The Secret of the Totem

We can also show how totems in Australia become involved in really religious conceptions, as I understand "religion," if we may cite Mr. Howitt's evidence. Mr. Howitt says: "This is certain, that when the aboriginal legends purport to account for the origin of totemy, that is to say the origin of the social divisions which are named after animals, it is not the totems themselves to whom this is attributed, nor to the black fellows, but it is said that the institutions of these divisions and the assumption of the animal names, were in consequence of some injunction of the great supernatural being, such as Bunjil, given through the mouth of the wizard of the tribe."185 "Any tradition of the origin of the two classes" (phratries) "is one which attributes it to a supernatural agency."186 Accepting Mr. Howitt's evidence (always welcomed on other points), one source of the "religious" character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist obeys the decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine decrees given by Zeus to Minos.

Though I had not observed this statement by Mr. Howitt, still, in Social Origins, I have quoted five cases in which a supernormal being or beings, licensed, or actually ordained, the totemic rules, thereby giving them, in my sense of the phrase, a real religious sanction. Rules with a religious sanction, vouched for by a myth which explained the divine origin of a name, might well become "the centre of a veritable religious system."187

As another example of the myth that totems are of divine or supernormal institution, Mrs. Langloh Parker gives the following case from the Euahlayi tribe, on the Queensland border of north-west New South Wales. Their nearest Kamilaroi neighbours live a hundred and fifty miles away, but they call their "over-god," or "All Father," by the Kamilaroi word Baiame, pronounced "Byamee"; in other respects they "have only a few words the same as the Kamilaroi." These words, however, indicate, I think, a previous community of language.

Mrs. Langloh Parker writes, on this matter of the divine institution of totems, "A poor old blind black fellow of over eighty came back here the other day. He told me some more legends, in one of which was a curiously interesting bit about the totems. The legend was about Byamee, and it spoke of him as having a totem name for every part of his body – even to a different one for each finger and toe. No one had a totem name at that time, but when Byamee was going away for good he gave each division of the tribe one of his totems, and said that every one hereafter was to have a totem name which they were to take, men and women alike, from their mother; all having the same totem must never marry each other, but be as brothers and sisters, however far apart were their hunting grounds. That is surely some slight further confirmation of Byamee as one apart, for no one else ever had all the totems in one person; though a person has often a second or individual totem of his own, not hereditary, given him by the wirreenuns (sorcerers or medicine men), called his yunbeai, any hurt to which injures him, and which he may never eat – his hereditary totem he may."

In such cases, myths give a "religious" origin for totemism.

Tribes which have religious myths, attributing totemism to the decree of a superhuman being, may also have other myths giving quite other explanations. Thus the Dieri were said to have a fable to the effect that Mura-Mura, "the creator," enjoined totemism, to regulate marriage.188 Later, Mr. Howitt learned that "in the plural form Mura-Mura means the deceased ancestors themselves."189 In fact, in the plural, the Mura-Mura answer more or less to the Alcheringa men of the Arunta, to that potent, magical, partly human, partly divine, partly bestial, race, which, like the Greek Titans, appears in so many mythologies, and "airs" the world for the reception of man. It is usual to find a divine word, like Mura-Mura, in the plural, meaning this kind of race, while in the singular, the term seems to denote a deity.190

Whether there be such a singular form of Mura-Mura in Dieri, with the sense of deity, I know not. Mr. Gason, an initiated man, says that he (Mura-Mura) made men out of Lizards. Ancestral spirits are not here in question.

Mr. Howitt now knows a Dieri myth by which totems were not divinely decreed, but were children of a Mura-Mura, or Alcheringa female Titan. Or, in another myth, as animals, they came out of the earth in an isle, in a lake, and "being revived by the heat of the sun, got up and went away as human beings in every direction."191

Such are the various myths of the Dieri. Another myth attributes exogamy to a moral reformatory movement, which, of course, could only be imagined by men living under exogamy already.

In other cases, as in America among the north-western peoples, a myth of ancestral friendship with the totem animal is narrated. That myth is conditioned by the prevailing animistic belief that a man's soul is reincarnated in a man, a beast's, in a beast, though some tribes hold that a soul always incarnates itself in but one species. The Arunta myth is that semi-bestial forms became human, and that the souls of these totem ancestors are reincarnated in human children. As a rule, the totem, being explained in myth as a direct ancestor of the totemist, or a kinsman, or as the animal out of which he was evolved, receives such consideration as ancestral spirits, where they have a cult, obtain… more or less religious. All these facts are universally known. There is here no conjecture. I do not need to guess that such more or less religious myths of the origin of the connection between totem and totemist would probably be evolved. They actually were evolved, and a large collection of them may be found in Mr. Frazer's Totemism.

In but one case known to me, a non-religious and thoroughly natural cause of the totem name is given. Two totem kins are said to be so called "from having, in former times, principally subsisted on a small fish, and a very small opossum." These are but two out of seven kins, in one Australian tribe. In the other five cases the totem kins, according to the myth, are descended from their totem animals, and, of course, owe to them, in each case, friendly kinship and regard.192

Enfin, it suffices for me to record all the known facts of totemic tabu and practice, in Australia, and, as long as I give them, it matters very little whether I call them "religious" or not. They certainly are on the frontiers of religion: it is more important to explain their evolution than to dispute about the meaning of a term, "religion," which every one defines as he pleases. To the evolution of totemic marriage rules out of a certain belief as to the name-giving animals of groups, we next turn.

So far we have reached these results: we guess that for the sake of distinction groups gave each other animal and plant names. These became stereotyped, we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten. The belief that there must necessarily be some connection between animals and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature of the connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men and animals of the same names were akin by blood. That kinship, with animals, being peculiarly mysterious, was peculiarly sacred. From these ideas arose tabus, and among others, that of totemic exogamy.

The nature and origin of the supposed connection or rapport between each human group and its name-giving animal is thus explained in a way consistent with universally recognised savage modes of thinking, and with the ordinary process by which collective names, even in modern times, are given from without. Dr. Pikler, Major Powell, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Lord Avebury, Mr. Howitt, and others have recognised that the names are the germ of totemism. But both Mr. Herbert Spencer and Lord Avebury appear to think that the name Eagle Hawk or Crow, or Wolf or Raven, was originally that of a male ancestor, who founded a clan that inherited his name. Thus a given Donald, of the Islay family, marrying a MacHenry heiress, gave the name "MacDonald" to the MacHenrys of Glencoe. But this theory is impossible, as we must repeat, in conditions of inheriting names through women, and such were the conditions under which totemism arose. The animal name, now totemic, from the first was a group name, as Mr. Fison argued long ago. "The Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group, not of an individual… And even if it were first given to an individual, his family, i. e. his children, could not inherit it from him."193 These are words of gold.

CHAPTER VII

RISE OF PHRATRIES AND TOTEM KINS

How phratries and totem kins were developed – Local animal-named groups would be exogamous – Children in these will bear the group names of their mothers – Influence of tattooing – Emu local group thus full of persons who are Snipes, Lizards, &c —by maternal descent– Members are Emus by local group name: Snipes, Lizards, &c., by name of descent– No marriage, however, within local group – Reason, survival of old tabu – Reply to Dr. Durkheim – The names bring about peaceful relations between members of the different local groups – Tendency to peaceful betrothals between men and women of the various local groups – Probable leadership of two strong local groups in this arrangement – Say they are groups Eagle Hawk and Crow – More than two such groups sometimes prominent – Probable that the dual alliance was widely Imitated – The two chief allied local groups become the phratries – Tendency of phratries to die out – Often superseded by matrimonial classes – Meaning of surviving phratry names often lost, and why – Their meaning known in other tribes – Members, by descent, of various animal names, within the old local groups (now phratries), become the totem kins of to-day – Advantages of this theory – Difficulties which it avoids.

We have perhaps succeeded in showing how totemism my have become a belief and a source of institutions: we have shown, at least, that granting savage methods of thought, totemism might very naturally have come in this way.

Totemism certainly arose in an age when, if descent reckoned, and, if names were inherited, it was on the spindle side. "All abnormal instances," writes Mr. Howitt, "I have found to be connected with changes in the line of descent. The primitive and complete forms" (of totemism) "have uterine descent, and it is in cases where descent is counted in the male line that I find the most abnormal forms to occur."194

As few scholars seriously dispute this opinion of Mr. Howitt, based on a very wide experience, and fortified by the almost universal view that descent was reckoned, when totemism began, in the female line, and as the point is accepted by every author whose ideas I have been discussing, we need not criticise hypotheses which assume that totemism arose when descent was reckoned in the male line, or that totems arose out of personal manitus of males, transferred to the female line.

Now, granting that our system so far may afford a basis of argument, we have to show how the phratries and the totem kins within them might be logically and naturally developed.

If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a sacred sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical rule would be that of the jealous Sire, "No males to touch the females in my camp," with expulsion of adolescent sons. In efflux of time that rule, become habitual, would be, "No marriage within the local group." Next, let the local groups receive names, such as Emus, Crows, Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, "No marriage within the local group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe." But, if the primal groups were not exogamous, they would become so, as soon as totemic myths and tabus were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other names of small local groups.

The natural result will be that all the wives among the local groups called Snipes will come to bear names other than Snipe, will come to be known by the names of the local groups from which they have been acquired. These names they will retain, I suggest, in local group Snipe, by way of distinction – as the Emu woman, the Opossum woman, and so forth. The Emus know the names of the groups from which they have taken women, and it seems probable enough that the women may even have borne tattoo marks denoting their original groups, as is now in some places the Australian practice. "It probably has been universal," says Mr. Haddon.195

If, then, the stranger women among the Emus are known, in that local group, as the Opossum woman, the Snipe woman, the Lizard woman; their children in the group might very naturally speak of each other as "the Snipe woman's, the Lizard woman's children," or more briefly as "the little Snipes," "the young Lizards," and so on. I say "might speak," for though totem names have the advantage of being easily indicated, and in practice are often indicated by gesture language, I take it that by this time man had evolved language.196

In course of time, by this process (which certainly did occur, though at how early a stage it came first into being we cannot say), each local group becomes heterogeneous. Emu local group is now full of members of Snipe, Lizard, and other animal-named members by maternal descent. There are thus what Mr. Howitt has called "Major totems" (name-giving animals of local groups), and "Minor totems" (various animal names of male and female members within, for example, local group Emu, these various animal names being acquired by female descent). Each member of a local Emu group is now Emu by local group; but is Snipe, Lizard, Opossum, Kangaroo, or what not, by name of maternal descent.

This theory is no original idea, it is Mr. McLennan's mode of accounting for the heterogeneity of the local group. They are not all Wolves, for example, where descent is reckoned in the female line, and exogamy is the rule. In the local group Wolf are Ravens, Doves, Dogs, Cats, what you will, names derived by the children from mothers of these names. I do not pretend that I can demonstrate the existence of the process, but it accounts for the facts and is not out of harmony with human nature. Can any other hypothesis be suggested?

When things have reached this pitch, each local group, if it understood the situation as it is now understood among most savages, might find wives peacefully in its own circle. Lizard man, in local group Emu, might marry Snipe woman also in local group Emu, as far as extant totem law now goes. They were both, in fact, members of a small local tribe of animal name, with many kins of animal names, by female descent, within that tribe. Why then might not Snipe (by descent) in Emu local group marry a woman, by descent Lizard, in the same Emu local group? Many critics have asked this question, including Dr. Durkheim.197 I had given my answer to the question before it was asked,198 backing my opinion by a statement of Dr. Durkheim himself. People of different totems in the same local group (say Emu) might have married; but then, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another case, "the old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."199 "Now the old prohibition in this case was that a man of the Emu (local) group was not to marry a woman of the Emu (local) group. That rule endures, even though the Emu group now contains men and women of several distinct and different totem kins," that is to say, of different animal-named kins by descent.

I may add that, as soon as speculation about the animal names led to the belief in the mystic rapport between the animals and their human namesakes, and so led to tabu on the intermarriage of persons of the same animal name, the tabu would attach as much to the name-giving animal of the local group as to the animals of the kins by descent within that local group.

Thus Lizard man, in Emu local group, cannot marry Snipe woman in the same. Both are also, by local group name, Emus. He is Emu-Lizard, she is Emu-Snipe.

If it be replied that now no regard is paid by the members of a phratry to their phratriac animal (where it is known), I answer that the necessary poojah is done, by the members of the totem kin of that animal, within his phratry, while all do him the grace of not marrying within his name.200 A Lizard man and a Snipe woman in Emu local group could not, therefore, yet marry. The members of the local group, though of different animal names of descent, had still to ravish brides from other hostile local groups.

Each local group was now full of men and women who, by maternal descent, bore the same animal names as many members of the other local groups. A belief in a mystic rapport between the bearers of the animal names and the animals themselves now being developed, Snipe and Lizard and Opossum by descent, in Emu local group, must already have felt that they were not really strangers and enemies to men of the same names by descent, Snipe, Lizard, and Opossum, and of the same connection with the same name-giving animals, in Kangaroo local group, or any other adjacent local group.

This obvious idea – human beings who are somehow connected with the same animals are also connected with each other – was necessarily an influence in favour of peace between the local groups. In whatever local group a Snipe by descent might be, he would come to notice a connection between himself and Snipes by descent in all other local groups. Consequently men at last arranged, I take it, to exchange brides on amicable terms, instead of Snipe by descent risking the shedding of kindred blood, that of another Snipe by descent, in the mellay of a raid to lift women from another local group.

If two strong local groups, say Emu and Kangaroo, or Eagle Hawk and Crow, took the lead in this treaty of alliance and connubium, and if the other local groups gradually came into it under their leadership (for union would make Eagle Hawk and Crow powerful), or if several local groups chose two such groups to head them in a peaceful exchange of brides, we have, in these two now united and intermarrying local groups of animal name, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, the primal forms of the actual phratries of to-day.

But why do we find in a tribe only two phratries? I have asked myself and been asked by others. In the first place, in America, we note examples of three or more phratries in the same tribe. Again, in Australia, we seem to myself to find probable traces of more than two phratries in a tribe, traces of what Mr. Frazer styles "sub-phratries," what one may call "submerged phratries" (see Chapter X.). Further, dual alliances are the most usual form of such combinations: two strong groups, allied and setting the example, would attract the neighbouring groups into their circle. Finally, if I am right in thinking that the phratriac arrangement arose in a given centre, and was propagated by emigrants, and was borrowed by distant tribes (which is a point elsewhere discussed), the original model of a dual alliance would spread almost universally, while, as has been said, traces of more numerous combinations appear to occur.

Except as parties of old to a peaceful arrangement, the phratries, as they at present exist (where they exist), have often now no reason for existence. Where totems are exogamous, or where totems and matrimonial classes exist, the phratry is now an empty survival; having done its work it does no more work, and often vanishes. If members of local animal-named groups, become fully totemic, had at once understood their own position as under the now existing totem law, they could have taken wives of different totems of descent each in their own group, without any phratries at all. People manage their affairs thus in all totemic parts of the world where there are no phratries, though, for what we know, phratries may have existed, and vanished, in these places, when their task was ended.

Again, phratries die out, we repeat, even in America and Australia. In some regions of Australia their place has been taken by the opposed matrimonial classes, prohibiting marriage between mothers' and sons', fathers' and daughters' generations. That arrangement, as it is not found in the most primitive Australian tribes, which have only phratries and totems, must be later than phratries and totems. It was a later enactment, within the phratry, and, as among the Arunta and Wiraidjuri, it has now superseded the phratry. The matrimonial classes, originally introduced within each pre-existing phratry, now regulate marriage, among Arunta and Wiraidjuri, and the phratry has dropped off, its name being unknown, like the flower which has borne its fruit.

Again, in Australia, as has been said, we shall try to show that phratries, in many tribes, are perhaps a borrowed institution, not an institution independently evolved everywhere. That is rendered probable because, among many tribes, the phratry names survive but are now meaningless, yet these same phratry names possess, or have recently possessed, a meaning in the language of other tribes, from whom the institution may apparently (though not necessarily) have been borrowed with the foreign names of each phratry.

For all these reasons, phratries seem, in some regions, to be a device adopted, by some tribe, or tribes, at a given moment, for a given purpose (peace), and borrowed from them by some other tribes, or propagated by emigrants into new lands. Men might borrow the names of the phratries, or might use other names which were already current designations of their own local groups. The purpose of the phratry organisation, I argue, may have been the securing of peace and alliance, and the movement may have been originated, somewhere in Australia, by two powerful local groups of animal name; in one vast region known as Eagle Hawk and Crow, Mukwara and Kilpara, and by other names of the same meaning. Such I take to have been the mode in which phratries arose, out of the alliance and connubium of two local groups, say Eagle Hawk and Crow; or of more than two groups. Mr. Frazer says that the Moquis of Arizona have ten phratries (quoting Bourke, Snake Dance, p. 336) and the Wyandots have four; the Mohegans have three.201 These, or other groups, took the lead in recognising the situation, namely, that brides might be peacefully exchanged among local groups becoming conscious of common kinship in their totems by descent.

Meanwhile, in the various otherwise animal-named members of local groups Eagle Hawk and Crow – in the men and women within local groups Eagle Hawk and Crow who were Snipes, Lizards, Opossums, and so on, by maternal descent– we have the forerunners of the totem kins within the phratries of to-day. In the same way, members of all other adjacent local groups could also come into Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries by merely dropping their local group-names, keeping their names by descent.

We have not, on this system, to imagine that there were but two totem groups in each district, at the beginning (a thing unlikely to happen anywhere, still less always and everywhere), and that many of their members, hiving off, took new totem names. Our scheme gives us, naturally, and on Mr. Darwin's lines, first, many small local groups, perhaps in practice exogamous; then these local groups invested with animal names; then, the animals become totems, sanctioning exogamy; then by exogamy and female descent, each animal-named local group becomes full of members of other animal names by descent; then an approach to peace among all the groups naturally arises; then pacific connubium between them all, at first captained by two leading local groups, say Crow and Eagle Hawk (though there is no reason why there should not have been more of such alliances in a tribe, and there are traces of them),202 and, lastly, the allies prevailing, the inhabitants of a district became an harmonious tribe, with two phratries (late local groups), say Eagle Hawk and Crow, and with the other old local group-names represented in what are now the totem kins within the phratries. This arrangement, in course of time, is perhaps even borrowed, foreign phratry names and all, by distant groups hitherto not thus organised.