Lang Andrew
Social Origins and Primal Law
Where I can agree with Herr Cunow is on the point that the two 'primary divisions' are the result, probably, of amalgamation, not of bisection for purposes of exogamy. Where we differ is as to the character of the communities that, by alliance and connubium, became 'primary divisions' or 'phratries.' On his system the communities were large, holding great districts. On mine, they were ancient local totem groups, whose members, through exogamy and female descent, were really of various totems. In a note (p. 139) Herr Cunow shows that he might easily have arrived at my conclusion, but, while allowing that alien brides brought the totem names of their own kins into each original totem group, he says that the men of that group still 'belonged to the totem identified with that horde.' This is the result of his belief that reckoning descent in the female line is 'an innovation.' His 'horde' is originally endogamous; then, we know not well why, is exogamous (p. 137). Those who do not believe that men originally lived in 'hordes,' and hold that, through jealousy and other causes, their little primary sets were, or tended to be, exogamous from the first, cannot agree with Herr Cunow. On the other hand, they may incline to accept his theory that, as the Australian terms of relationship indicate often status, not relationship in our sense, they do not help to prove a past of consanguine and communal marriage.
CLASSES AGAIN
To return to the classes, Dr. Durkheim opposes Herr Cunow's theory that they indicated originally degrees of seniority. He takes no notice, however, of Herr Cunow's argument from etymology, and the original meanings of the class names, 'Young' and 'Old.' He argues that, on Herr Cunow's system, each individual would, in lapse of time, move from young to old, and so ought to change his class name, and move into another class. Herr Cunow answers that, if this occurred, the object of the class names, practically to prevent young and old intermarrying, would have been defeated. But, as matters exist, a grandfather may marry a girl who might be his grand-daughter. He is A, his children are B, but their children are A again. He is Kubbi, he marries Ippatha, her children are Buta, their children are Ippatha, and the venerable Kubbi may marry a very juvenile Ippatha.
Possibly the institution grew up among people who did not look so far forward, who 'took short views.' It is certain that, if the object of the classes was to stop marriages between young and old, it is a failure. 'The old men marry young wives at present,' says Mr. Mathews. If so, Herr Cunow may be right. Dr. Durkheim offers a theory. But his theory takes for granted, as we saw, that the two 'phratries,' originally, were only two totem groups, containing within them no members of other totem kins. 'They were not yet subdivided' into other totem kins. But I have tried to show that there was no such 'subdivision' into 'secondary clans' or totem kins. Dr. Durkheim regards these totem kins as colonies split off from the two original totem groups which became phratries.179 My reasons against accepting this position have already been given. This being the case, it is unnecessary to unfold Dr. Durkheim's theory of the origin of the classes. Probably that of Herr Cunow comes nearest to the truth.
Mr. Mathews offers another solution of the problem. 'Phratry' Dilbi, for example, has 'classes' Murri and Kubbi, while the linked phratry, Kupathin, has classes Ippai and Kumbo. 'It is possible that the group Dilbi was divided into (female) Matha and Kubbitha to distinguish the mothers from the daughters, and that the terms Murri and Kubbi were adopted to provide names for the uncles and nephews of their respective generations.' Thus we return to distinction of generations. In any case the 'classes' 'have the effect of preventing consanguineous marriages, by furnishing an easy test of relationship when the tribe has become so numerous or widespread that kinship could not otherwise be well determined.180 Later (p. 168) Mr. Matthews writes, 'The mother of a man's wife, and also his daughters, belong to the same section' ('class'), 'and therefore his marriage with that section is prohibited.' That is, he cannot marry out of his generation above or below, as indicated by 'class' names. 'Neither can he marry into the section to which his mother belongs, although a woman might be found in either case, who was in no way connected with him.' In short, as far as the names rudely indicate the generation above, and the generation below a man, he cannot marry into these classes. But, as old men do marry young wives, the apparent intention of the rules is to some extent frustrated. We can say no more, till we are told what the class names mean in a literal sense. Does nobody inquire into this essential question?
As if to accentuate the problems raised by the change of 'class' names in each generation, Mr. Matthews has discovered that when a man may marry a woman of his own 'phratry,' but out of a set of totems not his own, the totems of his children by her alter as the class names do. 'The children take the totem name,' not of their mother, but of their maternal grandmother. 'One totem is the mother of another totem.'181 This is an unusual phenomenon, and looks like the effort of a desperate ingenuity.
The class system exists among the Arunta, with male descent. One moiety of the southern part of the tribe consists of Panunga and Bulthara, linked classes, calling themselves Nakrakia; the other moiety is of Purula and Kumara, calling themselves Mulganuka. A Bulthara man of the first moiety can only marry a Kumara woman, of the second moiety: a Purula man marries a Panunga woman only. The children of a Bulthara man's union with a Kumara woman take neither the Bulthara nor Kumara name, but are called Panunga, while the children of a Purula man and a Panunga woman are Kumara: of a Panunga man and a Purula woman, Bulthara; of a Kumara man and a Bulthara woman, Purula.
That is to say, the Arunta reckoning in the male line, a man's children do not take his 'class' name but the name of the 'class' linked to his, and forming, with his, one division of the tribe. Further each of these four divisions consists of two moieties, and a Panunga man, though he can marry a Purula woman, must choose her out of the proper moiety of the Purula division. These moieties of each division, among the Northern Arunta, have names; Uknaria, Appungerta, Umbitchana, Ungalla, and the children of each marriage fall under these names.
This restricts a man to only an eighth of the women of his generation, but, on the other hand, among the Arunta, the totem prohibition no longer exists: the totems are not restricted to one or another class, but skip among them, as we have shown in the section on the Arunta. The eight class system, perhaps the four class system, may be regarded as later and conscious modifications of the old phratry and totem rules, which, on my hypothesis, had no conscious moral origin.
CHAPTER VII
THEORIES OF LORD AVEBURY
The opinions of Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) are to be collected from the sixth edition (1902) of his Origin of Civilisation. First published in 1870, this was a pioneer work of great value and importance. Perhaps the vast amount of new information and of new speculation which has accrued since 1870 might almost make us wish that Lord Avebury had found time to re-write his early book. But he 'sees no reason to change in any essential respects the opinions originally expressed,' and merely adds a few references to such recent researches as those of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. Therefore we must not look to Lord Avebury for much new light on the origin of the Australian 'classes' or 'primary divisions,' or 'phratries,' and on their relations to the totem kindreds within them.
LORD AVEBURY ON TOTEMISM
Our author (p. 217) regards Totemism as synonymous with Nature-Worship. He speaks of 'Nature-Worship or Totemism, in which natural objects, trees, lakes, stones, animals, &c. are worshipped.' I am not acquainted (unless it be in early Peru) with any totem kin whose totem is a lake; and totems, very often, are not 'worshipped' at all. Nature-Worship, again, may exist where there is no Totemism, and Totemism where there is no Nature-Worship, indeed where, as among the Arunta, there is, strictly speaking, no worship, as far as we are informed.
Again (p. 351), 'Totemism' (as opposed to fetichism), 'is a deification of classes.' But the term 'deification' implies the possession, by the deifiers, of the conception of Deity; of gods, or of a god. The Australians have totems, but, according to Lord Avebury, have no notion of a god or gods. They 'possess merely certain vague ideas as to the existence of evil spirits, and a general dread of witchcraft' (p. 338). It is not clear, then, how they can 'deify' classes of things, if they have no notion of deity. 'They do not believe in the existence of a true Deity' (with a capital D), says Lord Avebury, without defining what 'a true Deity' is: and, contrary to the evidence of Mr. Howitt and many others, he denies that 'morality is in any way connected with their religion, if such it can be called' (p. 338).
The authority cited is of 1859,182 and is contradicted, for example, by Mr. Howitt (1880-1890), who is not here quoted. It is clear that Australian totems cannot result from the 'deification of classes,' if the Australians have no conception of Deity, whether 'true' or not so true.
Lord Avebury remarks, 'True, myths do not occur among the lowest races' (p. 355), whereas, with many others, myths of the origin of Totemism do notably occur, as we have shown, among perhaps all totemistic races. Perhaps we should read, deleting the comma, 'true myths do not occur among the lowest races,' when the question as to what a 'true myth' is again arises, as in the case of 'a true Deity.' Perhaps we must suppose that by 'a true myth,' or a 'true Deity,' Lord Avebury implies a Deity or a myth in accordance with his own conception of either.
LORD AVEBURY ON THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM
'The worship of animals,' says our author (p. 275), 'is susceptible of a very simple explanation, and perhaps, as I have ventured to suggest,183 may have originated from the practice of naming, first individuals, and then their families, after particular animals. A family, for instance, which was called after the bear, would come to look on that animal first with interest, then with respect, and at length with a sort of awe.' If by 'individuals,' male individuals are intended, this theory is open to the objection that Lord Avebury regards descent in the female as earlier than descent in the male line (p. 164), while 'families' with enduring relations to their founders, can hardly yet have been consciously envisaged, by his theory, at so very rudimentary a stage. Moreover, we try to show that totem names were, originally, group names, and were not derived from the personal names of individuals, an opinion in which Mr. Haddon concurs. Lord Avebury's theory is, apparently, that of Mr. Herbert Spencer, minus the supposed worship of the ghost of the male ancestor and founder of the family.
COMMUNAL MARRIAGE
Lord Avebury assumes, as a working hypothesis, that 'the communal marriage system … represents the primitive and earliest social condition of man…' (p. 102). The objections to this hypothesis we have stated, though, of course, historic certainty cannot be attained.
Lord Avebury, assuming 'communal marriage' as the Primitive stage, holds that it 'was gradually superseded by individual marriage founded on capture, and that this led firstly to exogamy, and then to female infanticide; thus reversing Mr. McLennan's order of sequence' (p. 108). 'Originally no man could appropriate a woman of his own tribe exclusively to himself … without infringing tribal rights, but, on the other hand, if a man captured a woman belonging to another tribe, he thereby acquired an individual and peculiar right to her, and she became his exclusively, no one else having any claim or property in her' (p. 110). (I here italicise 'tribe' and 'tribal.' Lord Avebury intends, I think, a woman of the same 'fire-circle' (p. 188), not a woman of the tribe understood as a large and inevitably not primitive local aggregate of friendly groups of different totems, such as the Arunta, Narrinyeri, Pawnees, and so forth.)
In brief, men would desire to appropriate to themselves some woman, at first from beyond their own 'tribe.' This they could only do by capture. Their individual right in her would be modified by the disgusting license of the bridal night, which Lord Avebury regards as 'compensation' to the other males of the 'tribe' (pp. 138, 557-560). That license I would rather explain as Mr. Crawley does: the topic does not need to be insisted on at length in this place. Lord Avebury, at all events, supposes that a form of capture finally came to be applied, with results in individual marriage, to women of the same 'tribe' (p. 111). But if we have 'complete and conclusive evidence that in large portions of Australia every man had the privilege of a husband over every woman not belonging to his own gens; sharing, of course, these privileges with every other man belonging to the same class or gens as himself' (p. 112), I fail to see that a man gained anything by enduring the trouble and risk of capturing a bride all to himself. Before the capture she had been, it seems, the common spoil of the males of her 'tribe;' when captured she was the common spoil of her captor's 'class or gens' – though a 'class' and a gens are not, I think, identical, but much the reverse.
The rather promiscuous use of terms for different kinds of human communities affected all the pioneer works on primitive society, and, indeed, still perplexes our speculations. Thus Lord Avebury suggests (p. 119) the case of four exogamous neighbouring 'tribes,' with kinship traced through women. 'After a certain time the result would be that each tribe would consist of four septs or 'clans' (totem kins?), 'representing the four original tribes, and hence we should find communities in which each tribe is divided into clans, and a man must always marry a woman of a different clan.'
We do not, perhaps, know any exogamous tribes in our sense of 'tribe;' a Dieri is not obliged to marry out of the Dieri, or an Urabunna out of the Urabunna. By 'tribe' here, it seems probable that Lord Avebury intends not a large local aggregate, but 'a very small community,' for he writes 'we have seen that, under the custom of communal marriage, a child was regarded as related to the tribe, but not specially to any particular father or mother. Such a 'state of things, indeed, is only possible in very small communities.' Now a tribe is a very large community. The members of such communities must have been poor observers if they did not discover the relation between a child and the woman who bore and, for several years, nursed it. But such 'tribes' are not tribes in the sense in which I use the word; they are rather 'groups of the same hearth.' Now it is easy to see how small groups of the same hearth became exogamous, namely through sexual jealousy, and sexual tabu, which would oblige the young males to wander away, or to get wives by capture, practices resulting, under the tabu, in the sacred rule of exogamy. This, however, is not Lord Avebury's theory of the origin of exogamy.
Lord Avebury's theory does not become more distinct when he says, 'In Australia, where the same family names' (totem names?) 'are common almost over the whole continent, no man may marry a woman whose family name' (totem name?) 'is the same as his own' (here the Arunta are an exception) 'and who belongs therefore to the same tribe' (p. 144). But surely, if the 'family names' are 'common almost over the whole continent,' a woman may well have the same 'family name' (say Emu) as a man, and yet need not be of his tribe. An Arunta Emu man and a Dieri Emu woman would have the same 'family name' (totem name), but would not, therefore, 'belong to the same tribe.' It even appears that Lord Avebury regards 'tribe' and 'clan' and 'family' as synonymous terms, for, in proof of the statement that people of the same 'family name' necessarily belong to the same 'tribe,' he quotes my late uncle, Mr. Gideon Scott Lang, 'No man can marry a woman of the same clan, though the parties be no way related according to our ideas.'184 By 'clan' Mr. Lang here meant totem kin, and if Lord Avebury thinks 'clan' equivalent to 'tribe,' a 'tribe' must be a totem kin, which it is not; at least if we understand 'tribe' as a local aggregate of various totem kindreds.
These perplexities are caused by a vague terminology, and occurred naturally in a book of 1870, as they do in Mr. McLennan's own pioneer works. But in 1903 we must try to aim at closer and more exact distinctions and definitions, though we are still retarded and perplexed by the lack of truly scientific nomenclature. As far as I can perceive, Lord Avebury is apt to use 'family,' 'tribe,' 'clan,' and 'gens' as equivalents, while each of them, in various places, appears to be understood as denoting a totem kindred. Thus (p. 181) 'under a system of female descent combined with exogamy a man must marry out of his tribe,' where 'tribe' seems to mean 'totem kin.' Compare p. 187: 'another general rule, in America as elsewhere, is that no one may marry within his own clan or family,' where 'clan or family' like 'tribe' seems to mean 'totem kin.'
This use of terms makes it difficult for me to feel sure that I apprehend Lord Avebury's theory correctly. However I take it to be that, originally,'very small communities' ('tribes') lived in 'communal marriage.' Nobody knew who was the son of what father or of what mother, though, in a very small community one would expect the senior vigorous male or males to prevent son-and-mother, or brother-and-sister unions, by force, out of natural jealousy. This was not done, but some males wanted wives to themselves in private property, and got them by capture, paying 'compensation' in the license of the bridal night. But a man might fall in love with a lass in his own 'tribe' ('very small community') and want to keep her to himself (p. 111). 'Hence would naturally arise a desire on the part of many to extend the right of capture, which originally had reference only to women of a different tribe, and to apply it to all those belonging to their own.' Is 'tribe' still used of 'a very small community,' or is it here employed in the now more prevalent and much wider sense? If not, is the 'capture' now a mere ceremonial formula? Apparently 'tribe,' now and here, does mean (as elsewhere it does not) a large local aggregate, for we are next told of 'the division of Australian tribes into classes or gentes' (though a 'class' is one thing and a gens, if totem kin is meant, is another thing), and of the '1,000 miles of wives,' who, by the theory, are not individual wives of individual men. Such wives, special rights in such wives, were acquired 'originally by right of capture.'
But, when men possessed marital privileges, each 'over every woman not belonging to his own gens; sharing, of course, these privileges with every other man belonging to the same gens or class as himself' (p. 112), where is the individual right acquired by capture? It seems that each man, besides his '1,000 miles of wives' 'has his own individual wife … by right of capture.' Now the Urabunna have no such individual wives, if, like Lord Avebury, we accept the statement of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (p. 63). But the Arunta have such individual wives. Here it seems necessary for Lord Avebury, if he agrees with these authors, to prove that the Arunta, unlike the Urabunna, do demonstrably acquire their individual wives by capture. But no such demonstration is produced. Till proof is offered I am unable to appreciate the force of Lord Avebury's reasoning, while like Mr. Crawley, I doubt whether individual marriage does not exist among the Urabunna, the Piraungaru license not being, I conceive, a true survival of communal marriage, but a peculiar institution.
