Fire Ceremony of Central Australian Tribes. 25 



example, it will now be seen that we have over the country and 

 also, it must be remembered, in spots well known to the natives, 

 groups of wild cat spirit individuals. 



When a woman conceives it is supposed that it is one of such 

 a group of spirits who goes inside her and thus it naturally 

 follows, granting the premises firmly believed in by the natives, 

 that the totem of the child is determined solely by the spot at 

 which the mother conceived, or, what is the same thing, believes 

 that she conceived, the child. A single example of one of numerous 

 actual instances known to the authors must sufiice to illustrate 

 the actual usage. Not long ago a witchetty grub woman, living 

 at Alice Springs, her husband belonging to the same totem, went 

 on a visit to a neighbouring emu group, here she conceived, and 

 the child, afterwards born in a witchetty grub locality at Alice 

 Springs, belongs to the emu totem ; it nutst do, the natives say, 

 because it entered her in an emu locality; had it entered the 

 mother at Alice Springs it would as inevitably have been born a 

 witchetty grub. 



Not only is this so, but every spirit-child, when entering a 

 woman, is supposed to drop the churinga which until then it 

 always carries about. After the child's birth the father and one 

 or two old men, having learnt from the mother where conception 

 took place, actually go in search of the churinga. They either 

 find one, or if they do not, then they manufacture one out of the 

 mulga or other hard wood tree which lies nearest to the spot. 

 At the latter there is usually some gum tree or prominent natui'al 

 object, such as a rock, which the spirit-child has been supposed to 

 specially inhabit, and this is spoken of as its nanja tree or stone. 

 During the life of the human individual who is its reincarnation 

 this is his nanja tree or stone and the churinga is his churinga 

 nanja. 



Each local group of a totem has a sacred store-house, such as 

 a cleft in some more or less inaccessible spot in a rough range, 

 and here, under the custody of the head man, or alartunja, of 

 the group, all the churinga are kept. No woman or uninitiated 

 man goes near this sacred store-house, or ertnatulCmga, under 

 penalty of death. 



Such, in brief outline, is the totemic system of the Arunta, 

 Ilparra, and Luritcha tribes, and as before said the same 

 probably applies with slight variations to tribes further north. 



