[341] This is the case among the Warramunga, the Urabunna, the Worgaia, the Umbaia, the Tjingilli and the Guangi (Nor. Tr., pp. 258, 275 f.). Then, say Spencer and Gillen, "they were regarded as of especial value because of their association with a totem" (ibid., p. 276). There are examples of the same fact among the Arunta (Nat. Tr., 156).

[342] Strehlow writes tnatanja (I, pp. 4-5).

[343] The Kaitish, the Ilpirra, the Unmatjera; but it is rare among the latter.

[344] The pole is sometimes replaced by very long churinga, placed end to end.

[345] Sometimes another smaller one is hung from the top of the nurtunja. In other cases, the nurtunja is in the form of a cross or a T. More rarely, the central support is lacking (Nat. Tr., pp. 298-300, 360-364, 627).

[346] Sometimes there are even three of these cross-bars.

[347] Nat. Tr,, pp. 231-234, 306-310, 627. In addition to the nurtunja and the waninga, Spencer and Gillen distinguish a third sort of sacred post or flag, called the kanana (Nat. Tr., pp. 364, 370, 629), whose functions they admit they have been unable to determine. They merely note that it "is regarded as something common to the members of all the totems." According to Strehlow (II, p. 23, n. 2) the kanana of which Spencer and Gillen speak, is merely the nurtunja of the Wild Cat totem. As this animal is the object of a tribal cult, the veneration of which it is the object might easily be common to all the clans.

[348] Nor. Tr., p. 342; Nat. Tr., p. 309.

[349] Nat. Tr., p. 255.

[350] Ibid., ch. x and xi.

[351] Ibid., pp. 138, 144.

[352] See Dorsey, Siouan Cults, XIth Rep., p. 413; Omaha Sociology, Third Rep., p. 234. It is true that there is only one sacred post for the tribe, while there is a nurtunja for each clan. But the principle is the same.

[353] Nat. Tr., pp. 232, 308, 313, 334, etc.; Nor. Tr., 182, 186, etc.

[354] Nat. Tr., p. 346. It is true that some say that the nurtunja represents the lance of the ancestor who was at the head of each clan in Alcheringa times. But it is only a symbolic representation of it; it is not a sort of relic, like the churinga, which is believed to come from the ancestor himself. Here the secondary character of the explanation is very noticeable.

[355] Nat. Tr., pp. 614 ff., esp. p. 617; Nor. Tr., p. 749.

[356] Nat. Tr., p. 624.

[357] Ibid., p. 179.

[358] Ibid., p. 181.

[359] See the examples given in Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., Fig. 131. Here are designs, many of which evidently have the object of representing animals, plants, the heads of men, etc., though of course all are very conventional.

[360] Nat. Tr., p. 617; Nor. Tr., p. 716 ff.

[361] Nat. Tr., p. 145; Strehlow, II, p. 80.

[362] Nat. Tr., p. 151.

[363] Ibid., p. 346.

[364] It cannot be doubted that these designs and paintings also have an æsthetic character; here is the first form of art. Since they are also, and even above all, a written language, it follows that the origins of design and those of writing are one. It even becomes clear that men commenced designing, not so much to fix upon wood or stone beautiful forms which charm the senses, as to translate his thought into matter (cf. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, I, p. 405; Dorsey, Siouan Cults, pp. 394 ff.).

[365] See the cases in Taplin, The Narrinyeri, p. 63; Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 146, 769; Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169; Roth, Superstition, Magic and Medicine, § 150; Wyatt, Adelaide and Encounter Bay Tribe, in Woods, p. 168; Meyer, ibid., p. 186.

[366] This is the case with the Warramunga (Nor. Tr., p. 168).

[367] For example, among the Warramunga, the Urabunna, the Wonghibon, the Yuin, the Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, Ngeumba, etc.

[368] Among the Kaitish, if a man of the clan eats too much of his totem, the members of the other phratry have recourse to a magic operation which is expected to kill him (Nor. Tr., p. 284; cf. Nat. Tr., p. 204; Langloh Parker, The Euahlavi Tribe, p. 20).

[369] Nat. Tr., p. 202, n.; Strehlow, II, p. 58.

[370] Nor. Tr., p. 173.

[371] Nat. Tr., pp. 207 ff.

[372] See above, p. 128.

[373] It should also be borne in mind that in these myths the ancestors are never represented as nourishing themselves regularly with their totem. Consumption of this sort is, on the contrary, the exception. Their ordinary food, according to Strehlow, was the same as that of the corresponding animal (see Strehlow, I, p. 4).

[374] Also, this whole theory rests upon an entirely arbitrary hypothesis: Spencer and Gillen, as well as Frazer, admit that the tribes of central Australia, and especially the Arunta, represent the most archaic and consequently the purest form of totemism. We shall presently say why this conjecture seems to us to be contrary to all probability. It is even probable that these authors would not have accepted their thesis so readily if they had not refused to regard totemism as a religion and if they had not consequently misunderstood the sacred character of the totem.

[375] Taplin, The Narrinyeri, p. 64; Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 145 and 147; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 202; Grey, loc. cit.; Curr, III, p. 462.

[376] Nor. Tr., pp. 160, 167. It is not enough that the intermediary be of another totem: as we shall see, every totem of a phratry is forbidden in a certain measure for the members of the phratry who are of a different totem.

[377] Nor. Tr., p. 167. We can now explain more easily how it happens that when an interdiction is not observed, it is the other phratry which revenges this sacrilege (see above, p. 129, n. 2). It is because it has an interest in seeing that the rule is observed. In fact, they believe that when the rule is broken, the totemic species may not reproduce abundantly. Now the members of the other phratry consume it regularly: therefore it is they who are affected. That is why they revenge themselves.

[378] This is the case among the Loritja (Strehlow, II, pp. 60, 61), the Worgaia, the Warramunga, the Walpari, the Mara, the Anula and the Binbinga (Nor. Tr., pp. 166, 167, 171, 173). It may be eaten by a Warramunga or a Walpari, but only when offered by a member of the other phratry. Spencer and Gillen remark (p. 167, n.), that in this regard the paternal and the maternal totems appear to be under different rules. It is true that in both cases the offer must come from the other phratry. But when it is a question of the paternal totem, or the totem properly so-called, this phratry is the one to which the totem does not belong; for the maternal totem, the contrary is the case. Probably the principle was first established for the former, then mechanically extended to the other, though the situation was different. When the rule had once become established that the prohibition protecting the totem could be neglected only on the invitation of the other phratry, it was applied also to the maternal totem.

[379] For example, among the Warramunga (Nor. Tr., p. 166), the Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, the Kurnai (Howitt, pp. 146 f.) and the Narrinyeri (Taplin, The Narrinyeri, p. 63).

[380] Even this is not always the case. An Arunta of the Mosquito totem must not kill this insect, even when it bothers him: he must confine himself to driving it away (Strehlow, II, p. 58; cf. Taplin, p. 63).

[381] Among the Kaitish and the Unmatjera (Nor. Tr., p. 160). It even happens that in certain cases an old man gives a young one of a different totem one of his churinga, so that he may kill the donor's totem more easily (ibid., p. 272).

[382] Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 146; Grey, op. cit., II, p. 228; Casalis, Basoutos, p. 221. Among these latter, "one must be purified after committing such a sacrilege."

[383] Strehlow, II, pp. 58, 59, 61.

[384] Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, IIIrd Rep., pp. 225, 231.

[385] Casalis, ibid.

[386] Even among the Omaha, it is not certain that the interdictions of contact, certain examples of which we have just cited, are really of a totemic nature, for many of them have no direct connection with the animal that serves as totem of the clan. Thus in the sub-clan of the Eagle, the characteristic interdiction is against touching the head of a buffalo (Dorsey, op. cit., p. 239); in another sub-clan with the same totem, they must not touch verdigris, charcoal, etc. (ibid., p. 245).

We do not mention other interdictions mentioned by Frazer, such as those of naming or looking at the animal or plant, for it is still less certain that they are of totemic origin, except perhaps for certain facts observed among the Bechuana (Totemism, pp. 12-13). Frazer admits too readily—and in this regard, he has imitators—that the prohibitions against eating or touching an animal depend upon totemic beliefs. However, there is one case in Australia, where the sight of the animal seems to be forbidden. According to Strehlow (II, p. 59), among the Arunta and the Loritja, a man who has the moon as totem must not look at it very long, or he would be likely to die at the hand of an enemy. But we believe that this is a unique case. We must not forget, also, that astronomical totems were probably not primitive in Australia, so this prohibition may be the product of a complex elaboration. This hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that among the Euahlayi, looking at the moon is forbidden to all mothers and children, no matter what their totems may be (L. Parker, The Euahlayi, p. 53).

[387] See Bk. III, ch. ii, § 2.

[388] Perhaps there is no religion which makes man an exclusively profane being. For the Christian, the soul which each of us has within him and which constitutes the very essence of our being, has something sacred about it. We shall see that this conception of the soul is as old as religious thought itself. The place of man in the hierarchy of sacred things is more or less elevated.

[389] Nat. Tr., p. 202.

[390] Taplin, The Narrinyeri, pp. 59-61.

[391] Among certain clans of the Warramunga, for example (Nor. Tr., p. 162).

[392] Among the Urabunna (Nor. Tr., p. 147). Even when they tell us that the first beings were men, these are really only semi-human, and have an animal nature at the same time. This is the case with certain Unmatjera (ibid., pp. 153-154). Here we find ways of thought whose confusion disconcerts us, but which must be accepted as they are. We would denature them if we tried to introduce a clarity that is foreign to them (cf. Nat. Tr., p. 119).

[393] Among the Arunta (Nat. Tr., pp. 388 ff.); and among certain Unmatjera (Nor. Tr., p. 153).

[394] Nat. Tr., p. 389. Cf. Strehlow, I, pp. 2-7.

[395] Nat. Tr., p. 389; Strehlow, I, pp. 2 ff. Undoubtedly there is an echo of the initiation rites in this mythical theme. The initiation also has the object of making the young man into a complete man, and on the other hand, it also implies actual surgical operations (circumcision, sub-incision, the extraction of teeth, etc.). The processes which served to form the first men would naturally be conceived on the same model.

[396] This the case with the nine clans of the Moqui (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, IV, p. 86), the Crain clan among the Ojibway (Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 180), and the Nootka clans (Boas, VIth Rep. on the N.W. Tribes of Canada, p. 43), etc.

[397] It is thus that the Turtle clan of the Iroquois took form. A group of turtles had been forced to leave the lake where they dwelt and seek another home. One of them, which was larger than the others, stood this exercise very badly owing to the heat. It made such violent efforts that it got out of its shell. The process of transformation, being once commenced, went on by itself and the turtle finally became a man who was the ancestor of the clan (Erminnie A. Smith, The Myths of the Iroquois, IInd Report, p. 77). The Crab clan of the Choctaw was formed in a similar manner. Some men surprised a certain number of crabs that lived in the neighbourhood, took them home with them, taught them to talk and to walk, and finally adopted them into their society (Catlin, North American Indians, II, p. 128).

[398] For example, here is a legend of the Tsimshian. In the course of a hunt, an Indian met a black bear which took him to its home, and taught him to catch salmon and build canoes. The man stayed with the bear for two years, and then returned to his native village. But the people were afraid of him, because he was just like a bear. He could not talk or eat anything except raw food. Then he was rubbed with magic herbs and gradually regained his original form. After that, whenever he was in trouble, he called upon his bear friends, who came to aid him. He built a house and painted a bear on the foundation. His sister made a blanket for the dance, upon which a bear was designed. That is why the descendants of this sister had the bear as their emblem (Boas, Kwakiutl, p. 323. Cf. Vth Rep. on the N.W. Tribes of Canada, pp. 23, 29 ff.; Hill Tout, Report on the Ethnology of the Statlumh of British Columbia, in J.A.I., 1905, XXXV, p. 150).

Thus we see the inconveniences in making this mystical relationship between the man and the animal the distinctive characteristic of totemism, as M. Van Gennep proposes (Totémisme et méthode comparative, in Revue de l'histoire des religions, Vol. LVIII, July, 1908, p. 55). This relationship is a mythical representation of otherwise profound facts; but it may be omitted without causing the disappearance of the essential traits of totemism. Undoubtedly there are always close bonds between the people of the clan and the totemic animal, but these are not necessarily bonds of blood-relationship, though they are frequently conceived in this form.

[399] There are also some Tlinkit myths in which the relationship of descent between the man and the animal is still more carefully stated. It is said that the clan is descended from a mixed union, if we may so speak, that is to say, one where either the husband or the wife was an animal of the species whose name the clan bears (see Swanton, Social Condition, Beliefs, etc., of the Tlinkit Indians, XXVIth Rep., pp. 415-418).

[400] Nat. Tr., p. 284.

[401] Ibid., p. 179.

[402] See Bk. III, ch. ii. Cf. Nat. Tr., pp. 184, 201.

[403] Ibid., pp. 204, 262, 284.

[404] Among the Dieri and the Parnkalla. See Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 658, 661, 668, 669-671.

[405] Among the Warramunga, the blood from the circumcision is drunk by the mother (Nor. Tr., p. 352). Among the Binbinga, the blood on the knife which was used in the sub-incision must be licked off by the initiate (ibid., p. 368). In general, the blood coming from the genital organs is regarded as especially sacred (Nat. Tr., p. 464; Nor. Tr., p. 598).

[406] Nat. Tr., p. 268.

[407] Ibid., pp. 144, 568.

[408] Ibid., pp. 442, 464. This myth is quite common in Australia.

[409] Nat. Tr., p. 627.

[410] Ibid., p. 466.

[411] Ibid. It is believed that if all these formalities are not rigorously observed, grave calamities will fall upon the individual.

[412] Nat. Tr., p. 538; Nor. Tr., p. 604.

[413] After the foreskin has been detached by circumcision, it is sometimes hidden, just like the blood; it has special virtues; for example, it assures the fecundity of certain animal and vegetable species (Nor. Tr., pp. 353 f.). The whiskers are mixed with the hair, and treated as such (ibid., pp. 604, 544). They also play a part in the myths (ibid., p. 158). As for the fat, its sacred character is shown by the use made of it in certain funeral rites.

[414] This is not saying that the woman is absolutely profane. In the myths, at least among the Arunta, she plays a religious rôle much more important than she does in reality (Nat. Tr., pp. 195 f.). Even now she takes part in certain initiation rites. Finally, her blood has religious virtues (see Nat. Tr., p. 464; cf. La prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines, Année Sociol., I, pp. 41 ff.).

It is upon this complex situation of the woman that the exogamic restrictions depend. We do not speak of them here because they concern the problem of domestic and matrimonial organization more directly than the present one.

[415] Nat. Tr., p. 460.

[416] Among the Wakelbura, according to Howitt, p. 146; among the Bechuana, according to Casalis, Basoutos, p. 221.

[417] Among the Buandik and Kurnai (Howitt, ibid.); among the Arunta (Strehlow, II, p. 58).

[418] Howitt, ibid.

[419] In the Tully River district, says Roth (Superstition, Magic and Medicine, in North Queensland Ethnography, No. 5, § 74), as an individual goes to sleep or gets up in the morning, he pronounces in a rather low voice the name of the animal after which he is named himself. The purpose of this practice is to make the man clever or lucky in the hunt, or be forewarned of the dangers to which he may be exposed from this animal. For example, a man who has a species of serpent as his totem is protected from bites if this invocation has been made regularly.

[420] Taplin, Narrinyeri, p. 64; Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 147; Roth, loc. cit.

[421] Strehlow, II, p. 58.

[422] Howitt, p. 148.

[423] Nor. Tr., pp. 159-160.

[424] Ibid.

[425] Ibid., p. 225; Nat. Tr., pp. 202, 203.

[426] A. L. P. Cameron, On Two Queensland Tribes, in Science of Man, Australasian Anthropological Journal, 1904, VII, 28, col. I.

[427] Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 170.

[428] Notes on some Australian Tribes, J.A.I., XIII, p. 300.

[429] In Curr, Australian Race, III, p. 45; Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, I, p. 91; Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 168.

[430] Durkheim and Mauss, De quelques formes primitives de classification, in Année Sociol., VI, pp. 1 ff.

[431] Curr, III, p. 461.

[432] Curr and Fison were both informed by the same person, D. S. Stewart.

[433] Mathews, Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria, in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales, XXXVIII, pp. 287 f.; Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 121.

[434] The feminine form of the names given by Mathews is Gurogigurk and Gamatykurk. These are the forms which Howitt reproduces, with a slightly different orthography. The names are also equivalent to those used by the Mount Gambier tribe (Kumite and Kroki).

[435] The native name of this clan is Dyàlup, which Mathews does not translate. This word appears to be identical with Jallup, by which Howitt designates a sub-clan of the same tribe, and which he translates "mussel." That is why we think we can hazard this translation.

[436] This is the translation of Howitt; Mathews renders the word Wartwurt, "heat of the midday sun."

[437] The tables of Mathews and Howitt disagree on many important points. It even seems that clans attributed by Howitt to the Kroki phratry are given to the Gamutch phratry by Mathews, and inversely. This proves the great difficulties that these observations present. But these differences are without interest for our present question.

[438] Mrs. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, pp. 12 ff.

[439] The facts will be found below.

[440] Carr, III, p. 27. Cf. Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 112. We are merely mentioning the most characteristic facts. For details, one may refer to the memoir already mentioned on Les classifications primitives.

[441] Ibid., pp. 34 ff.

[442] Swanton, The Haida, pp. 13-14, 17, 22.

[443] This is especially clear among the Haida. Swanton says that with them every animal has two aspects. First, it is an ordinary animal to be hunted and eaten; but it is also a supernatural being in the animal's form, upon which men depend. The mythical beings corresponding to cosmic phenomena have the same ambiguity (Swanton, ibid., 16, 14, 25).

[444] See above, p. 142. This is the case among the Gournditch-mara (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 124), in the tribes studied by Cameron near the Dead Lake, and among the Wotjobaluk (ibid., pp. 125, 250).

[445] J. Mathews, Two Representative Tribes, p. 139; Thomas, Kinship and Marriage, pp. 53 f.

[446] Among the Osage, for example (see Dorsey, Siouan Sociology, in XVth Rep., pp. 233 ff.).

[447] At Mabuiag, an island in Torrès' Strait (Haddon, Head Hunters, p. 132), the same opposition is found between the two phratries of the Arunta: one includes the men of a water totem, the other those of earth (Strehlow, I, p. 6).

[448] Among the Iroquois there is a sort of tournament between the two phratries (Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 94). Among the Haida, says Swanton, the members of the two phratries of the Eagle and the Crow "are frequently considered as avowed enemies. Husband and wife (who must be of different phratries) do not hesitate to betray each other" (The Haida, p. 62). In Australia this hostility is carried into the myths. The two animals serving the phratries as totems are frequently represented as in a perpetual war against each other (see J. Mathews, Eaglehawk and Crow, a study of Australian Aborigines, pp. 14 ff.). In games, each phratry is the natural rival of the other (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 770).

[449] So Thomas has wrongly urged against our theory of the origin of the phratries its inability to explain their opposition (Kinship and Marriage, p. 69). We do not believe that it is necessary to connect this opposition to that of the profane and the sacred (see Hertz, La prééminence de la main droite, in the Revue Philosophique, Dec., 1909, p. 559). The things of one phratry are not profane for the other; both are a part of the same religious system (see below, p. 155).

[450] For example, the clan of the Tea-tree includes the grasses, and consequently herbivorous animals (see Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169). This is undoubtedly the explanation of a particularity of the totemic emblems of North America pointed out by Boas. "Among the Tlinkit," he says, "and all the other tribes of the coast, the emblem of a group includes the animals serving as food to the one whose name the group bears" (Fifth Rep. of the Committee, etc., British Association for the Advancement of Science, p. 25).

[451] Thus, among the Arunta, frogs are connected with the totem of the gum-tree, because they are frequently found in the cavities of this tree; water is related to the water-hen; with the kangaroo is associated a sort of parrot frequently seen flying about this animal (Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 146-147, 448).

[452] One of the signs of this primitive lack of distinction is that territorial bases are sometimes assigned to the classes just as to the social divisions with which they were at first confounded. Thus, among the Wotjobaluk in Australia and the Zuñi in America, things are ideally distributed among the different regions of space, just as the clans are. Now this regional distribution of things and that of the clans coincide (see De quelques formes primitives de classification, pp. 34 ff.). Classifications keep something of this special character even among relatively advanced peoples, as for example, in China (ibid., pp. 55 ff.).