CHAPTER III

THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

BY

ANDREW LANG

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1905

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

II. METHOD OF INQUIRY

III. THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

IV. THE ARUNTA ANOMALY

V. THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM

VI. THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

VII. RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

VIII. A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

IX. TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION

X. MATRIMONIAL CLASSES

XI. MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM

APPENDIX: AMERICAN THEORIES

INTRODUCTION

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

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

for the origin of marriage prohibitions in the social conditions of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

understood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From reflection on this mystic _rapport_ between the objects and the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

universally acknowledged by anthropologists.

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

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

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

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

honourable appellations.

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

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

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

venture to think not unimportant discoveries regarding the Australian

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

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

book in type-written MS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spencer and Gillen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

question as between two entirely different solutions of the old mystery

remains open.

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

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

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

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

any failures of interpretation on my own part.

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

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

of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

deficient in natural supplies.

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

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

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

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

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

heading the totems in their phratries, and betrothing two interesting

young human members of these divisions.

THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

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

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

tribal rules--Laws altered deliberately: sometimes

borrowed--Existing legislative methods of savages not

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

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

of progress towards the tribe traceable in surviving

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

culture in Australia--Varieties of social organisation

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

descent--Tribes of this organisation differ as to

ceremonies and beliefs--Some beliefs tend to polytheism:

others towards monotheism--Some tribes of pristine

organisation have totemic magic and _pirrauru_: others

have not--The more northern tribes of pristine

organisation share the ceremonies and beliefs of central

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

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

has female descent _plus_ "matrimonial classes"--Account

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

peculiar form of belief in reincarnation--_Churinga

nanja_--Recapitulation--The Euahlayi tribe.

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

or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In

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

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

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

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

known to us in America and in Australia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

totemism.

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

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

If we reflect that the society of the Australian aborigines presents

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

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

cultivating, on the whole, friendly relations with similar and

similarly organised tribes; while obeying a most elaborate system of

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

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

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

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

"the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial Government."

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

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

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

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

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

modification of law, there can be no doubt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of deliberate modification of his rites, ceremonies, and customary

laws, and of interchanging ideas on these subjects with neighbouring

tribes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

have been made very slowly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

secure obedience for its legislative acts. This postulate cannot be

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

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

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

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

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

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

previously been utterly unregulated.

Human history does not show us a relatively large mass segregating

itself into smaller communities. It shows us small communities

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

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

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

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

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

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

legislative primeval horde has been unconsciously borrowed from the

actual Tribe of experience to-day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

civilised Family, and the Family Peace.

The history of the progress must necessarily be written in the

strange characters of savage institutions, and in these odd and

elaborate regulations which alarm the incurious mind under the names

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

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

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

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

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

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

at odds among themselves.

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

which lies half concealed and half revealed in the savage institutions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ways out of early totemic society towards the civilised conception of

the family may be distinctly traced.

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

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

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

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

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

permanent shelters than others; some have less inadequate canoes than

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

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

wanderers, without domesticated animals, without priests, and without

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

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

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

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

use either sort as occasion serves.

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

varieties of social organisation, of ceremonial institutions, and of

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

expressing themselves in myths and rites.

Taking social organisation first, we begin with what all inquirers

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

knowledge appeared) acknowledge to be the most pristine type extant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

universally, where totems exist without phratries, marriage between

persons of the same totem is forbidden.

The organisation of the more primitive tribes presents only the two

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

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

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

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

never of the same names as those in Crow phratry.

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

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

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

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

the Iroquois and to have decayed.

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

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

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

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

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

with this pristine organisation possess identical ceremonies and ideas.

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

the tribes of this social organisation have peculiar ceremonies,

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

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

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

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

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

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

to the existence of a great supernatural anthropomorphic Being, by

whom the ceremonies were first instituted, and who still communicates

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

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

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

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

scarcely human creatures."[13]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

northern tribes of the primitive organisation described, differ from

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tribal organisation are _solidaires_ as to marriage, ceremonial rites,

and beliefs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

they denote animals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.

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

denoted animals, so that, say--

In phratry

{ Muri = Turtle.

_Dilbi_ { Kubi = Bat.

While in phratry

{ Ipai = Carpet Snake.

_Kupathin_ { Kumbo = Native Cat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

successive generation, would thus be delimited by bearing an animal

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

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

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

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

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

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

examples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

as his mother or father.

In practice the rules are thus quite simple, mistake is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

facilitate marriage.

The conspicuous practical result of the Class arrangement (not

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

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

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

marriages never occur in Australian tribes of pristine organisation

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

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

which will be discussed later.

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

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

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

phratry work.

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

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

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

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

systems tended to die out altogether.

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

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

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

personal research and partly through many correspondents. Mr. Howitt

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

familiar with their inmost secrets.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of one totem in Matteri phratry.[18]

They have phratries, totem kins, apparently no matrimonial classes

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

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

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

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

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

spirits, which are perpetually reincarnated in new members of the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

possess, not _four_, but _eight_ matrimonial classes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

prolonged and complex ceremonials, the belief in reincarnation of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

like most northern and western tribes, in the perpetual reincarnation

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

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

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

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

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

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

it, and around the nearest _rendezvous_ of discarnate _local_ totemic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Chapter IV.).

Meanwhile we conceive the various types of social organisation to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

cruelty accompanies social advance in this instance. In another matter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

allotted _permanent_ paramours may be a thing of isolated and special

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

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

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

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

88, 89.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Wutaru and Yungaru, however, interpretations indicating names

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

_Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 40, 41.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

escaped observation.

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

_et seq_.

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

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

528-535.

[13] Ibid., p. 487.

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

orthodox adhesion to one set of myths to prevail.

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

marriage with members of only one other totem.

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

Mr. J. G. Frazer.

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

Central Australia_, 1904. Macmillan.

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

_Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 60.

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

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

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

329.

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

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

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

later.

CHAPTER II

METHOD OF INQUIRY

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

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

socially advanced tribes--Nor among tribes of male

reckoning of descent--Nor in the myths explanatory

of origin of totemism--Myths of origin of heraldic

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

their totemic myths cannot be true--Case of Bantu

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

--Another African myth derives _tribal_ totems from

tribal nicknames--No totemic myths are of any historic

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

from conjecture--Two possible conjectures as to earliest

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

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

animal names of kinships in relation to early society and

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

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

McLennan's theory of exogamy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a satisfactory hypothesis must be marked.

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

among advanced and therefore non-pristine Australian types of tribal

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

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

of property. Such progressive peoples may present many interesting

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

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

are twisted and shattered strata, with fantastic features which cannot

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

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

especially in America, frequently make them unintelligible.

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

themselves much time and labour had they kept two conspicuous facts

before their eyes.

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

peculiarities and "sports" which always attend the decadence of

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such inheritance implies the existence of reckoning descent in the male

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

in, tribes who reckon descent in the female line.

Another stone of stumbling comes from the same logical formation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

natural in its intellectual and social condition; but not natural

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

explanation may be neglected as far as our present purpose is

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

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

can throw no light on the origin of sacred animals.

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

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

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

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

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

magical dances.

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

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

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

same Siboko as themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

looked upon it as sacred."

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

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

ancestor-worshippers of great piety, find themselves saddled with

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

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

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

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

explain their _Siboko_.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the Bahurutshe and the Bakuena, _Baboons_ entered the gardens of

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

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

unwilling that the pumpkins which the baboons had broken off and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

which had been killed by a crocodile."

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

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

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

whole thing."

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

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

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

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

as their superstitious and devotional feelings became more developed,

these tribal symbols became objects of veneration and superstitious

awe, whose favour was to be propitiated or malign influence

averted...."[3]

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

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

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

given to the tribes on account of certain undignified incidents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

powerful _local_ group in a tribe having descent through males,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hypotheses, but yield them no corroboration.

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

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

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

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

recourse as regards this matter to conjecture.

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

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

and abysm of time."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

guesses."

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

themselves in the most primitive organisation of the most archaic

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

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

institutions before us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

restraint. One or other view must be correct.

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

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

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

hate, must inevitably have produced _some_ rudimentary restrictions on

absolute archaic freedom. Some people would be prevented from doing

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

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

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

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

older and stronger males established no rudimentary restrictions on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that, till man had developed into something more like himself, as we

know him, than an animal without jealousy, and ignorant of anything

prejudicial to any one's interests in promiscuous unions, he could

begin to evolve his actual tribal institutions. This is also the

opinion of Mr. Howitt, as we shall see later.

Thus whoever tries to disengage the evolutionary processes which

produced the existing society of Australia must commence by making his

choice between the two conjectures--early man gregarious, promiscuous,

and anarchist; or early man unsociable, fierce, bullying, and jealous.

A _via media_ is attempted, however, by Mr. Howitt, to which we shall

return.

Next, it is clear and certain that some human beliefs about the

animals which give their names, in known cases, to the two large

exogamous divisions of the tribe (phratries), and about the other

animals which give names to the totem kins, and, in one or two cases,

to the matrimonial classes, must be, in some way, connected with the

prohibitions to marry, first within the phratries, then, perhaps,

within the totem kins, then within the Classes (or within the same

generation).

Thus there are here five courses which conjecture can logically take.

(a) Members of certain recognised human groups already married

habitually out of their group into other groups, _before_ the animal

names (now totem names) were given to the groups. The names came later

and merely marked, at first, and then sanctioned, the limits within

which marriage had already been forbidden while the groups were still

nameless.

Or (b) the animal names of the phratries and totem kins existed

(perhaps as denoting groups which worked magic for the behoof of each

animal) _before_ marriage was forbidden within their limits. Later, for

some reason, prohibitions were enacted.

Or (c) at one time there were no marriage regulations at all, but

these arose when, apparently for some religious reason, a hitherto

undivided communal horde split into two sections, each of which revered

a different name-giving animal as their "god" (totem), claimed descent

from it, and, out of respect to their "god," did not marry any of

those who professed its faith, and were called by its name, but always

married persons of _another_ name and "god."

Or (d) men were at first in groups, intermarrying within the group.

These groups received names from animals and other objects, because

individual men adopted animal "familiars," as Bear, Elk, Duck, Potato,

Pine-tree. The sisters of the men next adopted these animal or

vegetable "familiars," or protective creatures, from their brothers,

and bequeathed them, by female descent, to their children. These

children became groups bearing such names as Bear, Potato, Duck, and

so on. These groups made treaties of marriage with each other, for

political reasons of acquiring strength by union. The treaties declared

that Duck should never marry Duck, but always Elk, and _vice versa_.

This was exogamy, instituted for political purposes, to use the word

"political" proleptically.

Or (e) men were at first in a promiscuous incestuous horde, but,

perceiving the evils of this condition (whatever these evils might be

taken to be), they divided it into two halves, of which one must never

marry within itself, but always in the other. To these divisions animal

names were given; they are the phratries. They threw off colonies, or

accepted other groups, which took new animal names, and are now the

totem kins.

Finally, in (f) conjectures (a) and (c) may be combined thus: groups

of men, still nameless as groups, had for certain reasons the habit of

not marrying within themselves; but, after receiving animal names, they

developed an idea that the animal of each group was its kinsman, and

that, for a certain superstitious reason, it was even more wrong than

it had been before, to marry "within the blood" of the animal, as, for

Emu to marry Emu. Or (f2) the small groups did marry within themselves

till, _after_ receiving animal names, they evolved the superstition

that such marriage was a sin against the animals, and so became

exogamous.

On the point of the original state of society conjecture seems to be

limited to this field of possible choices. At least I am acquainted

with no theory hitherto propounded, which does not set out from one

or other of these conjectural bases. We must not attack each other's

ideas merely because they start from conjectures: they can start in

no other way. Our method must be to discover which conjecture, as it

is developed, most consistently and successfully colligates all the

ascertained facts and best endures the touchstone of logic.

Of the hypotheses enumerated above, the system to be advocated here is

that marked (f 1 and 2). Men, whatever their brutal ancestors may have

done, when they became men indeed, lived originally in small anonymous

local groups, and had, for a reason to be given, the habit of selecting

female mates from groups _not_ their own. Or, if they had not this

habit they developed the rule, after the previously anonymous local

groups had received animal names, and after the name-giving animals

came to receive the measure of respect at present given to them as

totems.

The second hypothesis (b) (that the animal names of the groups were

originally those of societies which worked magic, each for an animal,

and that the prohibition on marriage was _later_ introduced) has been

suggested by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and is

accepted by Mr. Howitt.

The third conjecture (c) (man originally promiscuous, but ceasing to

be so from religious respect for the totem, or "god") is that of Dr.

Durkheim.

The fourth theory (d) is that of Mr. Hill-Tout.[4]

The fifth theory (e) was that of Mr. Howitt. He now adopts the similar

theory of Mr. Spencer (b).

[1] The Dieri tribe do pray to the Mura-Mura, or _mythical_ ancestors,

but not, apparently, to the _remembered_ dead.

[2] "Totemism, South Africa," J. G. Frazer, _Man_, 1901, No. III.

Mr. Frazer does not, of course, adopt the Bantu myth as settling the

question.

[3] Stow, MSS., 820. I owe the extract to Miss C. G. Burne.

[4] I have not included the theory of Dr. Westermarck, in the _History

of Human Marriage_, because that work is written without any reference

to totemism.

NOTE

I have not included the theory of Mr. J. F. McLennan, the

founder of all research into totemism. In his opinion,

totemism, that is, the possession by different stocks of

different name-giving animals, "is older than exogamy in

all cases." That is, as Mr. Robertson Smith explains, "it

is easy to see that exogamy necessarily presupposes the

existence of a system of kinship which took no account

of degrees, but only of participation in a common stock.

Such an idea as this could not be conceived by savages

in an abstract form; it must necessarily have had a

concrete expression, or rather must have been thought

under a concrete and tangible form, and that form seems

to have been always supplied by totemism." (_Kinship and

Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 189, 1885). This means

that, before they were exogamous, men existed in groups

of animal name, as Ravens, Wolves, Ants, and so on. When

they became conscious of kinship, and resolved to marry

out of the kin, or stock, they fixed the name, say Raven,

Wolf, or what not, as the limit within which there must

be no marriage. But Mr. McLennan's theory as to why they

determined to take no wives within the stock and name, has

never been accepted. (See Westermarck, _History of Human

Marriage_, pp. 311-314.)

Mr. McLennan supposed that female infanticide made women

scarce in each group, and that therefore they stole each

other's girls, and, finally, abstained from their own.

But the objections to this hypothesis are infinite and

obvious. At one time Mr. McLennan thought that tattooing

was the origin of totemism. Members of each group tattooed

the semblance of an animal on their flesh--but, as far as

I am aware, he did not ask why they adopted this practice.

Manifestly a sense of some special connection between the

animal and the group must have been prior to the marking

of the members of the group with the effigy of the animal.

What gave rise to this belief in the connection? (See

Chapter VI., criticism of Dr. Pikler). Mr, McLennan merely

mentioned to me, in conversation, this idea, which he

later abandoned. It had previously occurred to Garcilasso

de la Vega that the _germ_ of totemism was to be found in

the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which

is the theory to be urged later, the _names_ being the

instruments of differentiation.

Mr. A. K. Keane, as in Mr. McLennan's abandoned

conjecture, and as in the theory of Dr. Pikler, makes

totemism arise in "heraldic badges," "a mere device for

distinguishing one individual from another, one family or

clan group from another ... the personal or family name

precedes the totem, which grows out of it." (Ethnology,

pp. 9, II).

CHAPTER III

THEORY OF PRIMAL PROMISCUITY

Why did man, if once promiscuous, regulate the relations

of the sexes?--Theory of Professor Spencer--Animal-named

magical societies were prior to regulation of

marriage--Theory of Mr. Howitt--Regulations introduced by

inspired medicine man--His motives unknown--The theory

postulates the pristine existence of the organised tribe

of to-day, and of belief in the All Father--Reasons

for holding that men were originally promiscuous: (1)

So-called survival of so-called "group marriage"; (2)

Inclusive names of human relationships--Betrothals

not denied--A form of marriage--Mitigated by

_Pirauru_--Allotment of paramours at feasts--Is

_Pirauru_ a survival of group marriage?--Or a rare case

of limitation of custom of feasts of license--Examples

of such saturnalia--Fiji, Arunta, Urabunna,

Dieri--Degrees of license--Argument against the author's

opinion--Laws of incest older than marriage--Names of

relationships--Indicate tribal status, not degrees of

consanguinity--Fallacy exposed--Starcke _versus_ Morgan's

theory of primal promiscuity--Dr. Durkheim on Choctaw

names of relationships--A man cannot regard his second

cousin as his mother--Dr. Fison on anomalous terms of

relationship--Grandfathers and grandsons call each other

"brothers"--_Noa_ denotes a man's wife and also all

women whom he might legally wed--Proof that terms of

relationship do not denote consanguinity--The _Pirrauru_

custom implies previous marriage, and is not logically

thinkable without it--Descriptions of _Pirrauru_--The

_Kandri_ ceremony merely modifies pre-existing

marriage--_Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage"--Is found

only in tribes of the Matteri Kiraru phratries--Not found

in south-eastern tribes--Mr. Howitt's "survivals" do not

mean "group marriage."

In the theories which postulate that man began in a communal horde,

with no idea of regulating sexual unions at all--because, having no

notion of consanguinity, or of harm in consanguine marriages, he saw

nothing to regulate--the initial difficulty is, how did he ever come

to change his nature and to see that a rule must be made, as made it

has been? Mr. Howitt endeavours (if I grasp his meaning) to show

how man did at last see it, and therefore bisected the horde into

intermarrying phratries. Mr. Spencer has only asserted that, while man

saw nothing to regulate in marriages, he evolved an organisation, that

of the phratries and classes, which did come, somehow, to regulate

them. Dr. Durkheim takes it, that man if he was originally promiscuous,

later regulated marriages out of respect to his totems, which were his

gods. Mr. Hill-Tout supposes that the exogamous rules were made for

"political" reasons.

The theories of Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer differed from each other,

originally, only in so far as that Mr. Spencer supposes animal-named

_magical societies_ (now totemic) to have arisen _before_ man regulated

marriage in any way; whereas this conception of animal-named groups

not bound by totemic restrictions on marriage had not occurred to Mr.

Howitt or any other inquirer, except Mr. J. G. Frazer, who evolved

it independently. Mr. Spencer's theory in this matter rests entirely

on his discovery, among the Arunta, in Central Australia, of totems

marking magical societies, but not regulating marriage, and on his

inference that, in the beginning, animal-named groups were everywhere

mere magical societies. To work co-operative magic was their primary

function. To that opinion Mr. Howitt has now come in, and he adds that

"the division of the tribe" (into the two primary exogamous moieties

or phratries, or "classes") "was made with intent to regulate the

relations of the sexes."[1] On one point, we repeat, namely, _why_

division was made, Mr. Spencer utters no certain sound, nor does Mr.

Howitt explicitly tell us for what reason sexual relations, hitherto

unregulated, were supposed to need regulation. He conceives that there

is "a widespread belief in the supernatural origin of the practice,"

but that explains nothing.[2]

Thus Mr. Howitt postulates the existence of a "tribe," divided

into animal-named magical societies, and promiscuous. The tribe

has "medicine men" who see visions. One of these men, conceiving,

no one knows why, that it would be an excellent thing to regulate

the relations of the sexes, announces to his fellow-men that he has

received from a supernatural being a command to do so. If they approve,

they declare the supernatural message "to the assembled headmen at one

of the ceremonial meetings," the tribe obeys, and divides itself into

the two primary exogamous moieties or phratries.[3] Mr. Howitt thus

postulates the existence of the organised tribe, with its prophets, its

"All Father" (such as Daramulun), its magical societies, its recognised

headmen, and its public meetings for ceremonial and legislation, all in

full swing, before the relations of the sexes are in any way regulated.

On reflection, Mr. Howitt may find difficulties in this postulate.

Meanwhile, we ask what made the very original medicine man, the Moses

of the tribe, think of the new and drastic command which he brought

down from the local Sinai? Why did this thinker suppose that the

relations of the sexes ought to be regulated? Perhaps the idea was the

inspiration of a dream. Mr. Spencer, acquainted chiefly with tribes who

have no All Father, has not advanced this theory.

The reasons given for supposing that the "tribe" was originally

promiscuous are partly based (a) on the actual condition as regards

individual marriage of some Australian tribes, mainly Dieri and

Urabunna, with their congeners. These tribes, it is argued, are now

no longer absolutely promiscuous, but men and women are divided into

intermarriageable sets, so that all women of a certain status in Emu

phratry are, or their predecessors have been, actual wives of all

men of the corresponding status in Kangaroo phratry. The only bar

to absolute promiscuity is that of the phratries (established by

legislation on this theory), and of certain by-laws, of relatively

recent institution. The names for human relationships (father, mother,

son, daughter, brother, sister), again, (b) are, it is argued, such as

"group marriage," and "group marriage" alone, would inevitably produce.

All women of a certain status are my "mothers," all men of a certain

status are my "fathers," all women of another status are my "sisters,"

all of another are my "wives," and so on. Thus Mr. Spencer is able

to say that "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in

practice in the Urabunna tribe" at the present day.[4]

This, however, does not mean that among many such tribes a man is not

betrothed to a special woman, and does not marry that woman, with

certain filthy initiatory "rites," contravening the usual rules of

intercourse.[5] Nor is it denied that such man and wife habitually

cohabit, and that the man, by hunting and fishing, provides for the

wife and all her children, and recognises them as his own.

It is meant that each man has only a certain set of nubile women

open to him (_Nupa_, or _Noa_, or _Unawa_), and that out of these,

in addition to his allotted bride, an uncertain number of women are

assigned to him and to others, mainly at tribal festivals, as paramours

(_Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_), by their elder brothers, or the heads of

totem kins, or the seniors of the Urabunna tribe. "This relationship

is usually established at times when considerable numbers of the tribe

are gathered together to perform important ceremonies."[6] One woman

may, on different occasions, be allotted as _Piraungaru_ to different

men, one man to different women. Occasionally, though rarely, the

regular husband (he who marries the wife by filthy "rites") resists the

allotting of his wife to another man, and then "there is a fight."

The question is, does this Urabunna custom of _Piraungaru_ (the

existence of which in some tribes is not denied) represent a survival

of a primary stage in which all men of a certain social and phratriac

status were all alike husbands to all women of the corresponding status

(group, or rather _status_, marriage); and was _that_, in turn, a

survival of the anarchy of the horde, in which there were no grades at

all, but anarchic promiscuity?

That is the opinion of believers in "the primary undivided horde," and

in "group marriage," or rather "status marriage."

Or is this _Piraungaru_ custom, as we think more probable, an organised

and circumscribed and isolated legalisation, among a few tribes, of

the utterly unbridled license practised by many savages on festive

occasions corresponding to the Persian feast of the Sacaea, and to the

Roman Saturnalia?[7]

The _Piraungaru_ allotments are made, as a rule, at great licentious

meetings, but among the Urabunna, though they break the rules

of individual marriage, they do not break the tribal rules of

incest. By these rules the _Piraungaru_ men and women must be legal

intermarriageable persons (_Nupa_); their regulated paramourship is

not, by tribal law, what we, or the natives, deem "incestuous." On the

other hand, at Fijian seasons of license, even the relationship of

brother and sister--the most sacred of all to a savage--is purposely

profaned. Brothers and sisters are "intentionally coupled" at the feast

of license called _Nanga_. The object is to have "a regular burst,"

and deliberately violate every law. Men and women "publicly practised

unmentionable abominations."[8]

The Fijians are infinitely above the Urabunna in civilisation, being an

agricultural people. Their Nanga feast is also called Mbaki--"harvest"

Yet the Fijians, though more civilised, far exceed the license of

the _Piraungaru_ custom of the Urabunna, not only permitting, but

enjoining, the extremest form of incest.

The Arunta, again, neighbours of the Urabunna, though said to have

more of "individual marriage" than they, in seasons of license go

much beyond the Urabunna, though not so far as the Fijians. Women, at

certain large meetings, "are told off ... and with the exception of

men who stand in the relation of actual Uther, brother, or sons, they

are, for the time being, common property to _all_ the men present on

the corroboree ground." Women are thus handed over to men "whom, under

ordinary circumstances, they may not even speak to or go near."[9]

Every known rule, except that which forbids the closest incest as

understood by ourselves, is deliberately and purposely reversed[10]

by the Arunta on certain occasions. Another example will be produced

later, that of the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna.

We suggest, then, that these three grades of license--the Urabunna,

adulterous, but more or less permanent, and limited by rules and

by tribal and modern laws of incest; the Arunta, not permanent,

adulterous, and tribally incestuous, limited only by our own ideas of

the worst kinds of incest; and the Fijian, not permanent, adulterous,

and of an incestuous character not only unlimited by laws, but rather

limited by the desire to break the most sacred laws--are all of the

same kind. They are not, we suggest, survivals of "group marriage," or

of a period of perfect promiscuity in everyday life, though that they

commemorate such a fancied period is the Arunta myth, just as the Roman

myth averred that the Saturnalia commemorated the anarchy of the Golden

Age.

"In Saturn's time

Such mixture was not held a crime."

The Golden Age of promiscuity is, of course, reported, not in an

historical tradition recording a fact, but in a myth invented to

explain the feasts of license. Men find that they have institutions,

they argue that they must once have been without institutions, they

make myths about ancestors or gods who introduced institutions, they

invent the Golden Age, when there were none, and, on occasion, revert

for a day or a week to that happy ideal. The periods of license cannot

be true commemorative functions, continued in pious memory of a time of

anarchy since institutions began.

But of the three types, Urabunna, Arunta, Fijian, the Urabunna, except

in its degree of permanence, is the least licentious, least invades

law, and it is a curious question why incest increases at these feasts

as culture advances, up to a certain point. The law invaded by the

Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom is not the tribal law of incest, nor

the modern law of incest, but the law of the sanctity of individual

marriage. It may therefore be argued (as against my own opinion) that

the sanctity of individual marriage is still merely a nascent idea

among the Urabunna, an idea which is recent, and so can be set aside

easily; whereas the tribal laws of incest are strong with the strength

of immemorial antiquity, and therefore must have already existed in a

past age when there was no individual marriage at all. On this showing

we have, first, the communal undivided horde; next, the horde bisected

into groups which must not marry within each other (phratries), though

_why_ this arrangement was made and submitted to nobody can guess with

any plausibility. By this time all females of phratry A might not only

marry any man of phratry B, but were, according to the hypothesis, by

theory and by practice, _all_ wives of _all_ men of phratry B. Next, as

to-day, a man of B married a woman of A, with or without the existing

offensive rites, but his tenure of her is still so insecure and recent

that it is set aside, to a great extent, by the _Piraungaru_ or

_Pirauru_ custom, itself a proof and survival of "group marriage," and

of communal promiscuity in the past. Such is the argument for "group

marriage," which may be advanced against my opinion, or thus, if I did

not hold my opinion, I would state the argument.

This licentious custom, whether called _Piraungaru_ or by other names,

is, with the tribal names for human relationships, the only basis of

the belief in the primal promiscuous horde. Now, as to these names of

relationships, we may repeat the adverse arguments already advanced by

us in _Social Origins_, pp. 99-103. "Whatever the original sense of

the names, they all now denote seniority and customary legal status in

the tribe, with the reciprocal duties, rights, and avoidances.... The

friends of group and communal marriage keep unconsciously forgetting,

at this point of their argument, that _our_ ideas of sister, brother,

father, mother, and so on, have nothing to do (as they tell us at

certain other points of their argument) with the native terms,

which _include_, indeed, but do not _denote_ these relationships as

understood by us.... We cannot say 'our word "son" must not be thought

of when we try to understand the native term of relationship which

includes sons--in _our_ sense,' and next aver that 'sons, in _our_

sense, are regarded [or spoken of] as real sons of the group, not of

the individual, because of a past [or present] stage of promiscuity

which made real paternity undiscoverable.'"

Manifestly there lurks a fallacy in alternately using "sons," for

example, in our sense, and then in the tribal sense, which includes

both fatherhood, or sonship, in our sense, and also tribal status and

duties. "The terms, in addition to their usual and generally accepted

signification of relationship by blood, express a class or group

relation quite independent of it."[11]

Thus the tribal names may result from an expanded use of earlier names

of blood relationship, or names of tribal status may now be applied

to include persons who are within degrees of blood relationship. In

the latter case, how do we know that a tribe with its degrees of

status is primitive? Starcke thinks that Mr. Morgan's use of terms of

relationship as proof of "communal marriage" is "a wild dream, if not

the delirium of fever." "The nomenclature was in every respect the

faithful reflection of the juridical relations which arose between

the nearest kinsfolk of each tribe. Individuals who were, according

to the legal point of view, on the same level with the speaker,

received the same designation. The other categories of kinship were

formally developed out of this standpoint." The system of names for

relationships "affords no warrant" for Mr. Morgan's theory of primitive

promiscuity.[12]

Similar arguments against inferring collective marriage in the

past from existing tribal terms of relationship are urged by Dr.

Durkheim.[13] He writes, taking an American case of names of

relationship, as against Professor Kohler: "We see that the (Choctaw)

word _Inoha_ (mother) applies indifferently to all the women of my

mother's group, from the oldest to the youngest. The term thus defines

its own meaning: it applies to all the women of the family (or clan?)

into which my father has married. Doubtless it is rather hard to

understand how the same term can apply to so many different people.

But certain it is, that the word cannot awake, in men's minds, any

idea of _descent_, in the usual sense of the word. For a man cannot

seriously regard his second cousin as his mother, even virtual. _The

vocabulary of relationships must therefore express something other

than relations of consanguinity, properly so-called...._ Relationship

and consanguinity are very different things ... relationship being

essentially constituted by certain legal and moral obligations, which

society imposes on certain individuals."[14]

The whole passage should be read, but its sense is that which I have

already tried to express; and Dr. Durkheim says, "The hypothesis of

collective marriage has never been more than an _ultima ratio_" (a last

resource), "intended to enable us to envisage these strange customs;

but it is impossible to overlook all the difficulties which it raises."

An analogous explanation of the wide use of certain terms of

relationship has been given by Dr. Fison, of whom Mr. Howitt writes,

"Much of what I have done is equally his."[15] Dr. Fison says, "All

men of the same generation who bear the same totem are tribally

brothers, though they may belong to different and widely separated

tribes. Here we find an explanation of certain apparently anomalous

terms of relationship. Thus, in some tribes the paternal grandson

and his grandfather call one another 'elder brother' and 'younger

brother' respectively. These persons are of the same totem."[16] "Many

other designations" in Mr. Morgan's Tables of Terms of Relationship

"admit of a similar solution."[17] The terms do not denote degrees of

blood relationship, but of brotherhood in the totem (or phratry, or

matrimonial class). It is so, too, with the Choctaw term for Mother.

Every one knows who his mother, in our sense, is: the Choctaw term

denotes a tribal status.

If it be said that, because a man calls his wife his _Noa_, and also

calls all women whom he might have married his _Noa_, therefore all

these women, in past times, would have been his wives; it might as

well be said that all the women whom he calls "mother" would, in times

past, have collaborated in giving birth to him. As far as these terms

indicate relationship, "a man is the younger brother of his maternal

grandmother," and the maternal grandfather of his second cousin![18]

The terms do not denote relationship in blood, clearly, but something

quite different.

The custom of _Piraungaru_, or _Pirrauru_, and cases of license at

festivals, and the names for tribal relations, are, we repeat, the

only arguments in favour of the theory of the communal horde.[19] We

have shown that the terms of relationship do not necessarily help the

theory. That theory, again, is invalidated by its inability to account

for the origin of the rules forbidding marriage between persons of the

same phratry (for it does not tell us _why_ the original medicine man

conceived the idea of regulations), or even to account for the origin

of the phratriac divisions.

But why, on our system, can the _Piraungaru_ custom break the rule of

individual marriage more easily than the law prohibiting incest? Why it

can do so on the theory of pristine promiscuity we have explained (p.

41, _supra_).

We reply that individual marriage has not, among savages, any

"religious" sanction; it is protected by no form of the phratry or

totem tabu; by no god, such as Hymen; but rests, as from the first it

rested, on the character and strength of the possessor of the woman or

women, and falls into abeyance if he does not choose to exert it. If

the males of the Urabunna have so far departed from the natural animal

instincts as usually (with exceptions) to prefer to relax their tenure

of women, being tempted by the bribe of a legalised change of partners

all round, they exhibit, not a primitive, but a rather advanced type of

human nature. The moral poet sings:--

"Of _Whist_ or _Cribbage_ mark the amusing Game,

The _Partners_ changing, but the _Sport_ the same,

Then see one Man with one unceasing Wife,

Play the long Rubber of connubial Life."[20]

This is the "platform" of the Urabunna and Dieri, as it is of the

old Cicisbeism in Italy, and of a section of modern "smart society,"

especially at the end of the _ancien régime_ in France. Man may fall

into this way of thinking, just as, in Greece, he actually legalised

unnatural passions by a ceremony of union. "That one practice, in many

countries, became systematised," as Mr. J. F. McLennan wrote to Mr.

Darwin.[21]

This is not the only example of a legalised aberration from nature,

or from second nature. Abhorrence of incest has become a law of

second nature, among savage as among civilised men. But Dr. Durkheim

publishes a long list of legalised aberrations from the laws of incest

among Hebrews, Arabs, Phœnicians, Greeks, Slavonic peoples, Medes,

Persians, Egyptians, Cambodians, and Peruvians.[22] If these things,

these monstrous aberrations, can be legalised "in the green tree," why

should not jealousy fall into a kind of legalised abeyance among the

Urabunna, under the law of partner-shifting? The _Piraungaru_ custom

does not prove that earliest man was not ferociously jealous; it merely

shows that certain tribes have reached a stage in which jealousy is, at

present, more or less suppressed in favour of legalised license.

We catch the Urabunna and Dieri at a moment of development in which

the abandonment of strict possession of a wife is compensated for by

a legalised system of changing partners, enduring after the feast of

license is over. But even so, a man is responsible, as father, for the

children of his actual wife, not for the children of his _Piraungaru_

paramours. For these their actual husbands (_Tippa Malku_) are

responsible.

Mr. Howitt says, in his earlier account of this institution, that among

the Dieri, neighbours of the Urabunna, the men and women who are made

_Pirauru_ are not consulted. The heads of the tribe do not ask whether

they fancy each other or not. "The time is one of festivity, feasting,

and amusement," only too obviously! "Dancing is carried on." "A man

can always exercise marital rights towards his _Pirauru_, if they

meet when her _Noa_ (real husband) is absent, but he cannot take her

away from him unless by his consent," except at the feasts. But the

husband usually consents. "In spite of all this arrangement, most of

the quarrels among the Dieri arise out of this _Pirauru_ practice....

"A son or daughter regards the real husband (_Noa_) of his mother as

his _Apiri Muria_, or "real father"; his mother's _Pirauru_ is only his

_Apiri Waka_, or "little father." At certain feasts of license, such

as intertribal marriages, "no jealous feeling is allowed under penalty

of strangling, but it crops up afterwards, and occasions many bloody

affrays."[23] Thus jealousy is not easily kept in abeyance by customary

law.

The idea of such a change of partners is human, not animal, and the

more of a brute the ancestor of man was the less could he dream, in

times truly primitive, of _Piraungaru_ as a permanent arrangement. Men,

in a few tribes, declined into it, and are capable of passing out of

it, like the Urabunna or Dieri man, who either retains so much of the

animal, or is rising so far towards the Homeric standard, as to fight

rather than let his wife be allotted to another man, or at least to

thump that other man afterwards.

The Dieri case of the feast of license, just mentioned, is notable.

"The various _Piraurus_ (paramours) are allotted to each other by

the great council of the tribe, after which their names are formally

announced to the assembled people on the evening of the ceremony of

circumcision, during which there is for a time a general license

permitted between all those who have been thus allotted to each other."

But persons of the same totem among the Dieri may not be _Piraurus_

to each other, nor may near relations as we reckon kinship, including

cousins on both sides.

In this arrangement Mr. Howitt sees "a form of group marriage," while

I see tribe-regulated license, certainly much less lawless than that

of the more advanced Fijians or the Arunta. Mr. Howitt did not state

that the _Pirauru_ or _Piraungaru_ unions are preceded (as marriage is)

by any ceremony, unless the reading the banns, so to speak, by public

proclamation among the Dieri is a ceremony.[24] Now he has discovered a

ceremony as symbolic as our wedding ring (1904).

Little light, if any, is thrown on these customs of legalised license

by philology. Mr. Howitt thought that _Pirauru_ may be derived from

_Pira_, "the moon," and _Uru_, "circular." The tribal feasts of

license are held at the full moon, but I am not aware that, by the

natives, people are deemed peculiarly "moonstruck," or lunatic, at

that season. If Urabunna _Piraungaru_ is linguistically connected with

Dieri _Pirauru_, then both _Piraungaru_ and _Pirauru_ may mean "Full

Mooners." "Thy full moons and thy festivals are an abomination to

me!"[25]

Among the Dieri, "a woman becomes the _Noa_ of a man most frequently by

being betrothed to him when she is a mere infant.... In certain cases

she is given by the Great Council, as a reward for some meritorious

act on his part." "None but the brave deserve the fair," and this is

"individual marriage," though the woman who is wedded to one man may be

legally allotted as Full Mooner, or _Pirauru_, to several. "The right

of the _Noa_ overrides that of the _Pirauru_. Thus a man cannot claim

a woman who is _Pirauru_ to him when her _Noa_ is present in the camp,

excepting by his consent." The husband generally yields, he shares

equivalent privileges. "Such cases, however, are the frequent causes of

jealousies and fights."[26]

This evidence does not seem, on the whole, to force upon us the

conclusion that the Urabunna _Piraungaru_ custom, or any of these

customs, any more than the custom of polyandry, or of legalised

incest in higher societies, is a survival of "group marriage"--all

men of certain social grades being actual husbands of all women of

the corresponding grades--while again that is a survival of gradeless

promiscuity. We shall disprove that theory. Rather, the _Piraungaru_

custom appears to be a limited concession to the taste, certainly a

human taste, for partner-changing--_which can only manifest itself

where regular partnerships already exist_. Jealousy among these tribes

is in a state of modified abeyance: like nature herself, and second

nature, where, among civilised peoples, things unnatural, or contrary

to the horror of incest, have been systematically legalised.

I have so far given Mr. Howitt's account of _Pirrauru_ (the name is now

so written by him) among the Dieri, as it appeared in his works, prior

to 1904. In that year he published his _Native Tribes of South-East

Australia_, which contains additional details of essential importance

(pp. 179-187). A woman becomes _Tippa Malku_,[27] or affianced,[28]

to one man only, _before_ she becomes _Pirrauru_, or what Mr. Howitt

calls a "group wife." A "group wife," I think, no woman becomes. She

is never the _Pirrauru_ of all the men who are _Noa_ to her, that is,

intermarriageable with her. She is merely later allotted, after a

symbolic ceremony, as a _Pirrauru_ to one or more men, who are _Noa_

to her. At first, while a child, or at least while a maiden, she is

betrothed (there are varieties of modes) to one individual male. She

may ask her husband to let her take on another man as _Pirrauru_;

"should he refuse to do this she must put up with it." If he consents,

other men make two adjacent ridges of sand, and level them into one

larger ridge, while a man, usually the selected lover, pours sand from

the ridge over the upper part of his thighs, "buries the _Pirrauru_ in

the sand." (The phrase does not suggest that _Pirrauru_ means "Full

Mooners.") This is the Kandri ceremony, it is performed when men swop

wives (exchange their _Noa_ as _Pirraurus_), and also when "the whole

of the marriageable or married people, even those who are already

_Pirrauru_, are _reallotted_," a term which suggests the temporary

character of the unions.

I am ready to allow that the _Kandri_ ceremony, a symbol of recognised

union, like our wedding ring, or the exchanged garlands of the Indian

_Ghandarva_ rite, constitutes, in a sense, marriage, or a qualified

union recognised by public opinion. But it is a form of union which

is arranged subsequent to the _Tippa Malku_ ceremony of permanent

betrothal and wedlock. Moreover, it is, without a shadow of doubt,

subsequent in time and in evolution to the "specialising" of one

woman to one man in the _Tippa Malku_ arrangement. That arrangement

is demonstrably more primitive than _Pirrauru_, for _Pirrauru_ is

unthinkable, except as a later (and isolated) custom in modification of

_Tippa Malku_.

This can easily be proved. On Mr. Howitt's theory, "group marriage"

(I prefer to say "status marriage") came next after promiscuity. All

persons legally intermarriageable (_Noa_), under phratry law, were

originally, he holds, _ipso facto_, married. Consequently the _Kandri_

custom could not make them _more_ married than they then actually were.

In no conceivable way could it widen the area of their matrimonial

comforts, unless it enabled them to enjoy partners who were not

_Noa_, not legally intermarriageable with them. But this the _Kandri_

ceremony does not do. All that it does is to permit certain persons

who are already _Tippa Malku_ (wedded) to each other, to acquire legal

paramours in certain other wedded or _Tippa Malku_ women, and in men

either married or bachelors. Thus, except as a legalised modification

of individual _Tippa Malku_, _Pirrauru_ is impossible, and its

existence is unthinkable.[29]

_Pirrauru_ is a modification of marriage (_Tippa Malku_), _Tippa

Malku_ is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a

_Tippa Malku_ husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to

himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his

intended _fiancée_.[30] The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his

_Pirrauru_ woman away from her _Tippa Malku_ husband "unless by his

consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times"--feasts, in fact, of

license. _Pirrauru_ secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the

seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless

and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these _Pirrauru_ "in

commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property

and social influence. What do the _Tippa Malku_ husbands say to this

arrangement?

As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group

marries another group, the _Pirrauru_ literally heap hot coals on

each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the

"group" as _Pirrauru_. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled

(_Nulina_). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri,

praises _Pirrauru_ for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One

does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's

wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy,

checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying,

but _Pirrauru_ is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is

involved. _Pirrauru may_ (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live

together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote

from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.

You may call _Pirrauru_ a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a

later modification of a prior _Tippa Malku_ wedlock, it cannot be cited

as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all

female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is

called "group marriage."[31]

If _Pirrauru_ were primitive, it might be looked for among these

southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social

organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent

institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the

All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or,

at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri

belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, _Pirrauru_ is

no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta

and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri,

Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, _Pirrauru_ cannot

claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to

"individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain,

prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln

and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and

Urabunna phratry names, _Matteri_ and _Kararu_, exist.[32] Having

identical phratry names (or one phratry name identical, as among the

Kunandaburi), whether by borrowing or by original community of language

and institutions: all these tribes southward to the sea from Lake Eyre

may possess, or may have possessed, _Pirrauru_.

Among the most pristine of all tribes, in the south by east, however,

_Pirrauru_ is not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the

Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find no _Pirrauru_.

But Mr. Howitt notes other practices which are taken by him to be mere

rudimentary survivals of "group marriage." They are (i.) exchange of

wives at feasts of marriage, or in view of impending misfortune, as

when shipwrecked mariners break into the stores, and are "working at

the rum and the gin." These are feasts of license, not survivals of

"group marriage" nor of _Pirrauru_. (ii.) The _jus primae noctis_,

enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all,

nor is it a survival of _Pirrauru_. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia,"

"almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost

promiscuous and very rare) nor _Pirrauru_. (iv.) Seven brothers have

one wife. This is adelphic polyandry, Mr. Howitt calls it "group

marriage." (v.) "A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife

of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by the

clan." If this is "group marriage" (there is no "group" concerned)

there was group marriage in ancient Rome.[33] This, I think, is all

that Mr. Howitt has to show for "group marriage" and _Pirrauru_ among

the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.

The manner in which _Tippa Malku_ betrothals are arranged deserves

attention. They who "give this woman away," and they who give away her

bride-groom also, are the brothers of the mothers of the pair, or the

mothers themselves may arrange the matter.[34]

Mr. Howitt, on this point, observes that, if the past can be judged of

by the present, "I should say that the practice of betrothal, which

is universal in Australia, must have produced a feeling of individual

proprietary right over the women so promised." Manifestly Mr. Howitt

is putting the plough before the oxen. It is because certain kinsfolk

have an acknowledged "proprietary right" over the woman that they can

betroth her to a man: it is not because they can betroth her to a man

that they have "a feeling of individual proprietary right over her."

I give my coppers away to a crossing-sweeper, or exchange them for

commodities, because I have an individual proprietary right over these

coins. I have not acquired the feeling of individual proprietary right

over the pence by dint of observing that I do give them away or buy

things with them.

The proprietary rights of mothers, maternal uncles, or any other

kinsfolk over girls must, of course, have been existing and generally

acknowledged before these kinsfolk could exercise the said rights of

giving away. But, in a promiscuous horde, before marriage existed, how

could anybody know what persons had proprietary rights over what other

persons?[35]

Mr. Howitt here adds that the "practice of betrothal ..." (or perhaps

he means that "the feeling of individual proprietary right"?) "when

accentuated by the _Tippa Malku_ marriage, must also tend to overthrow

the _Pirrauru_ marriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have

proved, that if there were no _Tippa Malku_ marriage there could be no

_Pirrauru_ to overthrow.

As to the _Pirrauru_ or _Piraungaru_ custom, moreover, Mr. Howitt

has himself candidly observed that, on his theory, it "ought rather

to have been perpetuated than abandoned" (so it _is_ abandoned)

"under conditions of environment" (such as more abundant food) "which

permitted the _Pirrauru_ group to remain together on one spot,

instead of being compelled by the exigencies of existence to separate

into lesser groups having the Noa" (or regular) "marriage."[36] So

_Pirrauru_ don't live in "groups"!

As a fact, the more that supplies, in some regions, as on the south

coast, permit relatively large groups to coexist, the less is their

marital license; while, on the other hand, the less favourable the

conditions of supply (as in the Barkinji region), the less do we hear

of _Pirrauru_, or anything of the kind, except among tribes of the

Kiraru and Matteri phratries. For these reasons, _Pirrauru_ unions

appear to mark an isolated moment in culture, not to be a survival of

universal pristine promiscuity. They are almost always associated,

in their inception, with seasons of frolic and lust, and with large

assemblages, rather than with the usual course of everyday existence.

For the reasons here stated, it does not seem that Australian

institutions yield any evidence for primitive promiscuity.

[1] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 89.

[2] Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 90.

[3] _Loc. cit._ Mr. Howitt says "classes," but we adhere to the term

"phratries."

[4] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

[5] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 92-98.

[6] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 63.

[7] For a large account of these customs see _The Golden Bough_, second

edition.

[8] Fison, J.A.I., xiv. p. 28.

[9] _Natives of Central Australia_, Spencer and Gillen, p. 97.

[10] Ibid., p. 111.

[11] Roth, _N.W.C. Queensland Aborigines_, p. 56.

[12] Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, p. 207.

[13] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. pp. 313-316.

[14] _L'Année Sociologique_, i. p. 315.

[15] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, xiv.

[16] Can Dr. Fison mean of the same matrimonial class?

[17] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 166, 167.

[18] _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 163. Pointed out by Mr.

N. W. Thomas.

[19] The participation of many men in the _jus primae noctis_ is open

to various explanations.

[20] _Poetry of the Antijacobin._

[21] _Studies in Ancient History_, ii. p. 52.

[22] _L'Année Sociologique_, i., pp.38, 39, 62.

[23] _J. A. I._, pp. 56-60, August 1890.

[24] Howitt, _J. A. I._, August 1890, pp. 55-58.

[25] What the Dieri call _Pirauru_ (legalised paramour) the adjacent

Kunan-daburi tribe call _Dilpa Mali_. In this tribe the individual

husband or individual wife (that is, the real wife or husband) is

styled _Nubaia_, in Dieri _Noa_, in Urabunna _Nupa_. Husband's brother,

sister's husband, wife's sister, and brother's wife are all _Nubaia

Kodimali_ in Kunandabori, and are all _Noa_ in Dieri. What _Dilpa

Mali_ (legalised paramour, or "accessory wife or husband") means in

Kunandabori Mr. Howitt does not know. But he learns that _Kodi Mali_

(applied to _Pirauru_) means "_not_ Nubaia," that is, "_not_ legal

individual husband or wife." If we knew what Dilpa means in Dilpa Mali

(legalised paramour of either sex), we should know more than we are apt

to do in the present state of Australian philology.

At Port Lincoln a man calls his own wife _Yung Ara_, that of his

brother _Karteti_ (_Trans. Phil. Soc. Vic._, v. 180). What do these

words mean?--_Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, pp.

804-806.

[26] _Report of Regents of Smithsonian Institute_, 1883, p. 807.

[27] _Tippa_, in one tongue, _Malku_ in another, denote the tassel

which is a man's full dress suit.

[28] Mr. Howitt says that the pair are _Tippa Malku_ "for the time

being" (p. 179), though the association seems to be permanent. May

girls Tippa Malku--"sealed" to a man--have relations with other men

before their actual marriage, and with what men? We are not told, but a

girl cannot be a _Pirrauru_ before she is _Tippa Malku_. If _Pirrauru_

"arises through the exchange by brothers of their _wives_" (p. 181),

how can an unmarried man who has no wife become a _Pirrauru_? He

does. When _Pirrauru_ people are "re-allotted" (p. 182), does the old

connection persist, or is it broken, or is it merely in being for the

festive occasion? How does the jealousy of the _Pirrauru_, which is

great, like the change? These questions, and many more, are asked by

Mr. N. W. Thomas.

[29] Will any one say, originally all Noa people were actual husbands

and wives to each other? Then the Kandri ceremony and _Pirrauru_

were devised to limit Tom, Dick, and Harry, &c., to Jane, Mary, and

Susan, &c., all these men being _Pirrauru_ to all these women, and

_vice versa_. Next, Tippa Malku was devised, limiting Jane to Tom,

but _Pirrauru_ was retained, to modify that limitation. Anybody is

welcome to this mode of making _Pirrauru_ logically thinkable, without

prior _Tippa Malku_: if he thinks that the arrangement is logically

thinkable, which I do not.

[30] Or his seniors would hare to ask it. But his kin could not possess

the tight to betroth him before kinship was recognised, which, before

marriage existed, it could not be.

[31] I have here had the advantage of using a MS. note by Mr. N. W.

Thomas.

[32] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 191.

[33] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 195, 217, 219, 224,

260.

[34] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 177, 178.

[35] Ibid., p. 283.

[36] _J. A. I._, xiii. p. 34.