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Totem Clans and Secret Associations in Australia and Melanesia. Author(S): Hutton Webster Source: the Journal of the Royal Anthr

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Totem Clans and Secret Associations in Australia and Melanesia. Author(S): Hutton Webster Source: the Journal of the Royal Anthr Totem Clans and Secret Associations in Australia and Melanesia. Author(s): Hutton Webster Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 41 (Jul. - Dec., 1911), pp. 482-508 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2843184 Accessed: 11-12-2015 12:17 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Wiley and Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 193.0.65.67 on Fri, 11 Dec 2015 12:17:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 482 TOTEM CLANS AND SECRET ASSOCIATIONS IN AUSTRALIA AND MELANESIA. By HUTTON WEBSTER,PH.D. INTRODUCTION. THE difficultieswhich beset an inquirerinto the mentaland social lifeof primitive peoples are obviously redoubled when the investigationconcerns their esoteric orders. The mysteriesof the savage enshrinehis innermostreligion and worship; forhim theypossess the sanctionof high antiquity; theirceremonial rites, ordained in the beginningof things by the tribal deities,are preservedwith jealous care from the gaze of women. children,and uninitiatedmen. It is convenient to describe such sacred corporationsas secretsocieties; but this appellation,like the terms totemismand taboo,covers a wide range of esotericphenomena not easily broughtwithin the confinesof a single definition. And, if the many remarkable similaritiescharacterizing secret societies in, widely separated regions have had often an independent origin,we may be certain,also, that a more intensive examination of differentcultural areas will disclose a vast amountof borrowing between related peoples. Comparativestudies of the technique of masks and costumes,together with a systematicanalysis of the initiatoryrituals, when these can be learnedin detail,should clear up many puzzlingproblems of diffusion. To outside observationthe julicial and politicalduties of the secretsocieties appeared as their most strikingfeature, and quite naturally were the firstto attract attention. Early in the eighteenthcentury Francis Moore's pictluresque descriptionmade the 3u?mboJu6mbo of the Mandingoesa householdword. There was somethingirresistibly comic in the apparitionof this masked and costumed bugbear,whose chief businessseemed to be that of passing through a village at nightfall,frightening women and children half out of their wits,and scourging with his rod those membersof the weaker sex suspectedof a departurefrom the straitpath of virtue. Furtheracquaintance with the secretorders of West Africa revealedthe singularlyimportant part played by many of them,such as Poro of Sierra Leone, Oro of Lagos, and Ilgboof Old Calabar. They punish crimesand act as public executioners,serve as nightpolice, collect debts,protect private property, and, where they extend over a wide area, help to maintain intertribalamity. When the Melanesian organizations,such as the Dukduk,first came into view it was noticed with interesthow similarwere their functionsas judge, policeman, and hangman,to those of the African societies,a similaritywhich some have This content downloaded from 193.0.65.67 on Fri, 11 Dec 2015 12:17:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Totem Clans and SecretAssociations in Australia and Melanesia. 483 ventured to explain by an hypothesisof prehistoricdiffusion across a continent now sunk beneaththe waters of the Indian Ocean. In view of the well authenti- cated instancesof preciselythe same duties,assumed by some secret societies in America,at points as far removed as Tierra del Fuego, Brazil, and California, a theoryof diffusionseems, at least, in this instance,distinctly less plausible than a theory of independent origin. I see in these organizations,so widespread throughoutthe aboriginalworld, one of the most remarkable effortsearly man has made to establish,under conditionsotherwise anarchical, some semblance of settledlgovernment. But it would be a vital error to infer that the great secret societies of Melanesia and West Africawere consciouslydevised to preserve law and order in a savage community.,There can be little doubt that this legal functionis or has been incidental to their main business of initiatingyoung men into manhood. Under their directionthe calndidatesare removed from defiling contact with women,subjected to variousordeals, instructed in all matters of religion,morality, and traditional lore, provided with a new name, a new language, and new privileges-in a word, made men. Such pubertyceremonies still belong to many of the Melanesian and African organizations,though now these bodies are more or less limitedin membership,divided into degrees,through which canididates able to pay the cost of initiationmay progress,and localized usuallyin some fixedlodge. Nevertheless,it is lnotimpossible to reconstruct,at least in outline, the steps whereby the rude but powerfularistocracy of a secretsociety may have emerged from the pubertyinstitution as we find it in Australia and in many otherregions, that moredemocratic body whichenrolls in its membershipevery male and adult memberof the community. There is, however,another aspect of primitivesecret societies, very prominent in the American fraternities,but hitherto not sufficientlyemphasized in the discussion of related organizationsin otherparts of the world. I referto their dramatic and magico-religiousceremonies. The initiates constitutea theatrical troupe,with masked and costumedactors oftenpersonating anlimals, and presenting songs,dances, and tableauxvivants, which often form an elaborate dramatizationof the native leg,ends. Ancestor-worshipand the cult of the dead loom large in their rituals: the chiefmasquerader is frequentlya personificationof the spirits of the dead; the performerswear skull-masksand representancestral individuals whose memoryis to be recalled. Ceremloniesundoubtedly magical in character,such as rain-makingand sorcery,the preparationof charmsand spells,the cure of disease, and so on, are associated withmany of the societies. These dramatic and magico-religiousfeatures appear to be closelyconnected with the structureand functionsof totemclans. Hence, one is temptedto see not simply a psychologicalaffinity between clans and secretsocieties, but their truly geneticrelationship. ProfessorFrazer's extensiveresearches1 have made it evident 1 Totemtsmand Exogamy,London, 1910. This content downloaded from 193.0.65.67 on Fri, 11 Dec 2015 12:17:17 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 484 HUTTONWEBSTER, PH.D.-Totem Clans antd that the lower races are very commonlydivided into clans whose members naintain an intimateconnection with species of naturalor artificialobjects called totems. Furthermore,it is well knownthat this social and religiousinstitution of totemism,in differentenvironments and underthe stressof various circumstances, does disintegrate,either vanishing entirelyor givingrise to a greatvariety of new groupingsand combinations. Among the latter, secret-societies would seem to occupy an importantplace. I have elsewhere'presented a considerablebody of evidencefor the totemicclan organizationunderlying mnany secret associationsin variousparts of the world. The data fromAustralia and the Melanesian area are particnllarlyinstructive and deserveextended consideration. EASTERNAND SOUTH-EASTERNAUSTRALIA. The researchesof such studentsas A. W. Howitt and R. H. Mathews indicate that in eastern and south-easternAustralia the initiatoryceremonies bring togetherall the local groups of a given tribe; or of several tribeswhen these by intermarriagehave formeda communityor " nation." The puberty rites thus presenta distinctivelytribal or intertribalcharacter. It is to be noticed,however, that where the totemic organizationis in a flourishingstate, one section(class, moiety) phratry) of the tribe, or of several tribes, summionsthe other to the ceremonies. The tribe or communityfor its periodical meetingsis in principle composedof the united exogamousdivisions. The initiatoryceremonies themselves are invariablyconducted by the inen of that sectionfrom which the novice will be allowed to choose his wife. The miembersof a phratry,sub-phratry, or totemic clan never initiatetheir own boys. Such arrangementsclearly bear witnessto the formationof tribal aggregatesconnected by the practice of exogamy2; just as clearly,it seems to me, they suggest an earlier stage of the social organization when the local (totemic?) groups were independentbodies, initiating, their own members. A similar conclusion as to the original self-sufficiencyof the Australian totemicgroups may be drawnfrom the factthat during the pubertyceremonies of such communitiesas the Coast Murring,whose kuringal or-bunan exemplifiesthe pubertyrites of the south-easterntotemic tribes,the songs,dances, and panto- mimes are exhibited in alternationby each of the two tribaldivisions. In these performancesall the animals
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