These myths favourably illustrate the piety of the Dieri, Woeworung,
Euahlayi men, and Menomini. Like Mr. Fison (at one time, and ‘under
all reserves’) these tribes leaned to the hypothesis of divine or
supernormal intervention in matters totemic. The Dieri may be right,
but a less difficult hypothesis is that there was never ‘an undivided
commune,’ in the sense of Mr. Morgan and Mr. Fison, and that,
consequently, it never was ‘divided into exogamous clans.’ If so, no
miracle is needed: _Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus._ My
own scheme needs no divine aid, nor deliberate legislation, ‘in the
beginning.’ But that such legislation has intervened later, I think
probable, or certain.
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write: ‘Rigidly conservative as the native
is, it is yet possible for changes to be introduced.... There are
certain men who are respected for their ability, and, after watching
large numbers of the tribe, at a time when they were assembled together
for months to perform certain of their most sacred ceremonies, we have
come to the conclusion that, at a time such as this, when the older
and more powerful men from various groups are met together, and when
day by day, and night by night around their camp fires, they discuss
matters of tribal interest, it is quite possible for changes of custom
to be introduced.’[20] The Arunta traditions allege that such changes
introduced by men of weight, and accepted after discussion, have been
not unusual.[21] This is highly probable, now, but not in the beginning.
The Arunta historical traditions are of little value as to historical
facts,[22] but the consciousness of the Central Australian tribes
accepts the possibility that new customs may now be proposed,
debated, and adopted. If no such thing ever occurred, the belief in
its possibility could scarcely have arisen among the Arunta. But
the possibility has its limits, and one of these is the deliberate
primeval introduction of exogamy, for no conceivable reason, and its
imposition on a society already totemic but not yet exogamous. Perhaps
few critics will frankly say that exogamy was thus imposed; they will
try to qualify or evade so improbable and antiquated a theory. Yet they
cannot but slip back into it, while they believe in ‘segmentations’
of ‘an undivided commune,’ and of later totemic ‘subdivisions’ of the
‘segmentations.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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