To me, judging of the possible feelings of the pristine ancestors of the Australians by their descendants of the present time, it seems most improbable that any such nicknames would have been adopted and have given rise to totemism, nor do I know of a single instance in which such nicknames have been adopted.
I could more easily imagine that these early savages might, through dreams, have developed the idea of relationships with animals, or even with plants. Such dreams as those of the medicine-man Bunjil-bataluk, who was a Lace-lizard, according to his dreams and in his own belief, or of the Biraark who dreamed that he was a Kangaroo, and assisted at their corrobboree, are cases in point.
The hypothesis suggested by Professor Haddon[1] is that groups of people, at a very early period, by reason of their local environment, would have special varieties of food.
This receives support from the fact that analogous names obtain now in certain tribes, e.g. the Yuin.
A question suggests itself, as to whether the ceremonies of the Dieri and other Lake Eyre tribes, which are the equivalents of the Intichiuma ceremonies, may be considered as the survival of primitive belief and custom, or whether they are a peculiar evolution of totemism. The Dieri tribe in its organisation, and in its customs and beliefs, is one of the most backward-standing tribes I know of, and therefore it would not be surprising if the magical food-producing ceremonies were retained, while other tribes have departed from them.
Assuming that the Dieri do, in fact, continue ceremonies which belonged to the primary functions of the early totemistic groups, it may be worth considering whether there are any apparent reasons why the native tribes in other parts of Australia have abandoned them. I have before pointed out that the tribes can be arranged in a series: first those with Pirrauru marriage; then those in which that form of marriage has become a rudimentary custom; and finally those which have more or less lost their class organisation, and have developed a form of individual marriage.
Now compare such a series of tribes with regard to these
- ↑ Proceedings of British Association, 1902.
