PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. LIX 



and organization, investigations carried on amongst tlie remains 

 of tribes that have been long in contact with white men are liable 

 to be very misleading. It is only those who have worked in the 

 field, both amongst natives in their natural state and amongst 

 others who have been in more or less close contact with settle- 

 ments, who can realize how rapidly, under the latter conditions, 

 their genuine and primitive customs become modified or even 

 lost. The greater the difference between the cultural levels of two 

 associated races, the more rajiidly does the lower one succumb ; 

 there is no such thing as grafting the higher upon the lower. 



The marriage rules, for example, owing to the rapid diminution 

 in numbers that inevitably occurs, soon break down, and the 

 younger men, under the protection of the white man, only too 

 readily shake off their old customs and beliefs, and, unfortunately, 

 unless specially protected, as they have been only too little in 

 Australia, are incapable of receiving anything better in return. 



The history of the study of cultural anthropology in Australia, 

 so far as the more important work is concerned, is comparatively 

 simple. One of the earliest writers to give us any intelligent 

 account of the customs of the natives was Collins (1789-1802), 

 whose quaint illustrations, published in his Account of the English 

 Colony of New South Wales, are of peculiar value, because they 

 serve to show that the youths during initiation were shown cere- 

 monies evidently connected with totems — that is, animals or plants 

 with which they were supj^osed* to be associated. Collins, of 

 course, had no idea of this, nor was there any further record of 

 such until Mr. Gillen and myself discovered the remarkable 

 development of this feature in Central Australia just 100 years 

 later. Since then, other workers have recorded them, more 

 especially in ]N"ew South Wales. 



In 1820 it had been shown in the pages of Archcpologica 

 Americana that amongst certain of the American tribes there was 

 a definite social organization regulating marriage, and that there 

 were groups of individuals the members of each of which were 

 closely associated with some animal or plant, which is now spoken 

 of as the totem of that particular individual or group; and, 

 further that the totem group or clan was an exogamous group, 

 that is, a man of one group must take his wife from some other. 

 Not only this, but these totem clans were grouped into phratries, 

 which again were exogamous. For example, amongst the Creek 

 Indians there are said to be some twenty clans. A panther might 

 not marry a panther nor a wild cat ; these two together forming 

 aphratry.CM The number of phratries apparently varied in 

 different tribes fr om two to ten, and both odd and even numbers 



Tn/i.L!'^""' *?''^" *^'''"' ^"""Ir 7°"^ *''*' summary given by Sir James Frazer in his great work on 

 loteraism and Exogamy. — Vol. 1, pp. 56, &c 



