1. Male reckoning of descent—which is found in very many tribes where totems are exogamous—as everywhere.
2. Local totem groups, which are a result of male reckoning of descent. These also are found in many other tribes where, as everywhere, totems are exogamous.
3. The belief that the spirits of the primal ancestors of the "Dream-Time" (Alcheringa)—creatures evolved out of various animal shapes into human form—are constantly reincarnated in new-born children. This belief is found in all the northern tribes with male descent; and among the Urabunna, who have female descent—but among all these tribes totems are exogamous, as everywhere.
4. The Arunta and Kaitish, with two or three minor neighbouring tribes, believe that spirits desiring incarnation, all of one totem in each case, reside "at certain definite spots." So do the Urabunna believe, but at each of these spots, in Urabunna land, there may be spirits of several different totems.[5] Among the Urabunna, as everywhere, totems are exogamous. None of these four conditions, nor all of them, can produce the Arunta totemic non-exogamy.
Finally (5) the Arunta and Kaitish, and they alone, believe not only that the spirits desiring reincarnation reside at certain definite spots, and not only that the spirits there are, in each case, all of one totem (which is essential), but also that these spirits are most closely associated with objects of stone, inscribed with archaic markings (churinga nanja), which the spirits have dropped in these places—the scenes where the ancestors died (Oknanikilla). These stone objects, and this belief in their connection with ancestral spirits, are found in the Arunta region alone, and are the determining cause, or inseparable accident at least, of the non-exogamy of Arunta totemism, as will be fully explained later.
Not one of these five conditions is reported by Mr. Howitt among the primitive south-eastern tribes, and the fifth is found only in Aruntadom. Yet Mr. Spencer regards as the earliest form of totemism extant that Arunta form, which requires four conditions, not found in the tribes of primitive organisation, and a fifth, which is peculiar to the Arunta "nation" alone.
That the Arunta tribe, whether shut off from all others or not (as a matter of fact it is not), should alone (while advanced in all respects, including marriage and ceremonials) have retained a belief which, though called primitive, is unknown among primitive tribes, seems a singularly paradoxical hypothesis. Meanwhile the cause of the Arunta peculiarity—non-exogamous totems—is recognised by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, who also declare that the cause is isolated. They say "it is the idea of spirit individuals associated with churinga" (manufactured objects of stone), "and resident in certain definite spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta tribe."[6]
Again, they inform us that the churinga belief, and the existence of stone churinga, are things isolated. "In the Worgaia tribe, which inhabits the country to the north-east of the Kaitish" (neighbours of the Arunta), "we meet, so far as we have been able to discover, with the last traces of the churinga—that is, of the churinga with its meaning and significance, as known to us in the true central tribes, as associated with the spirits of Alcheringa ancestors" (mythical beings, supposed to be constantly reincarnated).[7] Thus, "the present totemic system of the Arunta tribe,"—in which, contrary to universal rule, persons of the same totem may inter-marry—reposes on a belief associated with certain manufactured articles of stone, and neither the belief nor the stone objects are discovered beyond a certain limited region. It is proper to add that the regretted Mr. David Carnegie found, at Family Wells, in the desert of Central Australia, two stone objects, one plain, the other rudely marked with concentric circles, which resemble churinga nanja. He mentions two others found and thrown away by Colonel Warburton. The meaning or use of these objects was not ascertained.[8]
We differ from Messrs. Spencer and Gillen when they think that this peculiar and isolated belief, held by four or five tribes of confessedly advanced social organisation and ceremonials (a belief only possible under advanced social organisation), is the pristine form of totemism, out of which all totemists, however primitive, have found their way except the Arunta "nation" alone. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write: "... the only conclusion which it seems possible to arrive at is that in the more northern tribes" (which have no churinga nanja, no stone churinga), "the churinga represent the surviving relics of a time when the beliefs among those tribes were similar to those which now exist among the Arunta. It is more easy to imagine a change which shall lead from the present Arunta or Kaitish belief to that which exists among the Warramunga, than it is to imagine one which shall lead from the Warramunga to the Arunta."[9] Now among the Warramunga, as everywhere, the division of the totems between the two (exogamous) moieties is complete, "and, with very few exceptions indeed, the children follow the father."[10] (These exceptions are not explained.) Among the Kaitish the same totems occur among both exogamous moieties, so persons of the same totem can intermarry, but "it is a very rare thing for a man to marry a woman of the same totem as himself."[11]
The obvious conclusion is the reverse of that which our authors think "alone possible." The Kaitish have adopted the Arunta churinga nanja usage which introduces the same totem into both exogamous moieties, but, unlike the Arunta, they have not yet discarded the old universal rule, "No marriage within the totem." It is not absolutely forbidden, but it scarcely ever occurs. The Kaitish, as regards exogamy and religion, are a link between the primitive south-eastern tribes and the Arunta.