intermarrying divisions (which we call "exogamous moieties," or "phratries"), and each phratry bears a name which, when it can be translated, is, as a rule, that of an animal.7 We shall show later why the meaning of the names has often been lost. Take the animal names of the phratries to be Emu and Kangaroo, no man of the Emu phratry may marry a woman of the same phratry, he must marry out of his phratry ("exogamy"); nor may a man of the Kangaroo phratry marry a woman of the same. Kangaroo phratry must marry into Emu, and Emu into Kangaroo. The phratry names in each case are, in the more primitive types of the organisation (which alone we are now considering) inherited from the mother.8 A man of the Emu phratry marries a woman of the Kangaroo phratry, and to that phratry her children belong. Thus members of either phratry must be found in any casual knot or company of natives. Within each phratry there are, again, kinships also known by hereditary names of animals or plants. Thus, in Emu phratry, there may be kins called, say, Emu, Opossum, Wallaby, Grub, and others; in the Kangaroo phratry different names prevail, such as Kangaroos, Lizards, Dingoes, Cockatoos, and others. The name-giving animals, in this case, are called by us "totems," and the human kins which bear their names are called "totem kins." No man or woman may marry a person of his or her own totem. But this, in fact, as matters stand in Australia, puts no fresh bar on marriage, because (except in four or five tribes of the Centre) if a man marries out of his phratry he must necessarily marry out of his totem kin, since there are no members of his totem name in the phratry into which he must marry. In America, in cases where there are no phratries, and universally, where totems exist without phratries, marriage between persons of the same totem is forbidden.
The organisation of the more primitive tribes presents only the two exogamous moieties or phratries in each tribe and the totem kins in the phratries. We have Crow phratry and Eagle Hawk phratry, and, within Crow phratry, Crow totem kin,9 with other totem kins; within Eagle Hawk phratry, Eagle Hawk totem kin, with other totem kins, which are never of the same names as those in Crow phratry.
This we call the primitive type, all the other organisations are the result of advances on and modifications of this organisation. It also occurs in America,10 where, however, the phratry is seldom extant, though it does exist occasionally, and is known to have existed among the Iroquois and to have decayed.
On examining Mr. Howitt's map11 it will be seen that this type of social organisation extends, or has extended, from Mount Gambier, by the sea, in the extreme south, past Lake Eyre, to some distance beyond Cooper's Creek or the Barcoo River, and even across the Diamantina River in Queensland. But it is far from being the case that all tribes with this pristine organisation possess identical ceremonies and ideas. On the other hand, from the southern borders of Lake Eyre, northwards, the tribes of this social organisation have peculiar ceremonies, unknown in the south and east, but usual further north and west. They initiate young men with the rites of circumcision or subincision (a cruel process unknown outside of Australia), or with both. In the south-east the knocking out of a front tooth takes the place of these bloody ordeals. The Lake Eyre tribes, again, do not, like those south and east of them, hold by, and inculcate at the rites, "the belief as to the existence of a great supernatural anthropomorphic Being, by whom the ceremonies were first instituted, and who still communicates with mankind through the medicine men, his servants."12 Their myths rather repose on the idea of beings previous to man, "the prototypes of, but more powerful in magic than the native tribes. These beings, if they did not create man, at least perfected him from some unformed and scarcely human creatures."13
Thus, the more northern tribes of primitive tribal organisation (say the Dieri and their congeners) have beliefs which might ripen into the Greek mythology of gods and Titans, while the faith of the tribes of the same social organisation, further south by east, might develop into a rude form of Hebrew monotheism, and the two myths may co-exist, and often do. The northern tribes about Lake Eyre, and the central and north tribes, work co-operative magic for the behoof of their totem animals, as part of the common food supply, a rite unknown to the south and east. They also practise a custom (Pirrauru) of allotting men and women, married or unmarried, as paramours to each other, after a symbolic ceremony. This arrangement also is unknown in the south and east, and even north by west, though almost everywhere there is sexual licence at certain ceremonial meetings. It is thus plain that the more northern tribes of the primitive organisation described, differ from their southern and eastern neighbours (i.) in their most important initiatory rites, (ii.) in some of their myths or beliefs,14 (iii.) in their totemic magic, and (iv.) in their allotment of permanent paramours. In the first three points these northern tribes of primitive type resemble, not the south-eastern tribes of the same social type, but the more socially advanced central, western, and northern "nations," with whom some of them are in touch and even intermarry. It is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that all tribes of the primitive tribal organisation are solidaires as to marriage, ceremonial rites, and beliefs.
It is difficult to say which is the second type of tribal organisation. We have in Victoria, in a triangle with its apex on the Murray River, the organisation already described (1), but here descent is reckoned in the male, not in the female line. This implies some social advance: social institutions, with male descent of the totem name, are certain to become local, rather than totemistic. The Kangaroos, deriving the totem name from the father, are a local clan, in some cases, like the MacIans in Glencoe. The Kangaroo name prevails in the locality. This cannot occur, obviously, when the names are derived from mothers, and the women go to the husband's district. We may call the organisation thus described (2a), and as (2b) we should reckon the organisation which prevails, as a rule, on the east of Southern Australia, in Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern coast-line (with a gap in the centre of the coast-line), to the eastern limits of (1). Here we find (2b) a great set of tribes having female descent, but each individual belongs not only to one of two phratries, and to a totem, but also to a "Matrimonial Class." In each phratry there are two such classes. Among the Kamilaroi, in phratry Dilbi, are "classes" named Muri (male) and Kubi (male). In phratry Kupathin are Ipai (male) and Kumbo (male), while the women bear the feminine forms of these names. Their meaning is usually unknown, but in two or three tribes, where the meaning of the class names is known with certainty, they denote animals.
The arrangement works thus, a man of phratry Dilbi, and of matrimonial class Muri, may not marry any woman that he chooses, in the other phratry, Kupathin. He can only marry a Kubatha, that is, a female of the class Kumbo. Their children, female descent prevailing, are of Kupathin phratry, and of the mother's totem, but do not belong to the class either of father (Muri) or of mother (Kumbo). They must belong to the other class within her phratry, namely Ipai. This rule applies throughout; thus, if a man of phratry Dilbi, and of Kubi class, marries a woman of Ipai class in phratry Kupathin, their children are neither of class Kubi nor of class Ipai, but of class Kumbo, the linked or sister class of Ipai, in Kupathin phratry.
Suppose for the sake of argument that the class names denote, or once denoted animals, so that, say —
It is obvious that male Turtle would marry female Cat, and (with maternal descent) their children would, by class name, be Carpet Snakes. Bat would marry Carpet Snake, and their children would, by class name, be Cats. Persons of each generation would thus belong to classes of different animal names for ever, and no one might marry into either his or her own phratry, his or her own totem, or his or her own generation, that is, into his or her own class. It is exactly (where the classes bear animal names) as if two generations had totems. The mothers of Muri class in Dilbi would have Turtle, the mothers in Kupathin (Ipai) would have Carpet Snake. Their children, in Kupathin, would have Cat. Not only
There are exceptions, or at least one exception is known to the rule of animal names for phratries, a point to which we shall return. Dr. Roth (
That reckoning descent in the female line,
That this is the case will be proved later; the fact has hitherto escaped observation.
Frazer,
Ibid., p. 487.
That is, on our present information. It is very unusual for orthodox adhesion to one set of myths to prevail.
