The Secret of the Totem

CHAPTER VIII

A NEW POINT EXPLAINED

On our theory, in each phratry there should be a totem kin of the phratry name – If not, fatal to Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's theories, as well as to ours – The fact occurs in America: why not in Australia? – Questions asked by Mr. Thomas – The fact, totem kins of phratriac names within the phratries, does occur in Australia – The fact not hitherto observed – Why not observed – Three causes – The author's conjecture – Evidence proving the conjecture successful – Myth favouring Mr. Fraser's theory – Another myth states the author's theory —Mukwara and Kilpara remain, as phratry names, among many tribes which give other names to Eagle Hawks and Crows – The Eagle Hawk, under another name, is totem in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) phratry – The Crow, under another name, is a totem Kilpara (Crow) phratry – Thus the position is the same as in America – List of examples in proof – Barinji, Barkinji. Ta-ta-thi, Keramin, Wiraudjuri, and other instances – Where phratry names are lost – Eagle Hawk and Crow totems are still in opposite phratries – Five examples – Examples of Cockatoo-named phratries, each containing its own Cockatoo totem – Often under new names – Bee phratries with Bee matrimonial classes – Cases of borrowed phratry and class names – Success of our conjectures – Practical difficulty caused by clash of old and new laws – Two totem kins cannot legally marry – Difficulty evaded – These kins change their phratries – Shock to tender consciences – Change takes the line of least resistance – Example of a change to be given.

On the theory propounded in the last chapter, the lead in making peaceful alliance and connubium between exogamous groups previously hostile, was probably taken, and the example was set, or the allies were captained, by two or in some cases more of the exogamous animal-named local groups themselves. Such leading groups, by our theory, in time became the two phratries of the tribe. If this were the case, these two kins, say Eagle Hawk and Crow, or, among the Thlinkets in America, Wolf and Raven, should be found to-day among the totem kins, should exist not only as names of phratries, but as names of totem kins in the phratries. If they are not so found, it will prove a serious objection, not only to our hypothesis, but to that of Dr. Durkheim, and (at one time at least) of Mr. J. G. Frazer. Their theory being that two primary totem kins sent off colonies which took new totem names, and that the primary kins later became phratries, in the existing phratries we should discover totem kins of the phratry names, say, totem kin Raven in Raven phratry, and totem kin Wolf in Wolf phratry. This phenomenon has been noted in America, but only faintly remarked on, or not at all observed, in Australia.

Why should there be this difference, if it does exist, in the savage institutions of the two continents? The facts which, on either theory – Dr. Durkheim's or my own – were to be expected, are observed in America; in Australia they have only been noticed in two or three lines by Mr. Howitt, which have escaped comment by theorists. When once we recognise the importance of Mr. Howitt's remark, that in some phratries the animals of phratry names "are also totems," we open a new and curious chapter in the history of early institutions.

As to America, both Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim observe that "among the Thlinkets and Mohegans, each phratry bears a name which is also the name of one of the clans," thus the Thlinkets have a Wolf totem kin in Wolf phratry; a Raven totem kin in Raven phratry. Mr. Frazer adds, "It seems probable that the names of the Raven and Wolf were the two original clans of the Thlinkets, which afterwards, by subdivision, became phratries."204

We have seen the objections to this theory of subdivision (Chapter V. supra), in discussing the system of Dr. Durkheim, who, by the way, gives two entirely different accounts of the Thlinket organisation in three successive pages; one version from Mr. Morgan, the other more recent, and correct, from Mr. Frazer.205 Wolf and Raven do not appear in Mr. Morgan's version.206

If Mr. Frazer's view in 1887 and Dr. Durkheim's are right, Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries, say, are in Australia examples of the primary original totem kins, and as totem kins they ought to remain (as Raven and Wolf do among the Thlinkets), after they become heads of phratries. Again, if I am right, the names of the two leading local groups, after becoming phratries, should still exist to this day in the phratries, as names of totem kins. This is quite obvious, yet except in the Thlinket case, the Haida case, and that of the Mohegans, we never (apparently) have found – what we ought always to find – within the phratries two totem kins bearing the same animal names as the phratries bear. Why is this? What has become of the two original, or the two leading local animal-named groups and totem kins? Nobody seems to have asked this very necessary question till quite recently.207

What has become of the two lost totem kins?

Mr. Thomas's objection to an earlier theory of mine, in which the two original totem kins were left in the vague, ought to be given in his own words: "Mr. Lang assumes" (in Social Origins) "that the animals of the original connubial groups" (phratries) "did not become totems, and, consequently, that there were no totem kins corresponding to the original groups. This can only have taken place if a rule were developed that men of Emu" (local) "group might not marry women of the Emu kin, and vice versa. This would involve, however, a new rule of exogamy distinct from both group (local) and kin (totem) bars to marriage. This must have come about either (a) because the Emu kin were regarded as potentially members of the Emu group (an extension of group exogamy, the existence of which it would be hard to prove), or (b) because the Emu group or Emu kin were (legally) kindred, and as such debarred from marrying. … In either case, on Mr. Lang's theory, two whole kins were debarred from marriage or compelled to change their totems" (when phratries arose). "I do not know which is less improbable."

Certainly the two kins could not change their totems, and certainly they would not remain celibate.

Meanwhile the apparent disappearance in Australia of the two original, or leading, totem kins, of the same names as the phratries, is as great a difficulty to Dr. Durkheim's and Mr. Frazer's old theory as to my own, only they did not observe the circumstance.

How vanished the totem kins of the same names as the phratries? I answer that they did not vanish at all, and I go on to prove it. The main facts are very simple, the totem kins of phratry names in Australia are often in their phratries. But at a first glance this is not obvious. The facts escape observation for the following reasons: —

(1) In most totemic communities, except in Australia and in some American cases, there are no phratries, and consequently there is no possible proof that totem kins of the phratriac names exist, for we do not know the names of the lost phratries.

(2) In many Australian cases, such as those of the Wiraidjuri and Arunta, the phratries have now no names, and really, as phratries, no existence. Dual divisions of the tribes exist, but are known to us by the names of the four or eight "matrimonial classes" (a relatively late development)208 into which they are parcelled, as, among the Arunta, Panunga, Bukhara, Purula, Kumara.209

We cannot therefore say in such cases, that the totem kins of phratriac names have vanished, because we do not know how the phratries were named; they may have had the names of two extant totem kins, but their names are lost.

(3) Again, there are Australian cases, as of the Urabunna and Dieri of Central Australia, in which the phratries have names – Matthurie and Kirarawa (Urabunna), or Matteri and Kararu (Dieri) – but these phratry names cannot be, or are not translated. Manifestly, then, the meaning of the names may be identical with names of extant totem kins in these phratries, may be names of obsolete or almost obsolete sacred meaning, originally denoting totems now recognised by other names in the everyday language of the tribe.

Confronted by the problem of the two apparently lost totem kins, those of the same names as the phratries, I conjectured that phratry names, now meaningless in the speech of the tribes where they appear, might be really identical in meaning with other names now denoting totem animals in the phratries. This conjecture proved to be correct, and I proceed to show how my conclusion was reached. The evidence, happily, is earlier than scientific discussion of the subject, and is therefore unbiassed.

So long ago as 1852 or 1853, Mr. C. G. N. Lockhart, in his Annual Report to the Government of New South Wales, recorded a myth of the natives on the Lower Darling River, which flows from the north into the Murray River, the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria.210 The tribes had the phratries named by Mr. Lockhart Mookwara and Keelpara, usually written Mukwara and Kilpara. These were the usual intermarrying exogamous phratries. According to the natives, Mukwara and Kilpara were the two wives of a prehistoric black fellow, "the Eves of the Adam of the Darling," Mr. Lockhart says – like the Hebrew Lilith and Eve, wives of Adam, Lilith being a Serpent woman. (If Rachael and Leah are really animal names, they may be old phratry names, though I think it highly improbable.)

The children of wife Mukwara married those of wife Kilpara, and vice versa, the children taking the mother's name. Next, says the myth, as in the theories of Dr. Durkheim and Mr. Frazer, the two stocks, Mukwara and Kilpara, subdivided into totem kins, as Kilpara into Emu, Duck, &c., Mukwara into Kangaroo, Opossum, &c. (There is perhaps no modern theory of the origin of totemism, including my own, which has not been somewhere, and to some extent, anticipated by the mythical guesses of savages. The Port Fairy tribes, in their myth, take my view, and make the phratries arise in the male ancestor and his wife, two Cockatoos of various species; the totem kins were brought in by the sons of the two Cockatoos marrying women from a distance, of other animal parentage, their children keeping the maternal names, as Duck, Snipe, and so on. This myth is well inspired, for once!) In the passage of Mr. Lockhart, as cited by Mr. Curr, he does not give the translation of the names Mukwara and Kilpara. But in Mr. Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria, a compilation of evidence published in 1878, we find another myth. "The natives of the northern parts of Victoria" believe that the makers of the world were "two beings that had severally the forms of the Crow and the Eagle Hawk." The Eagle Hawk was Mak-quarra; the Crow is Kil-parra.211

Again, Mr. Bulmer writes: "The blacks of the Murray" – the river severing northern Victoria from New South Wales – "are divided into two classes" (phratries), "the Mak-quarra, or Eagle, and the Kilparra, or Crow. If the man be Mak-quarra, the woman must be Kil-parra," by phratry.212

One myth (1852-53) explains Mukwara and Kilpara as wives of one man, and mothers of the phratries. The other (1878) says that Mukwara was a cosmic Eagle Hawk, Kilpara a cosmic Crow. They were on hostile terms, like Ormuzd and Ahriman; like the Thlinket phratry-founders, Raven and Wolf; and like the name-giving founders of phratries in New Britain, Te Kabinana, the author of good, and Te Kovuvura, the author of evil.213 Eagle Hawk and Crow, Kilpara and Mukwara, in one of the myths, made peace, one condition being that "the Murray blacks should be divided into two classes" (phratries) called Mukwara and Kilpara, Eagle Hawk and Crow.214

Crow and Eagle Hawk, then, were apparently names of hostile groups, which, making connubium, became allied phratries.

The evidence thus is that Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk, that Kilpara meant Crow, in the language of some tribe which, so far, I have not been able to identify in glossaries. Probably the tribe is now extinct. But these two names for Eagle Hawk and Crow now denote two phratries in many widely separated tribes, which, in common use, employ various quite different names for Eagle Hawk and Crow.

Now the point is that, in Mukwara phratry (Eagle Hawk), we almost always find, under another name, Eagle Hawk as a totem kin; and in Kilpara, Crow, we find, under another name, Crow as a totem kin. In many other cases, we cannot translate the phratry names, but, by a fortunate chance, the meanings of Kilpara and Mukwara have been preserved, and we see that, as in America, so also in Australia, phratries contain totem kins representing the phratry animal-name givers.

We proceed to give instances.

On the Paroo River, for example, are the Barinji; they call the Eagle Hawk "Biliari," or Billiara; their name for Crow is not given215 But among the Barinji, Biliari, the Eagle Hawk, is a totem in the phratry called Mukwara, which means Eagle Hawk; Crow is not given, we saw, but here at least is the totem kin Eagle Hawk – Biliari – in the Eagle Hawk phratry, called by the foreign, and, to the Barinji, probably meaningless name, "Mukwara" (Mak-quarra).216 This applies to four other tribes.

The Barkinji have the same phratry names, Mukwara and Kilpara, as the Barinji. Their totem names are on the same system as those of the Ta-ta-thi Among the Ta-ta-thi the light Eagle Hawk is Waip-illi, he comes in Mukwarra, that is, in Eagle Hawk, phratry; and Walakili (the Crow), among the Ta-ta-thi, comes in Crow (Kilpara) phratry. The Wiimbaio, too, have totem Eagle Hawk in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) and totem Crow in Kilpara (Crow).

The Keramin tribe live four hundred miles away from the Barinji. They have not the same name, Biliari, for the Eagle Hawk. Their name for Eagle Hawk is Mundhill. This totem, Eagle Hawk, among the Keramin, appears in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara). The Keramin name for Crow is Wak. He occurs in Kilpara (Crow) phratry. All is as by my theory it ought to be.217

None of these tribes has "matrimonial classes," a relatively late device, or no such classes are assigned to them by our authorities. These tribes are of a type so archaic, that Mr. Howitt has called the primitive type, par excellence, "Barkinji."

All this set of tribes have their own names, in their own various tongues, for "Eagle Hawk" and "Craw," but all call their phratries by the foreign or obsolete names for "Eagle Hawk" and "Crow," namely, Mukwara and Kilpara. Occasionally either Crow totem is not given by our informants, or Eagle Hawk totem is not given, but Eagle Hawk, when given, is always in Eagle Hawk phratry (Mukwara), and Crow, when given, is always in Crow phratry (Kilpara). Where both Eagle Hawk and Crow totems are given, they invariably occur, Eagle Hawk totem in Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) phratry, and Crow totem in Kilpara (Crow) phratry.

In the Ngarigo tribe, the phratries are Eagle Hawk and Crow (Merung and Yukambruk), but neither fowl is given in the lists of totems, which, usually, are not exhaustive. The same fact meets us in the Wolgal tribe; the phratries are Malian and Umbe (Eagle Hawk and Crow), but neither bird is given as a totem.218 Mr. Spencer, in a letter to me, gives, for a tribe adjacent to the Wolgal, the phratries Multu (Eagle Hawk), and Umbe (Crow); the totems I do not know. Among the Wiraidjuri tribe, Mr. Howitt does not know the phratry names, but the tribe have the Kamilaroi class names, and Eagle Hawk and Crow, as usual, in the opposite unnamed phratries. Among a sept of the Wiraidjuri on the Lachlan River, the phratry names are Mukula and Budthurung. The meaning of Mukula is not given, but Budthurung means "Black Duck" and Black Duck totem is in Black Duck phratry, Budthurung in Budthurung, as it ought to be.219 Mr. Howitt writes that there is "no explanation" of why Budthurung is both a phratry name and a totem name. The fact, we see, is usual.

In several cases, where phratry names are lost, or are of unknown meaning, Eagle Hawk and Crow occur in opposite exogamous moieties, which once had phratry names, or now have phratry names of unknown significance. The evidence, then, is that Eagle Hawk and Crow totems, over a vast extent of country, have been in Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries, while, when they occur in phratries whose names are lost, the lost names or untranslatable names may have meant Eagle Hawk and Crow. Unluckily the names of the phratries of the central tribes about Lake Eyre and south-west – Kararu and Matteri – are of unknown meaning: such tribes are the Dieri, Urabunna, and their neighbours. We do indeed find Kuraru, meaning Eagle Hawk, in a tribe where the phratry name is Kararu; and Karawora is also a frequent name for Eagle Hawk in these tribes. But then Kurara means Rain, in a cognate tribe; and we must not be led into conjectural translations of names, based merely on apparent similarities of sound.

At all events, in the Kararu-Matteri phratries, we find Eagle Hawk and Crow opposed, appearing in opposite phratries in five cases, just as they do in tribes far south.220 Again, in the Kulin "nation," now extinct, we learn that their phratries were Bunjil (Eagle Hawk) and Waa (Crow), while of the totems nothing is known.221 It is obvious that several phratry names, capable of being translated, mean these two animals, Eagle Hawk and Crow, while two other widespread phratry names, Yungaru and Wutaru, appear to be connected with other animals. "The symbol of the Yungaru division," says Mr. Bridgman, "is the Alligator, and of the Wutaru, the Kangaroo."222 Mr. Chatfield, however, gives Emu or Carpet Snake for Wutaru, and Opossum for Yungaru.223

More certain animal names for phratries are Kroki-Kumite; Krokitch-Gamutch; Krokitch-Kuputch; Ku-urokeetch-Kappatch; Krokage-Kubitch; all of which denote two separate species of cockatoo; while these birds, sometimes under other names, are totems in the phratries named after them. The tribe may not know the meaning of its phratry names. Thus, in tribes east of the Gournditch Mara, Kuurokeetch means Long-billed Cockatoo, and Kappatch means Banksian Cockatoo, as I understand.224 But, within the phratries of all the Kuurokeetch-Kappatch forms of names, the two Cockatoos also occur under other names, as totem kins: such names are Karaal, Wila, Wurant, and Garchuka.225

In the Annan River tribe, Mr. Howitt gives the phratries as Walar (a Bee), and Marla (a Bee), doubtless two Bees of different species.226 In this case two names of matrimonial classes, Walar and Jorro, also mean Bee. Other cases of conjectural interpretation of phratry names might be given, but where the phratry names can be certainly translated they are names of animals, in all Australian cases known to me except one. When the phratry names cannot be translated, the reason may be that they were originally foreign names, borrowed, with the phratriac institution itself, by one tribe from another. Thus if tribes with totems Eagle Hawk and Crow (Biliara and Waa, let us say) borrowed the phratriac institution from a Mukwara-Kilpara tribe, they might take over Mukwara and Kilpara as phratry names, while not knowing, or at last forgetting, their meaning.

Borrowing of songs and of religious dances is known to be common in the tribes, and it is certain that the Arunta are borrowing four class names from the north. Again, several tribes have the Kamilaroi class names (Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi), but have not the Kamilaroi phratry names, Kupathin and Dilbi. Thus the Wiraidjuri, with Kamilaroi class names, have not Kamilaroi phratries, but have Mukula (untranslated), and Budthurung (Black Duck). The Wonghibon, with Kamilaroi class names, have phratries Ngielbumurra and Mukumurra. On the other hand the Kaiabara tribe, far north in Queensland, have the Kamilaroi phratry names Dilebi and Kubatine (= Dilbi and Kupathin), but their class names are not those of the Kamilaroi.227

It may be that some tribes, which had already phratries not of the Kamilaroi names, borrowed the Kamilaroi classes, while other tribes having the Kamilaroi phratries evolved, or elsewhere borrowed classes of names not those of the Kamilaroi.

Again, when the four or eight class system has taken firm hold, doing the work of the phratries, tribes often forget the meaning of the phratry names, or forget the names themselves. Once more, the phratry names may once have designated animals, whose names were changed for others, in the course of daily life, or by reason of some taboo. All these causes, with the very feeble condition of Australian linguistic studies, hamper us in our interpretations of phratry and class names. Often the tribes in whose language they originally occurred may be extinct. But we have shown that many phratry names are names of animals, and that the animals which give names to phratries often occur, in Australia as in America, as totems within their own phratries.

We have thus discovered the two lost totem kins!

Thus, if only for once, conjectures made on the strength of a theory are proved to be correct by facts later observed. We guessed (i.) that in the phratries should be totem-kin animals identical with the phratriac animals. We guessed (ii.) that the phratriac names of unknown sense might be identical in meaning with the actual everyday names of the totem animals. And we guessed (iii.) for reasons of early marriage law (as conjectured in our system) that the totem kins of the same names as the phratries would be found each in the phratry of its own name – if discovered in Australia at all.