It is necessary to understand this clearly. Take a very early group,
in a given district; suppose it, at first, to be anonymous, and let it
later be called the Emu group. So far, all members of the group will
be Emus, they will form an Emu _local_ group. But, next, suppose that
there are many neighbouring groups, also at first anonymous; let them
later be styled Rat, Cat, Bat, Sprat. Suppose that each such group now
(for reasons to be indicated later) takes its wives not from within
itself, but from all the other groups; that these women bring into the
Emu group their group names; and that their children inherit their
names from their mothers. Then the name, ‘Emu group,’ will cling to
that _local_ aggregate, as such; but, in time, the members of the Emu
group will all be, say, Rats, Cats, Bats, and Sprats, so called from
the group-names of their alien mothers. Suppose that, for one reason
or another, children at last come to inherit their names and totems
from their fathers. Then a Cat father will have Cat children, though
his wives may still be of different totems, and his sons’ children will
also be Cats, and so the local group will become mainly, if not wholly,
a group of one totem, the Cat. The Arunta of Central Australia do trace
kinship in the male line, and thus there is ‘one area which belongs to
the Kangaroo men, another to Emu men, another to Hakea flower men,’ and
so on. This has reached such a pitch that ‘in speaking of themselves
the natives will refer to these _local_ groups,’ not by the prevalent
totem names in each, but ‘by the name of the locality which each of
them inhabits,’ namely, as men of the Iturkawura camp, and so on.[27]
Thus we might say ‘the Glen Nevis men,’ ‘the Corradale men,’ and so on.
Thus we begin with an anonymous group, or group of unknown name, a
local group. We introduce Totemism, and that group becomes a local
group with a totem name. Granting exogamy (prohibition of marriage
within the group), and reckoning in the female line, it soon developes
into a local group made up of various totems, but, at first, _as a
local group_, it probably retains its original totem name among its
neighbours. Reckoning, still later, through the male line, we again
meet, as at first, a local totem group, but already Totemism is on
the wane, and the groups are soon to be called by the territorial
names of their lands. At this stage totem names are tending to decay,
and the next step will probably be to style the group by the name of
some remembered, or mythical, male ancestor, such as ‘children of
Donald’--Macdonalds.
Thus if, at a given time, the name of a certain male ancestor is
substituted, as ‘eponymous,’ for the totem name, or the district name,
we shall find a local group of, say, Sons of Donald, into which other
groups, Sons of Sorlie, or Ulrig, will enter, as occasion serves, and
be more or less absorbed. A State may at last arise, say, ‘Softs of
Israel.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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