The secret of the totem / by Andrew Lang.

  • Andrew Lang
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The secret of the totem / by Andrew Lang. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/236 page 11
    allotment of permanent paramours. In the first three points these northern tribes of primitive type resemble, not the south-eastern tribes of the same social type, but the more socially advanced central, western, and northern “ nations,” with whom some of them are in touch and even intermarry. It is a dangerous fallacy to suppose that all tribes of the primitive tribal organisation are solidaires as to marriage, ceremonial rites, and beliefs. It is difficult to say which is the second type of tribal organisation. We have in Victoria, in a triangle with its apex on the Murray River, the organisation already described (i), but here descent is reckoned in the male, not in the female line. This implies some social advance: social institutions, with male descent of the totem name, are certain to become local, rather than totemistic. The Kangaroos, deriving the totem name from the father, are a local clan, in some cases, like the Maclans in Glencoe. The Kangaroo name prevails in the locality. This cannot occur, obviously, when the names are derived from mothers, and the women go to the husband's district. We may call the organisation thus described (2^), and as {7.b) we should reckon the organisation which prevails, as a rule, on the east of Southern Australia, in Queensland and New South Wales, from the northerly and southern coast-line (with a gap in the centre of the coast-line), to the eastern limits of (i). Here we find (2^) a great set of tribes having female descent, but each individual belongs not only to one of two phratries, and to a totem, but also to a “ Matrimonial Class.” In each phratry there are two such classes. Among the Kamilaroi, in phratry Dilbi, are “classes” named Muri (male) and Kubi (male). In phratry Kupathin are Ipai (male) and Kumbo (male), while the women bear the feminine forms of these
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3