Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia Part 8

PHRATRY NAMES.

The Phratriac Areas. Borrowing of Names. Their Meanings. Antiquity of Phratry Names. Eaglehawk Myths. Racial Conflicts.

Intercommunication. Tribal Migrations.

It has been shown in Chapter III that from the point of view of kinship organisations Australia falls into three main areas--occupied by the cla.s.sless two-phratry, the four-cla.s.s and the eight-cla.s.s organisations.

The total number of phratry names, thirty-three pairs in all, does not of course fall solely to the count of the two-phratry tribes, but is divided between the three kinds of organisation, the two-phratry having twelve pairs with one anomalous area, the four-cla.s.s sixteen, and the eight-cla.s.s five such sets. As regards the relative size of the areas thus organised, the largest seems to be that occupied by the Matteri-Kiraru system, though the Muquara-Kilpara (5) probably runs it close, especially if we take into account the names of like meaning (1-4) in the East Victorian area. The remainder of the two-phratry systems do not range over a wide extent of country, so far as is known; but 10, 11, and 33 are of unknown extent.

In the four-cla.s.s area are two extensive systems, ranking next after those of South Australia and N.S. Wales; these are Mallera-Wuthera (27) and Pakoota-Wootaro (29); they have a single phratry name in common, which is also found in two other systems; if we add these together, as we may perhaps do on this evidence of a common basis, we have by far the largest phratric system in Australia as the result. Almost equal in extent to either of the two areas occupied by 27 and 29 is that claimed by the better known Kamilaroi system--Dilbi-Kupathin, which spreads over a long, comparatively narrow region, but had possibly at one time a wider field from which at the present time only the corresponding cla.s.s names can be recovered. Of the remaining thirteen in the two-cla.s.s region, only 28, one of the Wuthera systems already mentioned, has more than a restricted field of influence. Of moderate size are the four areas in the eight-cla.s.s system proper, that of the Mara being small in comparison.

Taking now the native names, we find that, in addition to the Wuthera (Ootaroo) sets already mentioned, the Dieri and Kurnandaburi have Matteri (Mattera) in common, while the latter have in the Baddieri tribe a neighbour which shares the Yungo phratry name with them. The fact, if correct, that with the Badieri Yungo is a.s.sociated with Wutheru, and takes the place of the more usual Yungaru, suggests that we may equate the latter with Yungo. In the eight-cla.s.s area Uluuru is common to two systems, while a third has Wiliuku, and the fourth Illitchi, all of which seem to be allied, if we may take it that uru, uku, and tchi are suffixes; that they are is borne out by the corresponding names Liaritchi and Liaraku. Other possible equations are Mukula--Muk.u.murra, and Cheepa--Koocheebinga, but in the latter case, even if koo is a prefix, the distance of the two systems makes any such correspondence improbable. In Victoria the Malian-Multa equation is indisputable; it is interesting to note that the former is found in N.S. Wales as the name of the bird, while Multa belongs to Yorke Peninsula.

As regards the meaning of these names, we find that of the fifty-eight names which remain after deducting those which occur in more than one system, nineteen can be translated with certainty, and we can guess at the meaning of some half dozen more. Of translateable names the most widely spread are various t.i.tles of Eaglehawk and Crow, which appear in five different systems in Victoria and New South Wales[100]. Crow reappears in West Australia under the name of Wartung, with white c.o.c.katoo, also a Victorian phratry name, as its fellow. In North Queensland, as a parallel to the black and white c.o.c.katoo of the south, we find on the Annan River two species of bee giving their names to phratries; and the Black Duck phratry of the Waradjeri suggests that here too might be found another contrasting pair, if we could translate the other name. For the Euahlayi phratry names, on which more will be said in discussing the "blood" organisations, Mrs Parker gives the translation "Light-blooded" and "Dark-blooded," which comes near that suggested by Mr Mathews--slow and quick blooded. In the Ulu, Illi, and Wili of Northern Territory we seem to recognise Welu (curlew). Koolpuru (emu), Yungaru and Yungo (kangaroo), and Wutheroo (emu) are also possible meanings.

The problems raised by the phratriac nomenclature are complex and probably insoluble. They are in part bound up with the problem of the origin of the organisation itself; of this nature, for example, is the question whether the names correspond to anything existing in the pre-phratriac stage, or whether the organisation was borrowed and the names taken over translated or untranslated into the idiom of the borrowers. If the latter be the solution, we have a simple explanation of the wide-spread Eaglehawk-Crow system as well as of other facts, to which reference is made below.

If on the other hand the names have not been much spread by borrowing,--and the increasing number of small phratry areas known to us tells in favour of this, though it also suggests that the widely-found systems have gained ground at the expense of their neighbours,--then we obviously need some theory as to the origin of the organisation, before we can frame any hypothesis as to the origin of the names.

The prominent part, however, played by the Eaglehawk among phratry names raises some questions which can be discussed on their merits. One of these is the age of phratry names. Some of the earliest records of initiation ceremonies in New South Wales mention that the eaglehawk figured in them[101]. In West Australia this bird is the demiurge, and the progenitors of the phratries, of which crow is one, are his nephews.

This is not the only case in which these birds figure in mythology.

As the Rev. John Mathew has pointed out in his work, _Eaglehawk and Crow_, there are found in Australia, especially in the south-eastern portion, a number of myths relating to the conflicts of these birds.

These myths he interprets as echoes of a long-past conflict between the aboriginal Negrito race and the invading Papuans, and traces the origin of the phratries to the same racial strife. As an explanation of exogamy the hypothesis is clearly insufficient, but it is evident that no theory of the origin of the phratries can leave exogamy out of the question.

The point, however, with which we are immediately concerned is the myth on which in the main Mr Mathew based his theory. Unfortunately, he did not think it necessary to attempt to define either the area covered by the different phratry names--an omission which is remedied by the present work--nor yet the limits within which the myth in question or its a.n.a.logues are part of the native mythology. These a.n.a.logues to the story of the battle of Eaglehawk and Crow, ended in the Darling area according to tradition by a treaty between the contending birds, are myths in which birds are said to have destroyed the human race, or a large portion of it, to have contended with Baiame, or one of the other G.o.ds, or to have figured in some other conflict[102]. The bird of this myth--the bird conflict myth, as it may be termed--is the Eaglehawk.

Possibly, as I have pointed out in the note in _Man_, both bird conflict myths and Eaglehawk-Crow myths--they may be termed collectively bird myths--may go back to a common origin. So far as Mr Mathew's evidence goes, bird myths do not seem to be told outside the colony of Victoria and the Darling area of New South Wales.

A little research, however, shows that this idea is altogether erroneous. There are unfortunately large areas in Australia, as to the mythology of which we know absolutely nothing. Therefore it must not be supposed that the bird conflict myth is confined to the districts in which we have evidence of its existence. We may rather infer that a myth so widely distributed--it ranges from the head of the Bight, 129 E., to the coast north of Sydney, and probably as far as Moreton Bay; to the north it is found among the Urabunna, and probably elsewhere--is common property of the Australian Tribes.

A glance at the map will show that the eaglehawk and crow myth covers but a small portion of the area in which the bird conflict myth is found. On the other hand we find within the eaglehawk-crow myth district the phratry names c.o.c.katoo, three names of unknown meaning, and the doubtful Kiraru--Kirarawa. Now if a racial conflict is indicated by the names eaglehawk and crow, this must be either because the contending races were already known by these names, or because the two birds in question are proverbially hostile to each other. In either case we are left without any explanation of the two c.o.c.katoo phratries. It may indeed be argued that the locality in which the eaglehawk-crow phratry names are found tells strongly in favour of the racial conflict hypothesis; for it is precisely in this area that the last stand of the aborigines against the invaders may, on the theory put forward by Mr Mathew and accepted by some anthropologists[103], be supposed to have taken place. But against this must be set the fact that in this area also we find two c.o.c.katoos, and on the Annan River two bees, arrayed against one another; unless it can be shown that these two birds are also proverbial foes, or that the Australian native had reached a point in his biological investigations at which he recognised that the presence of two closely allied species in a district involves a particularly keen struggle for existence (which they would, however, regard in such an advanced stage of knowledge as appropriate to the designation of intra-racial rather than inter-racial feuds), the two sets of facts balance one another, and leave us still engaged in a vain quest for a conclusion.

Putting theories as to racial conflicts aside, and dealing with the facts as we find them, we seem to have a choice of two hypotheses.

Either the eaglehawk-crow myths were told before the phratry names came into existence, or they were invented to explain the existence of the phratry names. Let us a.s.sume that none of the unknown names mean eaglehawk or crow, and that the eaglehawk-crow area has remained approximately the same size, or has, at any rate, not diminished (excluding, of course, those cases where it seems to have lost ground owing to the disappearance of phratry names altogether, as among the Kurnai); we must then, on the second theory, a.s.sume that the story of the combat spread to tribes with completely different phratry names like the Urabunna, and got mixed up with their ceremonies of initiation (the most sacred part of the mythology of the Australian natives, and one not likely to be much influenced by chance intruders); and that it came even in some cases to be told of Baiame, the creator and inst.i.tutor of the rites of initiation, who is represented as himself taking part in the conflict and gaining a victory over the foes of mankind[104]. On the whole, therefore, this view of the case appears improbable.

To the theory that the Eaglehawk-Crow story was originally independent of the phratry names no such objections apply. We are indefinitely remote from the period at which the anthropologist will be able to do for Australia what Franz Boas has done for the North-West of America--draw up a table showing the resemblances and differences between the stock of folktales of the different tribes, or, which is more important for our present purpose, of the main divisions, eastern, central, and western, which the a.n.a.lysis of initiation ceremonies gives us--a tripart.i.te division which Curr also makes on the linguistic side, though Mathew's map shows considerable intermixture in this respect.

Until we know to what extent the Urabunna or the Ikula have folktales in common with the Victorian area, or,--which is perhaps more important, though we do not seem to hear of any communication on this line,--how far there is a stock of folktales common to the Darling district and the central area, it is obviously idle to speculate as to how it comes that an Eaglehawk myth is told in both areas. The physical anthropology of the Australian natives is at present a little-worked field, in which, singularly enough, the French have done more than the English, to our shame be it said. Possibly a somatological survey might disclose to what extent the central tribes are distinct from the eastern group, and how far we may a.s.sume movements of population, subsequent to the original peopling of the country by the stocks in question, in either or both directions. In the absence of such data, and until an Australian Grimm has arisen to bring order into the present linguistic chaos, the evidence from folktales seems to promise most light on the question of migrations.

We are, of course, confronted by the difficulty that this evidence may simply disclose the lines along which tribal intercommunication has been most easy, whether in the way of simple interchange of commodities, evidence of which we have over considerable areas in Australia, or in the way of intermarriage, which, as we see by the example of the Urabunna and the Arunta, is found in spite of fundamental differences of tribal organisation. A common stock of folktales due to this cause would leave unexplained the prominence of the bird myth in the sacred rites, and leave the present hypothesis, in this regard, on a par with that of post-phratriac dissemination, in respect of probability. On the other hand we have the Scylla of tribal property in land, an idea so firmly rooted in our own day in the minds of the Australians as to make wars of conquest unthinkable to them, and to transform the practical part of their intertribal feuds into mere raids. If, therefore, investigation showed that the central and eastern tribes are in possession of a stock of folktales with many items in common, we should always have to take into consideration the possibility that these tales antedate the complete occupation of Australia, and go back to a period when the eastern and central divisions were in close relation. The probability of this view would, of course, depend on the extent of the resemblance between the two stocks of tales, or, perhaps, rather on the extent of the resemblance between those tales which they have in common; for it is clear that a close resemblance between comparatively few items would be more effective proof of intercommunication than a less marked general resemblance between the tale-stocks as a whole.

In spite of the deficiencies of our evidence we may perhaps incline to the view that the bird myth dates back to a very early period. Until it has been shown that intrusive elements are not only taken up into the tribal stock of tales, but also incorporated in the more sacred portion of those tales, which are told at the tribal mysteries, it will always remain more probable that the myth belongs to the two divisions as a result of lineal and not lateral transmission. If this is so the differences between the initiation ceremonies, no less than the anthropomorphic form of the myth in the eastern division, as compared with the purely theriomorphic story of the central division and the mixed form of the Ikula, will enable us to say that the period when the separation of the divisions took place must be very remote.

There is, therefore, no inherent improbability in supposing that the bird myth was told before the phratry names were invented or adopted, and that the latter were in some cases taken from the princ.i.p.al characters in the myth. This conclusion is supported by the fact that the phratry names seem to be subsequent to the present grouping, if we may take as our guide the fact that the frontiers of the phratry names correspond with the boundaries between the central and eastern divisions. The fact that there is a cross division, if we base our reasoning on the cla.s.s organisation, need not of course be taken into account, for we have every reason to believe that the cla.s.ses are subsequent to the phratries.

In favour of the derivation of the phratry names from the myth tells also the five-fold division of the eaglehawk-crow groups into Muquara and Kilpara, Bunjil and Waa, Merung and Yuckembruk, Multa or Malian and Umbe. For it is clearly more probable that the names should have been taken from a common object than that they should have been in their origin identical in form and subsequently differentiated, as the languages changed; we have in fact direct evidence of a tendency to preserve the old names, which we may perhaps regard as the sacred names, after the bird has been rebaptised in the terminology of daily life.

Over and above this we have of course the fact that the sacred language has, generally speaking, both in Australia and elsewhere, this unchanging character. But this simple name-borrowing theory, it is clear, is equally valid as an explanation of the facts.

Although we cannot determine the meaning of the names the quadripart.i.te division of the Mallera-Wuthera[105] and allied phratries in the north is evidence of a similar tendency. It is by no means impossible that Mallera, Yungaroo, and Pakoota all mean the same thing. (This ignorance of the meaning of the phratry and cla.s.s names is _prima facie_ evidence of their high antiquity.) In the newly-discovered phratry names of the eight-cla.s.s tribes we have yet another instance of tripart.i.te division.

If we may a.s.sume that Illitchi, Uluuru, and Wiliuku are from the same root (which, as we have seen, is probably _welu_, the terminations _-uku_, _-itchi_, and _-uru_ (=_-aree_) being formative suffixes), we have here too a single phratry name on the one side and three sister names on the other. While it is clear that the names cannot be in any sense of the term recent, from the fact that linguistic differentiation had already gone some distance in what we may call, for want of a better term, groups speaking a stock language (in proof of which we have only to look at the formative suffixes), it seems equally clear that the present phratry names must be considerably later than the final settlement of the country. At the same time it must not be forgotten that the existence of numerous small phratries, the number of which may yet be largely increased by more exact research, is _prima facie_ a proof that the groups which adopted them had not reached the stage at which anything like that tribal (still less national) organisation was known, which is at the present day characteristic of the Arunta, and, perhaps, we may say, of all groups organised on a cla.s.s system with cla.s.s names known and used over an area far beyond that over which the (in a restricted sense) tribal language extends.

The recurrence of crow in the phratry name of the far west lends further support to the view that the phratry names were selected in some way, and were not due to some accident of savage wit. The view has been taken that the phratry animals were originally totems, or animals that became totems at a later stage. In view of the large number of totems found in many tribes, or even restricting their number to six or eight in each phratry, it is not difficult to estimate the probability that c.o.c.katoo and crow would recur in different areas, and that an opposition of characters should be found in other cases. The hypothesis needs at any rate to be combined with a theory, firstly, of borrowing of phratry names, a process which must indeed have played a large part in the development of the present system, but which does not necessarily involve the supposition that the borrowed names replaced previously existing home-made names; and, secondly, of selection of such names as were not borrowed.

It has been mentioned that the principle of tribal property in land or, to be strictly accurate, in hunting grounds, is, at the present day, a fundamental one in native Australian jurisprudence. But, as is shown by the map, in some cases the phratries are split into two or more segments[106], more or less remote from one another, geographically speaking. Now this apparent segmentation must be due to migration; it can hardly arise from the chance adoption of identical names; for the groups in which the names occur are, though separated by a considerable distance, not so remote as, on the theory of chance selection, we should expect them to be, in other words the probability is in favour of the segmentation of an original group or its cleavage by an intrusive element. Of the causes of this drift of population, which on a large scale, and under pressure of any kind, might well overrule even the rights of property, we have naturally no idea. In a h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s like the population of Australia, and especially in a ma.s.s whose level of culture is so low as to leave no remains behind which we could use for the purposes of chronology, it is hopeless to expect any solution of any of the problems connected with drift of population. One thing only seems clear, and on this point we may hope for some light from the data of philology, namely that the migration was long subsequent to the original _Volkerwanderung_; for this must have preceded the rise of phratry names, which again must have preceded the migration of which the segmentation of groups, evidenced by the names themselves, is at present, and in default of the aid of philology, our only proof.

The migrations of which we are speaking must, if the possession of one phratry name in common be worth anything as evidence of a closer connection between the groups, have been internal to a group or, if the term be preferred, to a nation occupying the south of Queensland. For in the absence of evidence that phratry names are to be found outside their own linguistic groups, we cannot but infer from the quadripart.i.te division of the Wuthera phratries both the linguistic unity (and language must be in Australia the ultimate test of racial relationship on a large scale) and the internal movements of the group in which they occur.

In favour of the primitive unity of the Wuthera groups, is the fact that with small exceptions, and those on the outskirts of the district, the area occupied by the a.s.sumed h.o.m.ogeneous pre-phratry group has the same cla.s.s names throughout--which is at the same time a proof that the cla.s.s names are posterior to the phratry names; for the later the date, the more extensive the group, may be taken to be the rule in savage communities; if the phratry names came later than the cla.s.s names we should expect them to be identical, and the cla.s.s names different instead of the reverse. But to the relative age of cla.s.ses and phratries we return at another point of our argument.

The available data being few, it could hardly be expected that a discussion of them would be very fruitful. In the present chapter we have, however, shown that the phratry names and organisation are probably of very early date, that considerable movements of population took place within the linguistic groups subsequent to the adoption of the phratry names, and that these names have been selected for some explicit reason and not adopted at haphazard.

FOOTNOTES:

[100] For references, meanings, etc. see chap. IV.

[101] See _Man_ 1905, no. 28.

[102] Cf. _Man_, 1905, no. 28.

[103] But see _J.R.S. Vict._ XVII, 120.

[104] See _Man_, 1905, no. 28, where I show that in the Wellington Valley was current a myth of the conflict between Baiame and Mudgegong (=Eaglehawk).

[105] Chap. IV, phratries, nos. 27-29.

[106] See Map III, phratry no. 28.

CHAPTER VI.

ORIGIN OF PHRATRIES.

Mr Lang's theory and its basis. Borrowing of phratry names. Split groups.

The Victorian area. Totems and phratry names. Reformation theory of phratriac origin.

If a pre-phratry organisation developed into the system as we find it, it is a little difficult to see how selection can have operated, unless, indeed, as Mr Lang suggests, the phratries are _transformed_ connubial groups, in which case they may have received new names. It is perhaps simpler to suppose that the cases of selection of phratry names cited above are those in which the organisation has been borrowed with full knowledge of its meaning. If this view is correct, no criticism of theories of the origin of phratries is possible from the point of view of the names actually existing, for we cannot say which, if any, are those which were evolved in the organisation which served as a model to the remainder.

Broadly speaking the theories of origin at present in the field may be reduced to two: in the first place, the conscious reformation theory, which supposes that man discovered the evils of in-and-in breeding, a point on which some discussion will be found in a later portion of this work. In the second place, there is the unconscious evolution theory put forward by Mr Lang, whose criticism of the opposing view makes it unnecessary to deal with the objections here[107].

Mr Lang's original theory took for its basis the hypothesis, put forward by the late Mr J.J. Atkinson, in _Primal Law_, of the origin of exogamy. His starting-point was mankind in the brute stage. At the point in the evolution of the human race at which Mr Atkinson takes up his tale, man, or rather Eoanthropos, was, according to his conjecture, organised, if that term can be applied to the grouping of the lower animals, in bodies consisting of one adult male, an attendant horde of adult females, including, probably, at any rate after a certain lapse of time, his own progeny, together with the immature offspring of both s.e.xes. As the young males came to maturity, they would be expelled from the herd, as is actually the case with cattle and other mammals, by their sire, now become their foe. They probably wandered about, as do the young males of some existing species, in droves of a dozen or more, and at certain seasons of the year, one or more of them would, as they felt their powers mature, engage the lord of their own or of another herd in single combat, until with the lapse of time the latter either succ.u.mbed or was driven from the herd to end his days in solitary ferocity, his hand against everyone, just as we see the rogue elephant wage war indiscriminately on all who approach him.

In process of time, so Mr Atkinson suggests, with the lengthening childhood conditioned by the progress of the race, maternal love of a more enduring kind developed, than is found among the non-human species of the present day. This led eventually to the presence of a young male, perhaps the youngest born of a given mother, being permitted to remain, on conditions, in the herd after he had attained maturity. The original lord and master of the herd retained, Mr Atkinson supposes, his full sovereignty over the females born in the herd as well as over those whom his prowess had perhaps added to it from time to time. The young male on the other hand was not condemned to a life of celibacy as a condition of his non-enforcement of the traditional decree of banishment. He was permitted to find a mate, but she must be a mate not born in the herd, nor one of the harem of his sire; he had, if he wished to wed, to capture a spouse for himself from another herd. For the detailed working out of this ingenious theory we must refer our readers to Mr Atkinson's work, _Primal Law_. Here it suffices to state the primal law which resulted from the process sketched above. This primal law was "thou shalt not marry within the group." This law, at first enforced by the superior strength of the sire, came in the process of time to be a traditional rule of conduct, almost an instinct. And with this we reach the theory put forward in _Social Origins_ by Mr Andrew Lang, according to which local groups received animal names, perhaps from their neighbours. These local groups being exogamous for the reason just given, and the group name being eventually[108] given, not only to the actual members of the group, but also to the women, captured or otherwise, who became the mates of the men of the adjoining groups, it necessarily resulted that the men of a group, so long as the mother's group name did not descend to her children, were of one name, while their wives were of another, or more probably of many other names. The group became definitely heterogeneous when the maternal group name descended to the children born in the alien group, and in process of time these maternal group names became totem names.

Meanwhile the original group names had been retained and applied, along with the totem or quasi-totem names, to the members of the group; the name being probably, in the first place, that of the group in which they were born, but, with the rise of the matrilineal descent, which has been discussed above, eventually taken from the group to which the mother belonged.

During these processes the custom had sprung up to select a wife, not at random from any of the probably more or less hostile surrounding groups, but from one particular group with which the group of the candidate for matrimony had in the course of time come to be on friendly terms.

The names of these two groups, which drew in other smaller groups, became the phratry names of the newly-formed aggregate, the largest unit known to primitive society at that stage of its evolution, and corresponding roughly to what we have defined as a tribe; for it was united by bonds of friendship, and in the course of time the language, originally very different no doubt, how different we can, indeed, hardly say, must have so far coalesced, owing to the interchange of wives (in so far as a distinct woman's language, traces of which are found among some savage tribes, was not developed), as to produce a single tongue.