Chapter IX: Totemic Redistribution

The totemic redistribution--The same totem is never
in both phratries--This cannot be the result of
accident--Yet, originally, the same totems must have
existed in _both_ phratries, on any theory of the origin
of phratries--The present state of affairs is the result
of legislation--To avoid clash of phratry law and totem
law, the totems were redistributed--No totem in both
phratries--Recapitulation--Whole course of totemic
evolution has been surveyed--Our theory colligates every
known fact--Absence of conjecture in our theory--All the
causes are _veræ causæ_--Protest against use of such terms
as "sex totems," "individual totems," "mortuary totems,"
"sub-totems"--The true totem is hereditary, and marks the
exogamous limit--No other is genuine.

That the process of changing phratries was possible when it was necessary to meet, on the lines of least resistance, a matrimonial problem (there must always be some friction in law, under changed conditions) may be demonstrated as matter of fact. We are aware of an arrangement which cannot have been accidental, which evaded a clash of laws, and involved the changing of their phratries by certain members of totem kins.

That, at some early moment, the name-giving animals of descent had become full-blown totems, is plain from this fact, which occurs in all the primitive types of tribal organisation: _The same totem never exists in both phratries_.[1] This in no way increases, as things stand, the stringency of phratry law, of the old law, "No marriage in the local group," now a phratry. But it imposes a law perhaps more recent, "No marriage within the totem name by descent, and the totem kin." The distribution of totem kins, so that the same totem is never in both phratries, cannot, I repeat, be the result of accident.[2] Necessarily, at first, the same totem must have occurred, sometimes, in both of the _local_ groups which, on our theory, became phratries. Thus if Eagle Hawk local group and Crow local group had both taken wives from Lizard, Wallaby, Cat, Grub, and Duck local groups, these women would bring Wallaby, Cat, Grub, Lizard, Duck names into both the Eagle Hawk and the Crow local groups. Yet Eagle Hawk and Crow phratries, representing Eagle Hawk and Crow local groups, never now contain, both of them, Snipe, Duck, Grub, Wallaby, Cat, and Emu totem kins. Snipe, Duck, and Wallaby are in one phratry; Cat, Grub, and Emu are in the other.

This is certainly the result of deliberate legislation, whether at the first establishment of phratry law, or later.

If the theory of Mr. Frazer and Dr. Durkheim, the theory that the two primal groups threw off totem colonies, be preferred to mine, it remains very improbable that colonies, swarming off the hostile Crow group, never once took the same new animal-names as those chosen by Eagle Hawk colonies: that the Eagle Hawk colonies, again, always chose new totems which were always avoided by the Crow colonies.

It would appear, then, that there must have been a time when several of the same totems by descent occurred in both phratries, or, at least, in both the local groups that became phratries. In that case, by _phratry_ law, a Snipe in Eagle Hawk phratry might marry, out of his own phratry, in Crow phratry, a Snipe. By _totem_ law, however, he may not do this. There was thus a clash of laws, as soon as totem law was fully developed, and the totems were therefore deliberately arranged so that one totem never appeared in both phratries. This law made it necessary, when Snipes occurred in both phratries, that some Snipes, say, in Eagle Hawk phratry, must cross over and join the other Snipes in Crow phratry, or _vice versa_. They obviously could not change their totems, and, of two evils, preferred to change their phratry, the representative of their old local group. Totems were beginning to override and flourish at the expense of phratries, a process in the course of which many phratry names are now of unknown meaning, many phratry names have even ceased to exist (the later matrimonial class names doing all that is needed), and outside of Australia, America, and parts of Melanesia, phratries seem not to be found at all among totemists--(the Melanesians have only rags of totemism left).

But where totems, under male kinship (as among the Arunta), have decayed, phratries, named or nameless (and, where nameless, indicated by the opposed matrimonial classes in Australia), do regulate exogamy still.

Thus the possibility of members of a totem kin changing phratries, as we suppose Eagle Hawk and Crow kins to have done, seems to have been demonstrated by actual fact, by that _re_distribution of totem kins in the phratries--never the same totem in both phratries--which cannot be due to accident, and is universal, except in the Arunta nation. In that nation the absence of the universal practice has been explained. (Cf.