HORN EXPEDITION—ANTHROPOLOGY. 
79 
difficulty however consists in determining what is the precise nature of that 
association, for from no individual could I obtain an answer to questions so 
directed, put them how I would. 
I have already stated that, so far as I could discover, totemism does not exist 
in the Arunta tribe in the sense of constituting subordinate marriage groups 
within the phratry or subphratry. Nevertheless I have come to the conclusion, 
mainly through a consideration of these ceremonial objects, that the totemistic idea 
is fundamentally present, inasmuch as certain animals or other objects of nature 
appear to stand in some special relationship to individuals or groups of individuals, 
and the idea seems to come into play in the ceremonies to which the objects are 
attached. 
According to Mr. Schulze,* certain individual elders of the tribe are the patrons 
of one or other of these various ceremonies, most of which seem to have reference 
to food products and particularly to the promotion of their supply, and it is these 
elders who have the privilege of giving the word for the performances of which 
they, so to speak, have the monoply. Few persons have been in so good a position 
to judge as Mr. Schulze, and what little I gathered confirms his statement in this 
respect. I am however inclined to think, though I have no a,bsolute proof, that 
the association is still more fundamental, that in fact the object of the ceremony 
is really the totem of the elder who is patron of the festival and not of him 
exclusively, but of a certain group of natives who, with himself, are entitled to 
take part in it. 
A reference to Mr. Gillen’s paper will show that I’esti’ictions and monopolies 
concerning particular ceremonies do certainly apply to certain phratries, and I 
think it is extremely probable that the privileges of participating in certain 
other special festivals may be even still further restricted to smaller groups 
than the phratries or even the subphratry ; to such a group perhaps the term clan 
may be properly applicable though I hesitate to use it in my present state of 
knowledge of the subject. If this is correct, one might expect to find that while 
all that concerned any particular ceremony would be v^ery well known to a member 
of the group privileged to take part in it, there might equally well be ignorance 
of such matters on the part of one to whom these privileges did not extend. This 
is, in fact, just what happened when we found the collection at Kundiinga. Before 
we started for the place our guide said that the sticks and stones belonged to 
the opossum festival, and when, on refenang to him each article in succession. 
* Op. cit. 
