Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia

by Northcote Whitridge Thomas

Putting theories as to racial conflicts aside, and dealing with the facts as we find them, we seem to have a choice of two hypotheses. Either the eaglehawk-crow myths were told before the phratry names came into existence, or they were invented to explain the existence of the phratry names. Let us assume that none of the unknown names mean eaglehawk or crow, and that the eaglehawk-crow area has remained approximately the same size, or has, at any rate, not diminished (excluding, of course, those cases where it seems to have lost ground owing to the disappearance of phratry names altogether, as among the Kurnai); we must then, on the second theory, assume that the story of the combat spread to tribes with completely different phratry names like the Urabunna, and got mixed up with their ceremonies of initiation (the most sacred part of the mythology of the Australian natives, and one not likely to be much influenced by chance intruders); and that it came even in some cases to be told of Baiame, the creator and institutor of the rites of initiation, who is represented as himself taking part in the conflict and gaining a victory over the foes of mankind[104]. On the whole, therefore, this view of the case appears improbable.

To the theory that the Eaglehawk-Crow story was originally independent of the phratry names no such objections apply. We are indefinitely remote from the period at which the anthropologist will be able to do for Australia what Franz Boas has done for the North-West of America—draw up a table showing the resemblances and differences between the stock of folktales of the different tribes, or, which is more important for our present purpose, of the main divisions, eastern, central, and western, which the analysis of initiation ceremonies gives us—a tripartite division which Curr also makes on the linguistic side, though Mathew's map shows considerable intermixture in this respect. Until we know to what extent the Urabunna or the Ikula have folktales in common with the Victorian area, or,—which is perhaps more important, though we do not seem to hear of any communication on this line,—how far there is a stock of folktales common to the Darling district and the central area, it is obviously idle to speculate as to how it comes that an Eaglehawk myth is told in both areas. The physical anthropology of the Australian natives is at present a little-worked field, in which, singularly enough, the French have done more than the English, to our shame be it said. Possibly a somatological survey might disclose to what extent the central tribes are distinct from the eastern group, and how far we may assume movements of population, subsequent to the original peopling of the country by the stocks in question, in either or both directions. In the absence of such data, and until an Australian Grimm has arisen to bring order into the present linguistic chaos, the evidence from folktales seems to promise most light on the question of migrations.

We are, of course, confronted by the difficulty that this evidence may simply disclose the lines along which tribal intercommunication has been most easy, whether in the way of simple interchange of commodities, evidence of which we have over considerable areas in Australia, or in the way of intermarriage, which, as we see by the example of the Urabunna and the Arunta, is found in spite of fundamental differences of tribal organisation. A common stock of folktales due to this cause would leave unexplained the prominence of the bird myth in the sacred rites, and leave the present hypothesis, in this regard, on a par with that of post-phratriac dissemination, in respect of probability. On the other hand we have the Scylla of tribal property in land, an idea so firmly rooted in our own day in the minds of the Australians as to make wars of conquest unthinkable to them, and to transform the practical part of their intertribal feuds into mere raids. If, therefore, investigation showed that the central and eastern tribes are in possession of a stock of folktales with many items in common, we should always have to take into consideration the possibility that these tales antedate the complete occupation of Australia, and go back to a period when the eastern and central divisions were in close relation. The probability of this view would, of course, depend on the extent of the resemblance between the two stocks of tales, or, perhaps, rather on the extent of the resemblance between those tales which they have in common; for it is clear that a close resemblance between comparatively few items would be more effective proof of intercommunication than a less marked general resemblance between the tale-stocks as a whole.

In spite of the deficiencies of our evidence we may perhaps incline to the view that the bird myth dates back to a very early period. Until it has been shown that intrusive elements are not only taken up into the tribal stock of tales, but also incorporated in the more sacred portion of those tales, which are told at the tribal mysteries, it will always remain more probable that the myth belongs to the two divisions as a result of lineal and not lateral transmission. If this is so the differences between the initiation ceremonies, no less than the anthropomorphic form of the myth in the eastern division, as compared with the purely theriomorphic story of the central division and the mixed form of the Ikula, will enable us to say that the period when the separation of the divisions took place must be very remote.

There is, therefore, no inherent improbability in supposing that the bird myth was told before the phratry names were invented or adopted, and that the latter were in some cases taken from the principal characters in the myth. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the phratry names seem to be subsequent to the present grouping, if we may take as our guide the fact that the frontiers of the phratry names correspond with the boundaries between the central and eastern divisions. The fact that there is a cross division, if we base our reasoning on the class organisation, need not of course be taken into account, for we have every reason to believe that the classes are subsequent to the phratries.

In favour of the derivation of the phratry names from the myth tells also the five-fold division of the eaglehawk-crow groups into Muquara and Kilpara, Bunjil and Waa, Merung and Yuckembruk, Multa or Malian and Umbe. For it is clearly more probable that the names should have been taken from a common object than that they should have been in their origin identical in form and subsequently differentiated, as the languages changed; we have in fact direct evidence of a tendency to preserve the old names, which we may perhaps regard as the sacred names, after the bird has been rebaptised in the terminology of daily life. Over and above this we have of course the fact that the sacred language has, generally speaking, both in Australia and elsewhere, this unchanging character. But this simple name-borrowing theory, it is clear, is equally valid as an explanation of the facts.

Although we cannot determine the meaning of the names the quadripartite division of the Mallera-Wuthera[105] and allied phratries in the north is evidence of a similar tendency. It is by no means impossible that Mallera, Yungaroo, and Pakoota all mean the same thing. (This ignorance of the meaning of the phratry and class names is primâ facie evidence of their high antiquity.) In the newly-discovered phratry names of the eight-class tribes we have yet another instance of tripartite division. If we may assume that Illitchi, Uluuru, and Wiliuku are from the same root (which, as we have seen, is probably welu, the terminations -uku, -itchi, and -uru (= -aree) being formative suffixes), we have here too a single phratry name on the one side and three sister names on the other. While it is clear that the names cannot be in any sense of the term recent, from the fact that linguistic differentiation had already gone some distance in what we may call, for want of a better term, groups speaking a stock language (in proof of which we have only to look at the formative suffixes), it seems equally clear that the present phratry names must be considerably later than the final settlement of the country. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the existence of numerous small phratries, the number of which may yet be largely increased by more exact research, is primâ facie a proof that the groups which adopted them had not reached the stage at which anything like that tribal (still less national) organisation was known, which is at the present day characteristic of the Arunta, and, perhaps, we may say, of all groups organised on a class system with class names known and used over an area far beyond that over which the (in a restricted sense) tribal language extends.

The recurrence of crow in the phratry name of the far west lends further support to the view that the phratry names were selected in some way, and were not due to some accident of savage wit. The view has been taken that the phratry animals were originally totems, or animals that became totems at a later stage. In view of the large number of totems found in many tribes, or even restricting their number to six or eight in each phratry, it is not difficult to estimate the probability that cockatoo and crow would recur in different areas, and that an opposition of characters should be found in other cases. The hypothesis needs at any rate to be combined with a theory, firstly, of borrowing of phratry names, a process which must indeed have played a large part in the development of the present system, but which does not necessarily involve the supposition that the borrowed names replaced previously existing home-made names; and, secondly, of selection of such names as were not borrowed.

It has been mentioned that the principle of tribal property in land or, to be strictly accurate, in hunting grounds, is, at the present day, a fundamental one in native Australian jurisprudence. But, as is shown by the map, in some cases the phratries are split into two or more segments[106], more or less remote from one another, geographically speaking. Now this apparent segmentation must be due to migration; it can hardly arise from the chance adoption of identical names; for the groups in which the names occur are, though separated by a considerable distance, not so remote as, on the theory of chance selection, we should expect them to be, in other words the probability is in favour of the segmentation of an original group or its cleavage by an intrusive element. Of the causes of this drift of population, which on a large scale, and under pressure of any kind, might well overrule even the rights of property, we have naturally no idea. In a homogeneous mass like the population of Australia, and especially in a mass whose level of culture is so low as to leave no remains behind which we could use for the purposes of chronology, it is hopeless to expect any solution of any of the problems connected with drift of population. One thing only seems clear, and on this point we may hope for some light from the data of philology, namely that the migration was long subsequent to the original Volkerwanderung; for this must have preceded the rise of phratry names, which again must have preceded the migration of which the segmentation of groups, evidenced by the names themselves, is at present, and in default of the aid of philology, our only proof.

The migrations of which we are speaking must, if the possession of one phratry name in common be worth anything as evidence of a closer connection between the groups, have been internal to a group or, if the term be preferred, to a nation occupying the south of Queensland. For in the absence of evidence that phratry names are to be found outside their own linguistic groups, we cannot but infer from the quadripartite division of the Wuthera phratries both the linguistic unity (and language must be in Australia the ultimate test of racial relationship on a large scale) and the internal movements of the group in which they occur.