Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/85

Rh It will be seen that these two groups of ceremonies, the Intichiuma and the Engwura are of great importance in the life of the tribe. Upon the former depends the supply of food and other necessaries. The latter are the final rites in the admission of youths to manhood. Thus, on the one hand, their continuance is safeguarded; on the other hand, they have a conservative influence: totemism cannot die out while they continue to be performed. On the side of organisation, however, as distinguished from the ceremonial side, the totem-clan is in decay. Nay, it has already ceased to be a clan. The tie of blood is no longer recognised; and where the tie of blood is destroyed, there is no clan in the proper sense of the word. Mr. Howitt's inquiries tend to show that the change in the line of descent, from reckoning exclusively through the mother to reckoning exclusively through the father (which is exactly what has happened among the Arunta) is accompanied by "a profound alteration in the social arrangements," and that the decay and even the disappearance (as among the Chlpara of southern Queensland) of the totemclans are part and parcel of the changes that take place. The course of development in other tribes thus leads us to anticipate what is taking place among the Arunta. But at present the organisation survives as a totem-group, having as its sole bond of union the performance of the ceremonies. On the whole, though the conjecture may be a bold one, it would not surprise me if it should turn out that the organisation is undergoing a slow transformation into something more like the so-called secret societies of the British Columbian tribes.

If this view be correct, then vanishes the difficulty that here is a totemistic people to whom the rule of exogamy does not apply; for it is only a difficulty if we insist on