We shall presently see that other distinguished anthropologists do, to some extent, rely on Arunta myths, as ‘bearing the stamp of authenticity.’ The truth is that the native thinkers have hit on the same hypothesis as their European critics, the hypothesis of something like deliberate primeval legislation to a given end, the regulation of marriage. Far from accepting any such native myths, I am rather inclined to hold that, whatever theory be correct, the theory of the savage myth-makers must be wrong. It ought to be said that Mr. Fison, at least, knows what his own theory involves, and once even frankly accepted the possibility that the Dieri myth (the foundation of exogamy by divine decree) may be historically true. ‘All I contend for is,’ he says, ‘that if the former existence of the undivided commune be taken for granted’ (and Mr. Fison, unlike Mr. Howitt, regards the undivided commune as a mere unproved hypothesis), ‘its division into exogamous clans must have had precisely the effect’ (a consciously reformatory effect) ‘which Mr. Morgan’s theory requires. If such a community ever existed, I do not hesitate to say that Mr. Morgan’s “reformatory movement” appears to me the most likely method by which it would begin its advance to a better system of marriage’ than ‘communal marriage.’ But what gave the impulse to the hypothetical moral reformation? Contact with a more advanced tribe is reckoned improbable by Mr. Fison (for how came the other tribe to be more advanced?), and so the moral impulse ‘must have been derived from a higher power,’ from the Good Spirit, or from ancestral spirits, as in the myths of the Dieri, the Woeworung, also of the Menomini Redmen of North America, a branch of the Algonquins; and the Euahlayi tribe. According to the Menomini, there is, or was, a Being who ‘made the earth.’[18] His name being interpreted means ‘The Great Unknown,’ but only extreme believers in the theory of religious borrowing will say that he was Sir Walter Scott, Bart. He (The Great Unknown) created ‘manidos or spirits,’ in the shape of animals, or birds. The chief birds (as often in Australia) were Eagles and Hawks. The Bear ‘came out of the ground,’ and was turned into an Indian, by the Great Unknown, _alias_ ‘The Good Mystery.’ He and the Beaver headed totem kins now in ‘The Big Thunder phratry.’ Other animals came in; there are now Bear, Eagle, Crane, and Moose ‘phratries,’ each containing a number of totems. All the people of a totem name in the Menomini tribe are akin to persons of the same totem in other tribes, say of the Sioux.[19]