Frazer and Fieldwork on Australian Totemism In

W. Belier The long-sought sacrament; Frazer and fieldwork on Australian totemism In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 153 (1997), no: 1, Leiden, 42-64 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access WOUTER W. BELIER The Long-Sought Sacrament Frazer and Fieldwork on Australian Totemism 'The cross-currents of European thought have always been reflected in ap- proaches to ethnographic material. The problems posed by the latter have always been precisely those being posed in the European intellectual and political environment. Ethnographic materials are seized upon to work out the problems. When the European problem has been temporarily resolved, the ethnographic problem melts away - only to be resurrected in relation to new problems in the European ambience.' (Burridge 1973:176.) 1. lntroduction It is a self-evident truth that any cultural science depends on information about cultures. So history needs historical data, cultural anthropology re- quires information about non-Western cultures, and so on. However obvious this may be, data and information nevertheless do not come to us out of the blue. All cultural sciences have evolved criteria for distin- guishing relevant from non-relevant information. These criteria have been formulated in the European ambience. According to Burridge (as cited above) there is an interdependence between what is in the mind of Euro- pean intellectuals and ethnological fieldwork. Ethnographic materials reflect European problems. In this article I would like to investigate the truth of Burridge's statement at some greater depth. The case I will discuss concerns the relationship between late 19th-century theories about totemism as the most primitive form of religion and ethnographic material col- lected in Aboriginal Australia. More precisely, the case under discussion is that of Frazer and his theories about totemism and the construction of the so called intichiuma1 ceremonies by Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia. During these cere- 1 In this study the concepts denoted by the terms intichiuma, mbanbiuma (Spencer and Gillen 1927 1:145), inditjiwuma, arbmanama (T.G.H. Strehlow 1971:329, n.156), and so on, are all designated by the single term intichiuma. WOUTER W. BELIER is a high school teacher who obtained his Ph.D. from the Faculty of Religion at Leiden University. With the history of religious studies and their methodology as chief academie interest, he has previously published Decayed Gods, Leiden: Brill, and De Sacrale Samenleving; Theorievorming over Religie in het Discours van Durkheim, Mauss, Hubert en Hertz, Maarssen: De Ploeg. Dr. Belier may be contacted at 3 Octoberstraat 7, 2313 ZL Leiden. BK1 153-1 (1997) Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 43 monies, aimed at an increase in the totemic species, totem animals were eaten. The notion of totemic sacrifice and communal eating had been ad- ded to the theory of totemism by Robertson Smith as early as 1889. Sacri- fice of totemic animals led to the sacrifice of gods, and 'even if it was left implicit, the theological implications would have been evident to any con- temporary scholar' (Kuper 1988:88). Robertson Smith had had problems with the Church Assembly before this, with the latter accusing him of her- esy and cautioning him in 1880. Hence finding proof of totemic sacrifice as postulated by him not only was theoretically important, but also was to become an important issue in the debate between the orthodox adherents of the Church Assembly and the more secularized scholars of religion. Robertson Smith had erased a more explicit passage in which he posited a relationship between the notion of totemic sacrifice and the death of 'the God-man [who] dies for His people' (quoted in Kuper 1988:88) from his Lectures. So Frazer's labelling these intichiuma ceremonies as the 'long- sought totem sacrament' - using the notion of 'sacrament' as this had been evolved by western Christianity - was not without significance. In this debate the very uniqueness of Christianity was at stake. The possibility of tracing Holy Communion and the celebration of the Eucharist back to totemic sacrifice in Aboriginal Australia constituted an important test case for classical evolutionism. Hence the addition of the adjective 'long-sought', which is something of an emotional qualification rather than one that fits in with the concept of a value-free discipline. Spencer and Gillen, in their study of Aboriginal groups in Central Australia, not only described the rituals performed at initiations, marriages and burials but also distinguished a new category of rituals, which they termed intichiuma. This category comprised the ceremonies which the various totemic groups of that region performed in order to ensure an increase in the animals or plants which served as totem for each particular totemic group. Spencer and Gillen were the first to discover and describe this class of rituals. As no other ethnographer had so far described such rites in Australia or anywhere else, the question arises whether these intichiuma rituals were typical exclusively of these Central Australian groups, or re- presented a category common to all the religions of all the various Austra- lian Aboriginal societies, or even had a wider significance. In answering this question two problems have to be addressed. One is the absence of de- tailed descriptions of the religious aspects of Australian totemic beliefs prior to the publications of Spencer and Gillen. The other is the total lack of internal unity of the several rituals which the latter classed as intichiuma, at least as far as their structure is concerned. They differ comple- tely in form, and all they have in common is their purpose, namely ensuring the increase of a given totemic species. These two problems give rise to a third question, namely whether Spencer and Gillen were actually describ- Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access 44 W.W. Belier ing rituals which can be objectively shown to constitute a single class, or whether they 'fitted' the ceremonies concerned into a single category be- cause of a specific theoretical framework which required that they be clas- sified as such. If the latter is the case, one further question is: from whom did they derive the theory? These questions will be addressed below. I will begin by outlining the gradual development of the concept of intichiuma rituals in the publications of Spencer and Gillen. After that I will discuss the question of whether there is any unity of structure and form in these rituals. Then I will analyse descriptions of the concept of intichiuma rituals or related ideas in the works of other investigators be- sides Spencer and Gillen. In section five I will deal with the theories postulating that religion originated from totemism, and the relation of these theories to the debate about the intichiuma rituals, in which Frazer's theories about totemism play the most prominent part. Finally, I will present my conclusions. It is not my intention to flog the long-dead horse of totemism in this study. Since Goldenweiser and Lévi-Strauss, the debate concerning the validity of totemistic theories has become a thing of the past. I feel, however, that the problem of the relation between theoretical suppositions and what one finds in the empirical data is a problem of all times. Only, it is much easier to see the theoretical myopia of one's predecessors! 2. A history of the concept of intichiuma Spencer and Gillen included some very different kinds of ceremonies and 'magical' practices in their category of intichiuma rituals, which they even so presented as a closed category. I will summarize their descriptions of these ceremonies and practices in this section, and in the process tracé the history of their construction of this category. Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, 1896 The intichiuma ceremonies are explicitly mentioned for the first time in Spencer's Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia (1894-1895). They are referred to by Stirling in a section on ceremonies and corroborees. Stirling distinguished between ordinary corroborees and ceremonies of the highest importance. The latter class included food-producing festivals. For ceremonies of this class, Stirling referred to Gillen's description of the festival of the promotion of the supply of witchetty grubs (see Spencer 1896:70-1). Gillen discussed these food-producing ceremonies under the heading 'Intitchiuma'. According to him this was the general name for ceremonies of this kind. The ceremony was carried out by members of the P(B)ultarra and Panunga classes. The men walked unarmed and undecorated in single file to the spot where the festival was held. A hole was dug and each man Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 45 who entered it was struck twice in the abdomen with a large stone. They then returned to the camp with their bodies decorated, and there were offered water and food. Performances by Pultarra and Panunga members continued until daylight. 'A plentiful supply of the succulent grub is now assured' (Spencer 1896:177). Gillen also dealt with the rain-making ceremony, which he did not label as an intichiuma festival. It was performed by the members of the Kumarra and Puruia clans. After these men had decorated their bodies and sung songs for some time, they marched in silence to a specially constructed wurley, or ceremonial hut. Meanwhile, the older men among them assisted the rain-maker, or chantchwa, in his preparations for his part in the rite.

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