Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/75

 Rh Postponing for awhile our consideration of these practices, let us turn to the Arunta of Central Australia as depicted by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. Gillen. Striking differences at once reveal themselves in the mode of regarding the totem. The totem of British Columbia is derived from a single ancestor. Its origin, whether we accept the manitou-theory or not, is attributed to an individual. The Arunta totems, on the contrary, are none of them believed to be individual in origin. The notions held by the tribe as to birth preclude this. The theory of paternity—what we call birth in the ordinary course of nature—is unknown. Some years ago I ventured to suggest that certain archaic beliefs and practices found almost all over the world were consistent only with, and must have arisen from, imperfect recognition of fatherhood. I hardly expected, however, that a people would be found still existing in that hypothetical condition of ignorance. Yet, if we may trust the evidence before us, it is precisely the condition of the Arunta. They hold the cause of birth to be simply the desire of some Arunta of earlier days to be reincarnated. The doctrine has thus been summarised by Dr. Frazer: "They suppose that in certain far-off times, to which they give the name of 'Alcheringa,' their ancestors roamed about in bands, each band consisting of members of the same totem-group. Where they died their spirits went into the ground and formed, as it were, spiritual storehouses, the external mark of which is some natural feature, generally a stone or a tree. Such spots are all over the country, and the ancestral spirits who haunt them are ever waiting for a favourable opportunity to be born again into the world. When one of them sees his chance he pounces out on a passing girl or woman and enters into her. Then she conceives, and in due time gives birth to a child, who is firmly believed to be a reincarnation of the spirit that darted into the mother from the rock or tree." And he adds, "This is the first case on record of a tribe who believe in immaculate conception as