Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/192

 1 76 The Oi'igin of Exogamy and Totemisiu.

in 1905, has now to be modified in consequence of the general acceptance of certain evidence.

I next suppose that a local exogamous group of, say, Ducks, and another neighbouring group named Dogs, weary of fighting for wives against the kin of their own wives and own children, made peace with conniibuun. Here we have the evidence of the Urabunna, Karamundi, and Itchumundi arrangement by which people of one totem must marry only people of one other totem, as Dingo, among the Urabunna, marries only into Water Hen.*^

The Itchumundi nation contains four tribes. A man of the Mukwara (Eagle Hawk) totem and phratry " married a Kilpara " (Crow phratry) of the Bone-fish totem ; a Mukwara of the Kangaroo totem married a Kilpara of the Emu totem, a Mukwara of the Dog totem married a Kilpara of the Padi-melon totem, and so on. " The tribes of the Karamundi nation have a similar rule [like that of the Itchumundi nation] by which a member of either class" [phratry] " may marry only in one totem of the other class."*- Messrs. Spencer and Gillen and Mr. Howitt ass-ign the same rule to the Urabunna nation. All these tribes are in the most primitive state of social organisation, with female descent and no sub-classes; the Urabunna have, the others have not, pirraiirii. Mr. Frazer, Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Howitt make no attempt to explain their unique rule of one totem to one totem marriage. It must make the two intermarrying totem kins in a high degree consanguineous, and can scarcely have been adopted to prevent marriages of near kin, if cousins were reckoned near kin.

These marriages are mainly marriages of first cousins, which Urabunna law permits, if the bride be a daughter of the man's mother's younger brother, or of his father's younger sister. When one small community may select wives only from one other small community, — Water Hen group from

■•' Totemism and Exogamy, vol. i., pp. 176-, 387-S, quoting' Howitt and Spencer and Gillen. ■*2 Howitt, op. cit., pp. 194, 189.