forbidden was the totem kin, indicated by the totem name, the totem tabu, and the totem badge, or symbol – where it existed?
We now see how heterogeneous elements came to exist in the tribe of locality, a puzzle to the friends of the theory of the Patriarchal Family. For the nature of totemism, plus exogamy and female descent, is obviously such that under totemism, each family group even (each 'fire circle' of men, wives, and children), must contain persons of different totems. The father and mother must be of different totems (persons of the same totem not intermarrying), and the children must inherit the totem either of the father or of the mother.31 When paternal kinship is not only recognised (as, in practical life, it always is), but becomes exclusive in its influence on customary law, and when an approach to the Patriarchal Family, with the power of the patriarch, is evolved, all the members of the family in all its branches will (if Totemism persists) have the same totem; derived from the father. Thus there will now be a local totem group, a group mainly of the same totem name, as is practically the case in parts of Central Australia.32
It is necessary to understand this clearly. Take a very early group, in a given district; suppose it, at first, to be anonymous, and let it later be called the Emu group. So far, all members of the group will be Emus, they will form an Emu local group. But, next, suppose that there are many neighbouring groups, also at first anonymous; let them later be styled Rat, Cat, Bat, Sprat. Suppose that each such group now (for reasons to be indicated later) takes its wives not from within itself, but from all the other groups; that these women bring into the Emu group their group names; and that their children inherit their names from their mothers. Then the name, 'Emu group,' will cling to that local aggregate, as such; but, in time, the members of the Emu group will all be, say, Rats, Cats, Bats, and Sprats, so called from the group-names of their alien mothers. Suppose that, for one reason or another, children at last come to inherit their names and totems from their fathers. Then a Cat father will have Cat children, though his wives may still be of different totems, and his sons' children will also be Cats, and so the local group will become mainly, if not wholly, a group of one totem, the Cat. The Arunta of Central Australia do trace kinship in the male line, and thus there is 'one area which belongs to the Kangaroo men, another to Emu men, another to Hakea flower men,' and so on. This has reached such a pitch that 'in speaking of themselves the natives will refer to these local groups,' not by the prevalent totem names in each, but 'by the name of the locality which each of them inhabits,' namely, as men of the Iturkawura camp, and so on.33 Thus we might say 'the Glen Nevis men,' 'the Corradale men,' and so on.
Thus we begin with an anonymous group, or group of unknown name, a local group. We introduce Totemism, and that group becomes a local group with a totem name. Granting exogamy (prohibition of marriage within the group), and reckoning in the female line, it soon developes into a local group made up of various totems, but, at first, as a local group, it probably retains its original totem name among its neighbours. Reckoning, still later, through the male line, we again meet, as at first, a local totem group, but already Totemism is on the wane, and the groups are soon to be called by the territorial names of their lands. At this stage totem names are tending to decay, and the next step will probably be to style the group by the name of some remembered, or mythical, male ancestor, such as 'children of Donald' – Macdonalds.
Thus if, at a given time, the name of a certain male ancestor is substituted, as 'eponymous,' for the totem name, or the district name, we shall find a local group of, say, Sons of Donald, into which other groups, Sons of Sorlie, or Ulrig, will enter, as occasion serves, and be more or less absorbed. A State may at last arise, say, 'Softs of Israel.'
We are not assuming, however, that all human societies have passed through the totemistic and exogamous stages.
TOTEMISM AND EXOGAMY
But what was the original unit, the totem group, or other division outside of which alone could marriages be arranged? And why was the totem name the limit? Returning to Mr. Donald McLennan's account of the opinions which his brother did not live to set forth, Totemism arose 'in a state of man in which no idea of incest existed.' On this theory, I presume, there would be totem groups before exogamy arose; before it was reckoned 'incest' to many within the totem name. This, as we shall see, appears to be sometimes the opinion of the best Australian authorities, Messrs. Fison and Howitt, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. It is also the theory of Arunta tradition. The totem belief, as it now exists, imposes many tabus: you may not (as a rule) kill, eat, or use the plant or animal which is your totem; still less perhaps, in the long run, may you 'use,' sexually, a woman of your totem. If this, or a kindred totem tabu, is the origin of exogamy, then to exogamy (as a law, though not necessarily as a tendency) the totem is prior in time. But I have no reason to suppose that Mr. McLennan ever regarded the totem tabu as the origin of exogamy. In his published works he offers another theory, not commonly accepted.
But the important thing to note is that exogamy may conceivably (contrary to Mr. McLennan's opinion, but in accordance with that of Mr. Atkinson) have existed, or rather tended to exist, before totems arose; much more, then, previous to the evolution of totem names, of totem tabu, and of the idea of incest, as a sin, or mystic misdeed, and as an offence to the totem – a religious offence to God, or to ancestral spirits. Persons may have been forbidden to marry within their local group, their 'fire circle' before that group had a totem, or a totem name, and they may have been forbidden for reasons purely secular, to which the totem later lent a sanction, and a definite limit. Thus Mr. Tylor, our most sagacious guide in all such problems, writes 'Exogamy can and does exist without Totemism, and for all we know was originally independent of it.'34
It is part of my argument that exogamous tendencies, at least – that is, a habit of seeking female mates outside of the fire-circle – may very well have prevailed before any human group had even a totemic name. But exogamous tendencies are not, of course, the same thing as exogamy strictly defined, and sanctioned by religious or superstitious fear, and by secular penalties inflicted by the tribe. Against the notion that exogamy may have been prior to Totemism, Mr. Robertson Smith argued that very early man would not be restrained from marriages by such an abstract idea as that of kindred – 'not to marry your near kin' – while the idea of kindred was still fluid, and not yet crystallised around the totem name.35 But, without thinking of kindred by blood, perhaps without recognising consanguinity (though it must have been recognised very soon), early man may have decided that 'thou shalt not marry within this local group or crowd, of which I am head.' Nothing abstract in that! There was no tribal law – there were as yet (I suppose) no tribes – only the will of the head of each small set of people practically enforced exogamy.
We can have no certainty on this point, for we know of no pre-totemic race, no people who certainly have not yet entered into the totemic stage. Any such people, probably, in the remote past, had no idea of incest as a sin, or of exogamy as a law sanctioned by a tabu. But they may have, at least, had a strong tendency to marry outside of the circle of the hearth, the wandering hearth of homeless nomads ranging after food.
The reader of Mr. Atkinson's treatise will find that this kind of exogamy – marriage outside the local group – would, on his theory, be the rule, even when no idea of blood kindred, or of incest as a sin, need have arisen; and no totem, or anything else, had yet been named. The cause of the prohibition would, in Mr. Atkinson's opinion, be the sexual jealousy of the hypothetical patriarchal anthropoid male animal; and, later, the sexual jealousy of his adult male offspring, and of the females. Still later the group, already in practice exogamous, would accept the totem name, marking off the group from others, and the totem name, snipe, wolf, or what not, would become, for the time, the exogamous limit. No man and woman of the same totem name could intermarry. Still later, a myth of kinship with the totem would arise, and would add the religious sanction of a tabu.
A
Here the unusual case of the Arunta offers an exception to the rule; a point to be discussed later.
Spencer and Gillen, pp. 8-10.
'Remarks on Totemism,'
