The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

[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.).

[453] Bridgmann, in Brough Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, I, p. 91.

[454] Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 168; Howitt, Further Notes on the Australian Class Systems, J.A.I., XVIII, p. 60.

[455] Curr, III, p. 461. This is about the Mount Gambier tribe.

[456] Howitt, On some Australian Beliefs, J.A.I., XIII, p. 191, n. 1.

[457] Howitt, Notes on Australian Message Sticks, J.A.I., XVIII, p. 326; Further Notes, J.A.I., XVIII, p. 61, n. 3.

[458] Curr, III, p. 28.

[459] Mathews, Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria, in Journ. and Proceed. of the Royal Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXVIII, p. 294.

[460] Cf. Curr, III, p. 461; and Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 146. The expressions Tooman and Wingo are applied to the one and the other.

[461] Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 123.

[462] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 447 ff.; cf. Strehlow, III, pp. xii ff.

[463] Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.

[464] Curr, III, p. 462.

[465] Mrs. Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 20.

[466] Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., p. 151; Nat. Tr., p. 447; Strehlow, III, p. xii.

[467] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 449.

[468] However, there are certain tribes in Queensland where the things thus attributed to a social group are not forbidden for the members of the group: this is notably the case with the Wakelbura. It is to be remembered that in this society, it is the matrimonial classes that serve as the framework of the classification (see above, p. 144). Not only are the men of one class allowed to eat the animals attributed to this class, but they may eat no others. All other food is forbidden them (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 113; Curr, III, p. 27).

But we must not conclude from this that these animals are considered profane. In fact, it should be noticed that the individual not only has the privilege of eating them, but that he is compelled to do so, for he cannot nourish himself otherwise. Now the imperative nature of this rule is a sure sign that we are in the presence of things having a religious nature, only this has given rise to a positive obligation rather than the negative one known as an interdiction. Perhaps it is not quite impossible to see how this deviation came about. We have seen above (p. 140) that every individual is thought to have a sort of property-right over his totem and consequently over the things dependent upon it. Perhaps, under the influence of special circumstances, this aspect of the totemic relation was developed, and they naturally came to believe that only the members of the clan had the right of disposing of their totem and all that is connected with it, and that others, on the contrary, did not have the right of touching it. Under these circumstances, a tribe could nourish itself only on the food attributed to it.

[469] Mrs. Parker uses the expression "multiplex totems."

[470] As examples, see the Euahlayi tribe in Mrs. Parker's book (pp. 15 ff.) and the Wotjobaluk (Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 121 ff.; cf. the above-mentioned article of Mathews).