Lang Andrew
The Secret of the Totem
Pirrauru is a modification of marriage (Tippa Malku), Tippa Malku is not a modification of "group marriage." If it were, a Tippa Malku husband, "specialising" (as Mr. Howitt says) a woman to himself, would need to ask the leave of his fellows, who are Noa to his intended fiancée.57 The reverse is the case. A man cannot take his Pirrauru woman away from her Tippa Malku husband "unless by his consent, excepting at certain ceremonial times" – feasts, in fact, of license. Pirrauru secures the domestic peace, more or less, of the seniors, by providing the young men (who otherwise would be wifeless and desperate) with legalised lemans. By giving these Pirrauru "in commendation" to the young men, older men increase their property and social influence. What do the Tippa Malku husbands say to this arrangement?
As for "group" marriage, there is nothing of the kind; no group marries another group, the Pirrauru literally heap hot coals on each other if they suspect that their mate is taking another of the "group" as Pirrauru. The jealous, at feasts of license, are strangled (Nulina). The Rev. Otto Siebert, a missionary among the Dieri, praises Pirrauru for "its earnestness in regard to morality." One does not quite see that hiring out one's paramours, who are other men's wives, to a third set of men is earnestly moral, or that jealousy, checked by strangling in public, by hot coals in private, is edifying, but Pirrauru is not "group marriage." No pre-existing group is involved. Pirrauru may (if they like jealousy and hot coals) live together in a group, or the men and women may often live far remote from each other, and meet only at bean-feasts.
You may call Pirrauru a form of "marriage," if you like, but, as a later modification of a prior Tippa Malku wedlock, it cannot be cited as a proof of a yet more pristine status-marriage of all male to all female intermarriageable persons, which supposed state of affairs is called "group marriage."58
If Pirrauru were primitive, it might be looked for among these southern and eastern tribes which, with the pristine social organisation of the Urabunna and their congeners, lack the more recent institutions of circumcision, subincision, totemic magic, possess the All Father belief, but not the belief in prehuman predecessors, or, at least, in their constant reincarnation. (This last is not a Dieri belief.) But among these primitive south-east tribes, Pirrauru is no more found than subincision. Nor is it found among the Arunta and the northern tribes. It is an isolated "sport" among the Dieri, Urabunna, and their congeners. Being thus isolated, Pirrauru cannot claim to be a necessary step in evolution from "group marriage" to "individual marriage." It may, however, though the point is uncertain, prevail, or have prevailed, "among all the tribes between Port Lincoln and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla," that is, wherever the Dieri and Urabunna phratry names, Matteri and Kararu, exist.59 Having identical phratry names (or one phratry name identical, as among the Kunandaburi), whether by borrowing or by original community of language and institutions: all these tribes southward to the sea from Lake Eyre may possess, or may have possessed, Pirrauru.
Among the most pristine of all tribes, in the south by east, however, Pirrauru is not found. When we reach the Wiimbaio, the Geawe-gal, the Kuinmarbura, the Wakelbura, and the Narrang-ga, we find no Pirrauru. But Mr. Howitt notes other practices which are taken by him to be mere rudimentary survivals of "group marriage." They are (i.) exchange of wives at feasts of marriage, or in view of impending misfortune, as when shipwrecked mariners break into the stores, and are "working at the rum and the gin." These are feasts of license, not survivals of "group marriage" nor of Pirrauru. (ii.) The jus primae noctis, enjoyed by men of the bridegroom's totem. This is not marriage at all, nor is it a survival of Pirrauru. (iii.) Very rare "saturnalia," "almost promiscuous." This is neither "group marriage" (being almost promiscuous and very rare) nor Pirrauru. (iv.) Seven brothers have one wife. This is adelphic polyandry, Mr. Howitt calls it "group marriage." (v.) "A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by the clan." If this is "group marriage" (there is no "group" concerned) there was group marriage in ancient Rome.60 This, I think, is all that Mr. Howitt has to show for "group marriage" and Pirrauru among the tribes most retentive of primitive usages.
The manner in which Tippa Malku betrothals are arranged deserves attention. They who "give this woman away," and they who give away her bride-groom also, are the brothers of the mothers of the pair, or the mothers themselves may arrange the matter.61
Mr. Howitt, on this point, observes that, if the past can be judged of by the present, "I should say that the practice of betrothal, which is universal in Australia, must have produced a feeling of individual proprietary right over the women so promised." Manifestly Mr. Howitt is putting the plough before the oxen. It is because certain kinsfolk have an acknowledged "proprietary right" over the woman that they can betroth her to a man: it is not because they can betroth her to a man that they have "a feeling of individual proprietary right over her." I give my coppers away to a crossing-sweeper, or exchange them for commodities, because I have an individual proprietary right over these coins. I have not acquired the feeling of individual proprietary right over the pence by dint of observing that I do give them away or buy things with them.
The proprietary rights of mothers, maternal uncles, or any other kinsfolk over girls must, of course, have been existing and generally acknowledged before these kinsfolk could exercise the said rights of giving away. But, in a promiscuous horde, before marriage existed, how could anybody know what persons had proprietary rights over what other persons?62
Mr. Howitt here adds that the "practice of betrothal …" (or perhaps he means that "the feeling of individual proprietary right"?) "when accentuated by the Tippa Malku marriage, must also tend to overthrow the Pirrauru marriage." Of course we see, on the other hand, and have proved, that if there were no Tippa Malku marriage there could be no Pirrauru to overthrow.
As to the Pirrauru or Piraungaru custom, moreover, Mr. Howitt has himself candidly observed that, on his theory, it "ought rather to have been perpetuated than abandoned" (so it is abandoned) "under conditions of environment" (such as more abundant food) "which permitted the Pirrauru group to remain together on one spot, instead of being compelled by the exigencies of existence to separate into lesser groups having the Noa" (or regular) "marriage."63 So Pirrauru don't live in "groups"!
As a fact, the more that supplies, in some regions, as on the south coast, permit relatively large groups to coexist, the less is their marital license; while, on the other hand, the less favourable the conditions of supply (as in the Barkinji region), the less do we hear of Pirrauru, or anything of the kind, except among tribes of the Kiraru and Matteri phratries. For these reasons, Pirrauru unions appear to mark an isolated moment in culture, not to be a survival of universal pristine promiscuity. They are almost always associated, in their inception, with seasons of frolic and lust, and with large assemblages, rather than with the usual course of everyday existence.
For the reasons here stated, it does not seem that Australian institutions yield any evidence for primitive promiscuity.
CHAPTER IV
THE ARUNTA ANOMALY
How could man, if promiscuous, cease to be so? – Opinion of Mr. Howitt – Ethical training in groups very small, by reason of economic conditions – Likes and dislikes – Love and jealousy – Distinctions and restrictions – Origin of restrictions not explained by Professor Spencer – His account of the Arunta – Among them the totem does not regulate marriage, is not exogamous, denotes a magical society – Causes of this unique state of things – Male descent: doctrine of reincarnation, belief in spirit-haunted stone churinga nanja– Mr. Spencer thinks Arunta totemism pristine – This opinion contested – How Arunta totemism ceased to regulate marriage – Result of isolated belief in churinga nanja– Contradictory Arunta myths – Arunta totemism impossible in tribes with female descent – Case of the Urabunna – Origin of churinga nanja belief – Sacred stone objects in New South Wales – Present Arunta belief perhaps based on myths explanatory of stone amulets of unknown meaning – Proof that the more northern tribes never held the Arunta belief in churinga nanja– Traces of Arunta ideas among the Euahlayi – Possible traces of a belief in a sky-dwelling being among southern Arunta – Mr. Gillen's "great Ulthaana of the heavens" – How arose the magic-working animal-named Arunta societies? – Not found in the south-east – Mr. Spencer's theory that they do survive – Criticism of his evidence – Recapitulation – Arunta totemism not primitive but modified.
Next we have to ask how, granting the hypothesis of the promiscuous horde, man ceased to be promiscuous. It will be seen that, on a theory of Mr. Howitt's, man was, in fact, far on the way of ceasing to be promiscuous or a "horde's man," before he introduced the moral reform of bisecting his horde into phratries, for the purpose of preventing brother with sister marriages. Till unions were permanent, and kin recognised, things impossible in a state of promiscuity, nobody could dream of forbidding brother and sister marriage, because nobody could know who was brother or sister to whom. Now, Mr. Howitt does indicate a way in which man might cease to be promiscuous, before any sage invented the system of exogamous phratries.
He writes,64 "I start … from the assumption that there was once an undivided commune … I do not desire to be understood as maintaining that it implies necessarily the assumption of complete communism between the sexes. Assuming that the former physical conditions of the Australian continent were much as they are now, complete communism always existing would, I think, be an impossibility. The character of the country, the necessity of hunting for food, and of removing from one spot to another in search of game and of vegetable food, would necessarily cause any undivided commune, when it assumed dimensions of more than that of a few members, to break up, under the necessities of existence, into two or more communes of similar constitution to itself. In addition to this it has become evident to me, after a long acquaintance with the Australian savage, that, in the past as now, individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, although there was the admitted common right between certain groups of the commune, in practice these rights would either not be exercised by reason of various causes, or would remain in abeyance, so far as the separated but allied undivided communes were concerned, until on great ceremonial occasions, or where certain periodical gatherings for food purposes reunited temporarily all the segments of the original community. In short, so far as the evidence goes at present, I am inclined to regard the probable condition of the undivided commune as being well represented now by what occurs when on certain occasions the modified divided communes reunite."65
What occurs in these festive assemblies among certain central and northern tribes, as we have seen, is a legalised and restricted change of wives all round, with disregard, in some cases, of some of the tribal rules against incest. On Mr. Howitt's theory the undivided communal horde must always have been, as I have urged, dividing itself, owing to lack of supplies. It would be a very small group, continually broken up, and intercourse of the sexes even in that group, must have been restrained by jealousy, based on the asserted existence of individual "likes" and "dislikes." These restrictions, again, must have led to some idea that the man usually associated with, and responsible for feeding, and protecting, and correcting the woman and her children, was just the man who "liked" her, the man whom she "liked," and the man who "disliked" other men if they wooed her.
But that state of things is not an undivided communal horde at all! It is much more akin to the state of things in which I take marriage rules to have arisen.
We may suppose, then, that early moral distinctions and restrictions grew up among the practically "family" groups of everyday life, as described by Mr. Howitt, and we need not discuss again the question whether, at this very early period, there existed a community exactly like the local tribe of to-day in every respect – except that marriage was utterly unregulated, till an inspired medicine man promulgated the law of exogamy, his own invention.
Mr. Howitt began his long and invaluable studies of these problems as a disciple of Mr. Lewis Morgan. That scholar was a warm partisan of the primeval horde, of group marriage, and (at times) of a reformatory movement. These ideas, first admitted to Mr. Howitt's mind, have remained with him, but he has seen clearly that the whole theory needed at least that essential modification which his practical knowledge of savage life has enabled him to make. He does not seem to me to hold that the promiscuous horde suddenly, for no reason, reformed itself: his reformers had previous ethical training in a state of daily life which is not that of the hypothetical horde. But he still clings to the horde, tiny as it must have been, as the source of a tradition of a brief-lived period of promiscuity. This faith is but the "after-image" left in his mental processes by the glow of Mr. Morgan's theory, but the faith is confirmed by his view of the terms of relationship, and of the Piraungaru, Pirrauru, and similar customs. We have shown, in the last chapter, that the terms and the customs are not necessarily proofs of promiscuity in the past, but may be otherwise interpreted with logical consistency, and in conformity with human nature.
The statement of Mr. Howitt shows how the communal horde of the hypothesis might come to see that it needed moral reformation. In daily life, by Mr. Howitt's theory, it had practically ceased to be a communal horde before the medicine man was inspired to reform it. The hypothesis of Professor Baldwin Spencer resembles that of Mr. Howitt, but, unlike his (as it used to stand), accounts for the existence of animal-named sets of people within the phratries. Mr. Spencer, starting from the present social condition of the Arunta "nation" or group of tribes (Arunta, Kaitish, Ilpirra, Unmatjera), supposes that these tribes retain pristine traits, once universal, but now confined to them. The peculiar pristine traits, by the theory, are (1) the existence of animal-named local societies for magical purposes. The members of each local group worked magic for their name-giving animal or plant, but any one might marry a woman of his own group name, Eagle Hawk, Cockatoo, and the like, while these names were not inherited, either from father or mother, and did not denote a bond of kinship. Mr. Spencer, then, supposes the horde to have been composed of such magical societies, at a very remote date, before sexual relations were regulated by any law. Later, in some fashion, and for some reason which Mr. Spencer does not profess to explain, "there was felt the need of some form of organisation, and this gradually resulted in the development of exogamous groups."66 These "exogamous groups," among the Arunta, are now the four or eight "matrimonial classes," as among other tribes of northern Australia. These tribes, as a rule, have phratries, but the Arunta have lost even the phratry names.
Mr. Spencer's theory thus explains the existence of animal-named groups – as co-operative magical societies, for breeding the animals or plants – but does not explain how exogamy arose, or why, everywhere, except among the Arunta, all the animal or plant named sets of people are kinships, and are exogamous, while they are neither the one or the other among the Arunta. Either the Arunta groups have once been exogamous totem kinships, and have ceased to be so, becoming magical societies; or such animal-named sets of people have, everywhere, first been magical societies, and later become exogamous totem kinships. Mr. Spencer holds the latter view, we hold the former, believing that the Arunta have once been in the universal state of totemic exogamy, and that, by a perfectly intelligible process, their animal-named groups have become magical societies, no longer exogamous kinships. We can show how the old exogamous totem kinship, among the Arunta, became a magical society, not regulating sexual relations; but we cannot imagine how all totemic mankind, if they began with magical societies in an unregulated horde, should have everywhere, except among the Arunta, conspired to convert these magical societies into kinships with exogamy. If the social organisation of the Arunta were peculiarly primitive, if their beliefs and ceremonials were of the most archaic type, there might be some ground for Mr. Spencer's opinion. But Mr. Hartland justly says that all the beliefs and institutions of the Arunta "point in the same direction, namely, that the Arunta are the most advanced and not the most primitive of the Central Australian tribes."67
The Arunta, a tribe so advanced that it has forgotten its phratry names, has male kinship, eight matrimonial classes, and local totem groups, with Headmen hereditary in the male line, and so cannot possibly be called "primitive," as regards organisation. If, then, the tribe possesses a peculiar institution, contravening what is universally practised, the natural inference is that the Arunta institution, being absolutely isolated and unique, as far as its non-exogamy goes, in an advanced tribe, is a local freak or "sport," like many others which exist. This inference seems to be corroborated when we discover, as we do at a glance, the peculiar conditions without which the Arunta organisation is physically impossible. These essential and indispensable conditions are admitted by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen to be: —
1. Male reckoning of descent – which is found in very many tribes where totems are exogamous – as everywhere.
2. Local totem groups, which are a result of male reckoning of descent. These also are found in many other tribes where, as everywhere, totems are exogamous.
3. The belief that the spirits of the primal ancestors of the "Dream-Time" (Alcheringa) – creatures evolved out of various animal shapes into human form – are constantly reincarnated in new-born children. This belief is found in all the northern tribes with male descent; and among the Urabunna, who have female descent – but among all these tribes totems are exogamous, as everywhere.
4. The Arunta and Kaitish, with two or three minor neighbouring tribes, believe that spirits desiring incarnation, all of one totem in each case, reside "at certain definite spots." So do the Urabunna believe, but at each of these spots, in Urabunna land, there may be spirits of several different totems.68 Among the Urabunna, as everywhere, totems are exogamous. None of these four conditions, nor all of them, can produce the Arunta totemic non-exogamy.
Finally (5) the Arunta and Kaitish, and they alone, believe not only that the spirits desiring reincarnation reside at certain definite spots, and not only that the spirits there are, in each case, all of one totem (which is essential), but also that these spirits are most closely associated with objects of stone, inscribed with archaic markings (churinga nanja), which the spirits have dropped in these places – the scenes where the ancestors died (Oknanikilla). These stone objects, and this belief in their connection with ancestral spirits, are found in the Arunta region alone, and are the determining cause, or inseparable accident at least, of the non-exogamy of Arunta totemism, as will be fully explained later.
Not one of these five conditions is reported by Mr. Howitt among the primitive south-eastern tribes, and the fifth is found only in Aruntadom. Yet Mr. Spencer regards as the earliest form of totemism extant that Arunta form, which requires four conditions, not found in the tribes of primitive organisation, and a fifth, which is peculiar to the Arunta "nation" alone.
That the Arunta tribe, whether shut off from all others or not (as a matter of fact it is not), should alone (while advanced in all respects, including marriage and ceremonials) have retained a belief which, though called primitive, is unknown among primitive tribes, seems a singularly paradoxical hypothesis. Meanwhile the cause of the Arunta peculiarity – non-exogamous totems – is recognised by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, who also declare that the cause is isolated. They say "it is the idea of spirit individuals associated with churinga" (manufactured objects of stone), "and resident in certain definite spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta tribe."69
Again, they inform us that the churinga belief, and the existence of stone churinga, are things isolated. "In the Worgaia tribe, which inhabits the country to the north-east of the Kaitish" (neighbours of the Arunta), "we meet, so far as we have been able to discover, with the last traces of the churinga– that is, of the churinga with its meaning and significance, as known to us in the true central tribes, as associated with the spirits of Alcheringa ancestors" (mythical beings, supposed to be constantly reincarnated).70 Thus, "the present totemic system of the Arunta tribe," – in which, contrary to universal rule, persons of the same totem may inter-marry – reposes on a belief associated with certain manufactured articles of stone, and neither the belief nor the stone objects are discovered beyond a certain limited region. It is proper to add that the regretted Mr. David Carnegie found, at Family Wells, in the desert of Central Australia, two stone objects, one plain, the other rudely marked with concentric circles, which resemble churinga nanja. He mentions two others found and thrown away by Colonel Warburton. The meaning or use of these objects was not ascertained.71
We differ from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they think that this peculiar and isolated belief, held by four or five tribes of confessedly advanced social organisation and ceremonials (a belief only possible under advanced social organisation), is the pristine form of totemism, out of which all totemists, however primitive, have found their way except the Arunta "nation" alone. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write: "… the only conclusion which it seems possible to arrive at is that in the more northern tribes" (which have no churinga nanja, no stone churinga), "the churinga represent the surviving relics of a time when the beliefs among those tribes were similar to those which now exist among the Arunta. It is more easy to imagine a change which shall lead from the present Arunta or Kaitish belief to that which exists among the Warramunga, than it is to imagine one which shall lead from the Warramunga to the Arunta."72 Now among the Warramunga, as everywhere, the division of the totems between the two (exogamous) moieties is complete, "and, with very few exceptions indeed, the children follow the father."73 (These exceptions are not explained.) Among the Kaitish the same totems occur among both exogamous moieties, so persons of the same totem can intermarry, but "it is a very rare thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself."74
The obvious conclusion is the reverse of that which our authors think "alone possible." The Kaitish have adopted the Arunta churinga nanja usage which introduces the same totem into both exogamous moieties, but, unlike the Arunta, they have not yet discarded the old universal rule, "No marriage within the totem." It is not absolutely forbidden, but it scarcely ever occurs. The Kaitish, as regards exogamy and religion, are a link between the primitive south-eastern tribes and the Arunta.
We go on to show in detail how Arunta totems alone ceased to be exogamous, and to demonstrate that the more northern tribes have never been, and never can have been, in the present Arunta condition. Among the Arunta, in the classes, none of them his own, into which alone a man may marry, there are plenty of women of his own totem. Thus, in marrying a woman of his totem, but not of his set of classes, a man does not break the law of Arunta exogamy. Now how does it happen that a totem may be in both sets of exogamous classes among the Arunta alone of mankind? Was this always the case from the beginning?
It is, naturally, our opinion that among the Arunta, as everywhere else, matters were originally, or not much later, so arranged that the same totem never appeared in both phratries, or, afterwards, when phratries were lost, in both opposed sets of two or four exogamous matrimonial classes. The only objection to this theory is that the Arunta themselves believe it, and mention the circumstance in their myths. These myths cannot be historical reminiscences of the "Dream-Time," which never existed. But even a myth may deviate into truth, especially as the Arunta must know that in other tribes the same totem never occurs in both phratries, and are clever enough to see that their method needs explanation as being an exception to general rule; and that, even now, "the great majority of any one totem belong to one moiety of the tribe." So they say that originally all Witchetty Grubs, for instance, were in the Bulthara-Panunga moiety (as most Grubs still are to this day), while all Emus were in the opposite exogamous moiety (Purula-Kumura). But, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "owing to the system according to which totem names are" (now) "acquired, it is always possible for a man to be, say, a Purula or a Kumura, and yet a Witchetty; or, on the other hand, a Bulthara or a Panunga, and yet an Emu."75 The present system of acquiring totem names has transferred the totems into both exogamous moieties, and so has made it possible to marry within the totem name.
This suggests that, in native opinion or conjecture, Arunta totems, like all others, were once exogamous; no totem ever occurred originally in both exogamous moieties. It also indicates that, in the opinion of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, they only ceased to be exogamous when the present method of acquiring totem names, an unique method, was introduced. Happily, to prove the historical worthlessness of Arunta legendary myth, the tribe has a contradictory legend. The same totem, according to this fable, occurred in both exogamous moieties, even in the mythic Dream-Time (Alcheringa); by this fable the natives explain (what needs explaining) how the same totem does occur in both exogamous moieties to-day, and so is not exogamous.76
This is nonsense, just as the other contradictory myth was conjecture. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have themselves explained why the same totem may now occur in both moieties, and so be non-exogamous. The unique phenomenon is due to the actual and unique method of acquiring totem names.77 Thus the modern method is not primitive. These passages are very instructive.
The Arunta have been so long in the relatively advanced state of local totemism that their myths do not look behind it. A group, whether stationary or migratory, in the myths of the Dream-Time (the Alcheringa) always consists of persons of the same totem, with occasional visitors of other totems. The myths, we repeat, reflect the present state of local totem groups back on the past.
The myths allege (here the isolated superstition comes in) that the mythical ancestors of the Alcheringa died, or "went into the ground" at certain now haunted spots, marked by rocks or trees, which may be called "mortuary local totem-centres" – in native speech, Oknanikilla78 Trees or rocks arose to mark the spot where the ancestors, all of one totem in each case, went into the ground. These trees or rocks are called Nanja. Thereabouts the dying ancestors deposited possessions peculiar to Aruntadom, their stone amulets, or churinga nanja, with what are now read as totemic incised marks. Their spirits, all of one totem in each case, haunt the Nanja rock or tree, and are especially attached to these stone amulets,79 called churinga nanja. The spirits discarnate await a chance of entering into women, and being reborn. When a child comes to the birth, the mother, whatever her own or her husband's totem may be, names the spot where she supposes that she conceived the child, and the child's Nanja tree or rock is that in the Oknanikilla, or mortuary local totem-centre nearest to the place where the child was conceived. Its male kin hunt for the churinga, or stone amulet, there deposited by the dying Alcheringa ancestor; if they find it, it becomes the child's churinga, for he is merely the ancestor spirit reborn. He (or she) "comes into his own"; his Nanja tree or rock, his churinga nanja, and his original totem, which may be, and often is, neither that of his father or mother.
Thus inheriting his own old Nanja tree and churinga, and totem, the child is not necessarily of his father's or mothers but is of his own old original totem, say Grub, or Hakea Flower, or Kangaroo, or Frog. His totem is thus not inherited, we repeat, as elsewhere, from either parent, but is derived, by the accident of his place of conception, from the local totem, from the totemic ghosts (all of one totem) haunting the particular mortuary totem centre, or Oknanikilla, where he was conceived. His totem may thus be in both of the exogamous moieties, and for that reason alone is not exogamous. To take an example. A woman, by totem Cat, has a husband by totem Iguana. She conceives a child, and believes that she conceived it in a certain district. The local totem of that district is the Grub, Grub ghosts haunt the region; the child, therefore, is a Grub. He inherits his exogamous class, say Bukhara, from his father, and he must marry a woman of Class Kumara. But she may also be a Grub, for her totem, like his, has been acquired (like his, not by inheritance, but) by the accident that her mother conceived her in a Grub district. Thus, and thus only, are totems not exogamous among the Arunta. They are not inherited from either parent.
