told by Dr. Boas that "patriarchate prevails." This appears to mean
that descent is here reckoned not, as in the north, in the female, but
in the male line. "We do not find a single clan that has, properly
speaking, an animal for its totem; neither do the clans take their
name from their crest, nor are there phratries."[40] As the _northern_
Kwakiutl have animal-named exogamous "clans" with female descent, Dr.
Boas now thinks that the _northern_ Kwakiutl "have to a great extent
adopted the maternal descent and the division into animal totems of
the northern tribes."[41] We do not know, elsewhere, that totemism has
ever been borrowed by one tribe from another, especially by a tribe
so advanced in culture as the Kwakiutl, and we have no example of a
tribe in which the men have given up their social prerogatives, and
transmitted them to their nephews in the female line.
Mr. Frazer writes, "The question naturally arises, Are the Kwakiutl
passing from maternal institutions to paternal institutions, from
mother-kin to father-kin, or in the reverse direction?... In one
passage Dr. Boas seems to incline to the former member of this
alternative, that is, to the view that the Kwakiutl are passing, or
have passed, from mother-kin, or (as he calls it) matriarchate to
father-kin or patriarchate, for he says that "the marriage ceremonies
of the Kwakiutl seem to show that originally matriarchate prevailed
also among them."[42] Yet he afterwards adopted with great decision
the "contrary view." On these very intricate problems I take leave to
quote the statement with which Mr. Goldenweizer has been good enough
to favour me.
First, as to descent among the Kwakiutl proper.
"At first, as Mr. Frazer points out (iii. p. 329 _sq_.). Dr. Boas
believed that the Kwakiutl were passing from maternal to paternal
descent. Later investigations conducted by Dr. Farrand (cf. F. Boas,
_The Mythology of the Bella Coola_, Jesup North Pacific Expedition,
vol. i. p. 121), led to a reversal of that opinion. The main arguments
for original paternal descent among the Kwakiutl are three in number.
(1) The village communities, which were the original social unit of
the Kwakiutl,[43] regarded themselves as direct descendants of a
mythical ancestor, and not as descendants of the ancestor's sister,
which is the case in the legends of the northern tribes, with maternal
descent. (Cf. F. Boas, _The Kwakiutl_, etc., p. 335, where a genealogy
is also given.) (2) A number of offices connected with the ceremonies
of the secret societies, such as master of ceremonies, etc., are
hereditary in the male line (F. Boas, _Kwakiutl_, etc., p. 431). The
Secret Societies, with their dances, are a very ancient institution
among the Kwakiutl, and the male inheritance of the above offices is
a strong argument for the former prevalence of paternal descent among
these people. (3) The form taken by the maternal inheritance of rank,
privileges, etc., among the Kwakiutl points in the same direction.
When a man marries he receives crests, privileges, etc., from his
father-in-law through his wife, but he himself may not use them but
must keep them for his son, who, when of proper age, may sing the
songs, perform the dances, use the crest, etc., which he thus receives
from his mother through the medium of his father. (Cf. F. Boas,
_Kwakiutl_, etc., p. 334.) When the young man marries he must return
his privileges to his father, who then gives them to his daughter
when she marries. Thus, son-in-law No. 2 receives the privileges, but
again may not use them, but keeps them for his son, etc. It appears,
then, that the privileges exercised by the young man before marriage
are always derived from his mother, but formally he receives them from
his father, who acts as a sort of guardian of these privileges until
the son is ready for them. Descent here is clearly maternal, but the
form of paternal descent is preserved, a plausible condition for a
people who; having become maternal, still stick at least in form to the
traditional inheritance from the father. If this inference be rejected,
the feature becomes quite unaccountable.
"In the sentence, 'The woman's father, on his part, has acquired his
privileges in the same manner through his mother' (Frazer, vol. iii.
p. 333. note i), the privileges the woman's father exercised as a
young man before marriage are meant. The privileges he later acquired
through his wife he, of course, could not use, but had to keep them
for his son. The phrase, 'each individual inherits the crest of his
maternal grandfather' (Frazer, iii. p. 331, note 2), must be similarly
interpreted. The crest the individual uses before marriage is meant.
"In connection with the foregoing it must be remembered that another
mode of acquiring privileges, crests, songs, etc., was common among the
Kwakiutl, viz. by killing the owner (cf. F. Boas, _Kwakiutl_, etc., p.
424, and elsewhere).
"I also cite the actual words of Dr. Boas. He believes that the
intricate law by which 'a purely female line of descent is secured,
although only through the medium of the husband,' can only be explained
'as an adaptation of maternal laws by a tribe which was on a paternal
stage. I cannot imagine that it is a transition of a maternal society
to a paternal society, because there are no relics of the former'
(maternal) 'stage beyond those which we find everywhere, and which do
not prove that the transition has been recent at all. There is no trace
left of an inheritance from the wife's brothers; the young people do
not live with the wife's parents. But the most important argument is
that the customs cannot have been prevalent in the village communities
from which the present tribal system originated, as in these' (village
communities) 'the tribe is always designated as the direct descendants
of the mythical ancestor. If the village communities had been on
the maternal stage, the tribes would have been designated as the
descendants of the ancestor's sisters, as is always the case in the
legends of the northern tribes.'"[44]
From all this it appears that Dr. Boas believes the Kwakiutl proper to
have been once, "on the maternal stage," of which the usual "relics"
survive, but why should _all_ such traces survive? Some must disappear,
otherwise there could be no transition!
Apparently, in the village communities, the existence of a mythical
_ancestor_, not _ancestress_, is postulated; while in the northern
tribes, with female descent, mythical _ancestresses_ are postulated.
But if, among the Kwakiutl proper, male ancestry is now the recognised
rule (and it dimly seems to be so), then, as usual, Kwakiutl myth will
throw back into the unknown past the institutions of their present
state, will say "ancestor," not "ancestress." No argument can be based
on traditions which are really explanatory conjectures. There is
advanced no valid reason for supposing that the Kwakiutl proper began
with descent in the female line, then advanced to the male line, and
then doubled back on the female line, and so evolved transmission of
crests in the female line, through husbands.
The waverings of the Kwakiutl between the two lines of descent are,
in fact, such as we expect to occur when a people has retained, like
the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshians, the system of female descent after
reaching a fair pitch of physical culture, and arriving at wealth,
rank, and the attribution of children to the paternal stock.
[39] _T. and E._, vol. iii. pp. 318, 319.
[40] _Fifth Report on N. W. Tribes of Canada_, 1890. _T. and E._, vol.
iii. p. 320, note 1.
[41] _Twelfth Report on N. W. Tribes of Canada_, 1898, p. 676. T. and
E., vol. iii. p. 320, note 1.
[42] _T. and E._, vol. iii. p. 332, citing Dr. Boas in _Fifth Report on
N. W. Tribes of Canada_, p. 33, 1889.
[43] It seems to me impossible to suppose that the village community
was ever anywhere "the original social unit."--A. L.
[44] _Rep. U.S. Nat. Museum_, 1897. pp. 334-335.
VI.
I now come to give my own opinion as to the ways in which Kwakiutl
totemism may have attained its existing peculiarities. It is necessary
first to defend my view that the essential thing in totemism--surveying
the whole totemic field--is the existence of exogamous kins bearing
animal and other such names. Here Mr. Goldenweizer opposes me, saying
that "no particular set of features can be taken as characteristic of
totemism, for the composition of the totemic complex is variable, nor
can any particular feature be regarded as fundamental, for not one of
the features does invariably occur in conjunction with others; nor is
there any evidence to regard any other feature as primary in order of
development, or as of necessity original psychologically."[45]
I have already remarked that this is true; we find human
_associations_, which are _not_ kins or clans, bearing animal and other
totemic names, while these associations are not exogamous (the Arunta
nation); and we find exogamous sets, kins, or associations which do not
bear animal names.
But the co-existence of the exogamous kin with the totemic name of
that kin is found in such an immense and overwhelming majority over
every other arrangement; the exogamous "totem clan" is so hugely
out of proportion in numbers and width of diffusion over the Arunta
animal-named non-exogamous associations and other rare exceptions, that
we have a right to ask--Are not the exceptions aberrant variations?
Have not the Arunta, with non-exogamous sets bearing totemic names, and
other peoples with exogamous sets _not_ of totemic names, passed through
and out of the usual stage of animal-named exogamous kins? A mere guess
that this is so, that the now non-exogamous human sets with totem names
have once been exogamous, would be of no value. I must prove, and
fortunately I can prove, that it _was_ so.
It is certain, historically, that some exogamous units which now bear
non-totemic names, in the past were ordinary totem kins with totemic
names. As we can also demonstrate to a certainty that the Arunta have
been in, and, for definite reasons, have passed out of, the ordinary
stage of exogamous totem kins, we have a right, I think, to say that,
normally, the feature of the totemic name is associated with the
feature of exogamy, and that the exceptions really prove the rule, for
we can show how the exceptions came to vary from the rule.
Mr. Goldenweizer, in a very brief criticism of my own theory of
Totemism, given by me in _Social Origins_ (1903), and in _The Secret
of the Totem_ (1905), writes "Why is the question, How did the early
groups come to be named after the plants and animals?--the real
problem? Would not Lang admit that other features may also have been
the starting point?" (I not only admit but insist that "other features"
were among the starting-points of exogamous totemism.) Among "the other
features" Mr. Goldenweizer gives "animal taboos, or a belief in descent
from an animal, or primitive hunting regulations, or what not? I am
sure that Lang, who is such an adept in following the _logos_, could
without much effort construct a theory of totemism with any one of
these elements to start with--a theory as consistent with fact, logic,
and the mind of primitive man, as is the theory of names accepted from
without."
Now as to the last point, I have written "unessential to my system is
the question _how_ the groups got animal names, as long as they got
them and did not remember how they got them" (_et seq_.)[46] I _did_ show
how European and other village groups obtained animal names, namely as
_sobriquets_ given from without; and I proved the same origin of the
modern names of Siouan "gentes," of two Highland clans; of political
parties, religious sects; and so forth.
This mode of obtaining names is a _vera causa_: that is all: and nobody
had remarked on it, in connection with totemism.
Next I cannot "without much effort" (or with any effort) construct a
theory of totemism out of (1) "animal taboos." They are imposed for
many known and some unknown reasons, and not all totem kins taboo the
totem object. Next (2) as I must repeat that "belief in descent from
an animal," is only one out of many post-totemic myths explanatory of
totemism; I cannot possibly use it as the starting-point of totemism.
If Mr. Goldenweizer has read the book which he is criticising, he
forgets that I wrote[47] "it is an error to look for origins in myths
about origins," and that I refused to accept as corroboration of my
theory an African myth which agrees with my own view.
As to (3) "primitive hunting regulations," Mr. Goldenweizer does not
tell us what they were. It is a very common "regulation" that no totem
kin may hunt its own totem animal, but to suggest that the totem kin
was created by the regulation is to mistake effect for cause.
Finally (4), who can take "or what not" for the starting-point of an
investigation? But every totem kin has a totemic name: if there is no
totemic name how can we know that we have before us a totem kin? If
the Tlingit "clans" be exogamous but not named by totemic names (as
Mr. Swanton tells us), then the Tlingit clans are not totemic, now,
whatever they may have been in the past: and we are not concerned with
them.
Of every totem "clan" the totem name is a _universal_ feature; and
therefore I must begin my study from what is universal--the names.
Here (though we must not appeal to authority), I have the private
satisfaction of being in agreement with Mr. Howitt. The assumption by
men of the names of objects "in fact must have been the commencement of
totemism," says Mr. Howitt.[48]
I start then, from the totemic names because,--no totemic name, no
totemic "clan"! With the totemic name of a social unit in the tribe, I
couple exogamy, (though exogamy may exist apart from totemism), because
exogamy is always associated with a "clan" of totemic name, except in a
very few cases of which the Arunta "nation" is much the most prominent.
But it is not to the point, for _the Arunta have no totemic clans_. Mr.
Frazer's latest definition of totemism is "an intimate relation which
is supposed to exist between a group of _kindred_ people on the one
side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other"[49]
Now the Arunta associations of animal names are not (I must keep
repeating) kindreds, are not "clans," are not composed of persons who
are, "humanly speaking," akin. The totem is not inherited from either
parent or through any kinsman or kinswoman. The Arunta bearers of the
same totem name, in each case, do not constitute a "clan." This puts
the so-called Arunta "totem clans," non-exogamous, out of action as
proofs that "totem clans" may be non-exogamous.
Moreover, the non-exogamous Arunta associations bearing totemic names
have once been exogamous totem clans. The usages of the Arunta, and
their traditions, and the actual facts of their society, prove that
their totems were originally hereditary and exogamous.[50]
I use the word "prove" deliberately; the demonstration is of historical
and mathematical certainty. These facts compel me to believe that the
Arunta have been in and passed out of normal hereditary totemism, in
which the totems are arranged so that no totem occurs in both main
exogamous divisions, and all totems are exogamous. In that normal
totemic stage the Arunta have at one time been. But they have passed
out of it into their present "conceptional" totemism, with the same
totems appearing in both main exogamous divisions, the totems being
non-hereditary, and non-exogamous.
Spencer and Gillen say, "in the Arunta, as a general rule, the great
majority of the members of any one totemic group belong to one moiety
of the tribe, but this is by no means universal, and in different
totemic groups certain of the ancestors are supposed to have belonged
to one moiety and others to the other, with the result that of course
their living descendants also follow their example."[51] (This
statement I later compare with others by the same authors.) Now in
normal totemism, not "the great majority," but all the members of any
one totemic group belong to one or other moiety of the tribe. The
totems being hereditary, they cannot wander out of their own into the
other phratry, and, as all persons must marry out of their own phratry,
they cannot marry into their own totem, for no person of their own
totem is in the phratry into which they must marry.
At present "the great majority" of members of each totem, among
the Arunta, are in one phratry or the other. Thus their society is
either, (1) in some unknown way, rapidly approximating itself to
normal totemism, or (2) has comparatively recently emerged from normal
totemism. The former alternative is impossible. Each Arunta obtains
his or her totem by sheer chance, by the accident of the supposed
locality of his or her conception, and of the totemic _erathipa_ or
_ratapa_ which alone haunt that spot.[52] Manifestly this present
Arunta mode of determining totems cannot introduce the great majority
of each totem into one or the other phratry or main exogamous division
(Panunga-Bulthara and Purula-Kumara), for these divisions have now no
local habitation or limits. Consequently the arrangement by which the
great majority of each totem is in one or the other moiety can be due
to nothing but the fact that the Arunta have comparatively recently
emerged from normal exogamous and hereditary, into conceptional,
casual, non-hereditary and non-exogamous totemism. Had they emerged
long ago, and adopted their present fortuitous method of acquiring the
totem, _manifestly the totems, by the operation of chance, would now be
present in almost equal numbers in both phratries_. This would also be
the case had Arunta totemism always been conceptional and fortuitous.
According to Spencer and Gillen, "it is the idea of spirit individuals
associated with _churinga_ and resident in certain definite spots, that
lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta tribe."[53]
This is certainly true; and the facts prove, we shall see, to
demonstration, that this actual "conceptional" state of Arunta totemism
is later than, and has caused the disappearance of the normal
hereditary exogamous totemism, among the Arunta.
It is plain and manifest that if the Arunta nation, from the first,
were in their present stage of "conceptional totemism"--the totem
of each individual being always determined by sheer chance--when
the exogamous division of the tribe was instituted, individuals of
each totem would be almost equally distributed between the two main
divisions, Purula-Kumara and Bulthara-Panunga. Chance could not put
the great majority of the members of every totem name either into one
exogamous division or the other. If any one doubts this, let him take
four packs of cards (208 cards), and deal them alternately five or six
times to two friends, Jones representing the phratry Bulthara-Panunga,
and Brown standing for the phratry Purula-Kumara. It will not be found
that Brown always holds the great majority of Court cards--Ace, King,
Queen and Knave--and the great majority of tens, nines and eights:
while Jones holds the great majority of sevens, sixes, and fives,
fours, threes, and twos.
Chance distribution does not keep on working in that way; and the
chance conceptional distribution of totems could not put the great
majority of, say, Kangaroos, Hachea Flowers, Wild Cats, and Little
Hawks in the Bulthara-Panunga phratry, and the great majority of Emus,
Lizards, Wichetty Grubs, and Dogs in the Purula-Kumara division. That
is quite impossible. Yet all (or almost all) Arunta totems are thus
distributed between the two main exogamous divisions.
When once the reader understands this fact--insisted on by Spencer and
Gillen--he becomes convinced, becomes mathematically certain that the
chance distribution of conceptional totemism did not and could not thus
array the totems of the Arunta. This present arrangement, and this
alone, makes the Arunta associations with totemic names non-exogamous.
I proceed to give further evidence of Spencer and Gillen. "Whilst
every now and then we come across traditions, according to which,
as in the case of the Achilpa," (Cats) "the totem is common to all
classes[54] we always find that in each totem one moiety of the tribe
predominates,[55] and that, according to tradition, many of the groups"
(totem groups) "of ancestral individuals consisted originally of men or
women or of both men and women, who all belonged to one moiety. Thus
in the case of certain Okira or Kangaroo groups we find only Kumara
and Purula; in certain Udnirringita or Wichetty Grub groups we find
only Hulthara and Panunga, in certain Achilpa or 'Wild Cat' (groups) 'a
predominance of Kumara and Purula, with a smaller number of Bulthara
and Panunga.'[56] At the present day no totem is confined to either
moiety of the tribe, but in each local centre we always find a great
predominance of one moiety, as for example at Alice Springs, the most
important centre of the Wichetty Grubs, amongst forty individuals,
thirty-five belong to the Bulthara and Panunga and only five to the
other moiety of the tribe."[57]
Here the great majority--thirty-five to five--of the members of the
totem belong to one of the two main exogamous divisions. Outside of
the Arunta nation and Kaitish all the Grubs would belong to one main
exogamous division. It is mathematically certain that chance could
not bring thirty-five to five members of a given totem--or, "a great
majority" in each case--into one or other phratry.
Consequently the chance distribution of totems on the present
conceptional Arunta system has not caused this uniform phenomenon. It
follows that the totems of the Arunta were at one time hereditary, and
were arranged, some exclusively in one, some exclusively in the other
moiety, so that no person could marry into his or her own totem. The
fortuitous system of conceptional distribution then arose out of the
Arunta philosophy of spirits and emanations, and out of the _churinga
nanja_ usage, and has now detached a small minority of members of each
totem from their original phratry and lodged them in the other. Members
of every totem can therefore find legal spouses of their own totem in
the phratry not their own, and may marry them. And thus these Arunta
associations with totemic names are now non-exogamous. But they have
been exogamous totem kins. Mr. Frazer finds what he calls totemism
without exogamy in parts of Melanesia.[58] I need not here repeat my
arguments, given in _Anthropos_, vol. v. (1910) pp. 1092-1108, to prove
that the so-called "totems" in this case are only animal or vegetable
"familiars" of individuals. Thus the great example of "totem clans"
so-called, without exogamy, is put out of action. The Arunta "clans"
are not clans, and the Arunta have had exogamous totem clans like other
people.
[45] _J. A. F._ pp. 269, 270.
[46] _Secret of the Totem_, p. 125.
[47] _Secret of the Totem_, p. 23.
[48] _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p. 153.
[49] _T. and E._, vol. iv. pp. 3, 4.
[50] What, follows I have already said in _Anthropos_, 1910.
[51] _Northern Tribes_, p. 175.
[52] Vol. i. pp. 189-190. _Central Tribes_, p. 123.
[53] _Central Tribes_, p. 123.
[54] The myth is self-contradictory in the case of the Achilpa. They
were in both phratries; the other totems were confined to one or the
other phratry. In the latter case the myth exaggerates the present
state of things, and puts all, not the great majority, of each totem in
one phratry or the other. In the former case the myth throws the actual
state of things back into the past.
[55] By "moiety" the authors mean one of the two main exogamous
divisions or phratries.
[56] _Central Tribes_, p. 120. In fact out of three Achilpa or
Wild Cat sets of wanderers, two, in the legend, are exclusively of
one phratry--Purula-Kumara--and one is exclusively of the other,
Bulthara-Panunga, _op. cit._ p. 120.
[57] _Central Tribes_, p. 120.
[58] _T. and E._, vol. iii. pp. 9, 287.
VII.