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Title: The Secret of the Totem

Author: Andrew Lang

Release date: April 11, 2014 [eBook #45363]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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