The natural result will be that all the wives among the local groups called Snipes will come to bear names other than Snipe, will come to be known by the names of the local groups from which they have been acquired. These names they will retain, I suggest, in local group Snipe, by way of distinction—as the Emu woman, the Opossum woman, and so forth. The Emus know the names of the groups from which they have taken women, and it seems probable enough that the women may even have borne tattoo marks denoting their original groups, as is now in some places the Australian practice. "It probably has been universal," says Mr. Haddon.[2]
If, then, the stranger women among the Emus are known, in that local group, as the Opossum woman, the Snipe woman, the Lizard woman; their children in the group might very naturally speak of each other as "the Snipe woman's, the Lizard woman's children," or more briefly as "the little Snipes," "the young Lizards," and so on. I say "might speak," for though totem names have the advantage of being easily indicated, and in practice are often indicated by gesture language, I take it that by this time man had evolved language.[3]
In course of time, by this process (which certainly did occur, though at how early a stage it came first into being we cannot say), each local group becomes heterogeneous. Emu local group is now full of members of Snipe, Lizard, and other animal-named members by maternal descent. There are thus what Mr. Howitt has called "Major totems" (name-giving animals of local groups), and "Minor totems" (various animal names of male and female members within, for example, local group Emu, these various animal names being acquired by female descent). Each member of a local Emu group is now Emu by local group; but is Snipe, Lizard, Opossum, Kangaroo, or what not, by name of maternal descent.
This theory is no original idea, it is Mr. McLennan's mode of accounting for the heterogeneity of the local group. They are not all Wolves, for example, where descent is reckoned in the female line, and exogamy is the rule. In the local group Wolf are Ravens, Doves, Dogs, Cats, what you will, names derived by the children from mothers of these names. I do not pretend that I can demonstrate the existence of the process, but it accounts for the facts and is not out of harmony with human nature. Can any other hypothesis be suggested?
When things have reached this pitch, each local group, if it understood the situation as it is now understood among most savages, might find wives peacefully in its own circle. Lizard man, in local group Emu, might marry Snipe woman also in local group Emu, as far as extant totem law now goes. They were both, in fact, members of a small local tribe of animal name, with many kins of animal names, by female descent, within that tribe. Why then might not Snipe (by descent) in Emu local group marry a woman, by descent Lizard, in the same Emu local group? Many critics have asked this question, including Dr. Durkheim.[4] I had given my answer to the question before it was asked,[5] backing my opinion by a statement of Dr. Durkheim himself. People of different totems in the same local group (say Emu) might have married; but then, as Dr. Durkheim remarks in another case, "the old prohibition, deeply rooted in manners and customs, survives."[6] "Now the old prohibition in this case was that a man of the Emu (local) group was not to marry a woman of the Emu (local) group. That rule endures, even though the Emu group now contains men and women of several distinct and different totem kins," that is to say, of different animal-named kins by descent.
I may add that, as soon as speculation about the animal names led to the belief in the mystic rapport between the animals and their human namesakes, and so led to tabu on the intermarriage of persons of the same animal name, the tabu would attach as much to the name-giving animal of the local group as to the animals of the kins by descent within that local group.
Thus Lizard man, in Emu local group, cannot marry Snipe woman in the same. Both are also, by local group name, Emus. He is Emu-Lizard, she is Emu-Snipe.
If it be replied that now no regard is paid by the members of a phratry to their phratriac animal (where it is known), I answer that the necessary poojah is done, by the members of the totem kin of that animal, within his phratry, while all do him the grace of not marrying within his name.[7] A Lizard man and a Snipe woman in Emu local group could not, therefore, yet marry. The members of the local group, though of different animal names of descent, had still to ravish brides from other hostile local groups.
Each local group was now full of men and women who, by maternal descent, bore the same animal names as many members of the other local groups. A belief in a mystic rapport between the bearers of the animal names and the animals themselves now being developed, Snipe and Lizard and Opossum by descent, in Emu local group, must already have felt that they were not really strangers and enemies to men of the same names by descent, Snipe, Lizard, and Opossum, and of the same connection with the same name-giving animals, in Kangaroo local group, or any other adjacent local group.
This obvious idea—human beings who are somehow connected with the same animals are also connected with each other—was necessarily an influence in favour of peace between the local groups. In whatever local group a Snipe by descent might be, he would come to notice a connection between himself and Snipes by descent in all other local groups. Consequently men at last arranged, I take it, to exchange brides on amicable terms, instead of Snipe by descent risking the shedding of kindred blood, that of another Snipe by descent, in the mellay of a raid to lift women from another local group.