TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

[1]Totemism, p. 62. Cf. McLennan,Studies, Series II. pp. 369-371.

[2]L'Année Sociologique, i. pp. 5-7.

[3]It is not plain what Mr. Frazer meant when he wrote (Totemism, p. 63). "Clearly split totems might readily arise from single families separating from the clan and expanding into new clans." Thus a male of "clan" Pelican has the personal name "Pouch of a Pelican." But, under female descent, he could not possibly leave the Pelican totem kin, and set up a clan named "Pelican's Pouch." His wife, of course, would be of another "clan," say Turtle, his children would be Turtles; they could not inherit their father's personal name, "Pouch of a Pelican," and set up a Pelican's Pouch clan. The thing is unthinkable. "A single family separating from the clan" of female descent, would inevitably possess at least (with monogamy) two totem names, those of the father and mother, among its members. The event might occur with male descent, if the names of individuals ever became hereditary exogamous totems, but not otherwise. And we have no evidence that the personal name of an individual ever became a hereditary totem name of an exogamous clan or kin.

[4]It was first put to me by Mr. N. W. Thomas, inMan, January 1904, No. 2.

[5]Mr. Howitt affirms that the relative lateness of these classes, as sub-divisions of the phratries, is "now positively ascertained." (J. A. I., p. 143, Note. 1885.)

[6]Spencer and Gillen,passim.

[7]Curr,The Australian Race, ii. p. 165. Trubner, London, 1886.

[8]Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423-424. Mr. Howitt renders Kilpara, "Crow," among the Wiimbaio, citing Mr. Bulmer, (Native Tribes of S. E. Australia, p. 429.)

[9]Brough Smyth. i p. 86.

[10]Danks,J. A. I., xviii. 3, pp. 281-282.

[11]Brough Smyth, i. pp. 423, 424.

[12]Cameron,J. A. I., xiv. p. 348.Native Tribes of S-E. Australia, p. 99.

[13]Biliarinthuis a class name in the Worgaia tribe of Central Australia. (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 747.)

[14]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 98-100.

[15]Ibid., p. 102.

[16]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 107.

[17]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 91-94.

[18]Ibid., p. 126.

[19]Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 40. 1880.

[20]Ibid., p. 41.

[21]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 125.

[22]Ibid., pp. 121-124.

[23]Ibid., p. 118.

[24]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 116.

[25]L'Année Sociologique, v. p. 106, Note.Social Origins, p. 56, Note.

The totemic redistribution—The same totem is never in both phratries—This cannot be the result of accident—Yet, originally, the same totems must have existed inbothphratries, on any theory of the origin of phratries—The present state of affairs is the result of legislation—To avoid clash of phratry law and totem law, the totems were redistributed—No totem in both phratries—Recapitulation—Whole course of totemic evolution has been surveyed—Our theory colligates every known fact—Absence of conjecture in our theory—All the causes areveræ causæ—Protest against use of such terms as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems," "sub-totems"—The true totem is hereditary, and marks the exogamous limit—No other is genuine.

That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members of totem kins.

That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in all the primitive types of tribal organisation:The same totem never exists in both phratries.[1]This in no way increases, as things stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.[2]Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in both of thelocalgroups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries, representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe, Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the other.

This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the first establishment of phratry law, or later.

If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.

It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least, in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, byphratrylaw, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. Bytotemlaw, however, he may not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes, say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes in Crow phratry, orvice versa. They obviously could not change their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry, the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America, and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among totemists—(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).

But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy still.

Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been demonstrated by actual fact, by thatredistribution of totem kins in the phratries—never the same totem in both phratries—which cannot be due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf. Chapter IV.)

It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that became a phratry name, including several totem kins.

Now that this feeling—to which the totem of the kin was far nearer and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its name—is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr. Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory—his own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our terminology, the phratry name) "isgeneral, the totem name is in one senseindividual, for it is certainly nearer to the individual than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he belongs."[3]Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to be muchnearerto the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.[4]

As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.

It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not account for the fact that phratriac names—say Eagle Hawk, Crow—are commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."[5]

We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing, from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk; and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.

Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven, by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing, of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal names, which I show to be usual as groupsobriquetsin ancient Israel and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs, whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring, as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long been forgotten.

It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate a mysticalrapport, and transcendental connection, between the name and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that thisrapportis exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that myths have been invented to explain therapportwhich must, it is held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases. It is no conjecture that the myths explain therapport, usually, as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood, and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas, if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?

We have thus reachedtotemism, and we trace its varying forms in the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution—under changing conditions—of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrablyveræ causæ, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.

The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent, become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names (names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among the isolated Kurnai.

In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems," "Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later devised.

[1]The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.

[2]Cf.Social Origins, pp. 55—57, in which the author fails to discover any mode by which the distribution could occur accidentally or automatically.

[3]J. A. I., August 1888, p. 40.

[4]Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.

[5]N. W. Thomas,Man, January 1904, No. 2.

Matrimonial classes—Their working described—Prevent persons of successive generations from intermarrying—Child and parent unions forbidden in tribes without matrimonial classes—Obscurity caused by ignorance of philology—Meanings of names of classes usually unknown—Mystic names for common objects—Cases in which meaning of class names is known—They are names of animals—Variations in evidence—Names of classes from the centre to Gulf of Carpentaria—They appear to be Cloud, Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat—Uncertainty of these etymologies—One totem to one totem marriages—Obscurity of evidence—Perhaps the so-called "totems" are matrimonial classes—Meaning of names forgotten—Or names tabued—The classes a deliberately framed institution—Unlike phratries and totem kins—Theory of Herr Cunow—Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.

The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi, who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's "sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in its mother's phratry, which isnotits mother's. That a man of class Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem, belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which isnothers, that is, belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally forbid their intermarriage.

But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom, among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes, while retaining one result of that organisation—no parent and child marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in the north.

One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.

In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and Sanskrit divine names, say, Athênê, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon, comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or two, remained impenetrably obscure.

If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these laws have been codified by no Grimm.

As a science, Australian philology does not exist. In 1880 Mr. Fison wrote, "It is simply impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of these words" (changes of name and grade conferred at secret ceremonies), "without a very full knowledge of the native dialects," and without strong personal influence with the blacks.... "In all probability there are not half-a-dozen men so qualified in the whole Australian continent."[1]

The habit of using, in the case of the initiate, mystic terms even for the everyday names of animals, greatly complicates the problem. It does not appear that most of the recorders of the facts know even one native dialect as Dr. Walter Roth knows some dialects of North-West Central Queensland. In the south-east, Kamilaroi was seriously studied, long ago, by Mr. Threlkeld and Mr. Ridley, who wrote tracts in that language. Sir George Grey and Mr. Matthews, with many others, have compiled vocabularies, the result of studies of their own, and Mr. Curr collected brief glossaries of very many tribes, by aid of correspondents without linguistic training.

Into this ignorance as to the meanings of the names of matrimonial classes, Mr. Howitt brings a faint little gleam of light In a few cases, he thinks, the meaning of class and "sub-class" names is ascertained. Among the Kuinmurbura tribe, between Broad Sound and Shoal water Bay, the "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes") "were totems." By this Mr. Howitt obviously means that the classes bore animal names. They meant (i.) the Barrimundi, (ii.) a Hawk, (iii.) Good Water, and (iv.) Iguana.[2]For the Annan River tribe, he gives "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes"), (i.) Eagle Hawk, (ii.) Bee, (iii.) Salt-Water-Eagle Hawk, (iv.) Bee.[3]This is not very satisfactory. In previous works he gave so many animal names for his "sub-classes," Mr. Frazer's "sub-phratries" (our "matrimonial classes"), that Mr. Frazer wrote, "It seems to follow that the sub-phratries of the Kamilaroi (Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have, or once had, totems also," that is, had names derived from animals or other objects.[4]

Mr. Howitt himself at one time appeared to hold that the names of the matrimonial classes are often animal names. His phraseology here is not very lucid. "The main sections themselves are frequently, probably always, distinguished by totems." Here he certainly means that the phratries have usually animal names, though we are not told that the phratries, as such, treat their name-giving animal, even when they know the meaning of its name, "with the decencies of a totem." Mr. Howitt goes on, "The probability is that they are all" (that all the classes are) "totems."[5]By this Mr. Howitt perhaps intends to say that all the "classes" (both the phratries and the matrimonial classes) probably have animal or other such names.

Again, the class names of the Kiabara tribe were said to denote four animals—Turtle, Bat, Carpet Snake, Cat.[6]But now (1904) the Kiabara class names are given without translation, and the four animals are thrown into the list of totems, with Flood Water and Lightning totems (which names were previously given as translations of Kubatine and Dilebi, the phratry names).[7]Doubtless Mr. Howitt has received more recent information, but, if we accept what he now gives us, the meanings of his "sub-class" names are only ascertained in the cases of two tribes, and then are names of animals.

I spent some labour in examining the class names of the tribes studied by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, from the Arunta in the centre to the Tingilli at Powell's Creek, after which point our authors no longer marched due north, but turned east, at a right angle, reaching the sea, and the Binbinga, the Mara, and Anula coast tribes, on or near the MacArthur River. The class names of these coastal tribes did not resemble those of the central tribes. But if Messrs. Spencer and Gillen had held north by west, in place of turning due east from Newcastle Waters, they would have found, as far as the sea at Nichol Bay, four classes whose names closely resemble the class names of the central tribes, and are reported as Paljarie, or Paliali, or Palyeery (clearly the Umbaia and Binbinga Paliarinji), Kimera or Kymurra, (obviously Kumara), Banigher, or Bunaka, or Panaka (Panunga, cf. Dieri Kanunka = Bush Wallaby),[8]and Boorungo, or Paronga.[9]

It thus appears scarcely doubtful that, from the Arunta in the centre, to the furthest north, several of the class names are of the same linguistic origin, and—whether by original community of speech, or by dint of borrowing—had once the same significance. Now we can show that some of these names, in the dialects of one tribe or another, denote objects in nature. Thus Warramunga Tj-upila'(Tj being an affix) at least suggests the Dieri totem,Upala, "Cloud."Biliarinthu, in the same way, suggests theBarinji Biliari, "Eagle Hawk," or the Umbaia Paliarinji.Ungalla, orThungalla, is AruntaUngilla, "Crow," the Ungōla, or Ungăla, "Crow" of the Yaroinga and Undekerabina of North-West Queensland,[10]whilePanunga, Banaka, Panaka,resembles DieriKanunka—"Bush Wallaby," orKanunga, "Kangaroo Rat."

The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other, or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical change are obvious. We lay no stress on the "equations" given above, but merely offer the suggestion that class names have often been animal names, and hint that inquiry should keep this idea in mind.

I do not, then, offer my "equations" as more than guesses in a field peculiarly perilous. The word which means "fire" in one tribe, means "snake" in another. "What fools these fellows are, they call 'fire' 'snakes,'" say the tribesmen. However, if we guess right, we find Eagle Hawk, Crow, Cloud, and Kangaroo Rat, as class names, over an enormous extent of Central and Northern Australia.[11]

About the deliberate purpose of the classes there can be no doubt. They were introduced to bar marriages, not between parents and children, for these are forbidden in primitive tribes, but between persons of the parental and filial generations. Or the names were given to stereotype classes, already existing, but hitherto anonymous, within which marriage was already prohibited. To make the distinction permanent, it was only necessary to have a linked pair of classes of different names in each phratry, the child never taking the maternal class name, but always that of the linked class in her phratry (under a system of female descent). The names Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, would have served the turn as well as any others. If a tribe had two words for young, and two for old, these would have served the turn; as

Phratry

DilbyJeune.Old.

Phratry

KupathinVieux.Young.

Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we guess that this may have been so more generally.

According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say, of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other class" (phratry).[12]But neither in their first nor second volume do Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another special totem."[13]This would seemprima facieto be an almost impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot be obtained.

Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial classes.[14]Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense, and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but "sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements as were accessible in 1887.[15]There might conceivably be, in some tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins. With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.

Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem names—two for each phratry—might be tabued or reserved, and made to act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that, among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is "Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to orange or monkeyin everyday life. It is an archaic word of the same significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as we have shown that some phratry names also are.

For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare not go, in the present state of our information.

The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed institution.

In this respect they seem to differ from the phratry and totem names, which, as we have tried to show, are things of long and unconscious evolution. But conscious purpose is evident in the institution of matrimonial classes. We tentatively suggest that, if their names turn out to be usually names of animals and other objects, this occurs because animal-named sub-phratries once existed, and were converted into the mechanism of the classes; or because the pre-existing totemic system of nomenclature was preserved in the development of a new institution. Herr Cunow's theory that the class names mean "Young," "Old," "Big," "Little" (Kubbi = Kubbura, "young";Kunibo = Kombia,Kumbia, Gumboka, "great or old"), needs a wide and assured etymological basis.[16]Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis appears to assume that "clans," exogamous, with female descent, are territorial, which (see Chapter V.) is not possible.

Whatever their names may mean, the matrimonial classes were instituted to prevent marriage between persons of parental and filial generations.

[1]Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 59, 60.

[2]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. III.

[3]Ibid., p. 118.

[4]Totemism, p. 84. Cf.Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 41.

[5]J. A. I., 1885, p. 143. Cf. Note 4.

[6]J. A. I., xiii. pp. 336, 341.

[7]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 116.

[8]J. A. I., August 1890, p. 38.

[9]Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 36.J. A. I., ix. pp. 356, 357. Curr, i. p. 298.Austral. Assoc. Adv. Science, ii. pp. 653. 654.Journal Roy. Soc. N.S.W.vol. xxxii. p. 86. R. H. Matthews.

[10]Roth, p. 50.

[11]Mr. N. W. Thomas helped the chase of these names, without claiming any certainty for the "equations."

[12]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 176. Citing Spencer and Gillen, p. 60.

[13]Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 71, Note 2.

[14]Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 189-194.

[15]Totemism, pp. 64-67.

[16]Die Verwandschafts Organisationen der Australneger. Stuttgart, 1894.

Mr. Frazer's latest theory—Closely akin to that of Professor Spencer—Arunta totemism the most archaic—Proof of Arunta primitiveness—Their ignorance of the facts of procreation—But the more primitive south-eastern tribes are not ignorant of the facts—Proof from Mr. Howitt—Yet south-eastern tribes are subject to Mr. Frazer's supposed causes of ignorance—Mr. Frazer's new theory cited—No account taken of primitive tribes of the southern interior—Similar oversight by Mr. Howitt as regards religion—Examples of this oversight—Social advance does not explain the religion of tribes which have not made the social advance—Theory of borrowing needed by Mr. Howitt—Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of exogamy—Objections to the suggestion.

Throughout these chapters, when there was occasion to mention the totemic theories of Mr. J. G. Frazer, we have spoken of them with reserve, as the theory of this or that date. Fortunately his article, "The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian Aborigines," in theFortnightly Review(September 1905), enables us to report Mr. Frazer's latest, perhaps final, hypothesis. "After years of sounding," he says, "our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

In essence Mr. Frazer's latest hypothesis is that of Professor Baldwin Spencer. He acceptsPirrauruas "group marriage," and holds that the Arunta retain the most archaic form of totemism now known to exist. In Chapter III. we believe ourselves to have proved thatPirrauruis not "group marriage"; and that the "classificatory names for relationships "do not demonstrate the existence of "group marriage" in the relatively near, or of promiscuity in the very distant past.

In Chapter IV. we show that, by Professor Spencer's statement, the Arunta are in a highly advanced social state for Australians. Inheritance of local office (Alatunjaship) and of the paternal totemic ritual goes in the male, not in the female line of descent, which is confessedly the more archaic. (Mr. Frazer, however, now thinks this point open to doubt.) The institutions are of alocalcharacter; and the ceremonials are of what Professor Spencer considers the later and much more complex type. Arunta totemism, Mr. Spencer shows, depends on the idea of ancestral spirits attached to stonechuringa nanja, amulets of various forms usually inscribed with archaic patterns, and thesechuringa nanja, with this belief about them, are not found outside of the Arunta region. Without them, the Arunta system of totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer says nothing. For these and many other reasons, most of which have been urged by Dr. Durkheim, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Marett, and other students, we have explained the Arunta system as a late, isolated, and apparently unique institution. As the Arunta ceremonials and institutions, with inheritance in the male line and local magistracies hereditable in the male line, are at the opposite pole from the primitive, while the Arunta totemic system reposes on an isolated superstition connected with manufactured stone objects, and not elsewhere found in Australia, it has seemed vain to regard Arunta totemism as the most archaic.

This, however, is the present hypothesis of Mr. Frazer, as of Mr. Spencer, and he adduces a proof of Arunta primitiveness concerning which too little was said in our Chapter IV. The Arunta system "ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of offspring; and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as well as the paternal side."[1]The theory "denies implicitly, and the natives themselves deny explicitly, that children are the fruit of the commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance of natural causation cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote."[2]

Now when the Arunta "ignore the tie of blood on the maternal side," they prove too much. They ignore that of which they are not ignorant. Not being idiots, they are well aware of the maternal tie of blood; but they do not permit it to affect the descent of the totem, which is regulated by their isolated superstition, the doctrine of reincarnation combined with thechuringa nanjabelief. Nor do they ignore fatherhood, as we saw, in affairs of inheritance of local office and totemic rites.

But theydodeny that the intercourse of the sexes is the cause of birth of children. Here the interesting point is that tribes much more primitive, the south-eastern tribes, with female reckoning of descent, inheritance in the female line, and no hereditary local moderatorships, are perfectly well aware of all that the more advanced Arunta do not know. Yet they, quite as much as the Arunta, are subject to the causes which, according to Mr. Frazer, produce the Arunta nescience of the facts of procreation. That nescience, says Mr. Frazer, "may be explained easily enough from the habits and modes of thought of savage men." Thus, "first, the sexual act precedes the first symptoms of pregnancy by a considerable interval."Je n'en vois pas la nécessité.Secondly, savage tribes "allow unrestricted licence of intercourse between the sexes under puberty," and thus "familiarise him" (the savage) "with sexual unions that are necessarily sterile; from which he may not unnaturally conclude that the intercourse of the sexes has nothing to do with the birth of offspring." The savage, therefore, explains the arrival of children (at least the Arunta does) by the entrance of a discarnate ancestral spirit into the woman.

The conspicuous and closing objection to this theory is, that savages who are at least as familiar as the Arunta with (1) the alleged remoteness in time of the sexual act from the appearance of the first symptoms of pregnancy (among them, such an act and the symptoms may be synchronous), and (2) with licence before puberty, are not in the Arunta state of ignorance. They are under no illusions on these interesting points.

The tribes of social organisation much more primitive than that of the Arunta, the south-eastern tribes, as a rule, know all about the matter. Mr. Howitt says, "these" (south-eastern) "aborigines, even while counting descent—that is, counting the class names—through the mother, never for a moment feel any doubt, according to my experience, that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe their infantine nurture to their mother."[3]Mr. Howitt also quotes "the remark made to me in several cases, that a woman is only a nurse who takes care of a man's children for him."[4]

Here, then, we have very low savages among whom the causes of savage ignorance of procreation, as explained by Mr. Frazer, are present, but who, far from being ignorant, take the line of Athene in theEumenidesof Æschylus. I give Mr. Raley's translation of the passage:—

"The parent of that which is called her child is not really themotherof it, she is but thenurseof the newly conceived fœtus. It is the male who is the author of its being, while she, as a stranger for a stranger (i.e.noblood relation), preserves the young plant...."—Eumenides, 628-631.

These south-eastern tribes, far more primitive than the Arunta in their ceremonials, and in their social organisation, do not entertain that dominant factor in Aruntadom, the belief in the perpetual reincarnation of the souls of the mythical ancestors of theAlcheringa. That belief is a philosophy far from primitive. As each child is, in Arunta opinion, a being who has existed from the beginning of things, he is not, he cannot be, a creature of man's begetting. Sexual acts, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, only, at most, "prepare" a woman for the reception of a child—who is as old as the world! If the Arunta were experimental philosophers, and locked a girl up in Danae's tower, so that she was never "prepared," they would, perhaps, be surprised if she gave birth to a child.

However that may be, the Arunta nescience about reproduction is not caused by the facts which, according to Mr. Frazer, are common to them with other savages. These facts produce no nescience among the more primitive tribes with female descent, simply because these primitive tribes do not share the far from primitive Arunta philosophy of eternal reincarnation. If the Arunta deny the fact of procreation among the lower animals, that is because "the man and his totem are practically indistinguishable," as Mr. Frazer says. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

The proof of Arunta primitiveness, the only proof, has been their nescience of the facts of generation. But we have demonstrated that, where Mr. Frazer's alleged causes of that nescience are present, among the south-eastern tribes, they do not produce it; while among the Arunta, it is caused by their system of philosophy, which the south-eastern tribes do not possess.

Mr. Frazer next applies his idea to the evolution of a new theory of the Origin of Totemism. Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem for each region. These centres,Oknanikilla, are, in myth, and for all that I know, in fact, burial-places of the primal ancestors, and in each is one, or there may be more,Nanjatrees or rocks, permanently haunted by ancestral spirits, all of the same totem, whose stone amulets,churinga nanja, are lying in or on the ground. When a woman feels a living child's part in her being, she knows that it is a spirit of an ancestor of the local totem, haunting theNanja, and that totem is allotted to the child when born.

Mr. Frazer from these known facts, deduces thus his new theory of the Origin of Totemism. It is best to give it in his own words:[5]—

"Naturally enough, when she is first aware of the mysterious movement within her, the mother fancies that something has that very moment passed into her body, and it is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain what the thing is she should fix upon some object that happened to be near her and to engage her attention at the critical moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be watching a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or bathing in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might imagine that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed, of water, or of a gum-tree, had passed into her, and accordingly, that when her child was born, it was really a kangaroo, a grass-seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to the bodily eye it presented the outward form of a human being. Amongst the objects on which her fancy might pitch as the cause of her pregnancy we may suppose that the last food she had eaten would often be one. If she had recently partaken of emu flesh or yams she might suppose that the emu or yam, which she had unquestionably taken into her body, had, so to say, struck root and grown up in her. This last, as perhaps the most natural, might be the commonest explanation of pregnancy; and if that was so, we can understand why, among the Central Australian tribes, if not among totemic tribes all over the world, the great majority of totems are edible objects, whether animals or plants.[6]Now, too, we can fully comprehend why people should identify themselves, as totemic tribes commonly do, with their totems, to such an extent as to regard the man and his totem as practically indistinguishable. A man of the emu totem, for example, might say, 'An emu entered into my mother at such and such a place and time; it grew up in her, and came forth from her. I am that emu, therefore I am an emu man. I am practically the same as the bird, though to you, perhaps, I may not look like it.' And so with all the other totems. On such a view it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one of his totem species, should regard it with respect and affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess, to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances, for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice ofIntichiuma, that is, magical ceremonies, performed by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would be a natural development of the original germ or stock of totemism.[7]That germ or stock, if my conjecture is right, is, in its essence, nothing more or less than an early theory of conception, which presented itself to savage man at a time when he was still ignorant of the true cause of the propagation of the species. This theory of conception is, on the principles of savage thought, so simple and obvious that it may well have occurred to men independently in many parts of the world. Thus we could understand the wide prevalence of totemism among distant races without being forced to suppose that they had borrowed it from each other. Further, the hypothesis accounts for one of the most characteristic features of totemism, namely, the intermingling in the same community of men and women of many different totem stocks. For each person's totem would be determined by what may be called an accident, that is, by the place where his mother happened to be, the occupation in which she was engaged, or the last food she had eaten at the time when she first felt the child in her womb; and such accidents (and with them the totems) would vary considerably in individual cases, though the range of variation would necessarily be limited by the number of objects open to the observation, or conceivable by the imagination, of the tribe. These objects would be chiefly the natural features of the district, and the kinds of food on which the community subsisted; but they might quite well include artificial and even imaginary objects, such as boomerangs and mythical beasts. Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season."If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing, based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception with that of locality, could be derived from this hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as I shall point out immediately. And in the second place, the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present. Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

"If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing, based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception with that of locality, could be derived from this hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as I shall point out immediately. And in the second place, the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present. Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."

How the totemic spirits became localised, is, Mr. Frazer says, "matter of conjecture," and he guesses that, after several women had felt the first recognised signs of maternity, "in the same place, and under the same circumstances "—for example, at the moment of seeing a Witchetty Grub, or a Laughing Boy—the site would become anOknanikillahaunted by spirits of the Laughing Boy or Grub totem.[8]The Arunta view is different; these places are burial-grounds of men all of this or that totem, who have left theirchuringa nanjathere. About these essential parts of the system, Mr. Frazer, as has been observed, says nothing. His theory I do not criticise, as I have already stated my objection to his premises. "The ultimate origin of exogamy ..." he says, "remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," but is a matter of deliberate institution. The tribes, already totemic, but not exogamous, were divided into the two exogamous phratries, and still later into the matrimonial classes, which the most pristine tribes do not possess, though they do know about procreation, while the more advanced Arunta, with classes and loss of phratry names, do not know. In the primitive tribes, with no churinga nanja, the totems became hereditary. Among the advanced Arunta, withchuringa nanja, the totems did not (like all other things, including the right to work the paternal totemic ritual), become hereditary, though their rites did, which is curious. Consequently, Mr. Frazer suggests, the Arunta did not redistribute the totems so that one totem never occurs in both exogamous phratries; and totems in the region ofchuringa nanjaalone are not exogamous.

Finally the tribes of Central Australia, which we prove to have the more advanced ceremonial, system of inheritance, local magistracies hereditary in the male line, and the matrimonial classes which Mr. Frazer proclaims to be later than the mere phratries of many south-eastern tribes—"are the more backward, and the coastal tribes the more progressive."[9]

This is a very hard saying!

It seems to rest either on Mr. Frazer's opinion that the south tribes of Queensland, and many on the Upper Murray, Paroo, and Barwan rivers are "coastal" ("which is absurd"), or on a failure to take them into account. For these tribes, the Barkinji, Ta-Ta-Thai, Barinji, and the rest, are the least progressive, and "coastal," of course, they are not.

This apparent failure to take into account the most primitive of all the tribes, those on the Murray, Paroo, Darling, Barwan, and other rivers, and to overlook even the more advanced Kamilaroi, is exhibited by Mr. Howitt, whose example Mr. Frazer copies, in the question of Australian religious beliefs.

I quote a passage from Mr. Howitt, which Mr. Frazer re-states in his own words. He defines "the part of Australia in which a belief exists in an anthropomorphic supernatural being, who lives in the sky, and who is supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the natives ... That part of Australia which I have indicated as the habitat of tribes having that belief" (namely, 'certainly the whole of Victoria and of New South Wales up to the eastern boundaries of the tribes of the Darling River') "is also the area where there has been the advance from group marriage to individual marriage,from descent in the female line to that in the male line; where the primitive organisation under the class system has been more or less replaced by an organisation based on locality—in fact, where those advances have been made to which I have more than once drawn attention in this work."[10]

This is an unexpected remark!

Mr. Howitt, in fact, has produced all his examples of tribes with descent in the female line, except the Dieri and Urabunna "nations," from the district which he calls "the habitat of tribes in which there has been advance ... from descent in the female to that in the male line." Apparently all, and certainly most of the south-eastern tribes described by him who have not made that advance, cherish the belief in the sky-dwelling All Father.

I give examples:—

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