totem kins Wolf, Bear, Eagle, &c. (Frazer, Totemism, pp. 61, 62 (1887)). In Australia the fact has hitherto escaped observation, because so many phratry names are not translated, while, though Mukwara and Kilpara are translated, the Eagle Hawk and Crow totem kins within them bear other names for the same birds, more recent names, or tribal native names, such as Biliari and Waa, while Mukwara and Kilpara may have been names borrowed, within the institution of phratries, from some alien tribe now perhaps extinct.
We have now sketched a scheme explanatory of the most primitive type of social organization in Australia. The tendency is for phratries first to lose the meanings of their names, and, next, for their names to lapse into oblivion, as among the Arunta; the work of regulating marriage being done by the opposed Matrimonial Classes.
These classes are obviously an artificial arrangement, intended to restrict marriage to persons on the same level as generations. The meanings of the class names are only known with certainty in two cases, and then are names of animals, while there is reason to suspect that animal names occur in four or five of the eight class-names which, in different dialect forms, prevail in central and northern Australia. Conceivably the new class regulations made use of the old totemic machinery of nomenclature. But until Australian philologists can trace the original meanings of Class names, further speculation is premature.
10. Much might be said about the way out of totemism. When once descent and inheritance are traced through males, the social side of totemism begins to break up. One way out is the Arunta way, where totems no longer designate kinships. In parts of America totems are Breaking up of totemism. simply fading into heraldry, or into magical societies, while the “gentes,” once totemic, have acquired new names, often local, as among the Sioux, or mere sobriquets, as among the Blackfeet. In Melanesia the phratries, whether named or nameless, have survived, while the totems have left but a few traces which some consider disputable (Social Origins, pp. 176-184). Among the Bantu of South Africa the tribes have sacred animals (Siboko), which may be survivals of the totems of the chief local totem group, with male descent in the tribe, the whole of which now bears the name of the sacred animal. Even in Australia, among tribes where there is reckoning of descent in the male line, and where there are no matrimonial classes, the tendency is for totems to dwindle, while exogamy becomes local, the rule being to marry out of the district, not out of the kin (Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pp. 270-272; cf. pp. 135-137).
The problem as to why, among savages all on the same low level of material culture, one tribe derives descent through women, while its nearest neighbouring tribe, with ceremonies, rites, beliefs and myths like its own, and occupying lands of similar character in a similar climate, traces descent through men, seems totally insoluble. Again, we find that the civilized Lycians, as described by Herodotus (book i. ch. 173), reckoned lineage in the female line, while the naked savages of north and central Australia reckon in the male line. Our knowledge does not enable us to explain the change from female to male tracing of lineage. Yet the change was essential for the formation of the family system of civilized life. The change may be observed taking place in the region of North-West America peopled by the Thlinket, Haida and Salish tribes; the first are pure totemists, the last have arrived, practically, in the south, at the modern family, while a curious intermediate stage pervades the interjacent region.
The best authority on the Family developed in different shapes in North-West America is Charles Hill-Tout (cf. “Origin of the Totemism of the Aborigines of British Columbia,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. vii. sect. 11, 1901). He, like many American and some English and continental students, applies the term “totem” not only to the hereditary totem of the exogamous kin, but to the animal familiars of individual men or women, called manitus, naguals, nyarongs and yunbeai, among North American Indians, in South America, in Borneo and in the Euahlayi tribe of New South Wales. These animal familiars are chosen by individuals, obeying the monition of dreams, or are assigned to them at birth, or at puberty, by the tribal magicians. It has often been suggested that totemism arose when the familiar of an individual became hereditary among his descendants. This could not occur under a system of reckoning descent and inheriting the kin name through women, but as a Tsimshian myth says that a man’s sister adopted his animal familiar, the bear, and transmitted it to her offspring, Hill-Tout supposes that this may have been the origin of totemism in tribes with reckoning of descent in the female line. Instances, however, are not known to exist in practice, and myths are mere baseless savage hypotheses.
Exogamy, in his opinion, is the result of treaties of political alliance with exclusive interconnubium between two sets of kinsfolk by blood, totemism being a mere accidental concomitant. This theory evades the difficulties raised by the hypothesis of deliberate reformatory legislation introducing the bisection of the tribe into exogamous societies.
Authorities.—The study of the History of the Family has been subject to great fluctuation of opinion, as unexpected evidence has kept pouring in from many quarters. The theory of primal promiscuity, which in 1870 succeeded to Sir Henry Maine’s patriarchal theory, has endured many attacks, and there is a tendency to return, not precisely to the “patriarchal theory,” but to the view that the jealousy of the Sire of the “Cyclopean family,” or “Gorilla family” indicated by Darwin, has had much to do with laying the bases of “primal law.” The whole subject has been especially studied by English-speaking writers, as the English and Americans are brought most into contact with the most archaic savage societies. Among foreigners, in addition to Starcke, Westermarck and Durkheim, already cited, may be mentioned Professor J. Kohler, Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe (Stuttgart, 1897). Professor Kohler is in favour of a remote past of “collective marriage,” indicated, as in Morgan’s hypothesis, by the existing savage names of relationships, which are expressive of relations of consanguinity. E. S. Hartland (Primitive Paternity, 1910) discusses myths of supernatural birth in relation to the history of the Family.
A careful and well-reasoned work by Herr Cunow (Die Verwandtschafts Organisationen der Australneger, Stuttgart, 1894) deals with the Matrimonial Classes of Australian tribes. Cunow supposes that descent was originally reckoned in the male line, and that tribes with this organization (such as the Narrinyeri) are the more primitive. In this opinion he has few allies: and on the origin of Exogamy he seems to possess no definite ideas. Pikler’s Ursprung des Totemismus (Berlin, 1900) explains Totemism as arising from the need of names for early groups of men: names which could be expressed in pictographs and tattooing, to which we may add “gesture language.” This is much akin to the theory which we have already suggested, though Pikler seems to think that the pictograph (say of a Crow or an Eagle Hawk) was prior to the group name. But, he remarks, like Howitt, “the germ of Totemism is the naming”; and the community of name between the animal species and the human group led to the belief that there was an important connexion between the men and their name-giving animal.
Other useful sources of information are the annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington), the Journal of the Institute of the Anthropological Society, Folk Lore (the organ of the Folk Lore Society), and Durkheim’s L’Année sociologique. Tabou et totémisme à Madagascar, by M. A. van Gennep (Leroux, Paris, 1904) is a valuable contribution to knowledge.
For India, where vestiges of totemism linger in the hill tribes, see Risley and Crooke, Tribes and Castes, vols. i., ii., iii., iv.; and Crooke, Popular Religion; also Crooke in J.A.I. (N.S.), vol. i. pp. 232-244. (A. L.)
FAMINE (Lat. fames, hunger), extreme and general scarcity of food, causing distress and deaths from starvation among the population of a district or country. Famines have caused widespread suffering in all countries and ages. A list of the chief famines recorded by history is given farther on. The causes of famine are partly natural and partly artificial. Among the natural causes may be classed all failures of crops due to excess or defect of rainfall and other meteorological phenomena, or to the ravages of insects and vermin. Among the artificial causes may be classed war and economic errors in the production, transport and sale of food-stuffs.
The natural causes of famine are still mainly outside our control, though science enables agriculturists to combat them more successfully, and the improvement in means of transport allows a rich harvest in one land to supplement the defective
