It is probable that, after male descent came in, the Arunta and Kaitish at first inherited their totems from their fathers, as among all other tribes with male descent. This appears to be proved by the fact that they still do inherit, from their fathers, totemic rites, and the power of doing totemic mummeries for their fathers' totems, even when, by the accident of their places of conception, they do not inherit their fathers' totems. When they did inherit the paternal totem, they were, doubtless, totemically exogamous, like all other tribes with either male or female descent.
One simple argument upsets the claim of Arunta totems to be primitive. In no tribe with female descent can a district have its local totem, as among the Arunta. A district can only have a local totem if the majority of the living people, and of the haunting ghosts of the dead, are of one totem only. But this (setting aside the occasional results of an isolated Urabunna superstition) can only occur under male reckoning of descent, which confessedly is not primitive. In a region where reckoning in the female line exists a woman could not say, "I conceived my child in Grub district, the country of totem Grub" – for such a country there is not and cannot be. Consequently, among the Urabunna as everywhere with reckoning of descent in the female line, every child is of its mother's totem.
Let us examine other tribes who, like the Arunta, have the theory of reincarnation, but whose totems are, as elsewhere, exogamous, unlike those of the Arunta. The Urabunna have female descent, and their myth about the origin of totemic ancestors approximates to that of the Arunta, but, unlike the Arunta fable, does not produce, or account for, non-exogamy in totems. Things began, say the Urabunna, by the appearance of a few creatures half human, half bestial or vegetable. They had miraculous powers, and dropped spirits which tenanted lizards, snakes, and so on, all over the district. These spirits later became incarnated in human beings of the Lizard, Snake, or other totem, and are constantly being reincarnated. The two Urabunna phratries were originally a green and a brown snake: the Green Snake said to the Brown Snake, "I am Kirarawa, you are Matthurie" – the phratry names. It does not appear that these names now mean Green Snake and Brown Snake, though they may once have had these significations. The spirits left about by these snakes, like all the other such spirits (mai aurli) keep on being incarnated, and, when incarnated, the children bear the totem name of their mothers in each case. A Green Snake woman is entered by a spirit, which she bears as a Green Snake child. The accident of the locality in which the child was conceived does not affect his totem, so Urabunna totems remain in their own proper phratries, and therefore, by phratry law, are exogamous, as everywhere, except among the Arunta.80
This arrangement is merely the usual arrangement, with female descent A woman's child is of the woman's totem. Believing in reincarnation, the Urabunna merely adapt that belief to the facts. With female descent an Emu woman's child is Emu. If a tribe has male descent, an Emu father's child is Emu. With female descent, a spirit has entered an Emu woman and been born Emu: with male descent, a spirit has entered the wife of an Emu man, and, by inheritance from his father, is Emu. Yet Messrs. Spencer and Gillen think that the Arunta and Kaitish rule – demanding the non-primitive male descent, local groups, local ghosts all of one totem, and churinga stones of the mark of that totem (all of which are indispensable), "is probably the simplest and most primitive."81
Most primitive, by our author's own statement, the Arunta method cannot be, for, as they show, it demands male descent, local totemism, and the peculiar belief about manufactured stone churinga. But they think it "most simple," because the Urabunna have a complicated myth, which, however, in no way affects the result, namely, that each child takes its mother's totem. Each spirit, according to the myth, changes its phratry and sex, and, necessarily, its totem, at each reincarnation, but that does not affect the result. Each child, as in all tribes with female descent, is still of its mother's totem.82 No churinga nanja cause an anomaly among the Urabunna, for the churinga nanja, and the belief about them, among the Urabunna do not exist.
The Urabunna myth, adapted to male descent, occurs in all the northern tribes, from the northern bounds of the Kaitish to the sea, which have no stone churinga nanja; and in all of them totems are exogamous, because they never occur in both phratries, being uninfluenced by the Arunta churinga belief. They cannot, for they are duly inherited from the father, and they are so inherited because the tribes have not the exceptional Churinga Nanja creed, attaching the spirit to the amulet of a local totem group, which fixes – by the accident of place of conception – the totem of each child.
The Arunta non-exogamous totems, in Australia, as we saw, are only found where stone churinga nanja are in use; these amulets being peculiarly the residence of the spirits of totemic ancestors.
The origin of that belief is obscure. It could not arise in the present condition of Arunta or Kaitish affairs, for, now, every stone churinga in the tribe has already its recognised legal owner, and, on the death of an owner, or the extinction of a local totem group, the churinga are not left lying about to be found on or in the earth, but pass by a definite rule of inheritance; and they are all carefully warded and frequently examined, in Ertnatu-lunga, or sacred storehouses.83 Thus stone churinga nanja, to-day, are not left lying about on the surface, or buried in graves, like those which, on the birth of each Arunta child, are sought for, and sometimes found, at the local totem-centre, and near the Nanja tree or rock, where the child was conceived. There churinga nanja must have been buried, of old, if our authors correctly say that the mythical ancestors "went into the ground, each carrying his churinga with him."84 Again we read, "Many of the churinga were placed in the ground, some natural object again marking the spot." The spot was always marked by some natural object, such as a tree or rock.85
Though our authors tell us that they know Arunta natives who, on the birth of a child, have sought for and found his churinga nanja near the Nanja rock or tree next to the place where he was conceived, they do not say that the churinga are found by digging.86 If they are, or if the Oknanikilla really are ancient burying-places (about which we are told nothing), the association of the churinga nanja with the ghost of the man in whose grave it is buried would be easily explained. But the impression left is that the stone churinga nanja found after search are discovered on the surface, dropped there by the spirit when about to be reincarnated.87
Here a curious fact may be filed for reference. Stone amulets, fashioned and decorated by man, are not known to be in use south of the Arunta region. But a cousin of my own, Mr. William Lang, found a stone object not unlike one figured by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, on his station near Cooma, New South Wales. The decoration was of the rectilineal type prevalent in that region. Mr. Lang knew nothing of the Arunta churinga till I drew his attention to the subject. He then visited the Sydney Museum, and found several stone objects, "banana-shaped," exactly like the specimen (wooden?), one out of five known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and published by them in their first work (p. 150). The New South Wales ornament, however, was always rectilineal. The articles appear to be obsolete among the tribes of New South Wales. It is said that they were erected of old round graves of the dead. Whites call them "grave stones." Careful articles on these decorated stone objects of New South Wales have been written by Mr. W. R. Harper and Mr. Graham Officer.88 As a rule, they are not banana-shaped or crescentine, but are in the form of enormous stone cigars. They used to be placed, twelve or thirteen of them, on graves, and their weight, averaging about 3 lbs. to 4 lbs., makes them less portable than most of the churinga of the Arunta. It does not seem at all probable that Arunta stone churinga were ever erected round graves, but excavations at Oknanikilla, if they could be executed without a shock to Arunta sentiment, might throw some light on the subject.
In my opinion, the churinga found at Oknanikilla by the Arunta may have had no such original significance as is now attached to them. The belief may be a mere myth, explaining the sense of objects found and not understood – relics, as the myth itself avers, of an earlier race, the Alcheringa folk. The only information about those New South Wales decorated cigar-shaped and banana-shaped stone objects which could be got out of a local black was: "All same as bloody brand." He meant, conceivably, that the incised markings were totem marks, I think, and in that sense the marks on Arunta stone churinga are now interpreted.
It would not be surprising if the Arunta – supposing that they possessed the belief in "spirit trees," and the belief in reincarnation, and then found, near the Nanja trees or rocks, the stone amulets or "grave stones" of some earlier occupants of the region – evolved the myth that ancestral souls, connected with the spirit trees, abode especially in these decorated stones, common enough in American and European neolithic sites.
This is, of course, a mere conjecture. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen agree with us when they say: "It is this 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 tribes."89
Three facts are now apparent. The Arunta (i) must have reckoned in the male line for a very long time, otherwise their myths would not take local totem-centres for granted as a primeval fact, since such centres can only occur and exist under male reckoning of descent; in cases where the husbands do not go to the wives' region of abode. (2) The myth that totemic local ghosts are reincarnated cannot be older than local totem-centres, for it is their old local totem-centres that the totemic ghosts do haunt. The spots are strewn with their old totem-marked churinga. The myths make the wandering groups of fabled ancestors all of one totem, because, by male reckoning, they could be little else till the churinga superstition arose and scattered totems about at random in the population.
Again, (3) even local totemism, plus the belief in the reincarnation of primary ancestral spirits, did not produce the non-exogamy of totems, till it was reinforced by the unique Arunta belief in the stone churinga nanja.
The totemism of the Arunta, then, was originally like that of their neighbours, exogamous, till the stone churinga nanja became the centre of a myth which introduces the same totems into both exogamous moieties among the Arunta, where it has broken down the old exogamous totemic rule. Among the Kaitish, as we saw, the rule is still surviving in general practice.
We now proceed to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never passed through the present Arunta state of belief and customary law.
Suppose that the Arunta to-day dropped their churinga nanja belief, and allowed the totem name to be inherited through the father, as the right to work the ceremonies of the totem still is inherited by sons who do not inherit the totem itself. What would follow? Why, totems among the Arunta would still be non-exogamous, for the existing churinga nanja belief has brought the same totems into both exogamous moieties, and there they would remain, after they came to be inherited in the male line. In the same way, if the northern tribes had once been in the Arunta state of belief, their totems would still be in both exogamous moieties, and would not regulate marriage. But this is not the case. These tribes, therefore, have never been in the present Arunta condition. Q.E.D.
The Arunta belief is, obviously, an elaboration of the belief in reincarnation, not held, as far as is known, by the Dieri, but held by the Urabunna, and by all tribes from the Urabunna northwards to the sea. Mr. Howitt does not mention the belief among the south-eastern tribes. But there is a kind of tendency towards it among the Euahlayi of north-west New South Wales, reported on by Mrs. Langloh Parker (MS.). This tribe reckons in the female line, has phratries, and uses the class names (four), but not the phratry names of the Kamilaroi. Each individual has a Minngah tree haunted by spirits unattached. Medicine men have Minngah rocks. These answer to the Arunta Nanja (Warramunga, Mungai) trees and rocks in mortuary local totem-centres. But the Minngah-tree spirits do not seek reincarnation. Only spirits of persons dying young, before initiation, are reincarnated. Fresh souls for new bodies are made by the Crow and the Moon. These spirits, when "made," hang in the boughs of the coolabah tree only, not round Minngah trees or rocks.
I think it possible, or even probable, that ideas like those of the Euahlayi exist among the southern Arunta and elsewhere. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give a Kaitish myth of two men "who arose from churinga," and heard Atnatu (the Kaitish sky-dwelling being, the father of some men) making, in the sky, a noise with his churinga (the wooden bull roarer).90 Now, I have seen the statement, on which I lay no stress, that in extreme south-west Aruntadom a sky-dwelling Emu-footed being lost two stone churinga. Out of one sprang a man, out of the other a woman. They had offspring, "but not by begetting."
Among the tribes with the reincarnation belief connubial relations are supposed only to "prepare the mother for the reception and birth also of an already formed spirit child."91 This apparent ignorance of physical facts, not found among the south-eastern tribes, is a corollary from the reincarnation belief, or from the other belief that spirit children are "made" by some non-human being. (Cf. Chapter XI.)
To continue with the statement as to the southern Arunta, the sky-dwelling being "has laid germs of the little boys in the mistletoe branches, germs of little girls among the split stones … such a germ of a child enters a woman by the hip." Now among the Euahlayi, when the spirit children made by the Crow and the Moon are weary of waiting to be reincarnated, they are changed into mistletoe branches.
I do not insist on the alleged sky-dwelling being of these Arunta, for Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (in their two books) have not found him, and Mr. Howitt thinks that his name arises from a misunderstanding. Kempe, a missionary of 1883, speaks of "Altjira, 'god,' who gives the children."92 Altjira, "god," may be a mistake, based on the root of Alcheringa or Altjiringa, "dream." On the other hand, Mr. Gillen himself credits the Arunta with a belief in a sky-dwelling being, and with a creed incompatible with the faith in reincarnation, as, in tins Anunta myth, human souls are not reincarnated. This information we quote.
"ULTHAANA
"The sky is said to be inhabited by three persons, a gigantic man with an immense foot shaped like that of an emu, a woman, and a child who never develops beyond childhood. The man is called Ulthaana, meaning 'spirit.' When a native dies his spirit is said to ascend to the home of the great Ulthaana, where it remains for a short time; the Ulthaana then throws it into the Saltwater (sea) [these natives have no personal knowledge of the sea], from whence it is rescued by two benevolent but lesser Ulthaana who perpetually reside on the seashore, apparently merely for the purpose of rescuing spirits who have been subject to the inhospitable treatment of the great Ulthaana of the heavens (alkirra). Henceforth the spirit of the dead man lives with the lesser Ulthaana."93
Is it possible that Mr. Gillen's "Great Ulthaana of the Heavens, alkirra," is Kempe's Altjira? Or can he be a native modification of Kempe's own theology? Probably not.
In any case the Arunta of Mr. Gillen who do not believe in reincarnation cannot possibly, it would seem, possess the Arunta form of totemism. It is only natural that varieties of myth and belief should exist, and it is asserted that there is a myth among the Arunta of the extreme south-west section about a sky-dwelling being, who, like the Crow and the Moon of Euahlayi belief, makes spirit children, and places them in the mistletoe boughs. The story that the first man and woman sprang from two of this being's lost churinga, again, is matched by the Kaitish story of two men who rose from churinga. The Arunta described by Mr. Gillen, they whose souls dwell with "the lesser Ulthaana," no more believe in reincarnation than do the south-eastern tribes. These variants in belief and myth usually occur among savages.
The Arunta add to the reincarnation myth, the peculiarity of mortuary local totem-centres, and of the attachment of the spirit to a stone churinga inscribed with the marks of that totem, and from these peculiar ideas – as much isolated as the peculiar ideas of the Urabunna or the Euahlayi – arises the non-exogamous character of Arunta totemism. No one, out of such varying freaks of belief, can be regarded as primitive, more than another, but the Arunta variant, for the reason repeatedly given, cannot possibly be primitive.
The Arunta totems are not only non-exogamous: their actual raison d'être, to-day, is to exist as the objects of magical co-operative societies, fostering the totem plants and animals as articles of tribal food supply. Mr. Spencer thinks this the primary purpose of totem societies, everywhere. Now we have not, as yet, been told why each society took to doing magic for this or that animal or other thing in nature. They cannot have been "charged with" this duty, except by some central authority. As there did not yet exist, by the hypothesis, so much as a tribe with phratries, what can this central authority have been? If it existed, on what principle did it select, out of the horde, groups to become magical societies? Were they groups of kin, or groups of associates by contiguity? On what principle could the choice of departments of nature to be controlled by each group, be determined by the central authority? Had the groups already distinguishing names – Emu, Eagle Hawk, Opossum, &c. – how did these names arise, and did these names determine the department of nature for which each group was allotted to do magic? Or did authority give to each group a magical department, and did the nature of that department determine the group-name, such as Frogs, Grubs, Hakea Trees?
Or was there no formal distribution, no sudden organisation, no central authority? Did a casual knot of men, or a firm of wizards, say, "Let us do magic for the Kangaroo, and get more Kangaroos to eat"? Was their success so great and enviable that other casual knots of men or firms of wizards followed their example? And, in this case, why do Arunta totemists not eat their totems freely? Is it because they think that to do so would frighten the totems, and make them recalcitrant to their magic? But that cannot be the case if their success, while they worked their magic on their own account, was great, enviable, and generally imitated. And, if it was not, why was it imitated? Next, how, among the magical societies, was exogamy introduced? Mr. Spencer writes: "Our knowledge of the natives leads us to the opinion that this really took place; that the exogamic groups were deliberately introduced so as to regulate marital regulations." This was, then, a Marriage Reform Act. However, Mr. Spencer hastens to add that he cannot conceive a motive for the Marriage Reform Act. "We do not mean that the regulations had anything whatever to do with the idea of incest, or of any harm accruing from the union of individuals who were regarded as too nearly related."94
We have shown that no such ideas could occur to the supposed promiscuous horde, who knew not that there is such a thing as procreation, but supposed that, like the stars in Caliban's philosophy, children "came otherwise." Yet the "exogamic system" does nothing but prohibit certain marriages, and "it is quite possible that the exogamic groups were deliberately introduced so as to regulate marital relations."95
Mr. Spencer's theory is, then, that there was a horde with magical totemic societies, how evolved we cannot guess. Across that came the arrangement of classes to regulate marriage, as it does, but the ancestors who possibly introduced it had, he says, no idea that there was any moral or material harm in unregulated marriages. Then why did they regulate them?
The hypothetical horde of the kind which we have described had no marriage relations, and had no possible reason for regulating intersexual relations.
It is true that reformatory movements in marriage law are actually being purposefully introduced, among tribes which, possessing already such laws, of unknown origin, to reform, have deduced from these laws themselves that there is a right and wrong in matters of sex. Certainly, too, much of savage marriage law is of ancient and purposeful institution. But the question is, not how moral laws, once developed, might be improved; but how a tabu law against sexual relations between near kin could even be so much as dreamed of by members of a communal horde, who bad do idea of kin, and could not possibly tell who was akin to whom. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte! We must account for le premier pas.
Again, the Intichiuma, or co-operative totemic magic, of the Arunta, regarded by our authors as "primary," is nowhere reported of the tribes of the south and east. Mr. Howitt asserts its absence. The lack of record, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "is no proof that these ceremonies did not exist" If they did, bow could they escape the knowledge of Mr. Howitt, an initiated man?96 As a fact, when you leave the centre, and reach the north sea-coast, totemic magic dwindles, and nearly disappears. Among the coast tribes of the north, the Intichiuma magic is "very slightly developed." Its faint existence is "doubtless to be associated with the fact that they inhabit country where the food supply and general conditions of life are more favourable than in the central area of the continent which is the home of these ceremonies." But surely the regions of the south and east, where there is no Intichiuma, are also better in supply and general conditions than the centre. Why then should the apparent absence of Intichiuma in the south and east be due to want of observation and record, while the "very slight development" of Intichiuma on the north coast is otherwise explained, namely, by conditions – which also exist in the south!
Moreover, co-operative and totemic magic is most elaborately organised among the Sioux, Dakotah, Omaha, and other American tribes, where supplies are infinitely better than in any part of Australia,97 and agriculture has there, as in Europe, a copious magic. Magic, as a well-known fact, is most and best organised in the most advanced non-scientific societies. In Australia it is most organised in the centre, and dwindles as you move either north, south, or east. This implies that, socially, the centre is in this respect most advanced and least primitive; while magic, partly totemic, is highly organised in the much more prosperous islands of the Torres Straits, and in America.
It is true that Collins (1798), a very early observer, saw east-coast natives performing ceremonies connected with Kangaroos, in one of which a Kangaroo hunt was imitated. Collins believed that this was imitative magic of a familiar kind, done to secure success in the chase. In Magic and Religion, p. 100, I express the same opinion. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, as to the magic observed by Collins, "There can be little doubt but that these ceremonies, so closely similar in their nature to those now performed by the central natives, were totemic in their origin" – they may be regarded as "clear evidence of the existence of these totemic ceremonies … in a tribe living right on the eastern coast."98
Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe (i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of totemic ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance, not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and to do that is the aim of the Intichiuma.99 The hunt dances seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation ceremony.100 In the Emu Intichiuma of the Arunta the Emus are represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed to see the imitators of the fowls.101 The ceremonies reported by Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course were not allowed to see."102
Apparently we have not "clear evidence" that Collins saw Intichiuma, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr. Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.
It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact, we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development of Intichiuma on the north coast of Australia.
I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months, while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names, deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names had a special rapport with the name-giving animals or plants. This rapport was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and for the good of the tribe, which is singularly solidaire.
We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly late system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties, denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing to the isolated belief in reincarnation of local ghosts, attached to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere, by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem, does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites. Totemism is thus en pleine décadence among the Arunta, from whom, consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.
NOTE
The Arunta legends of the Alcheringa usually describe the various wandering groups, all, in each case, of one totem, as living exclusively for long periods on their own totems, plants, or animals. This cannot be historically true; many plants, and such animals as grubs, are in season for but a brief time. On the other hand, we meet a legend of women of the Quail totem who lived exclusively, not on quails, but on grass seeds.103 Again, in only one case are men of the Achilpa, or Wild Cat totem, said to have eaten anything, and what they ate was the Hakea flower. Later they became Plum men, Ulpmerka, but are not said to have eaten plums. In a note (Note I, p. 219) Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that "Wild Cat men are represented constantly as feeding on plums." They are never said to have eaten their own totem, the Wild Cat, which is forbidden to all Arunta, though old men may eat a little of it Reasons, not totemic, are given for the avoidance.104 We are not told anything about the Intichiuma or magical rites for the increase of the Wild Cat, which is not eaten. Are they performed by men of the Wild Cat totem? The old men of the totem might eat very sparingly of the Wild Cat, at their Intichiuma, but certainly the members of other totems who were present would not eat at all. The use of a Wild Cat Intichiuma is not obvious: there is no desire to propagate the animal as an article of food.