On these lines the prohibition to infringe the totem taboo by marriage within the totem name is intelligible, but the system of phratries has yet to be accounted for. It is obvious that the names could only have been given originally to local groups: the people who held this or that local habitation received the name. Suppose that the rule of each such group, or heart circle, had been “no marriage within the local group or camp,” as in Atkinson’s scheme. When the groups accept their new names, the rule becomes, “no marriage within local group Eagle Hawk, group Crow,” and so on. So far the animal giving the group name may not yet have become a revered totem. The result of the rule would inevitably be, in three or four generations, that in groups Crow or Eagle Hawk, there were no Crows or Eagle Hawks by descent, if the children took the names of descent from their mothers; for the sake of differentiation: the Ant woman’s children in local group Crow being Ants, the Grub woman’s children being Grubs, the Eagle Hawk woman’s children being Eagle Hawks,—all in local group Crow, and inheriting the names of the local groups whence their mothers were brought into local group Crow.
By this means (indicated first by McLennan) each member of a local group would have a local group name, say Eagle Hawk, and a name by female descent, say Kangaroo, in addition, as now, to his or her personal name. In this way, all members of each local group would find, in any other local group, people of his name of descent, and, as the totem belief grew to maturity, kinsmen of his in the totem. When this fact was realized, it would inevitably make for peace among all contiguous groups. In place of taking women by force, at the risk of shedding kindred blood, peaceful betrothals between men and women of different local group names and of different names by descent could be arranged. Say that local groups Eagle Hawk and Crow took the lead in this arrangement of alliance and connubium, and that (as they would naturally flourish in the strength conferred by union) the other local groups came into it, ranging themselves under Eagle Hawk and Crow, we should have the existing primitive type of organization: Local Groups Eagle Hawk (Mukwara) and Crow (Kilpara) would have become the widely diffused phratries, Mukwara and Kilpara, with all the totem kins within them.
But, on these lines, some members of any totem kin, say Cat, would be in phratry Eagle Hawk, some would be in phratry Kilpara as now (for the different reason already indicated) among the Arunta. Such persons were in a quandary. By phratry law, as being in opposite phratries, a Cat in Eagle Hawk’ phratry could marry a Cat in Crow phratry. But, by totem law, this was impossible. To avoid the clash of law, all Cats had to go into one phratry or the other, either into Eagle Hawk or into Crow.
Two whole totem kins were in the same unhappy position. The persons who were Eagle Hawks by descent could not be in Eagle Hawk local group, now phratry, as we have already shown. They were in Crow phratry, they could not, by phratry law, marry in their own phratry, and to marry in Eagle Hawk was to break the old law, “no marriage within the local group name.” Their only chance was to return to Eagle Hawk phratry, while Crow totem kin went into Crow phratry, and thus we often find, in fact, that in Australian phratries Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) there is a totem kin Eagle Hawk, and in Kilpara phratry (Crow) there is a totem kin Crow. This arrangement—the totem kin within the phratry of its own name—has long been known to exist in America. The Thlinkets have Raven phratry, with totem kins Raven, Frog, Goose, &c., and Wolf phratry, with totem kins Wolf, Bear, Eagle, &c. (Frazer, Totemism, pp. 61, 62 (1887)). In Australia the fact has hitherto escaped observation, because so many phratry names are not translated, while, though Mukwara and Kilpara are translated, the Eagle Hawk and Crow totem kins within them bear other names for the same birds, more recent names, or tribal native names, such as Biliari and Waa, while Mukwara and Kilpara may have been names borrowed, within the institution of phratries, from some alien tribe now perhaps extinct.
We have now sketched a scheme explanatory of the most primitive type of social organization in Australia. The tendency is for phratries first to lose the meanings of their names, and, next, for their names to lapse into oblivion, as among the Arunta; the work of regulating marriage being done by the opposed Matrimonial Classes.
These classes are obviously an artificial arrangement, intended to restrict marriage to persons on the same level as generations. The meanings of the class names are only known with certainty in two cases, and then are names of animals, while there is reason to suspect that animal names occur in four or five of the eight class-names which, in different dialect forms, prevail in central and northern Australia. Conceivably the new class regulations made use of the old totemic machinery of nomenclature. But until Australian philologists can trace the original meanings of Class names, further speculation is premature.
10. Much might be said about the way out of totemism. When once descent and inheritance are traced through males, the social side of totemism begins to break up. One way out is the Arunta way, where totems no longer Breaking up of totemism. designate kinships. In parts of America totems are simply fading into heraldry, or into magical societies, while the “gentes,” once totemic, have acquired new names, often local, as among the Sioux, or mere sobriquets, as among the Blackfeet. In Melanesia the phratries, whether named or nameless, have survived, while the totems have left but a few traces which some consider disputable (Social Origins, pp. 176-184). Among the Bantu of South Africa the tribes have sacred animals (Siboko), which may be survivals of the totems of the chief local totem group, with male descent in the tribe, the whole of which now bears the name of the sacred animal. Even in Australia, among tribes where there is reckoning of descent in the male line, and where there are no matrimonial classes, the tendency is for totems to dwindle, while exogamy becomes local, the rule being to marry out of the district, not out of the kin (Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 270-272; cf. pp. 135-137).
The problem as to why, among savages all on the same low level of material culture, one tribe derives descent through women, while its nearest neighbouring tribe, with ceremonies, rites, beliefs and myths like its own, and occupying lands of similar character in a similar climate, traces descent through men, seems totally insoluble. Again, we find that the civilized Lycians, as described by Herodotus (book i. ch. 173), reckoned lineage in the female line, while the naked savages of north and central Australia reckon in the male line. Our knowledge does not enable us to explain the change from female to male tracing of lineage. Yet the change was essential for the formation of the family system of civilized life. The change may be observed taking place in the region of North-West America peopled by the Thlinket, Haida and Salish tribes; the first are pure totemists, the last have arrived, practically, in the south, at the modern family, while a curious intermediate stage pervades the interjacent region.
The best authority on the Family developed in different shapes in North-West America is Charles Hill-Tout (cf. “Origin of the Totemism of the Aborigines of British Columbia,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. vii. sect. 11, 1901). He, like many American and some English and continental students, applies the term “totem” not only to the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin, but to the animal familiars of individual men or women, called manitus, naguals, nyarongs and yunbeai, among North American Indians, in South America, in Borneo and in the Euahlayi tribe of New South Wales. These animal familiars are chosen by individuals, obeying the monition of dreams, or are assigned to them at birth, or at puberty, by the tribal magicians. It has often been suggested that totemism arose when the familiar of an individual became hereditary among his descendants. This could not occur under a system of reckoning descent and inheriting the kin name through women, but as a Tsimshian myth says that a man’s sister adopted his animal familiar, the bear, and transmitted it to her offspring, Hill-Tout supposes that this may have been the origin of totemism in tribes with reckoning of descent in the female line. Instances, however, are not known to exist in practice, and myths are mere baseless savage hypotheses.
Exogamy, in his opinion, is the result of treaties of political alliance with exclusive interconnubium between two sets of kinsfolk by blood, totemism being a mere accidental concomitant. This theory evades the difficulties raised by the hypothesis of deliberate reformatory legislation introducing the bisection of the tribe into exogamous societies.