Now to what do the traditions amount, as regards earlier marriage laws and customs at variance with those now in use among the Arunta? They amount to this: (1) Men of one totem had marital relations normally with women of the same totem. It is no longer the case that Arunta men have relations, normally and exclusively, with women of the same totem; a man may marry a woman of his own totem, or not, as he pleases. But so, in the traditions of the primeval trek, a man might, and did, take women of other totems as he pleased, by conquest probably; though these women seem to have lived, hitherto, solely with men of their own totem. The tradition starts from the hypothesis that all members of each mythical wandering totem group were originally of the same totem. That being so, the men naturally lived, when on trek, with women of their totem, taking women of other totems as they came across them. No longer on trek, the Arunta of to-day do the same thing, many women of their own or any other totem. The only shade of difference arises from the nature of the mythical theory, that many totem groups were originally migratory. But the present Arunta system of 'go as you please' in marriage (as far as totems are concerned) differs from the regular custom of the neighbouring Urabunna, for example. That difference, the Arunta probably feel, needs explanation. So their myth explains it, 'we Arunta always acted thus from the beginning.' So far the 'tradition' of Messrs Spencer and Gillen seems to me to be an ordinary explanatory myth.
(2) At the supposed time (a time when many human types were still in the husk!) men and women of what are now 'exogamic groups' ('phratries' or 'classes') had marital relations contrary to present usage.
But did the phratries or classes then, according to tradition, exist at all? The legend says that the men of the Little Hawk totem had these 'phratries' and classes, Kumura and Purula and so on (the names then carrying no known exogamous prohibition, as now, for the legend does not say that these 'classes' were exogamous). The Little Hawk men had arrived at the arts of making flint knives, and using them in circumcision. This they taught to less advanced groups, who tooled with fire sticks. But they only let their pupils have 'very rough' stone knives (Palæolithic, probably), at first. 'It was these Little Hawks,' say our authors, 'who first gave to the Arunta the four "class" names. We may presume that along with them there was instituted some system of marriage regulations, but what exactly this was there is no evidence to show.' Either the Little Hawks introduced exogamy, or they did not, a valuable result of traditional evidence.[39] 'As yet we have no indication of any restrictions with regard to marriage as far as either totems or classes are concerned,' say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. Then why does the legend aver that the class names existed? Why did they exist? Now the existing restrictions of the 'classes' need explanation, and get it, from the myth; but, as there are no Arunta totem restrictions on marriage, at present the myth naturally says nothing about them. At this mythic period, 'persons of the Purula and Kumura classes, who may not now marry one another, are represented as living together.'[40] (3) Next 'the organisation now in vogue was adopted.' But, in its first shape, due to the wisdom of Emu men, it permitted marriages, which are now (4) forbidden by the superior intelligence of men dwelling further north, 'and it was decided to adopt the new system,' that is, the present Arunta 'class' system.
Now the Arunta are still accepting innovations from the North, and this part of the myth need not be mythical.
But the whole traditions, full of stark mythical inventions (including a myth like that of Isis and the mutilation of Osiris), amount merely to this. Society was totemic, but the totems were not exogamous; rather endogamous of the two. Society among the Arunta is still totemic, but not, as far as totems go, exogamous. In this it differs from the usual rule, and the myth explains why,—'it was always so.' But Arunta society is exogamous as regards the 'phratries' and classes, and that has to be explained by the myth. The myth therefore explains by saying that Emu men introduced a deficient, and northern men an adequate, system of exogamy—that which now prevails. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, however, appear to deny that the 'traditions' 'simply explain the origin of the present system, out of, as it were, no system. It is true that the traditions do give stages in the arrangement of the present system; but they also do 'explain the origin of the present system.' And Messrs. Spencer and Gillen not only admit this, but, as we saw, even think the explanation 'quite possible.' The explanation, I repeat, is that the system 'is due to the deliberate action of certain ancestors,' Emu men and wiser Northern men.
Of course, as we tried to show, that explanation of primeval exogamy is improbable, but it is the explanation given by the Arunta legend. With a grain of fact, as to innovations from the North, the legend is a myth, an ætiological myth, a myth explanatory of the origin of the present organisation. History it is not. The Arunta 'traditions' are not historical evidence in favour of the new hypothesis that the Arunta are 'primitive,' are in 'the chrysalis stage' of humanity; (this they deny): that Totemism, in origin, was a magical co-operative and industrial association; that the original totems were not exogamous; and that exogamy was superimposed by legislation, or grew out of an organisation so imposed on a society of non-exogamous totem groups. Whatever the value of that hypothesis, it has no historical support from the Arunta traditions. History is a very different thing.
The Arunta still marry, at pleasure, in or out of the totem, merely because their totems are now scattered about among their exogamous divisions. This is not the 'natural arrangement' (as Mr. Frazer assures us), is not the inevitable original arrangement, and is not the case with their neighbours, the Urabunna, who are confessedly 'less developed than the Arunta.' The Urabunna system, therefore, is more archaic, ex hypothesi than that of the Arunta, which must be less archaic. It is, I repeat, peculiar, isolated, needs explanation, and the Arunta traditions give the explanation. The ancestors took women in or out of the totem, as at present the Arunta do; exogamy by classes was later imposed, says the myth. Dr. Durkheim appears here to hold the more logical position. There was, I conceive, with Dr. Durkheim, and have stated, though Messrs Spencer and Gillen and others deny it, 'a primary relationship between the totemic system and exogamy.'[41]
[1] Ethnological Bureau, Annual Report, 1893-1894, pp. 200, 201.
[2] Studies in Ancient History, p. 221.