Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/499

 Reviews. 467

that "the customs of the Arunta and Kaitish tribes probably represent most nearly the original customs common to the ancestors of the central and north-central tribes." The more northerly tribes differ in many respects from the Arunta. While the part played by the father in bringing into the world a new human being is not understood by any of these tribes (nor, it may be added, by some of the North Queensland tribes studied by Mr. Roth), and every new child is held to be the incarnation, or re- incarnation, of spirit-children left by remote ancestors,^ still in all the tribes north of Lake Eyre and its immediate district, descent is counted for some purposes in the male line. The totem, for instance, descends thus. With rare exceptions which appear to follow the haphazard rule of the Arunta and Kaitish, male descent of the totem is found among the Warramunga, their immediate neighbours to the north. In the tribes beyond the Warramunga the rule is invariable. In all the tribes each totem has a headman (called by the Arunio. A latunj a) ; and the headship of the totem like- wise passes by male descent. Its importance, however, diminishes from the Arunta northward. In the Arunta nation the Alatunja has two very important functions : he is responsible for the per- formance of the Intichiuma ceremonies, and he has charge of the sacred storehouse where the churinga (sacred stones and staves) of the totem are hidden. But among the Warramunga there is no sacred storehouse, the churinga are fewer in number, are not connected, as among the Arunta, with the spirit-part of individual members of the totem, and are little used in ceremonies. North- ward and eastward of the Warramunga the use of churinga and the legends about them gradually die away. The Warramunga, it is true, still perform Intichiuma as magical ceremonies for securing the increase of the totemic animal or plant. But they are not comparable in importance to those of the Arunta and Kaitish tribes. In fact, save the Worgaia tribe, the Warramunga group, or nation, only yielded "mere vestiges of this magical part of the Intichiuma." Beyond them, there are indeed traces of such cere- monies among the Binbinga, but the headman is not of necessity associated with them. " In the coastal tribes the social aspect of

' The Gnanji, however, are an exception, holding that women have no spirit- part, and cannot be reincarnated (p. 170). Then, whence do the baby -girls come?

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