with female descent, the Dieri, actually in the process of diverging from female to male descent of the totem. “A step further is when a man gives his totem name to his son, who then has those of both father and mother. This has been done even in the Dieri tribe,” which appears to mean that it is also done in other tribes.[1]
A difficult case in marriage law is explained by saying that “possibly some man, as is sometimes the case, gave his Murdu (totem) to his son, who was then of two Murdus, and so could not marry a girl of one of his two totems.”[2] We thus see how the change from female to male descent of the totem is “directly led to,” as Mr Howitt says,[3] by a man's mere fatherly desire to have his son made a member of his own totem kin. On the other hand, we never read that with male descent of the totem a mother gives hers to son or daughter. All these facts make it hard to doubt (though absolute proof is necessarily impossible) that female everywhere preceded male descent of the totem.
Proof of transition from female to male descent of the totem appears to be positive in some tribes of the south of South Australia. Among them each person inherits his mother's totem, and may not marry a woman of the same. But he also inherits his father's totem, which “takes precedence,” and gives its name to the local group. No person, as apparently among the Dieri when a father has “given his totem” to a son, may marry into either his father's or his mother's totem kin (Mrs Bates).
Thus we have a consecutive series of evolutions: (a) All inherit the maternal totem only, and must not marry within it. This is the rule in tribes of south-east Australia with female descent. (b) Some fathers in this society give their totems to sons, who already inherit their maternal totems. Such sons can marry into neither the paternal nor maternal totems. This was a nascent rule among the Dieri. (c) All inherit both the paternal and the maternal totem, and may marry into neither (southern South Australia). (d) All inherit the religious regard for the maternal totem, but may marry within it, while they may not marry within the paternal totem (Worgaia and Warramunga of north central Australia). (e) The paternal totem alone is religiously regarded, and alone is exogamous (tribes of south-east Australia with male descent). (f) The totem is neither hereditary on either side nor exogamous (Spencer's Arunta). (g) The maternal totem is hereditary and sacred, but not exogamous (Strehlow's Arunta).
In this scheme we give the degrees by which inheritance of the totem from the mother shades into inheritance of the totem from both parents (Dieri), thence to inheritance of both the maternal and paternal totem while the paternal alone regulates marriage (Worgaia and Warramunga), thence to exclusive inheritance of the paternal, without any regard paid to the maternal totem (some tribes of South Australia), and so on.
Meanwhile we hear of no tribe with paternal descent of the totem in which mothers are giving their own totems also to their children. We cannot expect to find more powerful presumptions in favour of the opinion that tribes having originally only maternal have advanced by degrees to only paternal descent of the totem. Mr Frazer says, “So far as I am aware, there is no evidence that any Australian tribe has exchanged maternal for paternal descent, and until such evidence is forthcoming we are justified in assuming that those tribes which now trace descent from the father formerly traced it from the mother.”[4]
We have now provided, however, the evidence for various transitional stages from maternal to paternal descent, but have found no traces of the contrary process, nor more than one way of interpreting the facts. It is admitted by Mr Frazer that in several North American tribes the change from female to male descent has to all appearance been made.[5] Among the Delawares the initial process was much akin to that of the Dieri, who, in a tribe of female descent, “gives” his own totem to his sons. “The Delawares had a practice of sometimes naming a child into its father's clan,” and a son thus became a member of his father's clan. This “ may very well have served to initiate a change of descent from the female to the male line.”[6] Howitt says precisely the same thing about the paternal practice of the Dieri. Thus there is no reason for denying that the change from female to male descent can be made by Australian as readily as by American tribes. We have given evidence for every step in the transition. The opposite opinion arose merely in an attempt to save the primitiveness of the Arunta, some of whom actually still make the maternal totem hereditary.
The change to male descent is socially very important. The totem kin of a man, for example, takes up his blood feud. Where the descent is female a “man may probably have some (totemic) kinsmen in the same group, but equally a considerable number of members of other totem kins.” But it is clear that the rule of male descent gives far greater security to the members of a local group; for they are surrounded by kinsmen, local totem groups only occurring where male descent of the totem prevails, or is predominant.[7] The change from female to male descent of the totem, or the adoption of male descent from the first (if it ever occurred) is thus a great social advantage.
The Ways out of Totemism.—While Howitt believed (though later he wavered in his opinion) that female had always preceded male descent of the totem, he also observed that with male descent came in abnormal developments. One of these is that the people of a district with male descent are often known by the name of the region, or of some noted object therein (say wild cherries).[8] They may even regard (or white observers suppose that they regard) some object as their “local totem,” yet they marry within that so-called totem. But they take to marrying, not out of the hereditary totem kin, which becomes obsolescent, but out of their own region into some other given locality. Thus in the Kurnai tribe there were no inevitable hereditary totems, but thundung were given by the fathers to lads “when about ten years old or at initiation.”[9] The animal thundung (elder brother) was to protect the boy, or girl (the girl's thundung was called banung). The names of the creatures, in each case, appear to have been given to their human brothers and sisters; the thundung name descended to a man's sons. “The names are perpetuated” (under male descent) “from generation to generation in the same locality.”[10]
Thus it appears that when a Kurnai wishes to marry he goes to a locality where he finds girls of banung names into which he may lawfully wed. So far he seems, in fact, to practise totemic exogamy; that he has to travel to a particular locality is merely an accident. Though the thundung and banung names are not inherited at birth by the children, they are given by the father when the child is old enough to need them.[11]
On the whole, we seem to see, in tribes where male descent is of old standing, that the exogamous function of the totem becomes obsolete, but a shadow of him, as thundung, retains a sort of “religious” aspect and even an unappreciated influence in marriage law.
In Fiji and Samoa, in Melanesia[12] and British New Guinea, many types of contaminated and variegated survivals of totemism may be studied. In the Torres Islands[13] hero-worship blends with totemic survivals. As in parts of South Africa, where a tribe, not a kin, has a sacred animal, as in Fiji, he seems to be the one survivor of many totems, the totem of some dominant local
- ↑ N.T.S.E.A. p. 284.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 167.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 284.
- ↑ Totemism, i. 317.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 42, 58, 72, 80.
- ↑ Totemism, iii. 42.
- ↑ Except among the Arunta, where, though totems come by change, local groups are usual. See Spencer and Gillen, Central Tribes, p. 9. How this occurs we can only guess. See Folk Lore, vol. xx., No. 2, pp. 229-231. Here it is conjectured that adults of the totem congregate for the purpose of convenience in performing Intichiuma, or magical services for the propagation of the totem as an article of food. For the nature of these rites, common in the central and northern but unknown to the south-eastern tribes, see Central Tribes, pp. 167-212, and Northern Tribes, pp. 283-320. The Arunta totem aggregates are magical local societies.
- ↑ Central Tribes, pp. 8, 9.
- ↑ N.T.S.E.A. p. 146.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 146.
- ↑ Cf. Howitt, ibid. pp. 270-279.
- ↑ Rivers, “Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia,” Journ. Anthrop. Inst. vol. xxxix.
- ↑ Haddon, Cambridge Expedition, vol. v.
