86 EOYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



discordance with the practice of the natives at the present day is the best 

 guarantee that they -contain a substantial element of ti-uth. They 

 could not have been invented to explain customs which they contradict. 

 Every theory of C-entral Australian totemism [and I may add of any 

 other totemism] must reckon with them; none can be satisfactory which 

 does not show how the gulf between the present and past totemic system 

 'of the naitives may be bridged." ^ 



In this view of the matter I entirely concur with Dr. Frazer, and 

 would here desire to point out to him that the American view of 

 totemism offers the most satisfactory of bridges and reconciles without 

 violence of any kind, in the simplest and most effective manner this 

 seemingly discordant feature of " Australian totemism." 



Dr. Haddon has of course considered these disturbing data from 

 Central Australia too; indeed, he has himself called attention to similar 

 discordant practices among the Papuans and other Pacific Islanders. 

 He remarks in this connection : — " Among some Papuans marriage 

 restrictions are territorial and not totemic. Dr. Elvers has shown that 

 in Murray Island, eastern tribe of Torres Straits, marriages are regu- 

 lated by the places to which the natives belong. A man cannot marry 

 a woiman of his own village, or of certain other villages. ... A 

 ^similar custom occurs in the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, and 

 it is probably still more widely distributed. I was informed by a mem- 

 ber of the Yaraikanua tribe of Cape York, North Queensland, that 

 children must take the 'land' or 'country' of their mother; all who 

 belong to the same place are brothers and sisters, a wife must be taken 

 from another ' country ' ; thus it appears their marriage restrictions are 

 territorial and not totemic. The same is found amongst the Kumai 

 and the Coast Murring tribe of New South Wales. . At Kiwai, in 

 the delta of the Fly Eiver, B.N.G., all the members of a totemic group 

 live together in a long house which is confined to that group. I have 

 also collected evidence which proves there was a territorial grouping 

 of totemic clans among the western tribe of Torres Straits." 



But these practices, so 'discordant with the " Rule of Exogamy," do 

 not affect Dr. Haddon in the same manner as they do Dr. Frazer. He 

 sl]ll holds to his five " elements," and explains these breaches of his 

 rule by regarding them as some of the steps by which the savage passes 

 out of totemism.^ In offering this suggestion Dr. Haddon seems to 

 have overlooked the evidence of those traditions of the Arunta, gath- 

 ered by Messrs. Spencer and Giïlen, which shows that in the early days of 

 the trite " a man always married a woman of his own totem " ; for it 



' Fortnightly Revictc, 1899, p. 656. 



'^ See Ihis iremarks on this head in his Address, page 14. Transaictions of 

 Section H., Brit. Assoc, Belfast, 1902. 



