[299] Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., p. 296.
[300] Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 744-746; cf. p. 129.
[301] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 66 n. It is true that other informers contest this fact.
[302] Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 744.
[303] Swanton, Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida, pp. 41 ff., Pl. XX and XXI; Boas, The Social Organization of the Kwakiutl, p. 318; Swanton, Tlingit, Pl. XVI ff.—In one place, outside the two ethnographic regions which we are specially studying, these tattooings are put on the animals which belong to the clan. The Bechuana of South Africa are divided into a certain number of clans; there are the people of the crocodile, the buffalo, the monkey, etc. Now the crocodile people, for example, make an incision in the ears of their cattle whose form is like the jaws of this animal (Casalis, Les Basoutos, p. 221). According to Robertson Smith, the same custom existed among the ancient Arabs (Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, pp. 212-214).
[304] However, according to Spencer and Gillen, there are some which have no religious sense (see Nat. Tr., pp. 41 f.; Nor. Tr., pp. 45, 54-56).
[305] Among the Arunta, this rule has exceptions which will be explained below.
[306] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 162; Nor. Tr., pp. 179, 259, 292, 295 f.; Schulze, loc. cit., p. 221. The thing thus represented is not always the totem itself, but one of those things which, being associated to this totem, are regarded as being in the same family of things.
[307] This is the case, for example, among the Warramunga, the Walpari, the Wulmala, the Tjingilli, the Umbaia and the Unmatjera (Nor. Tr., 339, 348). Among the Warramunga, at the moment when the design is executed, the performers address the initiated with the following words: "That mark belongs to your place; do not look out along another place." "This means," say Spencer and Gillen, "that the young man must not interfere with ceremonies belonging to other totems than his own: it also indicates the very close association which is supposed to exist between a man and his totem and any spot especially connected with the totem" (Nor. Tr., p. 584 and n.). Among the Warramunga, the totem is transmitted from father to child, so each locality has its own.
[308] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 215, 241, 376.