TOTEMIC REDISTRIBUTION
The totemic redistribution--The same totem is never
in both phratries--This cannot be the result of
accident--Yet, originally, the same totems must have
existed in _both_ phratries, on any theory of the origin
of phratries--The present state of affairs is the result
of legislation--To avoid clash of phratry law and totem
law, the totems were redistributed--No totem in both
phratries--Recapitulation--Whole course of totemic
evolution has been surveyed--Our theory colligates every
known fact--Absence of conjecture in our theory--All the
causes are _veræ causæ_--Protest against use of such terms
as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems,"
"sub-totems"--The true totem is hereditary, and marks the
exogamous limit--No other is genuine.
That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was
necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial
problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed
conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an
arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of
laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members
of totem kins.
That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had
become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in
all the primitive types of tribal organisation: _The same totem never
exists in both phratries_.[1] This in no way increases, as things
stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in
the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more
recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem
kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never
in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.[2]
Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in
both of the _local_ groups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus
if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives
from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women
would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle
Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries,
representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both
of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe,
Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the
other.
This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the
first establishment of phratry law, or later.
If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the
two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it
remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow
group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by
Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose
new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.
It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of
the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least,
in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, by
_phratry_ law, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his
own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. By _totem_ law, however, he may
not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was
fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged
so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it
necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes,
say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes
in Crow phratry, or _vice versa_. They obviously could not change
their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry,
the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to
override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the
course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many
phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class
names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America,
and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among
totemists--(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).
But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have
decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated
by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy
still.
Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as
we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been
demonstrated by actual fact, by that _re_distribution of totem kins in
the phratries--never the same totem in both phratries--which cannot be
due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that
nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf.
Chapter IV.)
It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition
to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the
rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem
being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that
became a phratry name, including several totem kins.
Now that this feeling--to which the totem of the kin was far nearer
and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its
name--is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr.
Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory--his
own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our
terminology, the phratry name) "is _general_, the totem name is in
one sense _individual_, for it is certainly nearer to the individual
than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he
belongs."[3] Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to
be much _nearer_ to the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than
the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.[4]
As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose
men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and
we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never
the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their
phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on
my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed
us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate
marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.
It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not
account for the fact that phratriac names--say Eagle Hawk, Crow--are
commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that
Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."[5]
We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that
the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing,
from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk;
and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions
very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no
everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with
the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other
names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.
Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole
course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves
but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven,
by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he
had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons
and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and
milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing,
of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal
names, which I show to be usual as group _sobriquets_ in ancient Israel
and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for
silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be
signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs,
whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is
no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner
naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring,
as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this
day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long
been forgotten.
It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate
a mystical _rapport_, and transcendental connection, between the name
and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that this _rapport_
is exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that
myths have been invented to explain the _rapport_ which must, it is
held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases.
It is no conjecture that the myths explain the _rapport_, usually,
as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is
no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood,
and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood
of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas,
if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an
inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an
animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection
between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one
animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?
We have thus reached _totemism_, and we trace its varying forms in
the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution--under
changing conditions--of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrably
_veræ causæ_, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the
hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.
The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt
justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning
of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names
lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or
are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic
anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent,
become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names
(names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among
the isolated Kurnai.
In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members
of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error
of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters
by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or
individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an
associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under
some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron
animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after
a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem
kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one
totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are
not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems,"
"Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying
totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or
to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised
and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later
devised.
[1] The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.
[2] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 55--57, in which the author fails to
discover any mode by which the distribution could occur accidentally or
automatically.
[3] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 40.
[4] Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.
[5] N. W. Thomas, _Man_, January 1904, No. 2.
CHAPTER X
MATRIMONIAL CLASSES
Matrimonial classes--Their working described--Prevent
persons of successive generations from
intermarrying--Child and parent unions forbidden in
tribes without matrimonial classes--Obscurity caused by
ignorance of philology--Meanings of names of classes
usually unknown--Mystic names for common objects--Cases in
which meaning of class names is known--They are names of
animals--Variations in evidence--Names of classes from the
centre to Gulf of Carpentaria--They appear to be Cloud,
Eagle Hawk (?), Crow, Kangaroo Rat--Uncertainty of these
etymologies--One totem to one totem marriages--Obscurity
of evidence--Perhaps the so-called "totems" are
matrimonial classes--Meaning of names forgotten--Or
names tabued--The classes a deliberately framed
institution--Unlike phratries and totem kins--Theory of
Herr Cunow--Lack of linguistic evidence for his theory.
The nature of the sets called Matrimonial Classes has already been
explained (Chapter I.). In its simplest form, as among the Kamilaroi,
who reckon descent in the female line, and among the adjacent tribes to
a great distance, there exist, within the phratries, what Mr. Frazer
has called "sub-phratries," what Mr. Howitt calls "sub-classes," in our
term "matrimonial classes," In these tribes each child is born into
its mother's phratry and totem of course, but not into its mother's
"sub-phratry," "sub-class," or "matrimonial class." There being two of
these divisions in each phratry, the child belongs to that division, in
its mother's phratry, which is _not_ its mother's. That a man of class
Muri, in Dilbi phratry, marries a woman of class Kumbo, in Kupathin
phratry, and their children, keeping to the mother's phratry and totem,
belong to the class in Kupathin phratry which is _not_ hers, that is,
belong to class Ipai, and so on. Children and parents are never of
the same class, and never can intermarry. The class names eternally
differentiate each generation from its predecessor, and eternally
forbid their intermarriage.
But child-parent intermarriages are just as unlawful, by custom,
among primitive tribes like the Barkinji, who have female reckoning
of descent, but no matrimonial classes at all. By totem law, among
the Barkinji, a man might marry his daughter, who is neither of his
phratry nor totem, but he never does. Yet nobody suggests that the
Barkinji once had classes and class law, but dropped the classes,
while retaining one result of that organisation--no parent and child
marriage. The classes are found in Australia only, and tend, in the
centre, north, and west, under male descent, to become more numerous
and complex, eight classes being usual from the centre to the sea in
the north.
One of the chief obstacles to the understanding of the classes and of
their origin, is the obscurity which surrounds the meaning of their
names, in most cases. Explorers like Messrs. Spencer and Gillen mention
no instance in which the natives of Northern and Central Australia
could, or at all events would, explain the sense of their class names.
In these circumstances, as in the interpretation of the divine names
of Sanskrit and Greek mythology, we naturally turn to comparative
philology for a solution of the problem. But, in the case of Greek and
Sanskrit divine names, say, Athênê, Dionysus, Artemis, Indra, Poseidon,
comparative philology almost entirely failed. Each scholar found
an "equation," an interpretation, which satisfied himself, but was
disputed by his brethren. The divine names, with a rare exception or
two, remained impenetrably obscure.
If this was the state of things when divine names of peoples with a
copious written literature were concerned; if scholars armed with "the
weapons of precision" of philological science were baffled; it is easy
to see how perilous is the task of interpreting the class names of
Australian savages. Their dialects, leaving no written monuments, have
manifestly fluctuated under the operation of laws of change, and these
laws have been codified by no Grimm.
As a science, Australian philology does not exist. In 1880 Mr. Fison
wrote, "It is simply impossible to ascertain the exact meaning of these
words" (changes of name and grade conferred at secret ceremonies),
"without a very full knowledge of the native dialects," and without
strong personal influence with the blacks.... "In all probability
there are not half-a-dozen men so qualified in the whole Australian
continent."[1]
The habit of using, in the case of the initiate, mystic terms even for
the everyday names of animals, greatly complicates the problem. It
does not appear that most of the recorders of the facts know even one
native dialect as Dr. Walter Roth knows some dialects of North-West
Central Queensland. In the south-east, Kamilaroi was seriously
studied, long ago, by Mr. Threlkeld and Mr. Ridley, who wrote tracts
in that language. Sir George Grey and Mr. Matthews, with many others,
have compiled vocabularies, the result of studies of their own, and
Mr. Curr collected brief glossaries of very many tribes, by aid of
correspondents without linguistic training.
Into this ignorance as to the meanings of the names of matrimonial
classes, Mr. Howitt brings a faint little gleam of light In a few
cases, he thinks, the meaning of class and "sub-class" names is
ascertained. Among the Kuinmurbura tribe, between Broad Sound and Shoal
water Bay, the "sub-classes" (our "matrimonial classes") "were totems."
By this Mr. Howitt obviously means that the classes bore animal names.
They meant (i.) the Barrimundi, (ii.) a Hawk, (iii.) Good Water, and
(iv.) Iguana.[2] For the Annan River tribe, he gives "sub-classes"
(our "matrimonial classes"), (i.) Eagle Hawk, (ii.) Bee, (iii.)
Salt-Water-Eagle Hawk, (iv.) Bee.[3] This is not very satisfactory. In
previous works he gave so many animal names for his "sub-classes," Mr.
Frazer's "sub-phratries" (our "matrimonial classes"), that Mr. Frazer
wrote, "It seems to follow that the sub-phratries of the Kamilaroi
(Muri, Kubi, Ipai, and Kumbo) have, or once had, totems also," that is,
had names derived from animals or other objects.[4]
Mr. Howitt himself at one time appeared to hold that the names of the
matrimonial classes are often animal names. His phraseology here is
not very lucid. "The main sections themselves are frequently, probably
always, distinguished by totems." Here he certainly means that the
phratries have usually animal names, though we are not told that the
phratries, as such, treat their name-giving animal, even when they know
the meaning of its name, "with the decencies of a totem." Mr. Howitt
goes on, "The probability is that they are all" (that all the classes
are) "totems."[5] By this Mr. Howitt perhaps intends to say that all
the "classes" (both the phratries and the matrimonial classes) probably
have animal or other such names.
Again, the class names of the Kiabara tribe were said to denote four
animals--Turtle, Bat, Carpet Snake, Cat.[6] But now (1904) the Kiabara
class names are given without translation, and the four animals are
thrown into the list of totems, with Flood Water and Lightning totems
(which names were previously given as translations of Kubatine and
Dilebi, the phratry names).[7] Doubtless Mr. Howitt has received
more recent information, but, if we accept what he now gives us, the
meanings of his "sub-class" names are only ascertained in the cases of
two tribes, and then are names of animals.
I spent some labour in examining the class names of the tribes studied
by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, from the Arunta in the centre to the
Tingilli at Powell's Creek, after which point our authors no longer
marched due north, but turned east, at a right angle, reaching the
sea, and the Binbinga, the Mara, and Anula coast tribes, on or near
the MacArthur River. The class names of these coastal tribes did not
resemble those of the central tribes. But if Messrs. Spencer and Gillen
had held north by west, in place of turning due east from Newcastle
Waters, they would have found, as far as the sea at Nichol Bay, four
classes whose names closely resemble the class names of the central
tribes, and are reported as Paljarie, or Paliali, or Palyeery (clearly
the Umbaia and Binbinga Paliarinji), Kimera or Kymurra, (obviously
Kumara), Banigher, or Bunaka, or Panaka (Panunga, cf. Dieri Kanunka =
Bush Wallaby),[8] and Boorungo, or Paronga.[9]
It thus appears scarcely doubtful that, from the Arunta in the centre,
to the furthest north, several of the class names are of the same
linguistic origin, and--whether by original community of speech, or by
dint of borrowing--had once the same significance. Now we can show that
some of these names, in the dialects of one tribe or another, denote
objects in nature. Thus Warramunga Tj-_upila'_ (Tj being an affix) at
least suggests the Dieri totem, _Upala_, "Cloud." _Biliarinthu_, in the
same way, suggests the _Barinji Biliari_, "Eagle Hawk," or the Umbaia
Paliarinji. _Ungalla_, or _Thungalla_, is Arunta _Ungilla_, "Crow,"
the Ungōla, or Ungăla, "Crow" of the Yaroinga and Undekerabina of
North-West Queensland,[10] while _Panunga, Banaka, Panaka,_ resembles
Dieri _Kanunka_--"Bush Wallaby," or _Kanunga_, "Kangaroo Rat."
The process of picking out animal names in one tribe corresponding to
class names in other tribes, is not so utterly unscientific as it may
seem, for the tribes have either borrowed the names from each other,
or have a common basis of language, and some forms of dialectical
change are obvious. We lay no stress on the "equations" given above,
but merely offer the suggestion that class names have often been animal
names, and hint that inquiry should keep this idea in mind.
I do not, then, offer my "equations" as more than guesses in a field
peculiarly perilous. The word which means "fire" in one tribe, means
"snake" in another. "What fools these fellows are, they call 'fire'
'snakes,'" say the tribesmen. However, if we guess right, we find Eagle
Hawk, Crow, Cloud, and Kangaroo Rat, as class names, over an enormous
extent of Central and Northern Australia.[11]
About the deliberate purpose of the classes there can be no doubt. They
were introduced to bar marriages, not between parents and children, for
these are forbidden in primitive tribes, but between persons of the
parental and filial generations. Or the names were given to stereotype
classes, already existing, but hitherto anonymous, within which
marriage was already prohibited. To make the distinction permanent,
it was only necessary to have a linked pair of classes of different
names in each phratry, the child never taking the maternal class name,
but always that of the linked class in her phratry (under a system of
female descent). The names Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, would have served
the turn as well as any others. If a tribe had two words for young, and
two for old, these would have served the turn; as
Phratry { Jeune. _Dilbi_ { Old.
Phratry
_Kupatkin_ { Vieux. { Young.
Meanwhile, in our linguistic darkness, we are only informed with
assurance that, in two cases, the class names denote animals, while we
guess that this may have been so more generally.
According to Mr. Howitt, "in such tribes as the Urabunna, a man, say,
of class" (phratry) A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or
rather "his totem inter-marries only with certain totems of the other
class" (phratry).[12] But neither in their first nor second volume do
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give definite information on this obscure
point. They think that it "appears to be the case" that, among the
northern Urabunna, "men of one totem can only marry women of another
special totem."[13] This would seem _prima facie_ to be an almost
impossible and perfectly meaningless restriction on marriage. Among
tribes so very communicative as the dusky friends of Messrs. Spencer
and Gillen, it is curious that definite information on the facts cannot
be obtained.
Mr. Howitt, however, adds that "one totem to one totem" marriage
is common in many tribes with phratries but without matrimonial
classes.[14] Among these are some tribes of the Mukwara-Kilpara phratry
names. Now this rule is equivalent in bearing to the rule of the
phratries, it is a dichotomous division. But the phratries contain
many totems; the rule here described limits marriage to one totem kin
with one totem kin, in each phratry. What can be the origin, sense,
and purpose of this, unless the animal-named divisions in the phratry
called "totems" by our informants, are really not totem kins but
"sub-phratries" of animal name, each sub-phratry containing several
totems? This was Mr. Frazer's theory, based on such facts or statements
as were accessible in 1887.[15] There might conceivably be, in some
tribes, four phratries, or more, submerged, and, as bearing animal
names, these might be mistaken by our informants for mere totem kins.
With development of social law, such animal-named sub-phratries might
be utilised for the mechanism of the matrimonial classes. In many
tribes the meaning of their names, like the meaning of too many phratry
names, might be forgotten with efflux of time.
Or again, when classes were instituted, four then existing totem
names--two for each phratry--might be tabued or reserved, and made to
act exclusively as class names, while new names might be given to the
actual animals, or other objects, which were god-parents to the totem
kins. Such tabus and substitutions of names are authenticated in other
cases among savages. Thus Dr. Augustine Henry, F.L.S., tells me that,
among the Lolos of Yunnan, he observed the existence of kinships, each
of one name. It is not usual to marry within the name; the prohibition
exists, but is decadent If a person wishes to know the kin-name of a
stranger, he asks: "What is it that you do not touch?" The reply is
"Orange" or "Monkey," or the like; but the name is not that applied to
orange or monkey _in everyday life_. It is an archaic word of the same
significance, used only in this connection with the tabued name-giving
object of the kin. The names of the Australian matrimonial classes
appear to be tabued or archaic names of animals and other objects, as
we have shown that some phratry names also are.
For practical purposes, as we have shown, any four different
class-titles would serve the turn, but pre-existing law, in phratries
and totems, had mainly, for the reasons already offered, used animal
and plant names, and the custom was, perhaps, kept up in giving such
names to the new classes of seniority. Beyond these suggestions we dare
not go, in the present state of our information.
The matrimonial classes are a distinct, deliberately imposed
institution.
In this respect they seem to differ from the phratry and totem names,
which, as we have tried to show, are things of long and unconscious
evolution. But conscious purpose is evident in the institution of
matrimonial classes. We tentatively suggest that, if their names turn
out to be usually names of animals and other objects, this occurs
because animal-named sub-phratries once existed, and were converted
into the mechanism of the classes; or because the pre-existing
totemic system of nomenclature was preserved in the development of
a new institution. Herr Cunow's theory that the class names mean
"Young," "Old," "Big," "Little" (_Kubbi = Kubbura_, "young"; _Kunibo =
Kombia_, _Kumbia, Gumboka_, "great or old"), needs a wide and assured
etymological basis.[16] Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis appears to assume
that "clans," exogamous, with female descent, are territorial, which
(see Chapter V.) is not possible.
Whatever their names may mean, the matrimonial classes were instituted
to prevent marriage between persons of parental and filial generations.
[1] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 59, 60.
[2] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. III.
[3] Ibid., p. 118.
[4] _Totemism_, p. 84. Cf. _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 41.
[5] _J. A. I._, 1885, p. 143. Cf. Note 4.
[6] _J. A. I._, xiii. pp. 336, 341.
[7] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 116.
[8] _J. A. I._, August 1890, p. 38.
[9] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 36. _J. A. I._, ix. pp. 356, 357. Curr,
i. p. 298. _Austral. Assoc. Adv. Science_, ii. pp. 653. 654. _Journal
Roy. Soc. N.S.W._ vol. xxxii. p. 86. R. H. Matthews.
[10] Roth, p. 50.
[11] Mr. N. W. Thomas helped the chase of these names, without claiming
any certainty for the "equations."
[12] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 176. Citing Spencer
end Gillen, p. 60.
[13] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 71, Note 2.
[14] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 189-194.
[15] _Totemism_, pp. 64-67.
[16] _Die Verwandschafts Organisationen der Australneger_. Stuttgart,
1894.
CHAPTER XI
MR. FRAZER'S THEORY OF TOTEMISM
Mr. Frazer's latest theory--Closely akin to that of
Professor Spencer--Arunta totemism the most archaic--Proof
of Arunta primitiveness--Their ignorance of the facts
of procreation--But the more primitive south-eastern
tribes are not ignorant of the facts--Proof from Mr.
Howitt--Yet south-eastern tribes are subject to Mr.
Frazer's supposed causes of ignorance--Mr. Frazer's new
theory cited--No account taken of primitive tribes of
the southern interior--Similar oversight by Mr. Howitt
as regards religion--Examples of this oversight--Social
advance does not explain the religion of tribes which have
not made the social advance--Theory of borrowing needed by
Mr. Howitt--Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of
exogamy--Objections to the suggestion.
Throughout these chapters, when there was occasion to mention the
totemic theories of Mr. J. G. Frazer, we have spoken of them with
reserve, as the theory of this or that date. Fortunately his article,
"The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian
Aborigines," in the _Fortnightly Review_ (September 1905), enables us
to report Mr. Frazer's latest, perhaps final, hypothesis. "After years
of sounding," he says, "our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."
In essence Mr. Frazer's latest hypothesis is that of Professor Baldwin
Spencer. He accepts _Pirrauru_ as "group marriage," and holds that the
Arunta retain the most archaic form of totemism now known to exist.
In Chapter III. we believe ourselves to have proved that _Pirrauru_
is not "group marriage"; and that the "classificatory names for
relationships "do not demonstrate the existence of "group marriage" in
the relatively near, or of promiscuity in the very distant past.
In Chapter IV. we show that, by Professor Spencer's statement,
the Arunta are in a highly advanced social state for Australians.
Inheritance of local office (Alatunjaship) and of the paternal totemic
ritual goes in the male, not in the female line of descent, which is
confessedly the more archaic. (Mr. Frazer, however, now thinks this
point open to doubt.) The institutions are of a _local_ character; and
the ceremonials are of what Professor Spencer considers the later and
much more complex type. Arunta totemism, Mr. Spencer shows, depends
on the idea of ancestral spirits attached to stone _churinga nanja_,
amulets of various forms usually inscribed with archaic patterns, and
these _churinga nanja_, with this belief about them, are not found
outside of the Arunta region. Without them, the Arunta system of
totemism does not, and apparently cannot exist On this head Mr. Frazer
says nothing. For these and many other reasons, most of which have been
urged by Dr. Durkheim, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Marett, and other students, we
have explained the Arunta system as a late, isolated, and apparently
unique institution. As the Arunta ceremonials and institutions, with
inheritance in the male line and local magistracies hereditable in
the male line, are at the opposite pole from the primitive, while the
Arunta totemic system reposes on an isolated superstition connected
with manufactured stone objects, and not elsewhere found in Australia,
it has seemed vain to regard Arunta totemism as the most archaic.
This, however, is the present hypothesis of Mr. Frazer, as of Mr.
Spencer, and he adduces a proof of Arunta primitiveness concerning
which too little was said in our Chapter IV. The Arunta system
"ignores altogether the intercourse of the sexes as the cause of
offspring; and further, it ignores the tie of blood on the maternal as
well as the paternal side."[1] The theory "denies implicitly, and the
natives themselves deny explicitly, that children are the fruit of the
commerce of the sexes. So astounding an ignorance of natural causation
cannot but date from a past immeasurably remote."[2]
Now when the Arunta "ignore the tie of blood on the maternal side,"
they prove too much. They ignore that of which they are not ignorant.
Not being idiots, they are well aware of the maternal tie of blood;
but they do not permit it to affect the descent of the totem, which is
regulated by their isolated superstition, the doctrine of reincarnation
combined with the _churinga nanja_ belief. Nor do they ignore
fatherhood, as we saw, in affairs of inheritance of local office and
totemic rites.
But they _do_ deny that the intercourse of the sexes is the cause of
birth of children. Here the interesting point is that tribes much more
primitive, the south-eastern tribes, with female reckoning of descent,
inheritance in the female line, and no hereditary local moderatorships,
are perfectly well aware of all that the more advanced Arunta do
not know. Yet they, quite as much as the Arunta, are subject to the
causes which, according to Mr. Frazer, produce the Arunta nescience
of the facts of procreation. That nescience, says Mr. Frazer, "may
be explained easily enough from the habits and modes of thought of
savage men." Thus, "first, the sexual act precedes the first symptoms
of pregnancy by a considerable interval." _Je n'en vois pas la
nécessité._ Secondly, savage tribes "allow unrestricted licence of
intercourse between the sexes under puberty," and thus "familiarise
him" (the savage) "with sexual unions that are necessarily sterile;
from which he may not unnaturally conclude that the intercourse of
the sexes has nothing to do with the birth of offspring." The savage,
therefore, explains the arrival of children (at least the Arunta does)
by the entrance of a discarnate ancestral spirit into the woman.
The conspicuous and closing objection to this theory is, that savages
who are at least as familiar as the Arunta with (1) the alleged
remoteness in time of the sexual act from the appearance of the first
symptoms of pregnancy (among them, such an act and the symptoms may
be synchronous), and (2) with licence before puberty, are not in
the Arunta state of ignorance. They are under no illusions on these
interesting points.
The tribes of social organisation much more primitive than that of
the Arunta, the south-eastern tribes, as a rule, know all about the
matter. Mr. Howitt says, "these" (south-eastern) "aborigines, even
while counting descent--that is, counting the class names--through the
mother, never for a moment feel any doubt, according to my experience,
that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe
their infantine nurture to their mother."[3] Mr. Howitt also quotes
"the remark made to me in several cases, that a woman is only a nurse
who takes care of a man's children for him."[4]
Here, then, we have very low savages among whom the causes of savage
ignorance of procreation, as explained by Mr. Frazer, are present,
but who, far from being ignorant, take the line of Athene in the
_Eumenides_ of Æschylus. I give Mr. Raley's translation of the
passage:--
"The parent of that which is called her child is not really the
_mother_ of it, she is but the _nurse_ of the newly conceived fœtus. It
is the male who is the author of its being, while she, as a stranger
for a stranger (_i.e._ no _blood relation_), preserves the young
plant...."--_Eumenides_, 628-631.
These south-eastern tribes, far more primitive than the Arunta in their
ceremonials, and in their social organisation, do not entertain that
dominant factor in Aruntadom, the belief in the perpetual reincarnation
of the souls of the mythical ancestors of the _Alcheringa_. That
belief is a philosophy far from primitive. As each child is, in Arunta
opinion, a being who has existed from the beginning of things, he is
not, he cannot be, a creature of man's begetting. Sexual acts, say
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, only, at most, "prepare" a woman for the
reception of a child--who is as old as the world! If the Arunta were
experimental philosophers, and locked a girl up in Danae's tower, so
that she was never "prepared," they would, perhaps, be surprised if she
gave birth to a child.
However that may be, the Arunta nescience about reproduction is not
caused by the facts which, according to Mr. Frazer, are common to them
with other savages. These facts produce no nescience among the more
primitive tribes with female descent, simply because these primitive
tribes do not share the far from primitive Arunta philosophy of eternal
reincarnation. If the Arunta deny the fact of procreation among the
lower animals, that is because "the man and his totem are practically
indistinguishable," as Mr. Frazer says. What is sauce for the goose is
sauce for the gander.
The proof of Arunta primitiveness, the only proof, has been their
nescience of the facts of generation. But we have demonstrated that,
where Mr. Frazer's alleged causes of that nescience are present,
among the south-eastern tribes, they do not produce it; while among
the Arunta, it is caused by their system of philosophy, which the
south-eastern tribes do not possess.
Mr. Frazer next applies his idea to the evolution of a new theory of
the Origin of Totemism. Among the Arunta, as we know, each region has
its local centre of totemic spirits awaiting reincarnation, one totem
for each region. These centres, _Oknanikilla_, are, in myth, and for
all that I know, in fact, burial-places of the primal ancestors, and in
each is one, or there may be more, _Nanja_ trees or rocks, permanently
haunted by ancestral spirits, all of the same totem, whose stone
amulets, _churinga nanja_, are lying in or on the ground. When a woman
feels a living child's part in her being, she knows that it is a spirit
of an ancestor of the local totem, haunting the _Nanja_, and that totem
is allotted to the child when born.
Mr. Frazer from these known facts, deduces thus his new theory of the
Origin of Totemism. It is best to give it in his own words:[5]--
"Naturally enough, when she is first aware of the
mysterious movement within her, the mother fancies that
something has that very moment passed into her body, and
it is equally natural that in her attempt to ascertain
what the thing is she should fix upon some object that
happened to be near her and to engage her attention at the
critical moment. Thus if she chanced at the time to be
watching a kangaroo, or collecting grass-seed for food, or
bathing in water, or sitting under a gum-tree, she might
imagine that the spirit of a kangaroo, of grass-seed,
of water, or of a gum-tree, had passed into her, and
accordingly, that when her child was born, it was really
a kangaroo, a grass-seed, water, or a gum-tree, though to
the bodily eye it presented the outward form of a human
being. Amongst the objects on which her fancy might pitch
as the cause of her pregnancy we may suppose that the
last food she had eaten would often be one. If she had
recently partaken of emu flesh or yams she might suppose
that the emu or yam, which she had unquestionably taken
into her body, had, so to say, struck root and grown up in
her. This last, as perhaps the most natural, might be the
commonest explanation of pregnancy; and if that was so, we
can understand why, among the Central Australian tribes,
if not among totemic tribes all over the world, the great
majority of totems are edible objects, whether animals or
plants.[6] Now, too, we can fully comprehend why people
should identify themselves, as totemic tribes commonly
do, with their totems, to such an extent as to regard
the man and his totem as practically indistinguishable.
A man of the emu totem, for example, might say, 'An emu
entered into my mother at such and such a place and time;
it grew up in her, and came forth from her. I am that
emu, therefore I am an emu man. I am practically the same
as the bird, though to you, perhaps, I may not look like
it.' And so with all the other totems. On such a view
it is perfectly natural that a man, deeming himself one
of his totem species, should regard it with respect and
affection, and that he should imagine himself possessed
of a power, such as men of other totems do not possess,
to increase or diminish it, according to circumstances,
for the good of himself and his fellows. Thus the practice
of _Intichiuma_, that is, magical ceremonies, performed
by men of a totem for its increase or diminution, would
be a natural development of the original germ or stock
of totemism.[7] That germ or stock, if my conjecture is
right, is, in its essence, nothing more or less than an
early theory of conception, which presented itself to
savage man at a time when he was still ignorant of the
true cause of the propagation of the species. This theory
of conception is, on the principles of savage thought,
so simple and obvious that it may well have occurred to
men independently in many parts of the world. Thus we
could understand the wide prevalence of totemism among
distant races without being forced to suppose that they
had borrowed it from each other. Further, the hypothesis
accounts for one of the most characteristic features of
totemism, namely, the intermingling in the same community
of men and women of many different totem stocks. For
each person's totem would be determined by what may be
called an accident, that is, by the place where his mother
happened to be, the occupation in which she was engaged,
or the last food she had eaten at the time when she first
felt the child in her womb; and such accidents (and with
them the totems) would vary considerably in individual
cases, though the range of variation would necessarily be
limited by the number of objects open to the observation,
or conceivable by the imagination, of the tribe. These
objects would be chiefly the natural features of the
district, and the kinds of food on which the community
subsisted; but they might quite well include artificial
and even imaginary objects, such as boomerangs and
mythical beasts. Even a totem like Laughing Boys, which
we find among the Arunta, is perfectly intelligible on
the present theory. In fact, of all the things which the
savage perceives or imagines, there is none which he might
not thus convert into a totem, since there is none which
might not chance to impress itself on the mind of the
mother, waking or dreaming, at the critical season.
"If we may hypothetically assume, as the first stage in
the evolution of totemism, a system like the foregoing,
based on a primitive theory of conception, the whole
history of totemism becomes intelligible. For in the first
place, the existing system of totemism among the Arunta
and Kaitish, which combines the principle of conception
with that of locality, could be derived from this
hypothetical system in the simplest and easiest manner, as
I shall point out immediately. And in the second place,
the existing system of the Arunta and Kaitish could, in
its turn, readily pass into hereditary totemism of the
ordinary type, as in fact it appears to be doing in the
Umbaia and Nani tribes of Central Australia at present.
Thus what may be called conceptional totemism pure and
simple furnishes an intelligible starting-point for the
evolution of totemism in general. In it, after years of
sounding, our plummets seem to touch bottom at last."
How the totemic spirits became localised, is, Mr. Frazer says, "matter
of conjecture," and he guesses that, after several women had felt the
first recognised signs of maternity, "in the same place, and under the
same circumstances "--for example, at the moment of seeing a Witchetty
Grub, or a Laughing Boy--the site would become an _Oknanikilla_ haunted
by spirits of the Laughing Boy or Grub totem.[8] The Arunta view is
different; these places are burial-grounds of men all of this or
that totem, who have left their _churinga nanja_ there. About these
essential parts of the system, Mr. Frazer, as has been observed, says
nothing. His theory I do not criticise, as I have already stated my
objection to his premises. "The ultimate origin of exogamy ..." he
says, "remains a problem nearly as dark as ever," but is a matter of
deliberate institution. The tribes, already totemic, but not exogamous,
were divided into the two exogamous phratries, and still later into the
matrimonial classes, which the most pristine tribes do not possess,
though they do know about procreation, while the more advanced Arunta,
with classes and loss of phratry names, do not know. In the primitive
tribes, with no churinga nanja, the totems became hereditary. Among
the advanced Arunta, with _churinga nanja_, the totems did not (like
all other things, including the right to work the paternal totemic
ritual), become hereditary, though their rites did, which is curious.
Consequently, Mr. Frazer suggests, the Arunta did not redistribute the
totems so that one totem never occurs in both exogamous phratries; and
totems in the region of _churinga nanja_ alone are not exogamous.
Finally the tribes of Central Australia, which we prove to have the
more advanced ceremonial, system of inheritance, local magistracies
hereditary in the male line, and the matrimonial classes which
Mr. Frazer proclaims to be later than the mere phratries of many
south-eastern tribes--"are the more backward, and the coastal tribes
the more progressive."[9]
This is a very hard saying!
It seems to rest either on Mr. Frazer's opinion that the south tribes
of Queensland, and many on the Upper Murray, Paroo, and Barwan rivers
are "coastal" ("which is absurd"), or on a failure to take them into
account. For these tribes, the Barkinji, Ta-Ta-Thai, Barinji, and the
rest, are the least progressive, and "coastal," of course, they are not.
This apparent failure to take into account the most primitive of all
the tribes, those on the Murray, Paroo, Darling, Barwan, and other
rivers, and to overlook even the more advanced Kamilaroi, is exhibited
by Mr. Howitt, whose example Mr. Frazer copies, in the question of
Australian religious beliefs.
I quote a passage from Mr. Howitt, which Mr. Frazer re-states in his
own words. He defines "the part of Australia in which a belief exists
in an anthropomorphic supernatural being, who lives in the sky, and
who is supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the
natives ... That part of Australia which I have indicated as the
habitat of tribes having that belief" (namely, 'certainly the whole of
Victoria and of New South Wales up to the eastern boundaries of the
tribes of the Darling River') "is also the area where there has been
the advance from group marriage to individual marriage, _from descent
in the female line to that in the male line_; where the primitive
organisation under the class system has been more or less replaced
by an organisation based on locality--in fact, where those advances
have been made to which I have more than once drawn attention in this
work."[10]
This is an unexpected remark!
Mr. Howitt, in fact, has produced all his examples of tribes with
descent in the female line, except the Dieri and Urabunna "nations,"
from the district which he calls "the habitat of tribes in which there
has been advance ... from descent in the female to that in the male
line." Apparently all, and certainly most of the south-eastern tribes
described by him who have not made that advance, cherish the belief in
the sky-dwelling All Father.
I give examples:--
Narrinyeri Male descent. All Father.
Wiimbaio Female descent. "
Wotjobaluk " " "
Woeworung Male descent. "
Kulin " " "
Kurnai " " "
Wiradjuri Female descent. "
Wathi Wathi " " "
Ta-Ta-Thi " " "
Kamilaroi " " "
Yuin Male descent. "
Ngarigo Female descent. "
About other tribes Mr. Howitt's information is rather vague, but,
thanks to Mrs. Langloh Parker, we can add:--
_Euahlayi_ Female descent All Father.
Here, then, we have eight tribes with female descent and the All
Father, against five tribes with male descent and the All Father, in
the area to which Mr. Howitt assigns "the advance from descent in the
female line to that in the male line." The tribes with female descent
occupy much the greater part of the southern interior, not of the
coastal line, of South-East Australia.
Mr. Frazer puts the case thus, "it can hardly be an accidental
coincidence that, as Dr. Howitt has well pointed out, the same regions
in which the germs of religion begin to appear have also made some
progress towards a higher form of social and family life."[11]
But though Dr. Howitt has certainly "pointed it out," his statement
seems in collision with his own evidence as to the facts. The tribes
with female descent and the "germs of religion" occupy the greater part
of the area in which he finds "the advance from descent in the female
line to that in the male line." He does find that advance, with belief
in the All Father, in some tribes, mainly coastal, of his area, but
he also finds the belief in the All Father among "nations" and tribes
which have not made the "advance"--in the interior. As the northern
tribes who have made the "advance" are mainly credited with no All
Father, it is clear that the "advance" in social and family life has
no connection with the All Father belief. Mr. Howitt, in saying so,
overlooks his own collection of evidence. Large tribes and nations, in
the region described by him, are in that social organisation which he
justly regards as the least advanced of all, yet they have the "germs
of religion," which he explains as the results of a social progress
which they have not made.
In these circumstances Mr. Howitt might perhaps adopt a large theory
of borrowing. The primitive south-east tribes have not borrowed from
the remote coastal tribes the usage of male descent; they have not
borrowed matrimonial classes from the Kamilaroi. But, nevertheless,
they have borrowed, it may be said, their religion from remote coastal
tribes. Of course, it is just as easy to guess that the coastal tribes
have borrowed their Bunjil All Father from the Kamilaroi Baiame, or the
Mulkari of Queensland.
I have not commented on Mr. Frazer's suggestion as to the origin of
exogamy. It was the result, he thinks, of a deliberate reformation,
and its earliest form was the division of the tribe into the two
phratries. "Exogamy was introduced ... at first to prevent the marriage
of brothers with sisters, and afterwards" (in the matrimonial classes)
"to prevent the marriage of parents with children."[12] The motive was
probably a superstitious fear that such close unions would be harmful,
in some way, "to the persons immediately concerned," according to "a
savage superstition to which we have lost the clue." I made the same
suggestion in _Custom and Myth_ (1884). I added, however, that totemic
exogamy might be only one aspect of the general totem tabu on eating,
killing, or touching, &c., an object of the totem name. We seem to
have found the clue to that superstition, including the blood tabu,
emphasised by Dr. Durkheim. But, on this showing, the animal patrons
of phratries and totem kins, with their "religion," are among the
causes of exogamy, while some unknown superstition, in Mr. Frazer's
system, may have been the cause. As we have a known superstition, of
origin already explained, it seems unnecessary to suppose an unknown
superstition.
Again, if the reformers knew who were brothers and sisters, how can
they have been promiscuous? Further, the phratriac prohibition includes
vast numbers of persons who are _not_ brothers and sisters, except
in the phratry. Sires could prohibit unions of brothers and sisters,
each in his own hearth circle; the phratriac prohibition is much more
sweeping, so is the matrimonial class prohibition. Once more, parent
with child unions do not occur among primitive tribes which have no
matrimonial classes at all.
For these reasons Mr. Frazer's system does not recommend itself at
least to persons who cherish a different theory.
He may, perhaps, explain the Kaitish usage, in which totems, though
not hereditary but acquired in the Arunta manner, remain practically
exogamous, by suggesting that the Kaitish are imitating the totemic
exogamy of the rest of the savage world. But this hardly accounts for
the fact that, among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate
in one, and another set of totems in the other exogamous moiety of
the tribe. These facts indicate that the Arunta system is relatively
recent, and has not yet overcome among the Kaitish the old rule of
totemic exogamy. Mr. Frazer, too, as has been said, does not touch on
the concomitance of stone _churinga nanja_ with the Arunta system of
acquiring totems.
[1] _Fortnightly Review_, September 1905, p. 453.
[2] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 455; cf. Spencer and Gillen, _N. T. C.
A._, pp. 124 _seq._, p. 265.
[3] _Journal Anthrop. Institute_, p. 502 (1882).
[4] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 283, 284.
[5] _Fortnightly Review_, pp. 455-458.
[6] As to the Central Australian totems, see Spencer and Gillen,
_Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, Appendix B, pp. 767-773.
Amongst the two hundred and one sorts of totems here enumerated, no
less than a hundred and sixty-nine or a hundred and seventy are eaten.
[7] When some years ago these _Intichiuma_ ceremonies were first
discovered on a great scale among the Central Australians, I was so
struck by the importance of the discovery that I was inclined to see in
these ceremonies the ultimate origin of totemism; and the discoverers
themselves, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, were disposed to take the same
view. See Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen, and J. G. Frazer, in _Journal
of the Anthropological Institute_, xxviii. (1899), pp. 275-286; J. G.
Frazer, "The Origin of Totemism," _Fortnightly Review_, April and May,
1899. Further reflection has led me to the conclusion that magical
ceremonies for the increase or diminution of the totems are likely to
be a later, though still very early, outgrowth of totemism rather than
its original root. At the present time these magical ceremonies seem to
constitute the main function of totemism in Central Australia. But this
does not prove that they have done so from the beginning.
[8] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 458.
[9] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 463.
[10] Howitt, _Native Races of South-East Australia_, p. 500.
[11] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 452.
[12] _Fortnightly Review_, p. 6l.
APPENDIX
SOME AMERICAN THEORIES OF TOTEMISM
With some American theories of the origin of totemism, I find it
extremely difficult to deal. They ought not to be neglected, that were
disrespectful to the valued labours of the school of the American
"Bureau of Ethnology." But the expositions are scattered in numerous
Reports, and are scarcely focussed with distinctness. Again, the
terminology of American inquirers, the technical words which they use,
differ from those which we employ. That fact would be unimportant if
they employed their technical terms consistently. Unluckily this is not
their practice. The terms "clan," "gens," and "phratry" are by them
used with bewildering inconsistency, and are often interchangeable.
When "clan" or _gens_, means, now (i) a collection of _gentes_, or (2)
of families, or (3) of phratries, and again (4) "clan" means a totem
kin with female descent; and again (5) a village community; while a
phratry may be (1) an exogamous moiety of a tribe, or (2) a "family,"
or (3) a magical society; and a _gens_ may be (1) a clan, or (2) a
"family," or (3) an aggregate of families, or (4) a totem kin with
male descent, or (5) a magical society, while "tribal" and "sub-tribal
divisions" are vaguely spoken of--the European student is apt to be
puzzled! All these varieties of terminology occur too frequently in
the otherwise most praiseworthy works of some of the American School
of Anthropologists. I had collected the examples, but to give them at
length would occupy considerable space, and the facts are only too
apparent to every reader.[1]
Once more, and this point is of essential importance, the recent
writers on totemism in America dwell mainly on the institution as
found among the tribes of the north-west coast of the States and of
British Columbia. These tribes are so advanced in material civilisation
that they dwell in village settlements. They have a system of credit
which looks like a satirical parody of the credit system of the
civilised world. In some tribes there is a regular organisation by
ranks, _noblesse_ depending on ancestral wealth.
It seems sanguine to look for the origins of totemism among tribes so
advanced in material culture. The origin of totemism lies far behind
the lowest savagery of Australia. It is found in a more primitive
form among the southern and eastern than in most of the north-western
American tribes, but the north-western are chiefly studied, for
example, by Mr. Hill-Tout, and by Dr. Boas. A new difficulty is caused
by the alleged intermixture of tribes in very different states of
social organisation. That intermixture, if I understand Mr. Hill-Tout,
causes some borrowing of institutions among tribes of different
languages, and different degrees of culture, in the west of British
Columbia and the adjacent territories. We find, in the north, the
primitive Australian type of organisation (Thlinket tribe), with
phratries, totems, and descent in the female line. South of these are
the Kwakiutl, with descent wavering in a curious fashion between the
male and female systems. Further south are the Salish tribes, who have
evolved something like the modern family, reckoning on both sides of
the house. I, with Mr. McGee of the United States Bureau of Ethnology,
suppose the Kwakiutl to be moving from the female to the male line
of descent. In the opinions of Mr. Hill-Tout and Dr. Boas, they are
moving from the advanced Salish to the primitive Thlinket system,
under the influence of their primitive neighbours. It is not for me to
decide this question. But it is unprecedented to find tribes with male
reverting to female reckoning of descent
Next, Mr. Hill-Tout employs "totem" in various senses. As totems he
reckons (1) the sacred animals of the tribe; (2) of the religious or
magical societies (containing persons of many totems of descent); (3)
of the individual and (4) the hereditary totems of the kin. All these,
our author says, are, by their original concept, Guardian Spirits. All
such protective animals, plants, or other objects, which patronise
and give names to individuals, or kins, or tribes, or societies, are
"totems," in the opinion of the late Major Powell, and the "American
School," and are essentially "guardian spirits." All are derived by the
American theory[2] from the _manitu_, or guardian, of some individual
to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired
dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that
man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning
in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr.
Hill-Tout's theory), and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while
men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society
"totems" suggested by dreams. These communities may or may not be
exogamous, they may even be endogamous. By the friends of this theory
the association of exogamy with hereditary kin-totemism is regarded as
"accidental," rather than essential.
Using the word "totem" in this wide sense, or in these many senses,
which are not ours, it is plain that a man and woman who chance to have
the same "personal totem," (i) or belong to the same religious society
with its "totem," (i) or to the same local tribe with its "totem,"
(3) may marry, and, by this way of looking at the matter, "totems" do
permit marriage within the totem, and are not exogamous. But we, for
our part (like Mr. E. B. Tylor, and M. Van Gennep[3]), call none of
these personal, tribal, or society sacred animals "totems." That term
we reserve for the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin. Thus it is
not easy, it is almost impossible, for us to argue with Mr. Hill-Tout,
as we and he use the term "totem" in utterly different senses.
On his theory there are all sorts of "totems," belonging to individuals
and to various kinds of associations. The totems hereditary in the kins
when they are exogamous, are exogamous (on Mr. Hill-Tout's theory)
because the kins, in certain cases, made a treaty of alliance and
intermarriage with other kins for purely political purposes. They
might have made such treaties, and become exogamous, though they had
no totems, no name-giving animals; and they might have had name-giving
animals, and yet not made such treaties involving exogamy. Thus totemic
exogamy is, on this theory, a mere accident: the totem has nothing to
do with the exogamous rule.
Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "The totem groups are exogamous not because
of their common totem, but because of blood relationship. It is
the blood-tie[4] that bans marriage within the totem group, not the
common totem. That exogamy and the totem group with female descent go
together is accidental, and follows from the fact that the totem group
is always, in Indian theory at least, blood related. Where I believe
you err is in regarding exogamy as the essential feature of totemism.
I cannot so regard it. To me it is secondary, and becomes the bar to
marriage only because it marks kinship by blood, which is the real bar,
however it may have arisen, and from whatever causes."
Here I am obliged to differ from Mr. Hill-Tout. I know no instance
in which a tribe with female kin (the most primitive confessedly),
and with hereditary totems, is not exogamous. Exogamy, then, if an
accident, must be called an inseparable accident of totemism, with
female descent, till cases to the contrary are proved to exist. Mr.
Hill-Tout cites the Arunta case: totems among the Arunta are not
exogamous. But of that argument we have disposed (see Chapter IV.), and
it need no longer trouble us.
Again, it is not possible to agree with Mr. Hill-Tout when he writes,
"It is the blood-tie that bars marriage within the totem group, not
the common totem." The totem does not by its law prevent marriages of
blood kin. A man, as far as totem law goes, may marry his daughter by
blood, a brother may marry his sister on the father's side (with female
descent), and a man may not marry a woman from a thousand miles away if
she is of his totem, though she is not of his blood. It is not the real
blood-tie itself, but the blood-tie as defined and sanctioned by the
totem, that is not to be violated by marriage within it.
To return to the theory that totems are tutelary spirits in animal
or other natural forms. A man may have a spirit guardian in animal
form, that is _his_ "totem," on the theory. He may transmit it to his
descendants, and then it is _their_ "totem"; or his sisters may adopt
it, and hand it down in the female line, and then it is the totem
of his nephews and nieces for ever; or the man may not transmit it
at all. Usually, it is manifest, he did not transmit it; for there
must have been countless species of animal protectors of individuals,
but tribes in America have very few totems. If a man does transmit
his animal protector, his descendants, lineal or collateral, may
become exogamous, on the theory, by making other kins treaties of
intermarriage to secure political alliances; or they may not, just
as taste or chance direct. All the while, every "totem" of every
sort, hereditary or not, is, on this theory, a guardian spirit.
That spiritual entity is the essence of totemism, exogamy is an
accident--according to Mr. Hill-Tout.
Such is his theory. It is, perhaps, the result of studying the
North-West American _Sulia_, or "personal totem" answering to the
_nyarongs_ of Borneo, the _naguals_ of the Southern American tribes,
the _yunbeai_ of the _Euahlayi_ of New South Wales, and the "Bush
Souls" of West Africa. All of these are, as the Ibans of Borneo imply
in the term _nyarong_, "spirit helpers," in animal or material form.
Some tribes call genuine totems by one name, but call animal familiars
of an individual by another name. _Budjan_, among the Wiradjuri, stands
both for a man's totem, and for the animal familiar which, rduring
apparently hypnotic suggestion," he receives on being initiated.[5]
Among the Ibans (but not among the few Australian tribes which have
_yunbeai_), the spirit helper may befriend the great-grandchildren of
its original _protégé_.[6]
But in no case recorded does this _nyarong_ become the hereditary totem
of an exogamous kin.
The "spirit helper" does not do that, nor am I aware, on the other
hand, that the hereditary totem of an exogamous kin is ever, or
anywhere, regarded as a "tutelary spirit." No such idea has ever
been found in Australia. Again, if I understand Dr. Boas, among his
north-western tribes, such as the Thlinket, who have female descent
and hereditary exogamous totems, the totem is no more regarded as a
tutelary spirit than it is among the Australians. Of the Kwakiutl
he says, "The _manitu_" (that is, the individual's tutelary spirit)
"was acquired by a mythical ancestor, and the connection has become
so slight, in many cases, that the tutelary genius of the clan has
degenerated into a crest."
That the "crest" or totem mark was originally a "tutelary genius"
among the Thlinket, seems to be merely the hypothesis of Dr. Boas.
Even among the Kwakiutl, in their transitional state, the totem mark
now is "in many cases a crest." "This degeneration" (from spirit to
crest), our author writes, "I take to be due to the influence of the
northern totemism," such as that of the Thlinket.[7] Thus the Thlinket,
totemic on Australian primitive lines, do _not_ regard their hereditary
exogamous totems as "tutelary spirits."[8] No more do the Australians,
nor the many American totemists who claim descent from the animal which
is their totem.[9]
The tutelary spirit and the true totem, in my opinion, are utterly
different things. The American theory that all things (their name is
legion) called "totems" by the American School are, in origin and
essence, tutelary spirits, is thus countered by the fact that the
Australian tribes do not regard their hereditary totems as such; nor
do many American tribes, even when they are familiar with the idea of
the tutelary spirits of individuals. The Euahlayi, in Australia for
instance, call tutelary spirits _yunbeai_; hereditary totems they call
by a separate name, _Dhe_.[10]
The theory that the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin is the
"spirit helper" or "tutelary genius," acquired by and transmitted by an
actual ancestor, cannot be proved, for many reasons. We know plenty of
tribes in which the individual has a "spirit helper," we know none in
which he bequeaths it _as the totem of an exogamous kin_.
Again we find, (1) in Australia, tribes with hereditary totems, but
with no "personal totems," as far as our knowledge goes. Whence, then,
came Australian hereditary totems? Next, (2) we find tribes with both
hereditary and "personal totems," but the "personal totems" are never
hereditable. The "spirit helpers," where they do occur in Australia,
are either the familiars of wizards (like the witch's cat or hare),
or are given by wizards to others.[11] Next, (3) we find, in Africa
and elsewhere, tribes with "personal totems," but with no hereditary
totems. Why not? For these reasons, the theory that hereditary
kin-totems are personal tutelary spirits become hereditary, seems a
highly improbable conjecture. If it were right, genuine totemism, with
exogamy, might arise in any savage society where "personal totems"
flourish. But we never find totemism, with exogamy, just coming into
existence.
To sum up the discussion as far as it has gone, Mr. Hill-Tout had
maintained (1) that the concept of a ghostly helper is the basis of
all his varieties of so-called "totems." I have replied that the idea
of a tutelary spirit makes no part of the Australian, or usually of
the American "concepts" about the hereditary totems. This is matter of
certainty.
Mr. Hill-Tout next argues that hereditary totems are only "personal
totems" become hereditary, which may happen, he says, in almost any
stage of savage society. I have replied, "not _plus_ the totemic law of
exogamy," and he has answered (3) that the law is casual, and may or
may not accompany a system of totemic kindred, instancing the Arunta,
as a negative example. In answer, I have shown that the Arunta case is
not to the point, that it is an isolated "sport."
I have also remarked frequently, in previous works, that under the
primitive method of reckoning descent in the female line, an individual
male cannot bequeath his personal protective animal as a kin-name to
his descendants, so that the hereditary totem of the kin cannot have
originated in that way. Mr. Hill-Tout answers that it can, and does,
originate in that way--a male founder of a family can, and does, found
it by bequeathing his personal protective animal to the descendants of
his sisters, so that it henceforth passes in the female line. I quote
his reply to my contention that this is not found to occur.[12]
"The main objection brought against this view of the matter by Mr.
Andrew Lang and others is that the personal totem is not transmissible
or hereditable. But is not this objection contrary to the facts of the
case? We have abundant evidence to show that the personal totem _is_
transmissible and hereditable. Even among tribes like the Thompson,
where it was the custom for every one of both sexes to acquire a
guardian spirit at the period of puberty, we find the totem is in
some instances hereditable. Teit says, in his detailed account of the
guardian spirits of the Thompson Indians, that 'the totems of the
shamans[13] are sometimes inherited directly from the parents'; and
among those tribes where individual totemism is not so prevalent, as,
for instance, among the coast tribes of British Columbia, the personal
totem of a chief or other prominent individual, more particularly if
that totem has been acquired by means other than the usual dream or
vision, such as a personal encounter with the object in the forest
or in the mountains, is commonly inherited and owned by his or her
posterity. It is but a few weeks ago that I made a special inquiry into
this subject among some of the Halkomelem tribes of the Lower Fraser.
'Dr. George,' a noted shaman[14] of the Tcil'Qe'Ek, related to me the
manner in which his grandfather had acquired their family totem,[15]
the Bear; and made it perfectly clear that the Bear had been ever since
the totem of all his grandfather's descendants. The important totem of
the Sqoiàqî[16] which has members in a dozen different tribes of the
coast and Lower Fraser Salish, is another case in point. It matters
little to us _how_ the first possessor of the totem acquired it. We may
utterly disregard the account of its origin as given by the Indians
themselves, the main fact for us is, that between a certain object or
being and a body of people, certain mysterious relations have been
established, identical with those existing between the individual and
his personal totem; and _that these people trace their descent from and
are the lineal descendants of the man or woman who first acquired the
totem_. Here is evidence direct and ample of the hereditability of the
individual totem, and American data abound in it."
All these things occur under the system of male kinship. Even if the
"personal totem" of a chief or shaman is adopted by his offspring, it
does not affect my argument, nor are the bearers of the badge thus
inherited said to constitute an exogamous kin.[17] If they do not, the
affair is not, in my sense, "totemic" at all. We should be dealing not
with totemism but with heraldry, as when a man of the name of Lion
obtains a lion as his crest, and transmits it to his family. Meanwhile
I do not see "evidence direct and ample," or a shred of evidence,
_that a man's familiar animal is borrowed by his sisters, and handed on
to their children_.
Next, as to that point, Mr. Hill-Tout writes:[18]--
"To return to Mr. Lang's primary objection, that the evolution of the
group totem cannot proceed from the personal, individual totem because
in the more primitive forms of society where totemism originated "male
ancestors do not found houses or clan names," descent being on the
female side. As Mr. Lang has laid so much stress upon this argument,
and is able apart from it to appreciate the force of the evidence
for the American point of view, if it can be clearly shown that his
objection has no basis in fact, that his conception of the laws of
inheritance under matriarchy is faulty, consistency must needs make him
a convert to the American view. The singular error into which Mr. Lang
has fallen is in overlooking the fact that male property and rights
are as hereditable under mother-right as under father-right, the only
difference being that in the latter case the transmission is _directly_
from the father to his offspring, and in the former _indirectly_ from
the maternal uncle to his sister's children. What is there to prevent
a man of ability under matriarchy from 'founding a family,' that
is, acquiring an individual totem which by his personal success and
prosperity is looked upon as a _powerful helper_, and therefore worthy
of regard and reverence? Under mother-right the _head_ of the clan is
invariably a man, the elder male relative on the maternal side; and
the clan name is not so much the property of the woman as of her elder
brother or her conventional 'father,' that is, her maternal uncle. The
'fathers' of the group, that is, the maternal uncles, are just as much
the heads and I founders of houses' and clans in the matriarchal state
as under the more advanced state of patriarchal rule. And that they
_do_ found family and group totems the evidence from our northern coast
tribes makes clear beyond the shadow of a doubt.
"The oft-quoted case of the Bear totem among the Tsimshians is a case
in point, and this is but one of scores that could be cited. The origin
of this totem came about in the following manner: 'A man was out
hunting and met a black bear who took him to his home and taught him
many useful things. After a lengthy stay with the bear the man returned
home. All the people became afraid of him, he looked and acted so like
a bear. Some one took him in hand and rubbed him with magic herbs and
he became a man again. Thereafter whenever he went hunting his friend
the bear helped him. He _built a house and painted the bear on the
front of it, and his sister made a dancing blanket, the design of which
represented a bear. Thereafter the descendants of his sister used the
bear for their crest, and were known as the Bear clan._'[19]
"Who was the 'founder of the family' here, and the source of the clan
totem? Clearly and indubitably the many and _so it invariably was,
as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems plainly
shows_.[20] It matters not, I may point out, that these myths may
have been created since the formation of the clans to account for
their origin, the point for us is that the man was regarded by the
natives as the 'founder' of the family and clan. The founders of
families and totem-crests are as invariably men under matriarchy
as under patriarchy, the essential difference only between the two
states in this regard being that under one the descent is through the
'conventional father,' under the other through the 'real or ostensible
father.' Such being the case, Mr. Lang's chief argument falls to the
ground, and the position taken by American students as to the origin of
group-totems is as sound as before."
Now where, outside the region of myth, is there proof that Mr.
Hill-Tout's processes ever do occur?
Mr. Hill-Tout argues that the founder of the totem kin is "invariably
the man, as the study of the myths accounting for the clan totems
plainly shows." But myths have no historical authority, and many of
these myths show the very opposite: in them a beast or other creature
_begets_ the "clan."[21] To be sure, Mr. Hill-Tout says nothing about
_these_ myths, or about scores of familiar American myths[22] to the
very same effect.
Again, as mythical evidence is worthless, Mr. Hill-Tout argues that
"the man was regarded by the natives themselves as the 'founder' of
the family or clan." Yes, in some myths, but not in those which Mr.
Hill-Tout overlooks.
That the natives in some myths regard the man as founder of a totem
kin under female descent proves nothing at all. Does the Tsimshian Bear
myth prove that the natives themselves turn into Bears, and become men
again? Does it even prove that such an occurrence, to-day, would now
seem normal to them? Nothing is proved, except that _in myth-making_
the natives think that this metamorphosis may have occurred in the
past. In the same way--when myth-making--they think that a man might
convey his badge to his sisters, to be hereditary in the female line.
To prove his case, Mr. Hill-Tout must show that men actually do thus
convey their personal protective animals and badges into the female
line. To that evidence I shall bow.
If I reasoned like our author, I might argue, "The South African tribes
say that their totems (_siboko_) arose in nicknames given to them on
account of known historical incidents, therefore my conjecture that
totems thus arose, in group names given from without, is corroborated
by the natives themselves, who testify thus to the actuality of that
mode of getting tribal names and _siboko_."[23]
But I, at least, cannot argue thus! The process (_my_ process) does
not and cannot occur in South African conditions, where tribes of an
advanced culture have sacred protective animals. The natives have
merely hit on my own conjecture, as to the remote germ of totemic
names, and applied it where the process never occurs. The Tsimshians,
in the same way, are familiar with the adoption of protective animals
by male individuals. They are also familiar with the descent of
the kin-totem through females. Like the famous writer on Chinese
Metaphysics, the Tsimshians "combine their information." A man, they
say, became a bear, and became a man again. He took the Bear for his
badge; and to account for the transmission of the badge through women,
the Tsimshians add that his sister also took and transmitted the Bear
cognisance, as a hereditary totem. They think this could be done,
exactly as the Bakwena think that their tribal protective animal, the
Crocodile, the Baboon, or another, could arise in a nickname, _given
recently_. It could not do so, the process is no longer possible, the
explanation in this case is false, and does not help my theory of the
origin of totemism. In the same way the Bear myth does not help Mr.
Hill-Tout's theory, unless he can prove that sisters do actually take
and transmit to their descendants, as exogamous totems, the _sulia_ or
individual protective animal of their brothers. Of this process I do
not observe that Mr. Hill-Tout gives a single verifiable example.
As to this argument, Mr. Hill-Tout writes to me, "I cannot accept your
criticism on the poor evidence of the Tsimshian accounts of the origin
of their totem kins. You could not take such a view, I think, if you
had personal, first-hand knowledge of the Indian mind. Your objections
apply to 'classic myths,' but not to the accounts of tribes who are
_still_ in the totemic stage."
I fail to understand the distinction. It is now universally recognised
that most myths, "classic" or savage (the classic being survivals of
savage myths), are mere fanciful hypotheses framed to account for
unexplained facts. Moreover, I am discussing and comparing the myths
of various savage races, I am not speaking of "classic myths." Savages
have anticipated us in every one of our hypotheses as to the origin of
totemism, but, of course, they state their hypotheses in the shape of
myths, of stories told to account for the facts. Some Australian myths
favour Mr. Howitt's hypothesis, others favour that of Mr. Spencer, one
flatters that of Dr. Haddon, one African myth is the fore-runner of
my theory, and a myth of the Tsimshians anticipates the idea of Mr.
Hill-Tout. But all these myths are equally valueless as historical
evidence.
As to heritage under female kin, which I am said not to understand,
no man reckoning by female kin has hitherto been said to inherit his
totem _from his maternal uncle_! A man inherits his totem from his
mother only, and inherits it if he has no maternal uncles, and never
had. If a man has a _manitu_, a _nagual_, a _yunbeai_, a _nyarong_, or
"personal totem," his sister does not take it from him and hand it to
her children, or, if this ever occurs, I say once more, we need proof
of it. A man may inherit "property and rights" from his maternal uncles
under female kin. But I speak of the totem name, which a man undeniably
does not inherit from his maternal uncle, while there is no proof
offered that a woman ever takes such a name from her brother, and hands
it on to her children. So I repeat that, under the system of reckoning
in the female line, "male ancestors do not found houses or clan names,"
or are not proved to do so.
* * * * *
It is apparent, probably, that a theory of totemism derived in great
part from the myths and customs of a few advanced tribes, dwelling in
village communities, and sometimes in possession of the modern family,
with male kin, is based on facts which are not germane to the matter.
The origin of totemism must be sought in tribes of much more backward
culture, and of the confessedly "more primitive" type of organisation
with female descent To disprove Mr. Hill-Tout's theory is of course
impossible. There may have been a time when "personal totems" were as
common among the Australians as they are now rare. There may have been
a time when an Australian man's sisters adopted, and transmitted, his
"personal totem," though that is no longer done to our knowledge. It
may have chanced that stocks, being provided, on Mr. Hill-Tout's plan,
with tutelary spirits of animal names descending in the female line,
made marriage treaties, and so became exogamous. Then we should have
explained totemism, perhaps, but a considerable number of missing facts
must be discovered and reported before this explanation can be accepted.
Mr. Hill-Tout's scheme, I presume, would work out thus: there are sets
of human beings, A, B, C, D, E, F. In all of these every man acquires
an animal, plant, or other friendly object. Their sisters adopt it as a
name, and hand it on to their children. The stocks are now named after
the familiar animals, as Grouse, Trout, Deer, Turtle, Buffalo, Salmon,
and hundreds more. They have hitherto, I presume, married as they
please, anyhow. But stocks Grouse and Deer think, "We shall be stronger
if we give our women to each other, and never let a Grouse marry a
Grouse, or a Deer a Deer." They make this pact, the other stocks,
Salmon, Turtle, Buffalo, &c., come into it, ranging themselves under
Deer or Grouse, and now Deer and Grouse are phratries in a tribe with
the other animals as heads of totem kins in the phratries. The animals
themselves go on being tutelary spirits, and are highly respected.
This scheme (whether Mr. Hill-Tout would arrange it just thus or not)
works perfectly well. It explains the origin of exogamy--not by an
inexplicable _moral_ reform, and bisection of the horde, but as the
result of a political alliance. It explains the origin of totemism by
a theory of animal-shaped tutelary spirits taken on by sisters from
brothers, and bequeathed by the sisters when they become mothers to
their children. It explains the origin of phratries, and of totem
kins in the phratries. It works out all along the line--if only one
knew that very low savages deliberately made political alliances; and
if all low savages had animal-shaped tutelary spirits; and if these
were known to be adopted from brothers by sisters, and by sisters
bequeathed, for an eternal possession, to their children; and if these
transactions, once achieved, were never repeated in each line of female
descent--no sister in the next generation taking on her brother's
personal tutelary animal, and bequeathing it to her children for ever.
Finally, if savages in general did regard their hereditary totems as
tutelary spirits, the sketch which I make on Mr. Hill-Tout's lines
would leave nothing to be desired. But we do not know any of these
desirable facts.
If I have stated Mr. Hill-Tout's ideas correctly, he agrees with me in
regarding the tribe as formed by aggregation of many more primitive
groups. He does not regard the phratries and totem kins as the result
of the segmentation of a primordial indiscriminate mass or horde,
split up at the injunction of an inspired medicine man, or by a tribal
decree. Against our opinion, Mr. Howitt argues that only one writer
who "has or had a personal acquaintance with the Australian blacks"
accepts it, the Rev. John Matthew. It is accepted, however, as far as
"sub-phratries" go (as an alternative hypothesis), by Mr. Hewitt's
friend, Dr. Fison.[24] But I have given my reasons for not accepting
Mr. Howitt's doctrine, and I await some reason for his rejection
of mine. Even authors who have "a personal acquaintance with the
Australian blacks" should, I venture to think, give their reasons for
rejecting one and persisting in another theory of "the probabilities
of the case."[25] I have shown why I think it improbable that a
postulated prehistoric tribe split itself up, for no alleged reason,
at the suggestion of a medicine man. Now I am anxious to know why my
postulated groups should not make marriage alliance for the reason of
securing peace--a very sufficient motive for betrothals.
[1] Compare Mr. N. W. Thomas's criticisms of Mr. Hill-Tout, in _Man_,
May, June, July 1904.
[2] We must not suppose that all American scholars agree with the views
of the "American School." Major Powell used "totem" in from ten to
fourteen different meanings.
[3] _Totémisme et Tabou à Madagascar_. 1904.
[4] A perfectly fictitious blood-tie, when a man Crow is born in
Victoria, and a woman Crow on the Gulf of Carpentaria.--A. L.
[5] Howitt. _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 144.
[6] For full details see Messrs. McDougall and Hose, _J. A. I._, N.S.,
xxxi pp. 199-201.
[7] _Report of Nat. Mus._, U.S., 1895, p. 336.
[8] Mr. Hill-Tout differs from my understanding of Dr. Boas's remarks.
[9] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5. Dorman, pp. 231-234.
[10] MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.
[11] _J. A. I._, vol. xvi. pp. 44, 50, 350. Howitt, _Native Tribes of
South-East Australia_, pp. 144, 387, 388. MS. of Mrs. Langloh Parker.
[12] _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, ix., xi. p. 72.
[13] These are not totems, but "familiars," like the witch's cat or
hare.--A. L.
[14] The shaman's sons keep on the shaman business, with the paternal
familiar. It is not, in my sense, a totem.--A. L.
[15] My italics.
[16] _Brit. Ass._, 1902. _Report of Ethnol. Survey of Canada_, pp.
51-52, 57. A fairy tale about the origin of a society of healing and
magical influence.--A. L.
[17] Mr. Hill-Tout says elsewhere: "Shamans _only_ inherited their
_sulia_" (he speaks of these personal totems or _sulia_) "from their
fathers; other men had to acquire their own. But this applied only
to the dream or vision totem or protective spirit." If a man "met
his ghostly guardian in form of a bear," when hunting, he would take
it as his "crest" and transmit it. This happened in the case of "Dr.
George," who inherited his crest and guardian, the Bear, from his
great-grandfather, who met a bear not in a dream but when hunting. (_J.
A. I._, vol. xxxiv. pp. 326, 327.) Such inheritance, in an advanced
American tribe of to-day, does not seem to me to corroborate the belief
that totems among the many primitive tribes of Australia are the result
of inheriting a personal crest or guardian spirit of a male ancestor.
[18] _Transactions_, ix. p. 76.
[19] _Fifth Report on the Physical Characteristics, &c., of the N.W.
Tribes of Canada_, B.A.A.S., p. 24. London, 1889.
[20] The myths, in fact, vary; the myth of descent from the totem also
occurs even in these tribes. (Hartland, _Folk Lore_, xi. I, pp. 60-61.
Boas, _Nat. Mus. Report_, 1895, pp. 331, 336, 375.)--A. L.
[21] Cf. Mr. Hartland in _Folk Lore_, ut supra.
[22] Frazer, _Totemism_, pp. 3-5.
[23] For the full account of _Siboko_ see Chapter II., _supra_.
[24] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 71, 72.
[25] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, pp. 143, 144.