Lang Andrew
Social Origins and Primal Law
THEORY THAT SIOUAN GENTES NAMES ARE OF EUROPEAN ORIGIN
To produce, from North America, examples of group names conferred from without, as in the instances of our English villages, may, to some students, seem inadequate evidence. For example an unconvinced critic may say that the nicknames of Mr. Dorsey's 'Siouan gentes' were originally given by white men; the Sioux, Dacota, Asineboin, and other tribes having been long in contact with Europeans. Now it is quite possible that some of the names had this origin, as Mr. Dorsey himself observed. But no critic will go on to urge that the common totemic names which still designate many gentes were imposed by Europeans who came from English villages of 'Mice,' 'Cuckoos,' 'Tater Grubs,' 'Dogs,' and so forth. We might as wisely say that our peasantry borrowed these village names from what they had read about totem names in Cooper's novels. To name individuals, or groups, after animals, is certainly a natural tendency of the mind, whether in savage or civilised society.
If we take the famous Mandan tribe, now reckoning descent in the male line, but with undeniable survivals of descent in the female line, we find that the gentes are:
Here, out of seven gentes, four names are totemic; one is a name of locality, 'High Village,' not a possible name in pristine nomadic society. While there are hundreds of such cases, we cannot reasonably regard the American group nicknames as generally of European origin. Still more does this theory fail us in the case of Melanesia, where contact with Europeans is recent and relatively slight. Among such tribes as the Mandans, and other Siouan peoples, we see Totemism with exogamy and female kinship waning, while kinship, recognised by male descent, plus settled conditions, brings in local names for gentes, and tends to cause the substitution of local names and nicknames for the totem group name. Precisely the same phenomena meet us, as we are to see, in Melanesia.
CHAPTER IX
THE MELANESIAN SYSTEMS
We have, fortunately, an opportunity in Melanesia of studying, as it seems, the Australian marriage system in a state of decay.235 The institutions of Melanesia bear every note of being Australian institutions, decadent, dislocated, contaminated and partially obliterated. Starting from New Guinea, we find a long archipelago sloping down, away from the east side of Australia, towards the Fiji Islands. The archipelago consists mainly, in the order given, of New Ireland, New Britain, the Solomon Group, Banks Island, the New Hebrides, Loyalty Island, and New Caledonia. The inhabitants are a fusion of many oceanic elements, and are much more advanced in culture than the natives of Australia: they have chiefs, whose office tends to be hereditary (and in one place, Saa, is hereditary), in the male line, the father handing on to the son his magical acquirements and properties, and leaving to him his wealth, as far as he may. This is not very far, as, curious to say, descent in the female line is generally prevalent. Wealth is both real and personal: landed property consisting (1) of Town Lots, (2) of Gardens (ἓρκος), (3) of the Waste ('the Bush'). The 'town lots' and gardens pass by inheritance; the possessor being only 'possessor,' not proprietor, and real property passing in the female line, where that line still prevails. The reclaiming of land from the Waste tends, however, to direct property into the male line, which, except in certain districts, is not dominant. Money is divided, on a death, among brothers, nephews – and sons, 'if they can get it' – the money being the native shell currency. The tendency towards the substitution, as heirs, of a man's sons for his sister's sons, is powerful.236
This is a curious and anomalous condition of the family. As regards material advantages (χορηγία, Greek [choreigia]) Melanesian society is greatly in advance of Australian. It is in possession of houses, fruit trees, agricultural allotments, domesticated animals, and a native currency. Thus there is much property to be inherited, and where that is the case, and where the family has a house of its own, the desire of men to leave their goods and dwellings to their sons usually results in the reckoning of descent on the sword side. Yet, in this respect, the Melanesians of many regions are behind the naked, houseless Arunta, and other Australian tribes with male descent.. What influences caused these tribes to depart from the reckoning in the female line, still used among their equally destitute neighbours, the Urabunna, is a most difficult question; indeed the number of distinct grades, in relation to family laws among the Australians, is an enigma. Among the Melanesians, at all events, material advance and accumulation of property have often failed to bring inheritance out of the female into the male line.
Insular conditions are apt to develop divergences from any given type – local varieties – while the mixture of races, and the introduction into one island, or part of it, of the customs of settlers from other islands, produces peculiarities and anomalies in Melanesia. We expect, therefore, to find Melanesian marriage rules rather dislocated and contaminated, and to see that the archaic type is half obliterated. In fact, this is the case, and Totemism, if it exists, survives in fragments and vestiges.
'Where are the totems?' Dr. Codrington asks, and we can only reply that they seem to be half obliterated. 'Nothing is more fundamental than the division of the people into two or more classes, which are exogamous, and in which descent is counted through the women.'237 This answers to the Australian 'primary divisions,' or 'phratries.' But, in Australia, as we showed, these divisions appear to be of totemic origin. If this was so, in Melanesia, the evidence for the fact is much less distinct. In a large region of the Solomon Islands 'there is no division of the people into kindreds, as elsewhere, and descent follows the father… The particular or local causes which have brought this exceptional state of things are unknown.'238
Speaking generally, however, the two primary exogamous classes exist, and to a Melanesian man, all women of his own generation count either as 'sisters' (barred) or as (potential) 'wives.' The appropriation of actual wives to their actual husbands 'has by no means so strong a hold on native society,' as the exogamous class divisions. By many students this license will be considered a survival of 'group marriage.' Prenuptial unchastity is wrong, but a breach of the exogamous rule used to be punished by death. Wife-lending used to be common, as in Central Australia, if the wife and guest were of opposite 'divisions.' Whether the license of certain feasts (as among Australians and Fijians) smiles on breaches of the exogamous law, does not seem quite certain.239
In Banks Island and the North New Hebrides, there are but the two 'primary class divisions.' These have not names as in Australia – if once they had names, the names are lost. We find merely 'divisions' (veve), two 'sides of the house.' Every man knows his own division; all the women in it are tabu to him; all the women of the other division, in the same generation, are potential wives (with certain restrictions in practice).
In Merlav, one of the Banks Islands, there are 'families within the kin' (answering to gentes– totem kins – in Australia). These families have local names, as a rule: one has its name from the Octopus, but eats it freely.
It is not inconceivable that here we have broken down and obliterated Totemism, among a settled agricultural people, probably dwelling, as a rule, in close contiguity.
In Florida, and adjacent parts of the Solomon Islands, not merely two, but six 'kema' or exogamous divisions ('phratries?') exist. Two of the six have names derived from localities, two have animal names, Eagle and Crab: two kema came in from abroad. All this points to contamination, and rearrangement, under new circumstances. Each kema in Florida has one or more buto, the clam, pig, pigeon, and so on, not to be eaten by members of the kema. This looks like the 'totemic subdivisions' (that is, the totem groups within the 'phratries') of the Australians. Again, these butos within each kema, animals and plants not to be eaten, are exactly like the survivals of Totemism in the names of the Siouan totem kins with male descent, 'Do not eat small Birds,' 'Do not eat Dogs,' 'Do not eat Buffalo,' and so forth. The buto of each kin within the Melanesian exogamous kemas, then, seems to me to be the old totem of the kin, now relegated to a position more obscure, in the changes of society, and, with one exception, not giving its name and tabu to the kema. Only in one case is the animal which is the buto, also the animal which gives its name to the kema. The Kakau kema may not eat Kakau – the crab. The Manukuma (eagle) kema may eat the eagle: one fancies that they find it tough. In the same way the Narrinyeri and other tribes in Australia permit their totem kins to eat their totems. Members of each kema are apt to speak of their butos (which they may not eat) as their ancestors, as in Totemism, but this is a mere mythical explanation of why they may not eat the buto. With half a dozen other myths, it is used by totemists to explain why they may not eat their totems.
Dr. Codrington, on the other hand, writes, 'the buto of each kema is probably comparatively recent in Florida, it has been introduced at Bugotu within the memory of living men.'240 Dr. Codrington, as we have already seen, inclines to the theory which derives totems originally from individuals. He cites Mr. Sleigh, of Lifu (mentioned by us before), who writes, 'When a father was about to die, surrounded by members of his family, he might say what animal he will be, say a butterfly or some kind of bird. That creature would be sacred to his family, who would not injure or kill it; on seeing or falling in with such a creature the person would say, "That is kaka" (papa), and would, if possible, offer him a young cocoa-nut. But they did not thus adopt the name of a tribe.'241
We need not repeat the objections to all such theories of the derivation of pristine totem group names from individuals, The butos, ancestors, not to be eaten, have all the air of archaic totems, now reduced to a lower plane, and, save in one case out of six, not giving the name to a kema, in Florida. Thus the butos of each kema would be, originally, totemic, but immigrations, settled conditions, the tendency to male descent, and the introduction of local or place names for some groups, of nicknames for others, broke down the old totemic nomenclature, leaving only the Kakau, or crabs, true to their colours and to their totem and totem name, while the other kemas got local names or nicknames – the Hongokikki being named from the pastime of Cat's Cradle – clearly a nickname. Apparently the pigeon is their buto. How did these conditions arise?
Say that there were once four exogamous totem groups in Ettrickdale – Grouse, Deer, Hares, Partridges. Say that there came in two alien groups, Trout and Plover. Of these two, one might come to be called Quoits, from their skill in that game. – Two of the original four might get local names, from their places of residence, say Singlee and Tushielaw. One might keep its old totem, Grouse, and its old totem name, abstaining from grouse. One might get a new name, Roe Deer, but all, under the names of Tushielaw, Singlee, Quoits, Roe Deer, and Grouse (with another not given), would retain their old totems as butos, ancestral in some way, and not to be eaten. But the new, not the totemic, names would now mark off the exogamous kemas. Something of this kind must have occurred in Florida, under new social conditions, and the stress of immigrants. But Dr. Codrington gives a case in which the banana was tabued, just before his death, by 'a man of much influence who said that he would be in the banana.'242
This origin of Totemism (namely, in animism, a man of influence tabuing, and bequeathing to his descendants for ever, the animal or plant that is to be his soul vehicle) is approved of, as the original cause of Totemism, by Dr. Wilken. But could it arise in a much lower state of society, wherein 'men of much influence' are rare, and are readily forgotten? Now in Melanesia, generally, a man's fame, however great, perishes with those who remember him in his life.243 Again, this sort of tabuing the banana affected 'all the people' of the isle Ulawa, and so could not be the base of an exogamous prohibition, unless all brides were to be brought in from foreign islands. If the prohibition was confined to known descendants of the banana man, then we have the patriarchal family, founded by a known ancestor, and exogamous. Now, in Ulawa, descent is reckoned in the male line, and there are no exogamous divisions.244 'This is an exceptional state of things,' says Dr. Codrington (p. 22), yet he thinks it (p. 32) 'in all probability' —plus the tabuing of an object by a dying patriarch – the cause of the buto prohibition in the kemas of Florida. Thus a solitary case from an isle without exogamous divisions ('the only restriction on marriage is nearness in blood'), and with male descent, is supposed by Dr. Codrington to cause the buto prohibition in an island with exogamous divisions, and with female descent.245
His theory is manifestly inconsistent with his facts – moreover, it involves the existence of the patriarchal system at the time when totems first arose.
On the whole, this reasoning does not convince, but, if Dr. Codrington is right, Melanesian institutions are shattered, dislocated, contaminated, and worn down to a remarkable degree. Yet, behind them, where the two, or the six exogamous divisions prevail, with descent counted in the female line, we can scarcely help recognising a basis of Australian customary law, with obsolescence of the totem, slowly tending towards inheritance through the father. 'A chief's sons are none of them of his own kin; and, as will be shown, he passes on what he can of his property and authority to them.'246 In spite of the 'generation names,' 'father,' 'brothers and sisters,' 'children,' the real distinctions of own father, cousin, and so forth, are understood, and expressed, as they usually are, everywhere.247
Thus Melanesia shows us some of the ways out from Totemism, exogamy, and descent in the female line. It also shows us, what Australia does not, ghost worship: most prominently in Saa, where, with descent in the male line, and hereditary chiefship, eleven generations of ancestors are remembered, 'by the invocation of their successive names in sacrifices.'248 This is a solitary case of such genealogical knowledge among Melanesians, as distinct from Polynesians. It is made possible by the sacrifices to the ancestors. Now, in Australia, there are no such sacrifices. Without them ancestors among low savages cannot be remembered, and could not hand down, as an hereditary totem, the animal or other object which is their 'soul-box,' or the vehicle of the ancestral soul after death. There appears to myself to exist, in Melanesia, a notable tendency to adore, nay, almost to deify, a dead man, as a tindalo. Dr. Codrington cites, from Bishop Selwyn, a case in which a renowned brave man was slain in action. A house, or shrine, was built over his head, and he was canonised, or made a tindalo.
His claims to sanctity were automatically certified by canoe tilting, in principle like our table tilting. The men in the canoe cease paddling, 'in a quiet place,' and, when the canoe begins to tilt, they call over a roll of names of tindalos (human ghosts). At the name of the dead warrior,'the canoe shook again.' A successful raid followed, a new shrine was built for the warrior, and fish and food were sacrificed to him. By this means a great man's memory is, now and then, contrary to general custom, kept green in this region of Melanesia. Occasionally he seems to be on the way towards godship, as a departmental deity, perhaps as god of war.249 Pigs are common victims, now, in sacrifice. We do not hear of any 'totem sacrifice,' if ever such a thing anywhere existed. In the case of a tindalo called Manoga, deification seems close at hand. His 'dwelling is the light of setting suns,' or of the dawn: or in high heaven, or in the Pleiades, or Orion's belt. It is a remarkable circumstance that this discarnate spirit is the tindalo or saint of a kema, or exogamous division, one of the six of Florida, and all of the six possess their tindalo, a ghost patron in receipt of sacrifice, as well as their buto, or animal not to be eaten.250
Still more remarkable it is that, in certain Melanesian isles of the New Britain group, the two exogamous divisions are neither anonymous, nor totemic, nor of local names, nor bear nicknames, but are named after the two opposing powers of Dualism, the God and Devil of savage theology. Of these Te Kabinana is 'the founder, creator, or inventor of all good and useful things, usages, and institutions.' On the other hand To Kovuvura is the Epimetheus of this savage Prometheus: Te Kabinana created good land: To Kovuvura created bad land, mountains and everything clumsy and ill formed. These powers captain the two exogamous divisions, an office assumed by two totems in the neighbouring Duke of York group.251 Nothing can prove more clearly the blending of different stages of thought in Melanesia.
On the whole, Totemism is breaking down, and something very like Polytheism, of an animistic type, is beginning to emerge, in Melanesia. There is a tindalo of the sea, of war, and of gardens, – Poseidon, Ares, and Priapus in the making. Sacrifice and prayer exist, neither is found (perhaps with an exception as regards prayers for the souls of the dead) in Australia. On the other hand, only the smallest of small change for the Australian conception of such makers and judges as Baiame is noted in Melanesia, mainly in the myths of and prayers to Qat, and myths of a creative unworshipped female being. These are Vuis, not ghosts; they are spirits never incarnate, unlike the tindalos.252 Qat appears to hover between the estate of a lowly creative being, born of a rock, and that of a culture hero, and rather resembles the Zulu Unkulunkulu. Thus Melanesia seems, in society and beliefs, to show an advance from Totemism, nomadic life, and from an unworshipped female creative being, towards Animism and Polytheism, and descent reckoned in the male line: agricultural and settled existence, with mixture of race, and foreign contamination of custom, being marked agents in the developement.
As tindalos (human ghosts, in one case the patron of a kema) thrive to Gods' estate, while butos remain ancestral plants or animals, not to be eaten, it would be a natural step to imagine later that the family God (tindalo) of ghost origin, incarnates himself in the buto, the sacred animal of the kin. That would be an explanatory myth. If accepted, it would produce the Samoan and Fijian belief, that the animals and plants not to be eaten by the kindreds (old totems) are incarnations of gods. Thus the Florida beliefs and customs are a stage between those of Australia and those of Samoa and Fiji.
HOW THE ORIGIN OF TOTEM NAMES WAS FORGOTTEN
It appears, at least to the mind of the maker of an hypothesis, that the names of Melanesian kemas, as well as the new names of American 'gentes' (totem kins with male descent), indicate the probability that, from the first – as among our villagers – group names were given (in the majority of cases) from without, as in many American and some Melanesian cases they certainly are. We see that it is so: no group would call itself 'Cat's Cradle Players,' or 'Eaters of Hide-scrapings,' or 'Bone Pickers,' as in Florida; among the Sioux; and in Western England. We cannot possibly expect to find any groups in the process of becoming totemic and of having plant and animal names given to them from without. But we certainly do observe that names, or nicknames, relatively recent, are given to savage groups, on their way out of Totemism – the totem name often still lingering on in America, like the butos in Melanesia – and that these names, or nicknames, are given from without. Nearer to demonstration that the totem names were given in the same way (as 'Whig' and 'Tory' were given), we cannot expect to come.
It may be said that my conjecture is only a form of that suggested (if I understand him) by Mr. Herbert Spencer. An individual had an animal name or nickname. He died: his ghost was revered by his old name, say Bear. He was forgotten, and his descendants, who kept up his worship, came to think that they were descended from a real bear, and were akin to bears. I need not once more reiterate the objections to this theory, but, like my own suggestion, it involves forgetfulness of a fact, – here the fact that 'Bear' was a human ancestor. Against the chances of this forgetfulness was the circumstance that individuals were constantly being named Bear, Wolf, Eagle, and so on, in daily experience, usually with a qualifying epithet, 'Sitting Bull,' 'Howling Wolf,' and so forth. These facts might have prevented Mr. Spencer's savages from forgetting that the ancestral Bear was a Bear of human kind, like themselves and their contemporaries.
In my hypothesis, forgetfulness, on the other hand, might readily occur. When all the group names in each area had become organised and stereotyped, there would necessarily be no new giving of group names to remind the savages how these titles came into existence. On the other hand the myth-making stage, as to kinship with the name-giving plants and animals, would set in, and then would come reverent behaviour towards these creatures, as if they were kinsmen and friends. Respect for the totem, in each case, will clinch the tendency to group exogamy. I have supposed, for the reasons given, that there was already a tendency against marriage within the group. That tendency must have been confirmed by the totem tabu against making any use of any member of the totem kin, and a woman of the totem would be exempted from marital use by her male fellow-totemists. The totem belief would add a supernormal sanction to the exogamous tendency.
