On the foundation of all these blended ideas, Totemism arose, a stately but fantastic structure, varying in shape under changing conditions, like an iceberg in summer seas. It is, indeed, 'a far cry' from anonymous human groups, and groups of plant or animal names, to Helen, the daughter of the swan, that was Zeus! But the pedigree is hardly disputable.
On the other hand, suppress the totem names, give the original groups such titles as the Sioux 'Take-down-their-leggings,' or 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' (some names you must give them), and what is left? Suppose such names to have been those of pristine groups, and suppose them to be tending to exogamy. A 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' man may not marry a 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' girl; but must marry a 'Take-down-their-leggings' girl, or a 'shoot-in-the-woods' girl, or a 'Do-not-split-the-body-of-a-buffalo-with-a-knife-but-cut -it-up-as-they-please' girl! That is rather cumbrous: marriage rules on that basis are not readily conceivable.
And where is here the tabu sanction? Brother Wolf or Brother Emu is a thinkable, powerful, sacred kinsman, who will not have his tabu tampered with. But there is no sanctity in Do-not-split-the-body-of-a-buffalo-with-a-knife-but -cut-it-up-as-they-please!
Luckily we have here a case in point. My theory is that animal names being once given to the groups, the animal, in accordance with savage ideas, became a kinsman and protector. The animal or vegetable or other type, in each case, sanctioned various tabus, including exogamy. Had the name been another kind of nickname, as 'Boil-meat-in-the paunch-skin,' what was there to sanction the tabu? Or, if the group name was a local name, where was the sanction? Exogamy does persist where totem groups have become local, and are now known by the names of their places of settlement. But not always. Of an Australian tribe, the Gournditch Mara, we read that it consisted of four local divisions, water (mere?), swamp, mountain, and river. But there was no exogamous rule affecting marriage. A man of the group dwelling in the swamp might marry a woman of the same group. There was descent in the male line; wife-lending was highly condemned. The office of headman was hereditary in the male line, 'before any whites came into the country.' The benighted tribe was not devoid of superstition.
'They believed that there was a future good and bright place, to which those who were good went after death, and that there was a Man at that place who took care of the world and of all the people.' The place was called Mūmble-Mirring. The dark, bad place was Burreet Barrat. 'This belief they had before there was any white person in the country.'
As these statements are odious to most anthropologists, they cannot be true, and thus a slur is cast on all that we learn about the Gournditch Mara. But though a missionary (the Rev. Mr. Stähle) cannot, of course, be trusted here, he had no professional motive for fictions about the marriage laws of the tribe. They had no ceremonies of initiation, no seasons of license, apparently no totems, and the merely local names of groups naturally carried no exogamous prohibition: conveyed no tabu sanction.[24] Had there never been any totem names, exogamy might never have arisen.
How my friendly critic is 'no nearer to the understanding of totem kinship as the basis of a social group,' if, for the sake of the argument, he grants 'the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen from a pre-existing name system,' I am at a loss to comprehend. Here are groups, Bear, Wolf, Trout, Racoon, firmly, though erroneously, believing that they are akin to these animals. Naturally they 'behave as such.' Each racoon has duties to other racoons, and to the actual racoons. He does not shoot a racoon if he can get anything else; he does not shoot a racoon sitting. He is brother to racoons of his own sex, and to sisters in the racoon of the other sex. He does not marry them. The belief in the racoon kinship is the basis of that social group—the man has other social groups of other kinds. Savages believe in their beliefs, to the extent of dying from fear after infringing a tabu in which they believe. Thus I would reply to the objections offered after a first glance at my conjecture.
TOTEMS AND MAGICAL SOCIETIES
A man has other social groups than his own totem group in certain regions. Totem groups among the Arunta, we have seen, work magic 'to secure the increase of the plant or animal which gives its name to the totem.' The Arunta have no myth as to the origin of these performances, styled Intichiuma.[25] This, as far as Australia is concerned, seems to be a peculiarity of the Arunta system alone, or all but alone, and, as we saw, it has even been suggested that these rites are the origin of Totemism. But such rites appear to be most firmly established and organised among societies which are passing out of Totemism. Such a society is that of the Omaha tribe of North America, where descent is reckoned in the male line.[26] Among the Omahas we find the Elk totem group with male kinship; they may not touch a male Elk, or eat its flesh: if they do, as in New Caledonia, they break out into sores. This kindred, with the Bears, 'worship the thunder' in spring. Their special business and duty is 'to stop the rain.' But, if they are a Weather Society, in this respect, that fact does not appear in their totem names, Elk and Bear.