ARUNTA PHRATRIES AND TOTEMS

[1]Ethnological Bureau, Annual Report, 1893-1894, pp. 200, 201.

[2]Studies in Ancient History, p. 221.

[3]Suppose we take a group ranging in a given locality, and known to its neighbours as the Emu group. Let us also take a similar and similarly situated Kangaroo group. Let us suppose that each such group has raided for its wives among Opossum, Grub, Cat, and Dingo groups. By female descent, both the Emu and Kangaroo groups will contain persons of the Opossum, Grub, Cat, and Dingo groups. This being so a man of the Emu local group, named Grub by totem, might marry a woman of the Emu local group, by totem of descent an Opossum; and similarly in the Kangaroo group. But, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another case, 'the old prohibition', deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives (L'Année Sociologique, v. 107, note). Now 'the old prohibition' was that a man of the Emu group was not to marry a woman of the Emu group. That rule endures, though the Emu group now contains men and women of several distinct totem kins. To escape from the difficulty, by my theory, Emu local totem group makes connubium with Kangaroo local totem group. Any Emu man may marry any Kangaroo woman not of his own totem by descent. But this does not, automatically, throw Opossum and Grub into one, Cat and Dingo into another, of the two local totem groups, Emu and Kangaroo, now become phratries, with loss of their local character. For if a man, by phratry Emu, and by totem of descent Cat, marries a woman, by phratry Kangaroo, and by totem of descent Grub, their children, by female descent, are Kangaroo Grubs. Meanwhile, if a man, by phratry Kangaroo, and by totem Cat, marries a woman, by phratry Emu, and by totem Grub, their children are Emu Grubs. There are thus Grubs in both phratries, a thing that never occurs (except among the Arunta). Therefore the division of the totem kins, some into one phratry, others into the other, is not automatic. There might be a tendency, by way of making assurance doubly sure, for the totem kins to be assorted into the two phratries, but some kind of deliberate arrangement does seem necessary. The same necessity attends Dr. Durkheim's theory later criticised.

[4]See again Durkheim, inL'Année Sociologique, i. 47-57, on the superstition as to blood, and the totem as a sacred representative of the inviolable blood of the kindred. That superstition gives religious sanction to a pre-existing exogamous tendency.

[5]Totemism, p. 60 (1889).

[6]Totemism, p. 62.

[7]The people of New Britain group of islands are divided into two exogamous sets. The totems of these classes are two insects, but I incline to suppose that there are, or may have been, totem kins included within these totemic classes. Our informant, the Rev. B. Danks, regrets that he did not pay more attention to these matters.J. A. I.xviii. 281-294.

[8]On the other hand, among the Mohegans, I can admit that Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, and Great Turtle may be deliberate subdivisions of the Turtle totem, now a phratry, but even this need not necessarily be the case; the different species of turtles being quite capable of giving names to different totems. I would not deny the possibility of the occasional segmentation of a totem group—far from it—but I doubt whether great tribes originally (and, as it seems, deliberately) first bisected themselves, and then cut up the two main divisions.

[9]My italics.

[10]J. A. I., N.S. i. 278.

[11]Ibid. p. 282.

[12]Mr. Mathews counts thirty-four totems in theDilbi, and as many in the Rupathin 'phratries.'Proc. Ray. Soc. N.S.W.xxxi. 157-158.

[13]J. A. I., N.S. i. 284-285.

[14]Studies in Ancient History, second series, p. 605.

[15]Local totem groups, in my theory.

[16]Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, i. 423-424.

[17]On the Organisation of Australian Tribes, p. 186.

[18]I know that many students will decline to admit that there is such a myth of a Maker.

[19]Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1892-1893, pt. i. pp. 32-43.

[20]Natives of Central Australia, pp. 12-15.

[21]Ibid. pp. 15, 421-422, also p. 272.

[22]Here I dissent from Mr. Frazer and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen; the point is discussed later.

[23]Fortnightly Review, June 1889.

[24]In 1895,J. A. I.xxiv., no. 4, p. 371, Mr. Fison abandons hope of a certain discovery of the origin of exogamy.

[25]Fortnightly Review, April, May, 1899.

[26]Spencer and Gillen, pp. 68, 69, 121.

[27]Ibid. p. 70.

[28]Ibid. p. 10.

[29]See 'The Origin of Totemism,'infra.

[30]L'Année Sociologique, 1900-1901, pp. 82-121.

[31]Ibid. v. 89-90.

[32]Totemism, p. 83.

[33]L'Année Sociologique, v. 92.

[34]Spencer and Gillen, p. 419.

[35]J. A. I., N.S., i. 285.

[36]Spencer and Gillen, p. 120.

[37]J. A. I., N.S., i., nos. 3, 4, p. 276.

[38]J. A. I., N.S., i. 276-277.

[39]Native Tribes of Australia, pp. 396-402, 421.

[40]Native Tribes of Australia, p. 418.

[41]Op. cit.p 279.

The essential question is, why, among the more archaic Urabunna, do the large exogamous divisions never include the same totems, whereas, among the more highly developed Arunta, they do? If we can show how the Arunta, if once organised on the Urabunna and North American model, came to slip out of it; while we cannot show how the Urabunna, and most other tribes, if once on the Arunta model, came to desert it (as they must have done), then it will seem probable that the Urabunna organisation, the regular universal Australian organisation, is the older.

The sequence of events, as understood by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, was this, or, at least, may thus be conceived. We take two tribes, say Urabunna and Arunta. They both have many totem groups, totemic, because (on this theory) each group had, for its 'primary function,' the working of magic for the object which was its totem. The totem had primarily, on this theory, no relation to marriage rules. It is 'quite possible' that certain persons then deliberately introduced exogamous divisions.... 'so as to regulate marital relations.' The exact purpose, however, is unknown; 'it can only be said that far back in the early history of mankind, there was felt the need of some form of organisation, and that this gradually resulted in the development of exogamic groups.' This position I have already criticised; it is not intelligible to me. However—the exogamous division was made, and then all the totems might be arranged separately in the two divisions, by the Urabunna, 'and perhapsthe majority of Australian tribes' (and the American tribes) or, 'this was not done,' as by the Arunta. Consequently, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen think, the rule which prevents an Urabunna man from marrying a woman of his own totem, has nothing, primarily, to do with the totem, but is a mere inevitable consequence of the system which, among all tribes but the Arunta, excluded each totem from one of the two exogamous divisions, and placed it (not among the Arunta) in the other. My own system—I need not reiterate it—is the reverse of all this.

The Arunta, I contend, probably had, originally, the usual organisation, but have lost it for obvious reasons, so that now the same totem may occur in both of the large exogamous divisions, and persons of the same totem may now intermarry.

The traditions of the Arunta represent the exogamous 'phratries' as later than the totemic (but not yet exogamous) division. Dr. Durkheim thinks this improbable or impossible. It is true that the 'phratries' or 'classes' are now much more important, among the Arunta, than the totems, on which Dr. Durkheim insists. They need not, therefore, be earlier.

The theory of Dr. Durkheim is not, perhaps, expressed with his usual lucidity; at least I have found some difficulty in understanding it. The following summary, however, seems to be correct. 'The phratry,' he says, 'began by being a clan' (in my terminology an exogamous local totem group). 'There is no reason why this general idea should not apply to the Arunta. Consequently, since there are actually two exogamous phratries, we have reason to admit that this society was originally formed by two primary clans, or, if any one prefers the phrase, by two elementary totem groups, both exogamous (également exogames), for under this form the two phratries must have begun to exist. Now in that case there was at least a moment when marriage was forbiddenbetween members of the same totem,' though now among the Arunta this rule no longer obtains.[1]

So far Dr. Durkheim and I hold identical views; we differ on a point of detail. What are, and whence came, the totems within the phratries? Dr. Durkheim conceives the case thus: Originally there was a 'clan' (local totem group) which was exogamous, and married out into one other equally exogamous clan. The members of each such exogamous totem group ('clan') then multiplied and 'swarmed off,' in colonies, and all such colonies took a new totem, while retaining 'the sentiment of their primary solidarity' with the original totem group. These are the 'secondary' totem kins. But why should they take new totem names and new totems?[2]I know not, but the original group from which they swarmed off now became their 'phratry.' This phratry, in many cases, still has a totem name, 'which is the proof that it is, or has been a clan,' that is an exogamous totem group.[3]Therefore exogamous totem groups were 'primary,' the existing totem kins are 'secondary,' they have split off from the original groups. As far as I am able to follow Dr. Durkheim's reasoning, he and I differ on this one point. We both regard the two 'phratries' as having been originally local exogamous totem groups, which united in connubium. But in each 'phratria' there exist several totem kinships. Dr. Durkheim regards these as 'secondary' branches which split off from the two original local totem groups, and which, in each case, took new totem names, while retaining membership in their original totem groups, now 'phratries.' They are totemic colonies of a totemic metropolis. I, on the other hand, as has been explained, conceive that each of the two local totem groups which became phratries (say Emu and Kangaroo) already, by the action of exogamy in a region where there were many totem groups, and by virtue of female descent, contained within it persons who were ofvarious totem kindreds. Dr. Durkheim, on the contrary, seems to think of the existence of but two primal exogamous clans in a given region. Groups emigrating from these took new totem names, while retaining the phratry name and connection with their mother clans, now phratries.

Why the clans were totemic at all does not appear. I understand that they were exogamous out of respect for the blood of their totems, the totem tabu (p. 57, note I).

Against the hypothesis it may be urged (1) that we do not know that emigrants from a local centre ever select new totem names—unless, indeed, they reach a region where their old totem does not exist. This cannot have occurred constantly. Again (2), Dr. Durkheim's theory involves the same difficulty as my own. How did the colonies from the Kangaroo group happen never to select the same totem as colonies from the Emu group, so that the same totem never occurs in both phratries? This implies deliberate arrangement. If however, totem names were given from without, by neighbours (as I shall argue), the case could not occur at all, and the same totem would appear in both phratries.

If we adopt the hypothesis that two friendly 'families,' or 'fire circles,' of a cousinly character, set the first example of exogamous intermarriage—exclusively with each other—and then got totem names, they might become phratries, but whence arose the totem kins within the phratries? Shall we say that other such 'families,' increasing in size, and receiving totem names, came in, two by two, to Emu and Kangaroo, each of the new linked adherents taking opposite sides, Opossum going to the Kangaroo, Bandicoot to the Emu phratry? This would give the totems within the phratries, by a constant accession of other pairs of phratries, which subordinated themselves, one to Emu, one to Kangaroo. Either this hypothesis, or Dr. Durkheim's, or my own, accounts for the phratryplustotem kins arrangement, without supposing the deliberate bisection of a hitherto undivided commune. That hypothesis, if any one, of the other three, Dr. Durkheim's, my own, or the theory of accessionsto the pair of exogamous intermarrying families, be accepted, is therefore not forced upon us in defect of a better.

At all events, the Arunta 'clan' (totem kin) is now no longer exogamous, and two Arunta phratries can now contain members of the same totems, contrary to Kamilaroi, Dieri and Urabunna and American custom. How did this anomaly arise? Dr. Durkheim supposes that the change began when Arunta kinship came to desert the female and to be reckoned in the male line. This appears to Dr. Durkheim to be indicated by the complicated and ingenious arrangements made when an Urabunna (who reckons by the female line) intermarries with an Arunta, who reckons by the male line.[4]These arrangements, he thinks, are no novelty devised for the occasion: the Arunta merely revert to their old way of reckoning by the spindle side. When the Arunta changed their system, and reckoned in the male, not, as of old, in the female line, the children now belonged to the 'phratries,' not of their mothers, as previously, but of their fathers. Each 'phratry' then bartered a sub-class of its own for a sub-class of its partner. Each bartered sub-class thus brought its totems into the other 'phratry,' and there was no longer a totem group entirely peculiar to one or other 'phratry.' Consequently, a member of the Kangaroo totem could marry a woman of the same, if she were in the opposite 'phratry' to his own.

Might not the same results follow from the mere fact, that, among the Arunta, the totem is now inherited neither from father nor mother, but is derived simply from the totem souls that haunt the particular glen or hill where the child was conceived? By this means a totem soul can get into a child of the 'phratry' to which that totem did not originally belong, and thus the totems 'skip' from one 'phratry'to another, contrary to general rule in Australia and North America. This is the explanation of the Arunta anomaly which Messrs. Spencer and Gillen accept. 'The spirit child' (of the Lizard totem) 'deliberately, the natives say, chose to go into a Kumura' (class) 'woman, instead of a Bulthara woman.... Though the class was changed, the totem could not possibly be.... Owing to the system according to which totem names are acquired, it is always possible for a man to be, say, a Purula' (class) 'or a Kumura' (class) 'and yet a Witchetty; or, on the other hand, a Bulthara' (class) 'or a Panunga' (class) 'and yet an Emu' (totem). But, if he is thus born to a totem which was not originally (on my theory) a totem of his phratry, a man loses the chance of being anAlatunja, or head man of a local group.[5]Thus the Arunta anomaly arises merely and necessarily from the Arunta philosophy of souls. That philosophy is an isolated freak, and it has upset and revolutionised Arunta Totemism, which, therefore, is the reverse of the 'primitive' model.

[1]L'Année Sociologique, v. 91, 92.

[2]This idea we shall find again later, in another part of Dr. Durkheim's system.

[3]L'Année Sociologique, i. 6, 7.

[4]L'Ann. Soc.v. 104-107; Spencer and Gillen, pp. 68-69.

[5]Spencer and Gillen, pp. 125, 126. The reader is recommended to study Dr. Durkheim's passage cited in the last note, the topic being difficult.

The prohibitions on marriage, with which we have hitherto been concerned, are based on what savages regard—while we do not—as relations of kindred. Men and women of the same 'phratry' or 'primary division' may not intermarry (where such divisions exist), nor may men and women of the same totem name. Civilised society, at least in Europe, now recognises no such things as the 'phratry' or the totem kin. When Mr. George Osborne, inVanity Fair, was asked whether he was akin to the ducal House of Leeds, he replied that he bore the same arms—these having been conferred on his father by a coach-builder. In savage society, Captain Osborne's answer would have been satisfactory. He would really have reckoned as a kinsman of all other Emus, if his totem and badge (coat of arms) was an Emu. In Scotland the Campbell name used to be regarded as implying at least a chance that the bearer was of the blood of the Black Knight of Loch Awe, and had a right to the Campbell tartan, and badge, the gale, or bog-myrtle. But, of course, as a rule, in modern society, a common surname is no proof of kinship, and coats of arms are usually home by the middle classes, and peers of recent creation, without much inquiry.

So far, then, the totemic rules which prohibit certain marriages, have no resemblance to our own definite 'forbidden degrees,' based on nearness of blood. The savage rules, as they stand, include our notions of kindred, but these notions, as far as they are recognised, are not conterminous with ours. But the 'phratry' prohibitions, and the totemprohibitions, are not the only bars to marriage among such peoples as the Australians.

The other bars are lucidly described by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen.[1]'There are still further restrictions to marriage ... and it is here that we are brought into contact with the terms of relationship.' We find that a woman may belong to a totem kin (and phratry) into which a man may lawfully marry, 'yet there is a further restriction preventing marriage in this particular case.' Thus a male Dingo (among the Urabunna) may marry a female Water Hen, as far as 'phratry' and totem are concerned. But he may not marry a woman of the Water Hen totem if she reckons (1) as his father's sister (i.e. of his father's generation), (2) if she is his child, or his brother's child (of thenextgeneration), (3) if she be one of his mother's younger brother's daughters: but hemaymarry her if she (4) be one of his mother's elder brother's daughters. All women of that category (4) are Nupa, or nubile, as far as this man goes. In category I, the women (including 'paternal aunts,' as we reckon) are of an older generation than the man; in category 2 they are of a younger generation (including our 'children' and 'nieces'); in category 3 the women include our cousins on the maternal side, by uncles younger than our mothers, and, in category 4, they include our cousins on the maternal side, by uncles older than our mothers. We Europeans, being males, may not marry into categories 1 and 2, but if not Catholics, we may marry into categories 3 and 4; if Catholics, we may—if we can get a dispensation.

In the Australian system the oddest thing is that a male may marry into what, in our phrase, includes his younger maternal uncle's daughter, but not his elder maternal uncle's daughter. But we here use the words 'uncle,' 'aunt,' and 'cousin,' only by way of illustration. The Urabunna, and tribes of their level generally, have no such words. All children (category I) 'of men who are at the same level in the generation, and belong to the same class and totem, areregarded as the common children of these men,' or, perhaps we should rather say, are called by the same name, Biaka, as a man's own children are styled. A man knows very well which children he reckons his own, though, as will be seen, he has little ground for his confidence. In the same way a child, though he calls all men of his father's class, totem, and level in the generation,Nia(fathers), knows well enough whichNiafeeds him, pets him, thrashes him for his good, and, generally, plays the paternal part. For example, a man informs you that this or that native, by personal name Oriaka, is hisOkilia, 'and you cannot possibly tell without further inquiry whether he is the speaker's own or tribal brother, that is the son of his own father, or of some man belonging to the same particular group' (by 'phratry,' totem, and seniority) 'as his father.'[2]But you can learn 'by further inquiry:' the actual relationship, in our sense of the word, is recognised.

These facts necessarily lead to the question, are all men of one class, totem, and seniority, actual husbands of all women of the opposite class, different totem, and equivalent seniority? (Group Marriage). Or, if this is no longer the case, was it once the case? and are these sweeping uses of names which include our 'father,' 'mother,' 'brother,' 'child,' survivals of such a stage, called 'Group Marriage'? This question is still undecided; good authorities take opposite views of the question, which has bred, in the past, much angry controversy.

The arrangement by 'classes,' 'the classificatory system,' was first brought into scientific prominence by the late Mr. Lewis Morgan, an American gentleman affiliated to theIroquois tribe, in his very original studies of the names for degrees of kinship.[3]A great deal may be said, and has been said, especially by Mr. McLennan and Dr. Westermarck, against Mr. Morgan's ideas and methods, but his large and careful collection of facts is of high importance. On what he called 'the Malayan system,' one name denoting kin includes all my brothers, sisters, and cousins. Another name includes my father, mother, my uncles, aunts, and all the cousins of my father, mother, aunts, and uncles. The generation of my grandparents and their relations is included in a third name; a fourth covers my children and their cousins, and the grandchildren of my brothers and sisters, with their children, bear the same name, for me, as my own grandchildren. From the names Mr. Morgan inferred the existence of certain facts in the evolution of systems of kindred. Everybody of the same generation lived together, once, on his theory, in 'communal marriage,' brothers, sisters, and cousins. There was promiscuity between all men and women in the same generation. Of course this involves the converse of Mr. Atkinson's Primal Law, as Mr. Atkinson observes in his eighth chapter. In place of the prohibition of brother and sister union being the earliest of prohibitions (as in Mr. Atkinson's system), the rule that they must unite, caused, in Mr. Morgan's opinion, the earliest form of the human family.

Mr. Morgan's theory, it must be observed, landed him at once in the fallacy of supposing that prohibitions of marriage of kinsfolk were originally the result of 'a reformatory movement.'[4]We have seen that, granting, for the sake of argument, Mr. Morgan's premise of an original 'undivided commune,' Mr. Fison is also deposited in the same difficulty,and was once even inclined to regard a theory of intervention 'by a higher power' (the Dieri myth) as not necessarily out of the question, if marriage was once communal. To reform such marriage relations, he says, 'would be a step in advance so difficult for men in that utter depth of savagery to take, that they would not be able to take it, unless they had help from without. This might be given by contact with a more advanced tribe; but if all the tribes started from the same level, that impulse would be impossible in the first instance, and must have been derived from a higher power.'[5]Mr. Fison, as we saw, has since expressed the opinion that the origin of exogamy is probably indiscoverable, but I cite again his early remark to prove his sense of the insuperable difficulty of Mr. Morgan's theory.

How were men in his hypothetical condition to know that there was anything to reform? It needed a divine revelation!

Mr. Morgan was himself aware of this difficulty, and tried to get out of it, by using Darwinian phrases about 'natural selection'—'blessed words,' but here unavailing. He was in the posture of Mr. Spencer, between direct legislation to introduce exogamy, and gradual evolution of exogamy, as the slow result of the felt need of 'someorganisation,'—its nature and purpose unknown. Thus Mr. Morgan, speaking of communal marriage, and its results, says that 'emancipation from them was slowly accomplished through movements which resulted in unconscious reformation.' These movements were, first, the 'class' system, then the 'gens' (totem system), 'worked out unconsciously through natural selection.'[6]This means, if it means anything, that, by a freak or sport, some people did not marry in and in, that they unconsciously evolved the totem system, that they therefore throve, while others who married in and in, and did not evolve the totem system, perished, and so we have the results of 'natural selection.' But why did some people avoid the habit of marriages of near kin which was so general? The position is that of Dr. Westermarck, whoadds an 'instinct,' developed by natural selection,[7]an idea which involves arguing in a circle.

Again, that peoples marrying in the communal way would die out has to be proved: science has no certainty in the matter.

In any case, Mr. Morgan presently deserts his opinion about slow unconscious reformation, and his natural selection. 'The organisation into classes seems to have been directed to the single object of breaking up the intermarriage of brothers and sisters, which affords a probable explanation of the origin of the system. But since it does not look beyond this particular abomination it retained a conjugal system nearly as objectionable....'[8]The reader sees that Mr. Morgan cannot keep on the high Darwinian level. He relapses on a supposed moral reform with a single object of things 'abominable'—to us—and 'objectionable'—to us. But how did the pristine savages find out that such things were 'abominable'? Presently the totem prohibition ('thegens') 'originates probably in the ingenuity of a small band of savages,' for the purpose of modifying marriage law, and the daring novelty 'must soon have proved its utility in the production of superior men.'[9]Here we have the legislation due to human 'ingenuity,' and natural selection comes in to aid and diffuse the system. Later 'the evils of the first form of marriage came to be perceived' (what were they?) and this led 'if not to its direct abolition, to a preference for wives beyond this degree. Among the Australians it was abolished by the organisation into classes, and more widely among the Turanian tribes by the organisation into gentes.' The Australians have 'gentes' (totem groups) quite as much as the 'Turanians' or 'Ganowanians,' and we have tried to show that totems are prior to 'classes.'[10]But the Australians 'abolished' a form of marriage by an 'organisation,' which implies deliberate legislation. From this difficulty of legislation,so early and so moral, no advocate of the 'bisection' of an undivided commune and of its 'subdivision' into totem 'phratries' and kins, can escape, however he may make a push at 'natural selection,' and gradual evolution.

These perplexities do not predispose us in favour of Mr. Morgan's theory of the terms of 'Relationship,' which we have illustrated by the case of the Urabunna. He himself takes the Hawaiian terms, which are to the same effect. In brief, all the men and women of a generation are' brothers and sisters,' all those of the prior generation are 'fathers and mothers,' all those of the following generation are 'children.' Now, if ever all the men and women of a generation married 'all through other,' promiscuously, these terms of 'relationship' would be in place. First, we are told, brothers and sisters in a family intermarried, and the process 'gradually enfolded the collateral brothers and sisters, as the range of the conjugal system widened.' And then 'the evils came to be perceived,' what evils, how perceived, we do not know, and Reformation set in. It definitely began with the Australian 'Bisection,' 'the organisation into classes' (really into 'phratries'), and about the difficulties of that theory enough has been said.

The reader will naturally ask, What is the original meaning of the words now used by Hawaiians, and Urabunna, and others, for the relations in which our 'father,' 'son,' 'wife,' 'husband,' 'mother.' 'daughter,' 'brother,' 'sister,' are included? Do the words embracing our terms 'brother' and 'sister' in Hawaii, or elsewhere, imply procreation, and issue (as in Greek), 'from the same womb'? Among the Arunta they cannot mean procreation, if they do not even know (as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen tell us), that there is any such thing as procreation. 'A spirit child enters a woman,' that is all. In the times of this primeval ignorance, words for relationships could not imply bearing andbegetting; they must have meant something else. Say that they meant relationships in point of seniority: 'my male elder,' 'my female elder,' 'my male junior,' 'my female junior,' 'my male coeval or friend,' 'my female coeval or friend,' 'the man I may marry,' 'the woman I may marry,' 'the woman or man I may not marry.'

If low savage names for relationships meant that (no doubt they do not, or not often) then they would undeniably prove nothing as to a system of communal marriage. A baby points to any man or woman and says 'pa' or 'ma,' without any theory of communal marriage. Thus philologists must first interpret for us the original significance of these savage names of relationships. Once given, they would last, whatever they originally implied. Dr. Westermarck has urged this point.[11]In the terms themselves there is, generally, nothing which indicates that they imply an idea of consanguinity.' 'Pa, papa' (father), ma, mama (mother), and scores of others, 'are formed from the earliest sounds a child can produce,' and 'have no intrinsic meaning whatever.' Dr. Westermarck gives a long list of such words, applied to 'fathers, and all the tribe brothers of fathers,' and the same for mothers, concluding 'that we must not, from these designations, infer anything as to early marriage customs.' He does not deny that other terms of relationship have roots of independent meaning, 'but the number of those that imply an idea of consanguinity does not seem to be very great.' In Lifu (Melanesia), the word for 'father' means 'root;' for 'mother,' 'foundation' or 'vessel;' for 'sister,' 'not to be touched;' for 'elder and younger brother,' 'ruler' and 'ruled.'[12]The terms for father and mother denote consanguinity; the others, customary law, and status.

If we only knew the meanings, say, of the Urabunna words for relationships, we should learn much. But the truly amusing fact is that Mr. Fison, for example, did not know the language of the natives, and thought that probablynot six white men in Australia had an adequate knowledge, and an adequate access to the notions, of the tribesmen. Of these one had been initiated, and, like a gentleman, declined to break the oath of secresy.[13]This was in 1880. Things may have improved. But unless our authorities know the languages, where are we? We do know that seniority is indicated: Father's elder brothers are Gampatcha Kuka (Warramunga tribe).

Mr. McLennan thought that all these terms were 'terms of address,' used to avoid the employment of personal names, and Dr. Westermarck holds that 'there can scarcely be any doubt that the terms for relationship are, in their origin, terms of address.' Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, after impartial consideration, cannot accept this view, for Australia; where the terms are very numerous, and stand for relations very complicated, connected with the intermarrying groups, and with social duties. In addressing a person, his or her individual name (our Christian name) is freely used.[14]They believe that the terms can only be explained 'on the theory of the former existence of group marriage, and further, that this has of necessity given rise to the terms of relationship used by the Australian natives.' These opinions are shared by Messrs. Fison and Howitt. The former says, 'It must, I think, be allowed that the classificatory terms point to group marriage,' and though Bastian denies this, Mr. Fison supports his theory by the Dieri custom of allotting paramours (pinauru) to men and women, out of the sets which may intermarry.[15]

To this problem we return; meanwhile it may seem impertinent in mere ethnologists of the study to hint a doubt as to the conclusions of observers on the spot. Mr. Crawley, however, has no hesitations. The use of the terms of relationship, he thinks, does not testify to a past of 'Group Marriage,' or to a remoter past of promiscuity, but is 'the regular result of the primitive theory of relationship;the system codifies a combination of relation and relationship, "address," and age.' The terms in use 'do not in themselves necessarily point to a previous promiscuity, or even to a present group marriage,' as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen believe.

The point is one on which I almost hesitate to venture a decided opinion. Much seems to depend on the original sense of the various terms, and on that point, in the case of Urabunna, and many other tribes, we have no light. But often the terms do not express consanguinity at all. There seems to be no word for 'daughter' as distinct from 'son,' 'nephew,' and 'niece.' The grandfathermaternalisThunthie, andThunthunnieis Urabunna for totem, so that it is tempting to guess thatThunthiemeans 'a sire of the maternal totem.'[16]Kadnini, again (I speaking), means grandfather paternal, grandmother maternal,andgrandchildren.[17]These relationships imply duties and services. 'One individual has to do certain things for another ... and any breach of these customs is severely punished.' An Arunta of the Panunga class calls all Kumura men 'fathers-in-law.' He gashes his flesh if any one of his 'fathers-in-law' dies, and he drops his dead game if he meets any one of them. They all have that advantage over him.[18]Thus these terms of relationship—communal in appearance—really involve certain duties, rather than relations of blood and affinity. But emphatically the terms are more than mere terms of address, as in Mr. McLennan's theory.

But these are usages of the system as it stands to-day. Is there behind it an 'undivided commune,' as Mr. Morgan held; is there actual 'group marriage'? I am not apt to believe that there is. Language shows, in the terms of relationship, a group of 'Mothers' for each child; but, as Mr. Darwin remarks, 'it seems almost incredible that the relationship of the child to its mother should ever have been completely ignored, especially as the women in most savage tribes nurse their infants for a long time.' A man's motherisone, andmustbe known, though he calls many women by the same name as he gives to his mother. She is lumped, in the terms of relationship, in one term with all the women whom the father might legally have married, but did not. The son, in addressing or speaking of his mother, overlooks the 'one love which needs no winning,' and his term has reference only to the present marriage law of his tribe. That law 'codifies' the terms, they result from that law, and that law, again, is based, if I am right, on totem prohibitions, on the desire to keep marriage between people of the same generation, and on the rights and duties of the generations. These prohibitions, of phratry, 'class,' totem, and age, leave only a certain set of women marriageable to a certain set of men. The name of this set of women isNupato their coevals,Lukato the succeeding generation. There is no name for 'wife,' no name for 'mother;' there are only names expressive of customary legal status, itself the result of the existing rules. Whatever their original sense, they all now connote seniority and customary legal status, with its reciprocal duties, rights and avoidances. 'It is the system, and not group marriage, which has given rise to these terms of relationship,' says Mr. Crawley.[19]

But what gave rise to the system? Mr. Fison has told us. 1. 'The division of a tribe (community) into two exogamous intermarrying classes....' 2. 'The subdivision of these two classes into four,' or, he suggests, the amalgamation of two tribes. 3. 'Their subdivision into gentes distinguished by totems.'[20]

But all of this theory we have already declined to accept for reasons given, and mainly because it involves (as I try to show) deliberate primeval reformatory legislation—without any conceivable motive. Again, we cannot accept Mr. Fison's system because it involves the hypothesis that a tribe, or 'community,' large enough to feel the necessity of bisecting itself for social and moral purposes, existed at a period when the difficulties of commissariat, of food supply,and of hostility, could seldom, if ever, permit its existence. A tribe is, I repeat, a local aggregate of small groups become friendly: it is not a primeval horde which keeps on subdividing itself, legislatively, for reformatory purposes. What social cement kept such a primeval horde, such an 'undivided commune,' together; and how did the animal jealousy of men so near to the brutal stage fail to rend it into pieces? How was it fed? How can we imagine a human herd—how supplied with food, who knows?—wherein each male sees each other male approach what female he pleases, perhaps his own preferred girl, without internecine jealousy? I cannot imagine this indifference to love in such a primitive Agapemone; I cannot understand its economics; any more than I can guess why such a state of affairs ever seemed—to its members—'abominable' and 'objectionable,' and a thing to be reformed; yet they 'bisected' it, and 'subdivided' the segments, all in the interests of morality—such is the theory.

As for the good-humoured laxity which enables all men and women to live together matrimonially at random, Mr. Morgan found an example, as he thought, in thePunaluaof the Hawaiians. The wordPunalua, when observed (1860) by Judge Andrews, meant 'dear friend,' or 'intimate companion.' A man called his sister's husband (our 'brother-in-law) his 'dear friend,' and a woman styled the wife of her husband's brother (her sister-in-law),her'dear friend,' orPunalua. This shows that relations-in-law were not 'Foes-in-law,' or, at least, that this was not the official view of the case. It really does not follow that all the wives 'shared their remaining husbands in common.' Judge Andrews thought that this happy family 'were inclinedto possess each other in common.' That was only the Judge's theory, also the theory of the Rev. Artemus Bishop. Probably there was a great deal of genial license and indifference among loose luxurious barbaric people, living in 'summer isles of Eden,' where food and necessaries were ready made by benignant Nature.[21]

Each shepherd clasped, with unconcealed delight,His yielding fair, within the Captain's sight;Each yielding fair, as chance or fancy led,Preferred new lovers to her sylvan bed.[22]

This is vastly well, and the poet adds, in a liberal spirit,

What Otaheite is, let England be!

It is very well, but it by no means represents, probably, the manners of primitive man.

'We may conclude,' says Mr. Darwin, 'from what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds,... that promiscuous intercourse, in a state of nature, is extremely improbable.... The most probable view is that primeval man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with as many wives as he could support and obtain, whom he would have jealously guarded against all other men. Or he may have lived with several wives by himself, like the Gorilla, for all the natives agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up a struggle takes place for mastery, and the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, establishes himself as the head of the community. The 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,' just as the other male did.[23]

This second view of Mr. Darwin's is much like the theory of Mr. Atkinson, and is very unlike Mr. Morgan's theory of a human horde, living in communal marriage, or group marriage. Mr. Darwin's idea, moreover, the primitive groups being small, does not encounter the economic difficulties raised by the hypothesis of the 'undivided commune.' The strongest male practically enforced exogamy, as far as he was able, and maybe conceived to have entertained no scruples as to connection with his daughters. Mr. Darwin admitted that'the indirect evidence' for communal marriage, and fraternal incest, was 'extremely strong,' but then 'it rests chiefly on the terms of relationship which are employed between members of the same tribe, implying a connection with the tribe alone, and not with either parent.' If, however, we have successfully explained these terms of relationship as not usually meaning degrees of consanguinity, but of customary legal status, under the prevalent customary law, the evidence which these terms yield for promiscuity, or group marriage, is extremely weak, or is nil, above all if our theory of how the legal status arose is accepted. And, if it is not accepted, back we come to primeval 'reformatory movements.'

In Lifu, the word for 'sister' means 'not to be touched,' land this is a mere expression of customary law. A man 'must not touch' any one of the women of his generation whom the totem tabu and the rule of the exogamous 'phratry' (in origin, we suggest, totemic) forbid him to touch. All such women, in a particular grade, are his sisters. Many women, besides his actual sisters, stand to him in the degree thus prohibited. All bear the same name of status as a man's actual sisters bear, but the name does notmean'sisters' at all, in our sense of that word: namely, daughters of the man's real father and mother. It means tabued women of a generation. If the 'classificatory' terms which include our 'fathers,' 'sisters,' 'wives,' and the rest meant what our 'fathers,' 'sisters,' 'wives,' and so on mean, then the evidence from the terms, for communal or group marriage, would really be 'extremely strong.' But, as Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, 'unless all ideas of terms of relationship as counted among ourselves be abandoned, it is useless to try and (sic) understand the native terms.'[24]Yet the whole force of the argument for communal marriage derived from savage terms of relationship rests precisely on our not 'abandoning' (as we are warned to abandon) 'all ideas of terms of relationship as counted among ourselves.'

The friends of group and communal marriage, it seemsto me, keep forgetting that our ideas of sister, brother, father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at certain points of their argument) with the native terms which include, indeed, but do not denote these relationships, as understood by us. An Urabunna calls a crowd of men of his father's status by the same term as he calls his father. This need not point to an age when, by reason of promiscuity, no man knew his father. Were this so, a man of the generation prior to his father might be the actual parent of the speaker, and all men under eighty ought to be called 'father' by him—which they are not. The facts may merely mean that the Urabunna styles his father by the name denoting a status which his father shares with many other men; a status in seniority, 'phratry,' and totem. We really cannot first argue that our ideas have no relation to the terms employed by savages, and then, when we want to prove a past of communal marriage, turn round and reason as if our terms and the savage terms were practically identical. 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 as real sons of the group, not of the individual—because of a past stage of promiscuity making paternity indiscoverable.'

As Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, we must 'lay aside all preconceived ideas of relationship,' when we study the Urabunna or other classificatory terms of relationships.[25]Let us do so, and the evidence borne by these terms to a past of communal marriage vanishes at once. That the terms often denote status in customary law is demonstrated. 'There are certain customs which are enforced by long usage and according to which men and women of particular degrees of relationship may alone have marital relations, or may not speak to one another, or according to which one individual has to do certain things for another, such as providing the latter with food, or with hair, as the case may be, and any breach ofthese customs is severely punished. The elder men of each group very carefully keep alive these customs, many of which are of considerable value to themselves....'[26]

Thus, you have speared a fish, or an opossum, but if you meet any man of your father-in-law's set, you must drop your spoil and make off. Consequently, I venture to take it, the terms of relationship in no way answer to our ideas of kin, but merely denote legal status.

We cannot, as a rule, recover (or Australian students have not recovered) the original sense and etymology of terms like Biaka, Nia, Nupa, and so forth. We are thus left to choose between two competing theories of their nature and diffusion. If we advocate the hypothesis of consanguine marriage and group marriage, we must suppose that the members of the 'undivided commune' of the theory, had once names absolutely identical in sense with our 'father,' 'mother,' 'sister,' 'brother,' 'son,' 'daughter,' and so forth. But the speakers, in each case, were obliged to apply these words with the utmost laxity, because who knewwhoA's father might be, and whether C's sister were really his sister or not, while every girl was the wife of every male of her generation, not barred by other laws, and so on? The promiscuity of living, then, made this lax use of words for relationships inevitable.

This is the usual hypothesis, and the sweeping scope of savage words for human relationships is accepted as proof that consanguine and group marriage once existed and left their marks in language. On the other hand, if communal marriage prevailed, the people who lived in that condition could not possibly have had ideas equivalent to our father, son, daughter, brother, wife, and so on. Our ideas of these relationships could not enter the human mind, at thehypothetical stage of culture when nobody knew 'who is who' and the hypothesis is wrecked on that fact.

Therefore either the names now used under the 'class system' are of unknown original sense; or, human marriage was, from the first, so far, 'individual' that our ideas of father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, could arise and could find expression in terms that still survive, say, among the Urabunna or other Australians. But while tribal customary laws as to classes, totems, generations, marriage rules, and many other social duties were being evolved; some of the ancient names for father, son, brother, sister, were perhaps taken up and applied to each of the large sets of persons whose customary legal status wasnow(as groups coalesced into large tribes) on the level of actual fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, and the rest. Obviously, in a primitive group of a male senior, his female mates and children, there could not exist (other groups being, on my theory, strange or hostile) large sets of persons occupying a common legal status, as in modern tribes. The existence of such sets of persons is the result of the later andtribalsociety, of society in which many groups are reconciled and united in a local tribe. Only in such a tribe, which cannot be primitive, is the classificatory system of naming sets of people necessary. It is only intriballaw that the grades of customary status answering to all the many terms can exist, and tribes with their laws cannot be primitive. Most names for the various grades, therefore, are later than Mr. Darwin's hypothetical stage of small and perhaps hostile groups; they were, in a few cases, perhaps originally names for such relationships as our own father, mother, son, brother, &c., but in the evolution of tribal customary law, such names have been extended out of theirfamily, or fire-circle, into theirtribalsignificance, out of recognised kinship, or close contiguity, into terms including all who have the same status, rights, and duties.

If our suggestion as to the origin and significance of the 'classificatory terms of relationship' be plausible, then the theory of a pristine past of 'communal' or of 'group marriage' will lose what Mr. Darwin deemed the chief evidence in its favour, the evidence from terms of relationship. But there remains the evidence from 'survivals,' in institutions. For example, among the Urabunna, women of a certain seniority, totem and 'phratry' areNupato men of the relative status among males. They are the men's potential wives. In actual practice each individual man has one or perhaps two of theseNupawomen who are specially attached to himself, and live in his camp. They are his wives. But each man has also, or many men have, other women of theNupaset, who by an allotment, which the elders arrange, are hisPiraungaru, He is, that is to say, their 'second master,' after their husbands. This is a kind ofCicisbeism, recognised and regulated by customary law, and sanctioned by a definite ceremony. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen therefore say 'individual marriage does not exist, either in name or in practice, among the Urabunna tribe.' Their idea appears to be that once every man was the husband of everyNupawoman who was accessible, and that thePiraungaruarrangement is a nascent restriction upon, or survival of, this communal marriage. It is admitted that a man may now try to prevent his wife from having sexual relations with her Piraungaru man, just as an Italian of the eighteenth century might have done in the case of his wife'sCicisbeo. 'But this leads to a fight, and the husband is looked upon as churlish.' The Italian husband would have undergone the same reproach, yethelived in a society which in theory, and as Christian, insisted on individual marriage.

The question arises, is thePiraungaruarrangement a modified survival of communal marriage, or is it a mere chartered libertinism in customary practice, and not a'rudimentary survival'? It is certainly found among the tribes most tenacious of archaic institutions. Mr. Crawley thinks, however, and, under correction, I agree with him, that thePiraungarusystem is no survival, and that it 'has never been more fully developed than it is now.'[27]

As to this Piraungaru affair, as usual we need, and do not get, the help of philology. What does the word 'Piraungaru' literally mean? Among the Dieri the Piraungaru custom prevails, and the persons affected by it are called Piraura—the resemblance to Piraungaru is striking. Now Mr. Howitt tells us that the Headman of the Dieri is calledPinaru, frompina, 'great,' but he also calls these HeadmenPiraurus, the same title as he gives to the men and women allotted to each other on the system of native Cicisbeism.[28]

Clearly there is here either a misprint, or a curious fact. Either the Headmen are Pinarus, not Piraurus, or Headmen and supplementary wives and husbands have one and the same title! One great Headman was JalinaPiramurana. Is 'great'pinaorpira? If Australia does not produce an adequate philologist in the native tongues, who will specially study these matters, it will be a heavy blow to the research into native institutions.

It is worth observing that the Dieri Piraura are 'permitted new marital privileges at the ceremony of circumcision.' Now license amidst the large assemblies brought together from all quarters on such occasions (in some places even transgressing the sacred rules of totem, phratry, and close relationship in our sense) is merely part of that periodical general 'burst' which survived in the Persian Sacæa and Roman Saturnalia. Many examples may be found in Mr. Frazer's 'Golden Bough.' Every kind of lawis, at these 'bursts,' deliberately violated. Perhaps, then, the due selection of Piraura, by the Dieri seniors, is really rather a restriction of Saturnalian license than a relaxation of marriage laws, or a survival of communal marriage. That the license of the Saturnalia was a return to primitive ways was a Roman theory. For Australia it is the theory of the Arunta themselves.[29]The adjacent Urabunna have the same Piraura usages, and what looks very like a form of the same word, Piraura, Piraungaru. The relations thereby indicated exist, when occasion serves, after the season of license.

A wife, at marriage, is subjected to a disgraceful ordeal (modern ideas will break in), which I take, as Mr. Crawley does, to be a mere initiation (due to a well-defined superstition) into the life matrimonial.[30]Meanwhile, though a definite and disgusting set of proceedings forms the Urabunna marriage ceremonial, I am not aware that the same doings precede and sanction the establishment of the Piraungaru or Piraura relation, which, if not, is no marriage at all. Thus, so far as our information goes, and with all deference to the great Australian authorities, I do not see that the evidence for a past stage of communal or of group marriage is such as compels our assent. On the other hand, as has been shown, the theory of communal marriage forces all its advocates, unwillingly or unconsciously, into the other theory of a primeval moral and social reformatory movement, deliberately undertaken, perhaps under direct divine inspiration, for what other motive could exist? The economical and biological difficulties which also beset that hypothesis have been sufficiently explained, and Mr. Darwin has dwelt on the psychological difficulty, the sexual jealousy of the primitive male. These objections, at least, do not hamper the hypothesis or conjecture, which we have ventured to submit as an alternative system. As a proof of survival of communal or group marriage, Mr. Fison quotes Mr. Lance: 'If a Kubbi meets a strange Ippatha' (female), 'they address each other as spouse.'(They belong to intermarrying phratries.) 'A Kubbi thus meeting an Ippatha, though she were of another tribe, would treat her as his wife, and his right to do so would be recognised by her tribe.' His right, as far as phratry prohibitions go, would certainly be recognised, but how her husband, if she had one, would view the transaction is another question. The morality is that of the Scottish ballads, in which suchbonnes fortunesare frequent, and the frail pair only ask questions—afterwards. In the ballad ofThe Bonny Hind, in theKalewala, and elsewhere, the answers prove that the pair are brother and sister. Suicide follows, but it does not follow that communal or group marriage prevailed in Scotland, or in Finland.

It is probable that the rules now defining the privileges, prohibitions, and duties of sets of people, rules interwoven now with those of 'class' and totem, have been gradually evolved in the wear and tear of ages. Tribes which hold such large and protracted assemblies, or palavers, as the Arunta of to-day, discuss and debate common affairs with all the diffuseness of our Parliament at Westminster. It is not to be supposed that tribal peace existed over hundreds of square miles of country, and that the group representatives, so to speak, flocked in from far-off regions, to parliament, in the ages when the pristine rules of exogamy were evolved. We might as wisely imagine that, in the beginning of Totemism, groups travelled to a tribal folk-mote, and arranged the details of a kind of magical co-operative society to preserve and increase the foodstuffs of the tribe. In ages really pristine the tribal peace and union cannot have arisen; deliberate legislation for a vast scattered tribal community could not have entered into men's dreams. No such community could have existed. But the tribes of to-day, and notably the Arunta, being remote from truly primitive conditions, do hold prolonged assemblies, andwork at public problems, so very remote from the primitive are they.

The Arunta, in their pseudo-historic legends, throw back upon the past the reflection of their actual estate, and ascribe the rule which practically limits marriage within the generation to a leader of the Thurathwerta group, living near what is called, by Europeans, Glen Helen, in the Macdonnell range. He was backed by the Emu people of four widely separated localities.[31]One is not, however, to suppose that, at some witan of the tribes, names indicative of generations, and of their respective rights, were suddenly invented and dealt out by 'the legislator,' any more than that totems were thus invented and dealt out. As Mr. Atkinson remarks (Chapter VIII.): 'Gradually each generation ... would,quageneration, come to be a distinctly defined class, with certain separate rights and obligations. In this simple classification of the connected persons, we see the origin of the classificatory system itself' (as far as generations are concerned), 'as an institution.... The classificatory system evolves itself merely as the result of a desire to define certain rights, and the division by generations was the most natural and feasible for the purpose.... Thus we find a desire for distinction, as regards rights in sexual union, to be the genetic cause of the classificatory system, both as concerns the generation and its component members.'

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