Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/170

144 divisions arose from the amalgamation of two groups, the totem of one being Eagle-hawk, and of the other Crow. I still see no reason to vary the opinion first advanced by Dr. Lorimer Fison and myself, and subsequently endorsed by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, than whom none have had better opportunities of forming an independent opinion as to the probabilities of the case. I say "probabilities" advisedly, for the momentous change in the social system must have occurred in the far distance of prehistoric time. We can see the results, but can only infer the possible causes.

In speaking of the social organisation I have given a considerable number of lists of totems in connection with the class and sub-class divisions. In the chapter on Marriage and Descent I have further considered the totems in regard to these subjects. Something remains to be said as to the relations of the individual and the totem when it is a living creature. Each totem name represents a group of persons, and for this totem the term "group totem" is appropriate. It represents those persons who, to use a Wiradjuri expression, are all of the same budjan. The group totem is in some tribes inherited from the mother, in others from the father; while in some, such as the Arunta, it is not inherited, the child being the reincarnated Alcheringa ancestor.

But there is another totem which is not inherited, but which is given to a youth at his initiation, as for instance at the Burbung of the Wiradjuri. The case of Murri-kangaroo, mentioned elsewhere, is in point. His group budjan was Kangaroo, inherited from his mother; his personal budjan was Tiger-snake, which he received during the apparently hypnotic suggestions to which his father, a noted medicineman of that tribe, subjected him.

A third totem is not inherited, nor is it given, because a child when born becomes at once its brother if a boy, or its sister if a girl. This is the sex totem, of which the Wotjobaluk tribe gives one of the best examples. In it the Bat,