Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/193

 The Origin of Exogamy and Tofcnn'siii. 177

Dingo group with restrictions on t/mt, — if the [)cople niaj- not marry sonic of their first cousins, wiioin nia}- tiicy marry ?

The Dieri, on the other hand, nia\- marry any person of the right tribal status, (^/// first cousins are excluded), in any of the many totems in the phratry which is not their own ; whereas among the Urabunna, Karamundi, and Itchumundi the members of eacii totem kin ma\' only marry into one totem kin in the opposite phratr}'.

I would suggest that, among the Urabunna and the other " nations," first Dingo and Water Hen, say, made a covenant to marry peacefully with each other alone, (some two kins must have begun the practice), and that then other pairs imitated the example ; and, finally, all pairs coalesced inta one federated phratry or the other. What they gained b\' this was peace.

The arrangement, I conjecture, would be worked out thus: first we have, V animal-named exogamous local groups raiding each other for wives. Two such groups. Water Hen and Dingo, tire of this, and make a marriage treaty for peaceful betrothals : other groups, however, may still raid //^^w, and they may raid other groups, as they probably would, in revenge for raids on themselves, and because, in two small communities, marriageable women were not ver\' plentiful. But other groups follow their example, two by two. This, however, does not prevent any adventurous braves in any of the groups from raiding every group which is not the one linked by marriage treaty with his own. This dangerous license would cease when half of the groups federated, and the other half also federated into what are now the phratries, each phratry as a whole making a covenant of peace with the other. But, by an amazing conservatism, the pairs of totem-kins still only marry into each other among the Urabunna, Itchumundi, and Kara- mundi. How otherwise than by my conjecture can we account for this strange limit to choice in marriage.?