2 4 o PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



northern tribes however the totems descend strictly in 

 the paternal line, and it is believed that a spirit seek- 

 ing reincarnation will in general refuse to enter a 

 woman other than the wife of a man of the proper 

 totem. 1 It is possible by magic to cause a spirit to 

 enter into a woman. About fifteen miles from Alice 

 Springs in the territory of the Arunta there is a rounded 

 stone projecting about three feet above the ground. 

 It is called Erathipa, meaning child. On one side of it 

 is " a round hole through which the spirit-children 

 are supposed to be on the look-out for women who 

 may chance to pass near, and it is firmly believed that 

 visiting the stone will result in conception. . . . Not 

 only may the women become pregnant by visiting the 

 stone, but it is believed that by performing a very 

 simple ceremony a malicious man may cause women 

 even children who are at a distance to become so. ... 

 Or again, if a man and his wife both wish for a child, 

 the man ties his hair girdle round the stone, rubs it 

 and mutters : ' The woman my wife you (think) not 

 good, look.' ' Similar stones exist at other places. 2 

 Although an ancestor is thus reincarnated the natives 

 have no hesitation about putting an inconvenient child 

 to death as soon as it is born. " They believe that the 

 spirit-part of the child goes back at once to the 

 particular spot from whence it came, and can be born 

 again at some subsequent time, even of the same 

 woman." 3 



1 S. and G. op. tit. 169, 175, 176, 273; Cent. Tribes, 124, 132, 



138, 300- 



2 S. and G. Cent. Tribes, 336; North. Tribes, 271, 331, 



45<>. 



3 S. and G. Cent. Tribes, 51. As to the Kaitish and Unmatjera, 

 see S. and G. North. Tribes, 506. As to the theory of multiple souls 



