Iniiiotiov Ceremoiues, Arunta Tribe. 153 



On the sixth day the Wurtja is taken out huntinr^ by Okilia 

 and Unibirna, and the succeeding night is spent by the men in 

 singing songs, to which the Wurtja listens and which have 

 reference to the wanderings of certain Alcheringa ancestors. 



We have in our previous account of the Engwurra ceremony^ 

 dealt briefly with the traditions which are concerned with the 

 wandei'ings of various groups of individuals and have described 

 the connection of these with the totemic system as developed in 

 the Arunta tribe. Up to the time of his initiation the youth has 

 known nothing of these traditions and now for the tirst time he 

 hears of them and sees the ceremonies performed in which the 

 ancestors of the tribe are represented decorated as they were, and 

 acting as they did, during life. In various accounts of initiation 

 ceremonies of the Australian tribes, as for example, in the 

 eai^liest one ever published — the one written by Collins in 1804: 

 — we meet with descriptions of performances in which different 

 animals are represented but, except in the case of the Arunta 

 tribe, no indication of the meaning and signiticance of these 

 performances has been yet forthcoming. In the Arunta tribe 

 however they are seen to have a very definite meaning and to be 

 intimately associated with the totemic system. Whether this be 

 .so in other tribes we have as yet no evidence to show, but it is, 

 at all events, worthy of note that, whilst the actual initiation 

 rite varies much from tribe to tribe, consisting in some in the 

 knocking out of a tooth, and in others in circumcision, etc., in 

 all an important pai't of the ceremony consists in showing to the 

 novitiates certain dances, the important and common feature of 

 which is that they represent the actions of particular animals. 

 In the Arunta tribe however they have a very definite meaning. 

 At the first glance it looks much as if all that they were intended 

 to represent was merely the behaviour of certain animals but in 

 reality they have a much deeper meaning, for each performer 

 represents an ancestral individual who lived in the Alcheringa. 

 He was a member of a group of individuals, all of whom, just like 

 himself, were the direct descendants or transformations of the 

 animals, the names of which they respectively bear. It is as a 

 re-incarnation of the never-dying spirit part of one of these semi- 



1 Pvoc. R.S. Vict., vol. X., pt. i., p. 17 



