes the usage of male descent; they have not

+borrowed matrimonial classes from the Kamilaroi. But, nevertheless,

+they have borrowed, it may be said, their religion from remote coastal

+tribes. Of course, it is just as easy to guess that the coastal tribes

+have borrowed their Bunjil All Father from the Kamilaroi Baiame, or the

+Mulkari of Queensland.

+

+I have not commented on Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of

+exogamy. It was the result, he thinks, of a deliberate reformation,

+and its earliest form was the division of the tribe into the two

+phratries. "Exogamy was introduced ... at first to prevent the marriage

+of brothers with sisters, and afterwards" (in the matrimonial classes)

+"to prevent the marriage of parents with children."[12] The motive was

+probably a superstitious fear that such close unions would be harmful,

+in some way, "to the persons immediately concerned," according to "a

+savage superstition to which we have lost the clue." I made the same

+suggestion in _Custom and Myth_ (1884). I added, however, that totemic

+exogamy might be only one aspect of the general totem tabu on eating,

+killing, or touching, &c., an object of the totem name. We seem to

+have found the clue to that superstition, including the blood tabu,

+emphasised by Dr. Durkheim. But, on this showing, the animal patrons

+of phratries and totem kins, with their "religion," are among the

+causes of exogamy, while some unknown superstition, in Mr. Frazer's

+system, may have been the cause. As we have a known superstition, of

+origin already explained, it seems unnecessary to suppose an unknown

+superstition.

+

+Again, if the reformers knew who were brothers and sisters, how can

+they have been promiscuous? Further, the phratriac prohibition includes

+vast numbers of persons who are _not_ brothers and sisters, except

+in the phratry. Sires could prohibit unions of brothers and sisters,

+each in his own hearth circle; the phratriac prohibition is much more

+sweeping, so is the matrimonial class prohibition. Once more, parent

+with child unions do not occur among primitive tribes which have no

+matrimonial classes at all.

+

+For these reasons Mr. Frazer's system does not recommend itself at

+least to persons who cherish a different theory.

+

+He may, perhaps, explain the Kaitish usage, in which totems, though

+not hereditary but acquired in the Arunta manner, remain practically

+exogamous, by suggesting that the Kaitish are imitating the totemic

+exogamy of the rest of the savage world. But this hardly accounts for

+the fact that, among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate

+in one, and another set of totems in the other exogamous moiety of

+the tribe. These facts indicate that the Arunta system is relatively

+recent, and has not yet overcome among the Kaitish the old rule of

+totemic exogamy. Mr. Frazer, too, as has been said, does not touch on

+the concomitance of stone _churinga nanja_ with the Arunta system of

+acquiring totems.

+

+

+[1] _Fortnightly Review_, September 1905, p. 453.

+

+[2] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 455; cf. Spencer and Gillen, _N. T. C.

+A._, pp. 124 _seq._, p. 265.

+

+[3] _Journal Anthrop. Institute_, p. 502 (1882).

+

+[4] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 283, 284.

+

+[5] _Fortnightly Review_, pp. 455-458.

+

+[6] As to the Central Australian totems, see Spencer and Gillen,

+_Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, Appendix B, pp. 767-773.

+Amongst the two hundred and one sorts of totems here enumerated, no

+less than a hundred and sixty-nine or a hundred and seventy are eaten.

+

+[7] When some years ago these _Intichiuma_ ceremonies were first

+discovered on a great scale among the Central Australians, I was so

+struck by the importance of the discovery that I was inclined to see in

+these ceremonies the ultimate origin of totemism; and the discoverers

+themselves, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, were disposed to take the same

+view. See Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen, and J. G. Frazer, in _Journal

+of the Anthropological Institute_, xxviii. (1899), pp. 275-286; J. G.

+Frazer, "The Origin of Totemism," _Fortnightly Review_, April and May,

+1899. Further reflection has led me to the conclusion that magical

+ceremonies for the increase or diminution of the totems are likely to

+be a later, though still very early, outgrowth of totemism rather than

+its original root. At the present time these magical ceremonies seem to

+constitute the main function of totemism in Central Australia. But this

+does not prove that they have done so from the beginning.

+

+[8] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 458.

+

+[9] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 463.

+

+[10] Howitt, _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 500.

+

+[11] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 452.

+

+[12] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 6l.

+

+

+

+

+APPENDIX

+

+SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM

+

+

+With some American theories of the origin of totemism, I find it

+extremely difficult to deal. They ought not to be neglected, that were

+disrespectful to the valued labours of the school of the American

+"Bureau of Ethnology." But the expositions are scattered in numerous

+Reports, and are scarcely focussed with distinctness. Again, the

+terminology of American inquirers, the technical words which they use,

+differ from those which we employ. That fact would be unimportant if

+they employed their technical terms consistently. Unluckily this is not

+their practice. The terms "clan," "gens," and "phratry" are by them

+used with bewildering inconsistency, and are often interchangeable.

+When "clan" or _gens_, means, now (i) a collection of _gentes_, or (2)

+of families, or (3) of phratries, and again (4) "clan" means a totem

+kin with female descent; and again (5) a village community; while a

+phratry may be (1) an exogamous moiety of a tribe, or (2) a "family,"

+or (3) a magical society; and a _gens_ may be (1) a clan, or (2) a

+"family," or (3) an aggregate of families, or (4) a totem kin with

+male descent, or (5) a magical society, while "tribal" and "sub-tribal

+divisions" are vaguely spoken of--the European student is apt to be

+puzzled! All these varieties of terminology occur too frequently in

+the otherwise most praiseworthy works of some of the American School

+of Anthropologists. I had collected the examples, but to give them at

+length would occupy considerable space, and the facts are only too

+apparent to every reader.[1]

+

+Once more, and this point is of essential importance, the recent

+writers on totemism in America dwell mainly on the institution as

+found among the tribes of the north-west coast of the States and of

+British Columbia. These tribes are so advanced in material civilisation

+that they dwell in village settlements. They have a system of credit

+which looks like a satirical parody of the credit system of the

+civilised world. In some tribes there is a regular organisation by

+ranks, _noblesse_ depending on ancestral wealth.

+

+It seems sanguine to look for the origins of totemism among tribes so

+advanced in material culture. The origin of totemism lies far behind

+the lowest savagery of Australia. It is found in a more primitive

+form among the southern and eastern than in most of the north-western

+American tribes, but the north-western are chiefly studied, for

+example, by Mr. Hill-Tout, and by Dr. Boas. A new difficulty is caused

+by the alleged intermixture of tribes in very different states of

+social organisation. That intermixture, if I understand Mr. Hill-Tout,

+causes some borrowing of institutions among tribes of different

+languages, and different degrees of culture, in the west of British

+Columbia and the adjacent territories. We find, in the north, the

+primitive Australian type of organisation (Thlinket tribe), with

+phratries, totems, and descent in the female line. South of these are

+the Kwakiutl, with descent wavering in a curious fashion between the

+male and female systems. Further south are the Salish tribes, who have

+evolved something like the modern family, reckoning on both sides of

+the house. I, with Mr. McGee of the United States Bureau of Ethnology,

+suppose the Kwakiutl to be moving from the female to the male line

+of descent. In the opinions of Mr. Hill-Tout and Dr. Boas, they are

+moving from the advanced Salish to the primitive Thlinket system,

+under the influence of their primitive neighbours. It is not for me to

+decide this question. But it is unprecedented to find tribes with male

+reverting to female reckoning of descent

+

+Next, Mr. Hill-Tout employs "totem" in various senses. As totems he

+reckons (1) the sacred animals of the tribe; (2) of the religious or

+magical societies (containing persons of many totems of descent); (3)

+of the individual and (4) the hereditary totems of the kin. All these,

+our author says, are, by their original concept, Guardian Spirits. All

+such protective animals, plants, or other objects, which patronise

+and give names to individuals, or kins, or tribes, or societies, are

+"totems," in the opinion of the late Major Powell, and the "American

+School," and are essentially "guardian spirits." All are derived by the

+American theory[2] from the _manitu_, or guardian, of some individual

+to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired

+dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that

+man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning

+in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory), and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while

+men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society

+"totems" suggested by dreams. These communities may or may not be

+exogamous, they may even be endogamous. By the friends of this theory

+the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as

+"accidental," rather than essential.

+

+Using the word "totem" in this wide sense, or in these many senses,

+which are not ours, it is plain that a man and woman who chance to have

+the same "personal totem," (i) or belong to the same religious society

+with its "totem," (i) or to the same local tribe with its "totem,"

+(3) may marry, and, by this way of looking at the matter, "totems" do

+permit marriage within the totem, and are not exogamous. But we, for

+our part (like Mr. E. B. Tylor, and M. Van Gennep[3]), call none of

+these personal, tribal, or society sacred animals "totems." That term

+we reserve for the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin. Thus it is

+not easy, it is almost impossible, for us to argue with Mr. Hill-Tout,

+as we and he use the term "totem" in utterly different senses.

+

+On his theory there are all sorts of "totems," belonging to individuals

+and to various kinds of associations. The totems hereditary in the kins

+when they are exogamous, are exogamous (on Mr. Hill-Tout's theory)

+because the kins, in certain cases, made a treaty of alliance and

+intermarriage with other kins for purely political purposes. They

+might have made such treaties, and become exogamous, though they had

+no totems, no name-giving animals; and they might have had name-giving

+animals, and yet not made such treaties involving exogamy. Thus totemic

+exogamy is, on this theory, a mere accident: the totem has nothing to

+do with the exogamous rule.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "The totem groups are exogamous not because

+of their common totem, but because of blood relationship. It is

+the blood-tie[4] that bans marriage within the totem group, not the

+common totem. That exogamy and the totem group with female descent go

+together is accidental, and follows from the fact that the totem group

+is always, in Indian theory at least, blood related. Where I believe

+you err is in regarding exogamy as the essential feature of totemism.

+I cannot so regard it. To me it is secondary, and becomes the bar to

+marriage only because it marks kinship by blood, which is the real bar,

+however it may have arisen, and from whatever causes."

+

+Here I am obliged to differ from Mr. Hill-Tout. I know no instance

+in which a tribe with female kin (the most primitive confessedly),

+and with hereditary totems, is not exogamous. Exogamy, then, if an

+accident, must be called an inseparable accident of totemism, with

+female descent, till cases to the contrary are proved to exist. Mr.

+Hill-Tout cites the Arunta case: totems among the Arunta are not

+exogamous. But of that argument we have disposed (see Chapter IV.), and

+it need no longer trouble us.

+

+Again, it is not possible to agree with Mr. Hill-Tout when he writes,

+"It is the blood-tie that bars marriage within the totem group, not

+the common totem." The totem does not by its law prevent marriages of

+blood kin. A man, as far as totem law goes, may marry his daughter by

+blood, a brother may marry his sister on the father's side (with female

+descent), and a man may not marry a woman from a thousand miles away if

+she is of his totem, though she is not of his blood. It is not the real

+blood-tie itself, but the blood-tie as defined and sanctioned by the

+totem, that is not to be violated by marriage within it.

+

+To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal

+or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal

+form, that is _his_ "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his

+descendants, and then it is _their_ "totem"; or his sisters may adopt

+it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem

+of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it

+at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there

+must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals,

+but tribes in America have very few totems. If a man does transmit

+his animal protector, his descendants, lineal or collateral, may

+become exogamous, on the theory, by making other kins treaties of

+intermarriage to secure political alliances; or they may not, just

+as taste or chance direct. All the while, every "totem" of every

+sort, hereditary or not, is, on this theory, a guardian spirit.

+That spiritual entity is the essence of totemism, exogamy is an

+accident--according to Mr. Hill-Tout.

+

+Such is his theory. It is, perhaps, the result of studying the

+North-West American _Sulia_, or "personal totem" answering to the

+_nyarongs_ of Borneo, the _naguals_ of the Southern American tribes,

+the _yunbeai_ of the _Euahlayi_ of New South Wales, and the "Bush

+Souls" of West Africa. All of these are, as the Ibans of Borneo imply

+in the term _nyarong_, "spirit helpers," in animal or material form.

+Some tribes call genuine totems by one name, but call animal familiars

+of an individual by another name. _Budjan_, among the Wiradjuri, stands

+both for a man's totem, and for the animal familiar which, rduring

+apparently hypnotic suggestion," he receives on being initiated.[5]

+Among the Ibans (but not among the few Australian tribes which have

+_yunbeai_), the spirit helper may befriend the great-grandchildren of

+its original _protege_.[6]

+

+But in no case recorded does this _nyarong_ become the hereditary totem

+of an exogamous kin.

+

+The "spirit helper" does not do that, nor am I aware, on the other

+hand, that the hereditary totem of an exogamous kin is ever, or

+anywhere, regarded as a "tutelary spirit." No such idea has ever

+been found in Australia. Again, if I understand Dr. Boas, among his

+north-western tribes, such as the Thlinket, who have female descent

+and hereditary exogamous totems, the totem is no more regarded as a

+tutelary spirit than it is among the Australians. Of the Kwakiutl

+he says, "The _manitu_" (that is, the individual's tutelary spirit)

+"was acquired by a mythical ancestor, and the connection has become

+so slight, in many cases, that the tutelary genius of the clan has

+degenerated into a crest."

+

+That the "crest" or totem mark was originally a "tutelary genius"

+among the Thlinket, seems to be merely the hypothesis of Dr. Boas.

+Even among the Kwakiutl, in their transitional state, the totem mark

+now is "in many cases a crest." "This degeneration" (from spirit to

+crest), our author writes, "I take to be due to the influence of the

+northern totemism," such as that of the Thlinket.[7] Thus the Thlinket,

+totemic on Australian primitive lines, do _not_ regard their hereditary

+exogamous totems as "tutelary spirits."[8] No more do the Australians,

+nor the many American totemists who claim descent from the animal which

+is their totem.[9]

+

+The tutelary spirit and the true totem, in my opinion, are utterly

+different things. The American theory that all things (their name is

+legion) called "totems" by the American School are, in origin and

+essence, tutelary spirits, is thus countered by the fact that the

+Australian tribes do not regard their hereditary totems as such; nor

+do many American tribes, even when they are familiar with the idea of

+the tutelary spirits of individuals. The Euahlayi, in Australia for

+instance, call tutelary spirits _yunbeai_; hereditary totems they call

+by a separate name, _Dhe_.[10]

+

+The theory that the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin is the

+"spirit helper" or "tutelary genius," acquired by and transmitted by an

+actual ancestor, cannot be proved, for many reasons. We know plenty of

+tribes in which the individual has a "spirit helper," we know none in

+which he bequeaths it _as the totem of an exogamous kin_.

+

+Again we find, (1) in Australia, tribes with hereditary totems, but

+with no "personal totems," as far as our knowledge goes. Whence, then,

+came Australian hereditary totems? Next, (2) we find tribes with both

+hereditary and "personal totems," but the "personal totems" are never

+hereditable. The "spirit helpers," where they do occur in Australia,

+are either the familiars of wizards (like the witch's cat or hare),

+or are given by wizards to others.[11] Next, (3) we find, in Africa

+and elsewhere, tribes with "personal totems," but with no hereditary

+totems. Why not? For these reasons, the theory that hereditary

+kin-totems are personal tutelary spirits become hereditary, seems a

+highly improbable conjecture. If it were right, genuine totemism, with

+exogamy, might arise in any savage society where "personal totems"

+flourish. But we never find totemism, with exogamy, just coming into

+existence.

+

+To sum up the discussion as far as it has gone, Mr. Hill-Tout had

+maintained (1) that the concept of a ghostly helper is the basis of

+all his varieties of so-called "totems." I have replied that the idea

+of a tutelary spirit makes no part of the Australian, or usually of

+the American "concepts" about the hereditary totems. This is matter of

+certainty.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout next argues that hereditary totems are only "personal

+totems" become hereditary, which may happen, he says, in almost any

+stage of savage society. I have replied, "not _plus_ the totemic law of

+exogamy," and he has answered (3) that the law is casual, and may or

+may not accompany a system of totemic kindred, instancing the Arunta,

+as a negative example. In answer, I have shown that the Arunta case is

+not to the point, that it is an isolated "sport."

+

+I have also remarked frequently, in previous works, that under the

+primitive method of reckoning descent in the female line, an individual

+male cannot bequeath his personal protective animal as a kin-name to

+his descendants, so that the hereditary totem of the kin cannot have

+originated in that way. Mr. Hill-Tout answers that it can, and does,

+originate in that way--a male founder of a family can, and does, found

+it by bequeathing his personal protective animal to the descendants of

+his sisters, so that it henceforth passes in the female line. I quote

+his reply to my contention that this is not found to occur.[12]

+

+"The main objection brought against this view of the matter by Mr.

+Andrew Lang and others is that the personal totem is not transmissible

+or hereditable. But is not this objection contrary to the facts of the

+case? We have abundant evidence to show that the personal totem _is_

+transmissible and hereditable. Even among tribes like the Thompson,

+where it was the custom for every one of both sexes to acquire a

+guardian spirit at the period of puberty, we find the totem is in

+some instances hereditable. Teit says, in his detailed account of the

+guardian spirits of the Thompson Indians, that 'the totems of the

+shamans[13] are sometimes inherited directly from the parents'; and

+among those tribes where individual totemism is not so prevalent, as,

+for instance, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, the personal

+totem of a chief or other prominent individual, more particularly if

+that totem has been acquired by means other than the usual dream or

+vision, such as a personal encounter with the object in the forest

+or in the mountains, is commonly inherited and owned by his or her

+posterity. It is but a few weeks ago that I made a special inquiry into

+this subject among some of the Halkomelem tribes of the Lower Fraser.

+'Dr. George,' a noted shaman[14] of the Tcil'Qe'Ek, related to me the

+manner in which his grandfather had acquired their family totem,[15]

+the Bear; and made it perfectly clear that the Bear had been ever since

+the totem of all his grandfather's descendants. The important totem of

+the Sqoiaqi[16] which has members in a dozen different tribes of the

+coast and Lower Fraser Salish, is another case in point. It matters

+little to us _how_ the first possessor of the totem acquired it. We may

+utterly disregard the account of its origin as given by the Indians

+themselves, the main fact for us is, that between a certain object or

+being and a body of people, certain mysterious relations have been

+established, identical with those existing between the individual and

+his personal totem; and _that these people trace their descent from and

+are the lineal descendants of the man or woman who first acquired the

+totem_. Here is evidence direct and ample of the hereditability of the

+individual totem, and American data abound in it."

+

+All these things occur under the system of male kinship. Even if the

+"personal totem" of a chief or shaman is adopted by his offspring, it

+does not affect my argument, nor are the bearers of the badge thus

+inherited said to constitute an exogamous kin.[17] If they do not, the

+affair is not, in my sense, "totemic" at all. We should be dealing not

+with totemism but with heraldry, as when a man of the name of Lion

+obtains a lion as his crest, and transmits it to his family. Meanwhile

+I do not see "evidence direct and ample," or a shred of evidence,

+_that a man's familiar animal is borrowed by his sisters, and handed on

+to their children_.

+

+Next, as to that point, Mr. Hill-Tout writes:[18]--

+

+"To return to Mr. Lang's primary objection, that the evolution of the

+group totem cannot proceed from the personal, individual totem because

+in the more primitive forms of society where totemism originated "male

+ancestors do not found houses or clan names," descent being on the

+female side. As Mr. Lang has laid so much stress upon this argument,

+and is able apart from it to appreciate the force of the evidence

+for the American point of view, if it can be clearly shown that his

+objection has no basis in fact, that his conception of the laws of

+inheritance under matriarchy is faulty, consistency must needs make him

+a convert to the American view. The singular error into which Mr. Lang

+has fallen is in overlooking the fact that male property and rights

+are as hereditable under mother-right as under father-right, the only

+difference being that in the latter case the transmission is _directly_

+from the father to his offspring, and in the former _indirectly_ from

+the maternal uncle to his sister's children. What is there to prevent

+a man of ability under matriarchy from 'founding a family,' that

+is, acquiring an individual totem which by his personal success and

+prosperity is looked upon as a _powerful helper_, and therefore worthy

+of regard and reverence? Under mother-right the _head_ of the clan is

+invariably a man, the elder male relative on the maternal side; and

+the clan name is not so much the property of the woman as of her elder

+brother or her conventional 'father,' that is, her maternal uncle. The

+'fathers' of the group, that is, the maternal uncles, are just as much

+the heads and I founders of houses' and clans in the matriarchal state

+as under the more advanced state of patriarchal rule. And that they

+_do_ found family and group totems the evidence from our northern coast

+tribes makes clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.

+

+"The oft-quoted case of the Bear totem among the Tsimshians is a case

+in point, and this is but one of scores that could be cited. The origin

+of this totem came about in the following manner: 'A man was out

+hunting and met a black bear who took him to his home and taught him

+many useful things. After a lengthy stay with the bear the man returned

+home. All the people became afraid of him, he looked and acted so like

+a bear. Some one took him in hand and rubbed him with magic herbs and

+he became a man again. Thereafter whenever he went hunting his friend

+the bear helped him. He _built a house and painted the bear on the

+front of it, and his sister made a dancing blanket, the design of which

+represented a bear. Thereafter the descendants of his sister used the

+bear for their crest, and were known as the Bear clan._'[19]

+

+"Who was the 'founder of the family' here, and the source of the clan

+totem? Clearly and indubitably the many and _so it invariably was,

+as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems plainly

+shows_.[20] It matters not, I may point out, that these myths may

+have been created since the formation of the clans to account for

+their origin, the point for us is that the man was regarded by the

+natives as the 'founder' of the family and clan. The founders of

+families and totem-crests are as invariably men under matriarchy

+as under patriarchy, the essential difference only between the two

+states in this regard being that under one the descent is through the

+'conventional father,' under the other through the 'real or ostensible

+father.' Such being the case, Mr. Lang's chief argument falls to the

+ground, and the position taken by American students as to the origin of

+group-totems is as sound as before."

+

+Now where, outside the region of myth, is there proof that Mr.

+Hill-Tout's processes ever do occur?

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout argues that the founder of the totem kin is "invariably

+the man, as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems

+plainly shows." But myths have no historical authority, and many of

+these myths show the very opposite: in them a beast or other creature

+_begets_ the "clan."[21] To be sure, Mr. Hill-Tout says nothing about

+_these_ myths, or about scores of familiar American myths[22] to the

+very same effect.

+

+Again, as mythical evidence is worthless, Mr. Hill-Tout argues that

+"the man was regarded by the natives themselves as the 'founder' of

+the family or clan." Yes, in some myths, but not in those which Mr.

+Hill-Tout overlooks.

+

+That the natives in some myths regard the man as founder of a totem

+kin under female descent proves nothing at all. Does the Tsimshian Bear

+myth prove that the natives themselves turn into Bears, and become men

+again? Does it even prove that such an occurrence, to-day, would now

+seem normal to them? Nothing is proved, except that _in myth-making_

+the natives think that this metamorphosis may have occurred in the

+past. In the same way--when myth-making--they think that a man might

+convey his badge to his sisters, to be hereditary in the female line.

+To prove his case, Mr. Hill-Tout must show that men actually do thus

+convey their personal protective animals and badges into the female

+line. To that evidence I shall bow.

+

+If I reasoned like our author, I might argue, "The South African tribes

+say that their totems (_siboko_) arose in nicknames given to them on

+account of known historical incidents, therefore my conjecture that

+totems thus arose, in group names given from without, is corroborated

+by the natives themselves, who testify thus to the actuality of that

+mode of getting tribal names and _siboko_."[23]

+

+But I, at least, cannot argue thus! The process (_my_ process) does

+not and cannot occur in South African conditions, where tribes of an

+advanced culture have sacred protective animals. The natives have

+merely hit on my own conjecture, as to the remote germ of totemic

+names, and applied it where the process never occurs. The Tsimshians,

+in the same way, are familiar with the adoption of protective animals

+by male individuals. They are also familiar with the descent of

+the kin-totem through females. Like the famous writer on Chinese

+Metaphysics, the Tsimshians "combine their information." A man, they

+say, became a bear, and became a man again. He took the Bear for his

+badge; and to account for the transmission of the badge through women,

+the Tsimshians add that his sister also took and transmitted the Bear

+cognisance, as a hereditary totem. They think this could be done,

+exactly as the Bakwena think that their tribal protective animal, the

+Crocodile, the Baboon, or another, could arise in a nickname, _given

+recently_. It could not do so, the process is no longer possible, the

+explanation in this case is false, and does not help my theory of the

+origin of totemism. In the same way the Bear myth does not help Mr.

+Hill-Tout's theory, unless he can prove that sisters do actually take

+and transmit to their descendants, as exogamous totems, the _sulia_ or

+individual protective animal of their brothers. Of this process I do

+not observe that Mr. Hill-Tout gives a single verifiable example.

+

+As to this argument, Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "I cannot accept your

+criticism on the poor evidence of the Tsimshian accounts of the origin

+of their totem kins. You could not take such a view, I think, if you

+had personal, first-hand knowledge of the Indian mind. Your objections

+apply to 'classic myths,' but not to the accounts of tribes who are

+_still_ in the totemic stage."

+

+I fail to understand the distinction. It is now universally recognised

+that most myths, "classic" or savage (the classic being survivals of

+savage myths), are mere fanciful hypotheses framed to account for

+unexplained facts. Moreover, I am discussing and comparing the myths

+of various savage races, I am not speaking of "classic myths." Savages

+have anticipated us in every one of our hypotheses as to the origin of

+totemism, but, of course, they state their hypotheses in the shape of

+myths, of stories told to account for the facts. Some Australian myths

+favour Mr. Howitt's hypothesis, others favour that of Mr. Spencer, one

+flatters that of Dr. Haddon, one African myth is the fore-runner of

+my theory, and a myth of the Tsimshians anticipates the idea of Mr.

+Hill-Tout. But all these myths are equally valueless as historical

+evidence.

+

+As to heritage under female kin, which I am said not to understand,

+no man reckoning by female kin has hitherto been said to inherit his

+totem _from his maternal uncle_! A man inherits his totem from his

+mother only, and inherits it if he has no maternal uncles, and never

+had. If a man has a _manitu_, a _nagual_, a _yunbeai_, a _nyarong_, or

+"personal totem," his sister does not take it from him and hand it to

+her children, or, if this ever occurs, I say once more, we need proof

+of it. A man may inherit "property and rights" from his maternal uncles

+under female kin. But I speak of the totem name, which a man undeniably

+does not inherit from his maternal uncle, while there is no proof

+offered that a woman ever takes such a name from her brother, and hands

+it on to her children. So I repeat that, under the system of reckoning

+in the female line, "male ancestors do not found houses or clan names,"

+or are not proved to do so.

+

+       *       *       *       *       *

+

+It is apparent, probably, that a theory of totemism derived in great

+part from the myths and customs of a few advanced tribes, dwelling in

+village communities, and sometimes in possession of the modern family,

+with male kin, is based on facts which are not germane to the matter.

+The origin of totemism must be sought in tribes of much more backward

+culture, and of the confessedly "more primitive" type of organisation

+with female descent To disprove Mr. Hill-Tout's theory is of course

+impossible. There may have been a time when "personal totems" were as

+common among the Australians as they are now rare. There may have been

+a time when an Australian man's sisters adopted, and transmitted, his

+"personal totem," though that is no longer done to our knowledge. It

+may have chanced that stocks, being provided, on Mr. Hill-Tout's plan,

+with tutelary spirits of animal names descending in the female line,

+made marriage treaties, and so became exogamous. Then we should have

+explained totemism, perhaps, but a considerable number of missing facts

+must be discovered and reported before this explanation can be accepted.

+

+Mr. Hill-Tout's scheme, I presume, would work out thus: there are sets

+of human beings, A, B, C, D, E, F. In all of these every man acquires

+an animal, plant, or other friendly object. Their sisters adopt it as a

+name, and hand it on to their children. The stocks are now named after

+the familiar animals, as Grouse, Trout, Deer, Turtle, Buffalo, Salmon,

+and hundreds more. They have hitherto, I presume, married as they

+please, anyhow. But stocks Grouse and Deer think, "We shall be stronger

+if we give our women to each other, and never let a Grouse marry a

+Grouse, or a Deer a Deer." They make this pact, the other stocks,

+Salmon, Turtle, Buffalo, &c., come into it, ranging themselves under

+Deer or Grouse, and now Deer and Grouse are phratries in a tribe with

+the other animals as heads of totem kins in the phratries. The animals

+themselves go on being tutelary spirits, and are highly respected.

+

+This scheme (whether Mr. Hill-Tout would arrange it just thus or not)

+works perfectly well. It explains the origin of exogamy--not by an

+inexplicable _moral_ reform, and bisection of the horde, but as the

+result of a political alliance. It explains the origin of totemism by

+a theory of animal-shaped tutelary spirits taken on by sisters from

+brothers, and bequeathed by the sisters when they become mothers to

+their children. It explains the origin of phratries, and of totem

+kins in the phratries. It works out all along the line--if only one

+knew that very low savages deliberately made political alliances; and

+if all low savages had animal-shaped tutelary spirits; and if these

+were known to be adopted from brothers by sisters, and by sisters

+bequeathed, for an eternal possession, to their children; and if these

+transactions, once achieved, were never repeated in each line of female

+descent--no sister in the next generation taking on her brother's

+personal tutelary animal, and bequeathing it to her children for ever.

+Finally, if savages in general did regard their hereditary totems as

+tutelary spirits, the sketch which I make on Mr. Hill-Tout's lines

+would leave nothing to be desired. But we do not know any of these

+desirable facts.

+

+If I have stated Mr. Hill-Tout's ideas correctly, he agrees with me in

+regarding the tribe as formed by aggregation of many more primitive

+groups. He does not regard the phratries and totem kins as the result

+of the segmentation of a primordial indiscriminate mass or horde,

+split up at the injunction of an inspired medicine man, or by a tribal

+decree. Against our opinion, Mr. Howitt argues that only one writer

+who "has or had a personal acquaintance with the Australian blacks"

+accepts it, the Rev. John Matthew. It is accepted, however, as far as

+"sub-phratries" go (as an alternative hypothesis), by Mr. Hewitt's

+friend, Dr. Fison.[24] But I have given my reasons for not accepting

+Mr. Howitt's doctrine, and I await some reason for his rejection

+of mine. Even authors who have "a personal acquaintance with the

+Australian blacks" should, I venture to think, give their reasons for

+rejecting one and persisting in another theory of "the probabilities

+of the case."[25] I have shown why I think it improbable that a

+postulated prehistoric tribe split itself up, for no alleged reason,

+at the suggestion of a medicine man. Now I am anxious to know why my

+postulated groups should not make marriage alliance for the reason of

+securing peace--a very sufficient motive for betrothals.

+

+

+[1] Compare Mr. N. W. Thomas's criticisms of Mr. Hill-Tout, in _Man_,

+May, June, July 1904.

+

+[2] We must not suppose that all American scholars agree with the views

+of the "American School." Major Powell used "totem" in from ten to

+fourteen different meanings.

+

+[3] _Totemisme et Tabou a Madagascar_. 1904.

+

+[4] A perfectly fictitious blood-tie, when a man Crow is born in

+Victoria, and a woman Crow on the Gulf of Carpentaria.--A. L.

+

+[5] Howitt. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 144.

+

+[6] For full details see Messrs. McDougall and Hose, _J. A. I._, N.S.,

+xxxi pp. 199-201.

+

+[7] _Report of Nat. Mus._, U.S., 1895, p. 336.

+

+[8] Mr. Hill-Tout differs from my understanding of Dr. Boas's remarks.

+

+[9] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5. Dorman, pp. 231-234.

+

+[10] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[11] _J. A. I._, vol. xvi. pp. 44, 50, 350. Howitt, _Native Tribes of

+South-East Australia_, pp. 144, 387, 388. MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.

+

+[12] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ix., xi. p. 72.

+

+[13] These are not totems, but "familiars," like the witch's cat or

+hare.--A. L.

+

+[14] The shaman's sons keep on the shaman business, with the paternal

+familiar. It is not, in my sense, a totem.--A. L.

+

+[15] My italics.

+

+[16] _Brit. Ass._, 1902. _Report of Ethnol. Survey of Canada_, pp.

+51-52, 57. A fairy tale about the origin of a society of healing and

+magical influence.--A. L.

+

+[17] Mr. Hill-Tout says elsewhere: "Shamans _only_ inherited their

+_sulia_" (he speaks of these personal totems or _sulia_) "from their

+fathers; other men had to acquire their own. But this applied only

+to the dream or vision totem or protective spirit." If a man "met

+his ghostly guardian in form of a bear," when hunting, he would take

+it as his "crest" and transmit it. This happened in the case of "Dr.

+George," who inherited his crest and guardian, the Bear, from his

+great-grandfather, who met a bear not in a dream but when hunting. (_J.

+A. I._, vol. xxxiv. pp. 326, 327.) Such inheritance, in an advanced

+American tribe of to-day, does not seem to me to corroborate the belief

+that totems among the many primitive tribes of Australia are the result

+of inheriting a personal crest or guardian spirit of a male ancestor.

+

+[18] _Transactions_, ix. p. 76.

+

+[19] _Fifth Report on the Physical Characteristics, &c., of the N.W.

+Tribes of Canada_, B.A.A.S., p. 24. London, 1889.

+

+[20] The myths, in fact, vary; the myth of descent from the totem also

+occurs even in these tribes. (Hartland, _Folk Lore_, xi. I, pp. 60-61.

+Boas, _Nat. Mus. Report_, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)--A. L.

+

+[21] Cf. Mr. Hartland in _Folk Lore_, ut supra.

+

+[22] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5.

+

+[23] For the full account of _Siboko_ see Chapter II., _supra_.

+

+[24] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 71, 72.

+

+[25] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 143, 144.

+

+

+

+

+

+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret of the Totem, by Andrew Lang

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