Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/493

Rh phratry, with clans Little Turtle, Mud Turtle, Great Turtle, Yellow Eel; Turkey phratry, with clans Turkey, Crane, Chicken. Here we are almost forced to conclude that the Turtle phratry was origin ally a Turtle clan which subdivided into a number of clans, each of which took the name of a particular kind of turtle, while the Yellow Eel clau may have been a later subdivision. Thus we get a probable explanation of the origin of split totems; they seem to have arisen by the segmentation of a single original clan, which had a whole animal for its totem, into a number of clans, each of which took the name either of a part of the original animal or of a subspecies of it. "We may conjecture that this was the origin of the Grey Wolf and Yellow Wolf and Great Turtle and Little Turtle clans of the Tuscarora-Iroquois; the Black Eagle and White Eagle and the Deer and Deer-Tail clans of the Raws; and of the Highland Turtle (striped), Highland Turtle (black), Mud Turtle, and Smooth Large Turtle clans of the Wyandots (Hurons). Warren actually states that the numerous Bear clan of the Ojibways was formerly subdivided into subclans, each of which took for its totem some part of the Bear's body (head, foot, ribs, &c.), but that these have now merged into two, the Common Bear and the Grizzly Bear. The subdivision of the Turtle (Tortoise) clan, which on this hypo thesis has taken place among the Tuscarora-Iroquois, is nascent among the Onondaga-Iroquois, for among them "the name of this clan is Hahnowa, which is the general word for tortoise; but the clan is divided into two septs or subdivisions, the Hanyatengona, or Great Tortoise, and the Nikahnowaksa, or Little Tortoise, which together are held to constitute but one clan. "

On the other hand, fusion of clans is known to have taken place, as among the Haidas, where the Black Bear and Fin-Whale clans have united; and the same thing has happened to some extent among the Omahas and Osages.

In Australia the phratries are still more important than in America. Messrs Howitt and Fison, who have done so much to advance our knowledge of the social system of the Australian aborigines, have given to these exogamous divisions the name of classes; but the term is objection able, because it fails to convey (1) that these divisions are kinship divisions, and (2) that they are intermediate divisions; whereas the Greek term phratry conveys both these meanings, and is therefore appropriate. We have seen examples of Australian tribes in which members of any clan are free to marry members of any clan but their own; but such tribes appear to be excep tional. Often an Australian tribe is divided into two (exogamous) phratries, each of which includes under it a number of totem clans; and of tener still there are subphratries interposed between the phratry and the clans, each phratry including two subphratries, and the subphratries including totem clans. We will take examples of the former and simpler organization first.

The Turra tribe in Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, is divided into two phratries, Wiltu (Eaglehawk) and Miilta (Seal). The Eaglehawk phratry includes ten totem clans (Wombat, Wallaby, Kangaroo, Iguana, Wombat-Snake, Bandicoot, Black Bandicoot, Crow, Rock Wallaby, and Emu); and the Seal phratry includes six (Wild Goose, Butterfish, Mullet, Schnapper, Shark, and Salmon). The phratries are of course exogamous, but (as with the Choctaws, Mohegan, and, so far as appears, all the American phratries) any clan of the one phratry may intermarry with any clan of the other phratry. But the typical Australian tribe is divided into two exogamous phratries; each of these phratries is subdivided into two subphratries; and these subphratries are subdivided into an indefinite number of totem clans. The phratries being exogamous, it follows that their subdivisions (the subphratries and clans) are so also. The well-known Kamilaroi tribe in New South Wales will serve as an example. Its subdivisions are as follows: —

Phratries. Subphratries. Totem Clans. Dilbi. Kupathin. Muri. Kubi. Ipai. Kumbo. Kangaroo, Opossum, Bandicoot, Padimelon, Iguana, Black Duck, Eaglehawk. Scrub Turkey, Yellow-Fish, Honey-Fish, Bream. Emu, Cai pet-Snake, Black Snake, Ked Kangaroo, Honey, Walieroo, Frog, Cod-Fish.

In such tribes the freedom of marriage is still more curtailed. A subphratry is not free to marry into either snbphratry of the other phratry; each subphratry is restricted in its choice of partners to one subphratry of the other phratry; Muri can only marry Kumbo, and vice versa; Kubi can only marry Ipai, and vice versa. Hence (supposing the tribe to be equally distributed between the phratries and subphratries), whereas under the two phratry and clan system a man is free to choose a wife from half the women of the tribe, under the phratry, subphratry, and clan system he is restricted in his choice to one quarter of the women.

A remarkable feature of the Australian social organization is that divisions of one tribe have their recognized equivalents in other tribes, whose languages, including the names for the tribal divisions, are quite different. A native who travelled far and wide through Australia stated that " he was furnished with temporary wives by the various tribes with whom he sojourned in his travels; that his right to these women was recognized as a matter of course; and that he could always ascertain whether they belonged to the division into which he could legally marry, though the places were 1000 miles apart, and the languages quite different. " Again, it is said that " in cases of distant tribes it can be shown that the class divisions correspond with each other, as for instance in the classes of the Flinders river and Mitchell river tribes; and these tribes are separated by 400 miles of country, and by many intervening tribes. But, for all that, class corresponds to class in fact and in meaning and in privileges, although the name may be quite different and the totems of each dissimilar." Particular information, however, as to the equivalent divisions is very scanty. This systematic correspondence between the intermarrying divisions of distinct and distant tribes, with the rights which it conveys to the members of these divisions, points to sexual communism on a scale to which there is perhaps no parallel elsewhere, certainly not in North America, where marriage is always within the tribe, though outside the clan. But even in Australia a man is always bound to marry within a certain kinship group; that group may extend across the whole of Australia, but nevertheless it is exactly limited and defined. If endogamy is used in the sense of prohibition to marry outside of a certain kinship group, whether that group be exclusive of, inclusive of, or identical with the man's own group, then marriage among the totem societies of Australia, America, and India is both exogamous and endogamous; a man is forbidden to marry either within his own clan or outside of a certain kinship group.

(3) Rules of Descent.—In a large majority of the totem tribes at present known to us in Australia and North America descent is in the female line; i.e., the children belong to the totem clan of their mother, not to that of their father. In Australia the proportion of tribes with female to those with male descent is as four to one; in America it is between three and two to one.

As to the totem tribes of Africa, descent among the Damaras is in the female line, and there are traces of female kin among the Bechuanas. Among the Bakalai property descends in the male line, but this is not a conclusive proof that descent is so reckoned; all the clans in the neighbourhood of the Bakalai have female descent both for blood and property. In Bengal, where there is a considerable body of totem tribes, Mr Risley says that after careful search he and his coadjutors have found no tribe with female descent, and only a single trace of it in one. Among the totem

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