in the opposed theory, the existence and actual exogamous function of totems is also accidental, arising from ignorance and a peculiar superstition. It is urged that no men would accept a nickname given from without by hostile groups. This is answered by many examples of cases in which tribes, clans, political parties, and, of course, individuals, have accepted sobriquets from without, and even when these were hostile and derisive.[1] It is asked, Why, on this theory, are there but two exogamous divisions in the tribe? The reply is that in America there may be three or more: that in the Urabunna there are as many exogamous divisions (dual) as there are totems, and that these, like the main exogamous divisions, go in pairs, because marriage is between two contracting parties.[2]
It is maintained in this theory that Australian blacks, who are reflective and by no means illogical men, have long ago observed that certain marriages are rigorously barred by their social system, for no obvious reason. Thus a man learns that he must not marry in his own main exogamous division, say Eagle Hawk. He must choose a wife from the opposite division, Crow. She must belong to a certain set of women in Crow, whose tribal status is precisely that, in Crow, of his own sisters, and his “little sisters” (the women of his sister's status) in Eagle Hawk. The reflective tribesman does not know why these rules exist. But he perceives that the marriageable women in his own main division bear the same title as his sisters by blood. He therefore comes to the conclusion that they are all what his own sisters manifestly are, “too near flesh,” as the natives say in English; and that the purpose of the rule is to bar marriage to him with all the women who bear the name “sisters” that denotes close consanguinity. Presently he thinks that other kinsfolk, actual, or bearing the same collective title as actual kinsfolk of his, are also “too near flesh,” and he goes on to bar them till he reaches the eight class model; or like some south-eastern tribes, drops the whole cumbrous scheme in favour of one much like our own.
The reflective savage, in short, acts exactly as the Church did when she extended to cousins the pre-existing Greek and Roman prohibitions against the marriages of very near kin; and, again, extended them still further, to exclude persons not consanguineous at all but called by the same title as real consanguines, “father,” “mother” and “child” in “gossipred”—godfather, godmother, godchild.
The savage and ecclesiastical processes are parallel and illustrate each other. Probably when a tribe with two main exogamous and intermarrying divisions came into existence in the way which we have indicated, the names used in families for father, mother, daughter, son, husband, wife, brother, sister, were simply extended so as to include, in each case, all persons in the tribe who were now of the same status, socially, with the same rights, restrictions and duties, as had been theirs in the fire-circle before the tribe was made a tribe by the union of two exogamous and previously hostile intermarrying local groups; or two sets of such groups. The process is natural; the wide extension now given to old names of relationships saved the trouble of making new names. Thus we have found a reasonable and probable way of accounting for classificatory terminology without adopting the hypothesis that it arose out of “group-marriage” and asking “But how did group-marriage arise?”
There is no accident here, all is deliberate and reflective design, beginning with the purely selfish and peace-loving design of the jealous sire. Meanwhile the totemic prohibition, “no marriage in the same totem name,” has been retained and expanded even beyond the tribe, and “however remote the hunting grounds” of two persons, they may not intermarry if their totem name be the same.
Such are the two chief opposed theories of the origins of exogamy, and of the connexions of exogamy with totemism. The second does not enjoy the benefit of notice and criticism in Mr Frazer's Totemism.
Relations of the Social and Religious Aspects of Totemism.—It is a curious fact (if it be accepted as a fact) that the social aspect of totemism—the prohibition to marry a person of the same hereditary totem name—is sometimes strongest where the “religious” prohibition against killing or eating the totem is weakest; while the highest regard is paid to the totem, or to the god which is supposed to inhabit the totem species, where there is no prohibition on marrying within the totem name. Thus in Australia, where (except in the centre, among the Arunta) almost all tribes prohibit marriages within the totem name, it is scarcely possible to find an instance in which irreligious treatment of the totem, killing or eating it, is (as among many other totemic peoples) thought to be automatically or “religiously” punished by illness, death or miscarriage. Religion, in these cases, does not hold that the injured majesty of the totem avenges itself on the malefactor. On the other hand the Samoans, who pay no regard to the sacred animal of each community in the matter of not marrying within his name, believe that he will inflict death if one of his species be eaten and if no expiatory rite be performed.[3] In Samoa, we saw, the so-called totem is the vehicle of a God; in Australia no such idea is found.
Meanwhile the offence of marrying within the totem name is nowhere automatically punished in any way except among the American Navajos, where, to make certain, the totem kin also inflicts secular penalties;[4] and it is part of the magic of the Intichiuma rites for the behoof of the totem that his kin should eat of him sparingly, as on all occasions they may do. In all other quarters, where marriage within the totem kin is forbidden, the penalty of a breach of law has been death or tribal excommunication. The offence is secular. The Euahlayi, who never marry within the totem name, “may and do eat their hereditary totems with no ill effects to themselves.” [5] This is very common in South Australia. As a rule, however, in Australia some respect is paid to the actual plant or animal, and some Northern tribes who inherit the paternal totem respect it almost as much as the maternal totem. As they also inherit property in the maternal line, it seems clear that they have passed from female to male descent, as regards the totem, but not as regards inheritance.[6]
Male and Female Descent of the Totem.—It was the almost universal opinion of anthropologists that, in the earliest totemic societies, the totem was inherited from the mother, and that inheritance from the father was a later development. But when the peculiar totemism of the Arunta was discovered, and it was desired to prove that this non-exogamous totemism was the most primitive extant, it was felt to be a difficulty that the Arunta reckon descent of everything hereditable in the male, not the female line. If then, the Arunta were not primitive but advanced, in this matter as well as in their eight sub-classes and ceremonies how could their totemism be primitive? It would have been easy to reply that a people might be “primitive” in some details though advanced in others—the fact is notorious. But to escape from the dilemma the idea was proposed that neither male nor female descent was more primitive than the other. One tribe might begin with male, one with female descent. Nobody can prove that it was not so, but “whereas evidence of the passage from female to male reckoning may be observed, there is virtually none of a change in the opposite direction.”[7]
Thus the Worgaia and Northern neighbours of the Arunta, with male descent, have certainly passed through a system of female descent of the totem, and actually inherit property in the female line, while Strehlow's Aranda or Arunta inherit their mothers' totems. Moreover Howitt shows us at least one tribe
- ↑ The Secret of the Totem, pp. 128, 134.
- ↑ For other arguments explaining the duality of the divisions see Van Gennep, ut supra, p. xxxiv. and note 1.
- ↑ Turner, Samoa, p. 31, sqq.
- ↑ Bourke, Snake Dance of the Moquis, p. 279.
- ↑ Mrs Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 279.
- ↑ See for Worgaia and Warramunga reverence of the mother's totem, though they inherit the father's, Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 166. That these tribes, though reckoning descent in the paternal line, inherit property in the maternal is certain, see pp. 523, 524.
- ↑ Thomas, ut supra, p. 15.
