Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/494

Rh tribes of Bengal descent is male. In Assam the exogamous totem clans of the Kasias have female descent, as also have the exogamous clans of the Garos, but it does not appear whether their clans are totem clans, though some of their legends point to totemism.

In the Australian tribal organization of two phratries, four subphratries, and totem clans, there occurs a peculiar form of descent of which no plausible explanation has yet been offered. It seems that in all tribes thus organized the children are born into the subphratry neither of their father nor of their mother, and that descent in such cases is either female or male, according as the subphratry into which the children are born is the companion subphratry of their mother's or of their father's subphratry. In the former case we have what may be called indirect female descent; in the latter, indirect male descent. But it is only in the subphratry that descent is thus indirect. In the totem clan it is always direct; the child belongs to the clan either of its mother or of its father. Thus, in the typical Australian organization, descent, whether female or male, is direct in the phratry, indirect in the sub phratry, and direct in the clan.

To take examples, the following is the scheme of descent, so far as the phratries and subphratries are concerned, in the Kamilaroi:—

This is an example of indirect female descent, because the children belong to the companion subphratry of their mother, not to the companion subphratry of their father. But in the totems the female descent is direct; e.g., if the father is Muri-Kangaroo and the mother is Kumbo-Emu, the children will be Ipai-Emu; if the mother is Kumbo-Bandicoot, the children will be Ipai-Bandicoot.

The following is the scheme of descent in the Kiabara tribe: —

This is an example of indirect male descent, because the children belong to the companion subphratry of their father, not to the companion subphratry of their mother. We have no information as to the totems, but on the analogy of indirect female descent we should expect them to be taken from the father. This at any rate is true of a large tribe or group of tribes to the south of the Gulf of Carpentaria; their rules of marriage and descent, so far as concerns the subphratries, are like those of the Kiabara, and the totems (which at the lower Leichhardt river are the names of fish) are inherited from father to son.

In some Australian tribes sons take their totems from their father and daughters from their mother. Thus the Dieri in South Australia are divided into two phratries, each of which includes under it sixteen totem clans, (Caterpillar, Mullet, Dog, Rat, Kangaroo, Frog, Crow, &c.); and if a Dog man marries a Rat woman, the sons of this marriage are Dogs and the daughters are Rats. The Ikula (Morning Star) tribe, at the head of the Great Australian Bight, has, with certain exceptions, the same rule of descent.

Besides the tribes whose line of descent is definitely fixed in the female or male line, or, as with the Dieri and Ikula, half-way between the two, there are a number of tribes among whom a child may be entered in either his mother's or his father's clan. Among the Haidas, children regularly belong to the totem clan of their mother; but in very exceptional cases, when the clan of the father is reduced in numbers, the newly-born child may be given to the father's sister to suckle. It is then spoken of as belonging to the paternal aunt, and is counted to its father's clan. Among the Delawares descent is regularly in the female line; but it is possible to transfer a child to its father's clan by giving it one of the names which are appropriated to the father's clan. In the Hervey Islands, South Pacific, the parents settled beforehand whether the child should belong to the father's or mother's clan. The father usually had the preference; but sometimes, when the father's clan was one which was bound to furnish human victims from its ranks, the mother had it adopted into her clan by having the name of her totem pronounced over it. In Samoa at the birth of a child the father's totem was usually prayed to first; but if the birth was tedious, the mother's totem was invoked; and whichever happened to be invoked at the moment of birth was the child's totem for life.

When a North American tribe is on the march, the members of each totem clan camp together, and the clans are arranged in a fixed order in camp, the whole tribe being arranged in a great circle or in several concentric circles. When the tribe lives in settled villages or towns, each clan has its separate ward. The clans of the Osages are divided into war clans and peace clans; when they are out on the buffalo hunt, they camp on opposite sides of the tribal circle; and the peace clans are not allowed to take animal life of any kind; they must therefore live on vegetables unless they can obtain meat in exchange for vegetables from the war clans. Members of the same clan are buried together and apart from those of other clans; hence the remains of husband and wife, belonging as they do to separate clans, do not rest together. It is remarkable that among the Thlinkets the body must always be carried to the funeral pyre and burned by men of another totem, and the presents distributed on these occasions by the representatives of the deceased must always be made to men of a different clan.

Here we must revert to the religious side of totemism, in order to consider some facts which have emerged from the study of its social aspect. We have seen that some phratries, both in America and Australia, bear the names of animals; and in the case of the Thlinkets and Mohegans we have seen reason to believe that the animals which give their names to the phratries were once clan totems. The same seems to hold of the names of the Australian phratries, Eaglehawk, Crow, and Seal, or at least of Eaglehawk and Crow, for these are clan totems in other tribes, and are, besides, important figures in Australian mythology. Indeed, there appears to be direct evidence that both the phratries and subphratries actually retain, at least in some tribes, their totems. Thus the Port Mackay tribe in Queensland is divided into two phratries, Yungaru and Wutaru, with subphratries Gurgela, Burbia, Wungo, and Kubera; and the Yungaru phratry has for its totem the alligator, and Wutaru the kangaroo, while the sub phratries have for their totems the emu (or the carpet snake), iguana, opossum, and kangaroo (or scrub turkey).