METHOD OF INQUIRY

[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, 94et 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 inNorthern 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.

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 derivestribaltotems 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 pureprimitivetotemism, 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 theoriginsof 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 theirtribalnames 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 localtribes, according to Mr. M'Call Theal, haveSiboko, that is, name-giving animals. The tribesmen will not kill, or eat, or touch, "or in any way come into contact with" theirSiboko, if they can avoid doing so. A man, asked "What do you dance?" replies by giving the name of hisSiboko, 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 tribalSiboko; why, they know not. So they naturally invent the fable that theSiboko, 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 theirSiboko.

We now give this South African myth, which explains tribalSiboko, 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 theSibokoor tribal sacred and name-giving animal of the Bahurutshe—Baboons. (These animal names in this part of Africa denotelocal tribes, not totem kins within a local tribe.)

"Tradition says that about the time the separation took place between the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena,Baboonsentered 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 theirSibokoto 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 theirSiboko(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 theSibokoof 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 theSibokoamong 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 theirSibokonow 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 inSocial 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, theSibokoortribalsacred animal, is the animal of the localtribe, not, as in pure totemism, of the scattered exogamous kin. It is probably a lingering remnant of totemism. The totem of the most powerfullocalgroup in a tribe having descent through males, appears to have become theSibokoof 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.Sibokono 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 absolutelyprimitiveman, 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 producedsomerudimentary 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 wereoriginallycommunal 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. Avia mediais 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,beforethe 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)beforemarriage 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 ofanothername 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, andvice 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,afterreceiving 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 groupsnottheir 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 waslaterintroduced) 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, ormythicalancestors, but not, apparently, to theremembereddead.

[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 theHistory of Human Marriage, because that work is written without any reference to totemism.

NOTEI 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 thegermof totemism was to be found in the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which is the theory to be urged later, thenamesbeing 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).

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 thegermof totemism was to be found in the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which is the theory to be urged later, thenamesbeing 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).

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 byPirauru—Allotment of paramours at feasts—IsPiraurua 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—StarckeversusMorgan'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"—Noadenotes a man's wife and also all women whom he might legally wed—Proof that terms of relationship do not denote consanguinity—ThePirraurucustom implies previous marriage, and is not logically thinkable without it—Descriptions ofPirrauru—TheKandriceremony merely modifies pre-existing marriage—Pirrauruis 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-namedmagical societies(now totemic) to have arisenbeforeman 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,whydivision 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, orNoa, orUnawa), 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 (PirauruorPiraungaru), 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 asPiraungaruto 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 ofPiraungaru(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 ratherstatus, marriage); and wasthat, 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 thisPiraungarucustom, 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]

ThePiraungaruallotments 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 thePiraungarumen 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 calledNanga. 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 thePiraungarucustom 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 toallthe 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 timeSuch 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 UrabunnaPiraungarucustom 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), thoughwhythis 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,allwives ofallmen 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 thePiraungaruorPiraurucustom, 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 calledPiraungaruor 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 inSocial 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, thatourideas 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, whichinclude, indeed, but do notdenotethese 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—inoursense,' and next aver that 'sons, inoursense, 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) wordInoha(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 ofdescent, 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 anultima 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 hisNoa, and also calls all women whom he might have married hisNoa, 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 ofPiraungaru, orPirrauru, 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 uswhythe 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 thePiraungarucustom 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:—

"OfWhistorCribbagemark the amusing Game,ThePartnerschanging, but theSportthe 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 theancien régimein 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? ThePiraungarucustom 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 hisPiraungaruparamours. 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 madePirauruare 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 hisPirauru, if they meet when herNoa(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 thisPiraurupractice.... "A son or daughter regards the real husband (Noa) of his mother as hisApiri Muria, or "real father"; his mother'sPirauruis only hisApiri 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, ofPiraungaruas 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 variousPiraurus(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 bePiraurusto 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 thePirauruorPiraungaruunions 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 thatPiraurumay be derived fromPira, "the moon," andUru, "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 UrabunnaPiraungaruis linguistically connected with DieriPirauru, then bothPiraungaruandPiraurumay mean "Full Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to me!"[25]

Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes theNoaof 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, orPirauru, to several. "The right of theNoaoverrides that of thePirauru. Thus a man cannot claim a woman who isPirauruto him when herNoais 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 UrabunnaPiraungarucustom, 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, thePiraungarucustom 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 ofPirrauru(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 hisNative Tribes of South-East Australia, which contains additional details of essential importance (pp. 179-187). A woman becomesTippa Malku,[27]or affianced,[28]to one man only,beforeshe becomesPirrauru, or what Mr. Howitt calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She is never thePirrauruof all the men who areNoato her, that is, intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a symbolic ceremony, as aPirrauruto one or more men, who areNoato 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 asPirrauru; "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 thePirrauruin the sand." (The phrase does not suggest thatPirraurumeans "Full Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop wives (exchange theirNoaasPirraurus), and also when "the whole of the marriageable or married people, even those who are alreadyPirrauru, arereallotted," a term which suggests the temporary character of the unions.

I am ready to allow that theKandriceremony, a symbol of recognised union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the IndianGhandarvarite, 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 theTippa Malkuceremony 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 theTippa Malkuarrangement. That arrangement is demonstrably more primitive thanPirrauru, forPirrauruis unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification ofTippa 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 theKandricustom could not make themmoremarried 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 notNoa, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this theKandriceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons who are alreadyTippa Malku(wedded) to each other, to acquire legal paramours in certain other wedded orTippa Malkuwomen, and in men either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification of individualTippa Malku,Pirrauruis impossible, and its existence is unthinkable.[29]

Pirrauruis a modification of marriage (Tippa Malku),Tippa Malkuis not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, aTippa Malkuhusband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his intendedfiancée.[30]The reverse is the case. A man cannot take hisPirrauruwoman away from herTippa Malkuhusband "unless by his consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times"—feasts, in fact, of license.Pirraurusecures 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 thesePirrauru"in commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property and social influence. What do theTippa Malkuhusbands say to this arrangement?

As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group marries another group, thePirrauruliterally heap hot coals on each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the "group" asPirrauru. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled (Nulina). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri, praisesPirraurufor "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, butPirrauruis 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 callPirraurua form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a later modification of a priorTippa Malkuwedlock, 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]

IfPirrauruwere 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,Pirrauruis 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,Pirraurucannot 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,MatteriandKararu, 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,Pirrauruis not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find noPirrauru. 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 ofPirrauru. (ii.) Thejus primae noctis, enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all, nor is it a survival ofPirrauru. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia," "almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost promiscuous and very rare) norPirrauru. (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" andPirrauruamong the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.

The manner in whichTippa Malkubetrothals 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 theTippa Malkumarriage, must also tend to overthrow thePirraurumarriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have proved, that if there were noTippa Malkumarriage there could be noPirrauruto overthrow.

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