This arrangement is merely the usual arrangement, with female descent A woman's child is of the woman's totem. Believing in reincarnation, the Urabunna merely adapt that belief to the facts. With female descent an Emu woman's child is Emu. If a tribe has male descent, an Emu father's child is Emu. With female descent, a spirit has entered an Emu woman and been born Emu: with male descent, a spirit has entered the wife of an Emu man, and, by inheritance from his father, is Emu. Yet Messrs. Spencer and Gillen think that the Arunta and Kaitish rule—demanding the non-primitive male descent, local groups, local ghosts all of one totem, and churinga stones of the mark of that totem (all of which are indispensable), "is probably the simplest and most primitive."[18]
Most primitive, by our author's own statement, the Arunta method cannot be, for, as they show, it demands male descent, local totemism, and the peculiar belief about manufactured stone churinga. But they think it "most simple," because the Urabunna have a complicated myth, which, however, in no way affects the result, namely, that each child takes its mother's totem. Each spirit, according to the myth, changes its phratry and sex, and, necessarily, its totem, at each reincarnation, but that does not affect the result. Each child, as in all tribes with female descent, is still of its mother's totem.[19] No churinga nanja cause an anomaly among the Urabunna, for the churinga nanja, and the belief about them, among the Urabunna do not exist.
The Urabunna myth, adapted to male descent, occurs in all the northern tribes, from the northern bounds of the Kaitish to the sea, which have no stone churinga nanja; and in all of them totems are exogamous, because they never occur in both phratries, being uninfluenced by the Arunta churinga belief. They cannot, for they are duly inherited from the father, and they are so inherited because the tribes have not the exceptional Churinga Nanja creed, attaching the spirit to the amulet of a local totem group, which fixes—by the accident of place of conception—the totem of each child.
The Arunta non-exogamous totems, in Australia, as we saw, are only found where stone churinga nanja are in use; these amulets being peculiarly the residence of the spirits of totemic ancestors.
The origin of that belief is obscure. It could not arise in the present condition of Arunta or Kaitish affairs, for, now, every stone churinga in the tribe has already its recognised legal owner, and, on the death of an owner, or the extinction of a local totem group, the churinga are not left lying about to be found on or in the earth, but pass by a definite rule of inheritance; and they are all carefully warded and frequently examined, in Ertnatu-lunga, or sacred storehouses.[20] Thus stone churinga nanja, to-day, are not left lying about on the surface, or buried in graves, like those which, on the birth of each Arunta child, are sought for, and sometimes found, at the local totem-centre, and near the Nanja tree or rock, where the child was conceived. There churinga nanja must have been buried, of old, if our authors correctly say that the mythical ancestors "went into the ground, each carrying his churinga with him."[21] Again we read, "Many of the churinga were placed in the ground, some natural object again marking the spot." The spot was always marked by some natural object, such as a tree or rock.[22]
Though our authors tell us that they know Arunta natives who, on the birth of a child, have sought for and found his churinga nanja near the Nanja rock or tree next to the place where he was conceived, they do not say that the churinga are found by digging.[23] If they are, or if the Oknanikilla really are ancient burying-places (about which we are told nothing), the association of the churinga nanja with the ghost of the man in whose grave it is buried would be easily explained. But the impression left is that the stone churinga nanja found after search are discovered on the surface, dropped there by the spirit when about to be reincarnated.[24]
Here a curious fact may be filed for reference. Stone amulets, fashioned and decorated by man, are not known to be in use south of the Arunta region. But a cousin of my own, Mr. William Lang, found a stone object not unlike one figured by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, on his station near Cooma, New South Wales. The decoration was of the rectilineal type prevalent in that region. Mr. Lang knew nothing of the Arunta churinga till I drew his attention to the subject. He then visited the Sydney Museum, and found several stone objects, "banana-shaped," exactly like the specimen (wooden?), one out of five known to Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and published by them in their first work (p. 150). The New South Wales ornament, however, was always rectilineal. The articles appear to be obsolete among the tribes of New South Wales. It is said that they were erected of old round graves of the dead. Whites call them "grave stones." Careful articles on these decorated stone objects of New South Wales have been written by Mr. W. R. Harper and Mr. Graham Officer.[25] As a rule, they are not banana-shaped or crescentine, but are in the form of enormous stone cigars. They used to be placed, twelve or thirteen of them, on graves, and their weight, averaging about 3 lbs. to 4 lbs., makes them less portable than most of the churinga of the Arunta. It does not seem at all probable that Arunta stone churinga were ever erected round graves, but excavations at Oknanikilla, if they could be executed without a shock to Arunta sentiment, might throw some light on the subject.
In my opinion, the churinga found at Oknanikilla by the Arunta may have had no such original significance as is now attached to them. The belief may be a mere myth, explaining the sense of objects found and not understood—relics, as the myth itself avers, of an earlier race, the Alcheringa folk. The only information about those New South Wales decorated cigar-shaped and banana-shaped stone objects which could be got out of a local black was: "All same as bloody brand." He meant, conceivably, that the incised markings were totem marks, I think, and in that sense the marks on Arunta stone churinga are now interpreted.
It would not be surprising if the Arunta—supposing that they possessed the belief in "spirit trees," and the belief in reincarnation, and then found, near the Nanja trees or rocks, the stone amulets or "grave stones" of some earlier occupants of the region—evolved the myth that ancestral souls, connected with the spirit trees, abode especially in these decorated stones, common enough in American and European neolithic sites.
This is, of course, a mere conjecture. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen agree with us when they say: "It is this idea of spirit individuals associated with churinga, and resident in certain definite spots, that lies at the root of the present totemic system of the Arunta tribes."[26]