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

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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 added 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 contemporary 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 detailed 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-

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ing rituals which can be objectively shown to constitute a single class, or whether they 'fitted' the ceremonies concerned into a single category because 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 besides 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. Squatting at the entrance to the wurley, the chantchwa and the older men sang a number of songs, after which the rain-maker, having fallen into a trance that caused him to quiver, ran up and down the trench several times. The ceremony was concluded by the young men rushing out screaming and the chantchwa and his companions returning to the camp. After this ceremony a rain dance was staged in which all the men took part, irrespective of class.

Early articles and correspondence of Spencer, 1896-1899 The concept of intichiuma apparently was not given very great importance in the early stages of Spencer and Gillen's ethnographic research. The intichiuma ceremonies were not mentioned in an article about Arunta rituals and the Arunta totemic system in Nature (Spencer and Gillen 1897), for instance. The problem to be solved in this early period was that of the eating of the totem by its members, which was something wholly unex- pected. In a letter to Fison of 21 November 1896 Spencer referred to another ritual, the Engwura. The performance of this ritual had been ar- ranged by Gillen, who had offered 'the rations necessary to support a gathering of far-flung clansmen'. This had been necessary to 'convince the Arunta elders to hold the great periodic initiation ceremony one more time' (Stocking 1983:78). During this ritual the performers ate their own totem (Marett and Penniman 1932:133). When Frazer wrote Spencer and Gillen a letter in which he inquired about the nature of this eating of the totem, Spencer replied in a letter of 12 July 1897: 'I do not think that, with the possible exception mentioned below, there is anything of the nature of a solemn sacrament at which the totem is eaten ... there is no such custom' (Marett and Penniman 1932:5). This exception seems to have been the eating of the witchetty grub by members of the relevant totem group. Spencer suggested that this eating of their own totem by members of a totemic clan might be explained by postulating an earlier cannibalistic phase, after which subsequent development proceeded along two diver- gent lines, viz. a division of tribes into '(a) a series to whom it is tabu, and (b) those who have ceremonies to increase the supply for eating purposes' (Marett and Penniman 1932:7).

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Two months later, however, Spencer had tentatively begun developing a generalistic perspective on any eating of a totem during intichiuma ceremonies. After dealing with the increase ceremonies for a kind of bulb (the irriukura), he concluded (27 September 1897): 'I fancy that though the details vary from totem to totem, the essential part of the ceremony so far as the eating is concerned, and the restrictions upon eating are closely similar in all' (Marett and Penniman 1932:13). The main problem still was that of the eating of the totem. At the end of the year Spencer dealt with the ritual character of this eating in his description of the intichiuma ceremonies of the members of the Kangaroo totem at Undiarra. Here the members opened their veins and allowed some of their blood to pour onto a rock in which they believed the spirits of the kangaroos to reside. The sacrifice of their blood was believed to lead the kangaroo spirits to depart from the rocks and to cause an increase in kangaroos. In his letters to Frazer of 14 November and 6 December 1897 Spencer referred to this 'magical' rite as the clue to the meaning of the intichiuma ceremonies (Marett and Penniman 1932:16). In 1897 and 1898, when Spencer and Frazer were preparing the publication of The Native Tribes of Central Australia, Spencer began to attach greater importance to his intichiuma ceremonies. In a letter to Frazer of 19 October 1898 he referred to the chapter dealing with the intichiuma ceremonies as the 'most valuable and important chapter in the book ... every scrap of information relating to the subject would have been put in it'. On 20 October 1898 Spencer wrote a long and important letter to Frazer, in which he stated in the first place that his 'remarks are limited to Australian tribes, and more especially to those of the centre'. However, Spencer had also found evidence of intichiuma ceremonies among other tribes, such as the Dieri and Urabunna (to the south-east of the Arunta), where totems regulate marriage. He wrote that he concurred with Frazer's theories about totemism, remarking that the origin of this lay in the fact that 'each group of people was originally charged with the duty of securing the multiplication of the particular object the name of which it bears'. This religious aspect of the institution was the oldest; exogamy had come later. The myths referred to a period in which marriage within the totemic group had been the rule. Frazer's reply was rather laudatory (letter of 28 November 1898). Spencer was invited to give a lecture on the 'explanation of the origin and meaning of totemism' for the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and here to offer the 'solution of the mystery which has puzzled anthropologists so long'. Spencer was to be the first scholar to have the honour 'of publicly stating what is probably the true explanation of the origin of totemism' (Marett and Penniman 1932:31). Frazer emphasized the accidental character of exogamy as a definer of totemism and observed that the totemic system was initially religious, or magical. This latter remark reflected Frazer's new perception of the order of evolution of human

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 47 thought and practice, which was: magie - religion - science (Marett and Penniman 1932:42). Spencer, in a letter to Frazer of 10 July 1899, expressed the conviction that intichiuma ceremonies were not an exclusive feature of the Arunta tribe. Referring to Howitt, who had found vestiges of intichiuma in Victoria, he stated that: 'So far as I can see at present,, it appears very much as if in all tribes the totemic groups were charged with the duty of performing ceremonies for the increase of the totem' (Marett and Penniman 1932:54). Whatever rules of marriage the clans observed, they all performed intichiuma ceremonies. Consequently, these ceremonies had to be older than the marriage system. Spencer emphasized in a letter to Lang (5 January 1899) that the intichiuma was the most important feature of the totemic system (Marett and Penniman 1932:142). Thus the totem was eaten at a special sacramental ceremony.

The preface of March 1898 to The Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899 In this book Spencer and Gillen gave a definition of the intichiuma ceremonies at the beginning of the chapter devoted to these rites, saying: 'The name intichiuma is applied to certain sacred ceremonies associated with the totems, and the object of which is to secure the increase of the animal or plant which gives its name to the totem' (Spencer and Gillen 1899a: 167). They also mentioned this category of rituals in the introduc- tion to the book, where they stated that nothing was known about their origin (Spencer and Gillen 1899a:l 1). They suggested that these rituals were of the utmost significance to the Arunta, however (see Kuper 1988: 103). The way in which the intichiuma ceremonies were performed differed greatly, even among groups in one and the same locality. The common trait shared by all these rituals was their purpose: they were all enacted with a view to the increase of the species which a group believed to be its totem (Spencer and Gillen 1899a: 179). The participants in these ceremonies were the members of the given totem group, irrespective of their moiety membership, and sometimes the members of other totem groups if they belonged to the right moiety. Spencer and Gillen began with detailed descriptions of the ceremonies of several Arunta totem groups, namely the Udnirringita or Witchetty Grub Totem (Alice Springs group); the Erlia or Emu Totem (Strangeway Range); the Unjiamba or Hakea Flower Totem; the Ilpirla or Manna Totem; the Yarumpa or Honey-Ant Totem; the Quatcha or Water Totem; and the Okira or Kangaroo Totem. At the conclusion of this section, I will examine the relation between these descriptions of intichiuma ceremonies by Spencer and Gillen and their definitions of this ritual category. From these descriptions Spencer and Gillen drew certain inferences of general interest with regard to totems. The first was that each individual was seen as a direct reincarnation of someone who lived in the alcheringa, so a direct link was postulated by these Australian Aboriginals between a

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access 48 W.W. Belier particular ancestor, his churinga, or spirit, and the pregnancy of the mother of the individual. Secondly, members of the totem group were allowed, be it to a very limited degree, to eat their totem species. Thirdly, each totemic group believed that it could control the increase of its totem species by performing intichiuma rituals. Apart from the instrumental (termed 'magical' by Spencer and Gillen) function attributed to the totemic churinga in this respect, several rites at the conclusion of the intichiuma ceremony pointed in this direction. For example, the members of the witchetty grub totem were the first to eat of the witchetty grub, and it was believed that there would be very few grubs if this rule of precedence were disobeyed. Moreover, the Alatunja (the local chieftains) had to give ritual permission to members of other totem groups to eat of the witchetty grub. The same held good for the relation between the members of the kangaroo totem and kangaroos. Spencer and Gillen gave other examples of these ideas from rituals in the intichiuma class which they had not described and analysed. The local belief that the sprinkling of the blood of kangaroo men upon the rock of the kangaroo spirits caused an increase in kangaroos also points to this belief in ritual control. It was meant 'to drive out in all directions the spirits of the kangaroo animals and so to increase the number of the animals' (Spencer and Gillen 1899a:206). So the key to the meaning of the intichiuma ceremonies that they proposed was the notion that 'the object of each of [them] is to increase the number of the totemic animal or plant', hence that it was 'increasing the food supply' (Spencer and Gillen 1899a: 207). Spencer and Gillen put forward the hypothesis that the various myths in which the ancestors feed on their totem species 'refer to a former time in which the relationship of human beings to their totemic animals or plants was of a different nature from that which now obtains' (Spencer and Gillen 1899a:209). On the strength of these data, they rejected Frazer's suggestion that these Australian Aboriginals had begun eating their totems because their respect for them had declined. That, they wrote, was hard to believe because of the solemn nature of the intichiuma rites and in view of the myths related. Except for this point, Spencer and Gillen concluded that Arunta totemistic beliefs and practices matched the characteristics indicated by Frazer in his basic definition of totemism. They demonstrated both a social and a religious dimension, moreover. Of these, the latter was more strongly developed, though no relation of respect and protection had been discovered between these Aboriginals and their totems. Spencer and Gillen concluded: 'It seems as if, in the case of the Central Australian tribes, the totemic system has undergone a somewhat curious development; at all events, it differs in certain respects from that of all other Australian tribes with which we are as yet acquainted' (Spencer and Gillen 1899a:211).

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Lecture Read before the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 14 December 1898 In this lecture the principal argument put forward by Spencer was that the intichiuma ceremonies were 'magical rites' and as such constituted the crucial element of totemism. Discussing these ceremonies, he stated: 'The hypothesis which is now suggested, and which has been advanced independently also by Mr. Frazer, is that in our Australian tribes the primary function of a totemic group is that of ensuring by magie means a supply of the object which gives its name to the totemic group, and that further, the relation between totemism and exogamy is merely a secondary feature' (Spencer and Gillen 1899b:278). The data obtained in Central Australia were no longer presented as deviations from Frazer's earlier theory. Exo- gamy was seen as a later development.

The Spencer-Frazer correspondence, 1900-1904 In 1901-1902 Spencer and Gillen conducted an expedition right across the continent of Australia, from Oodnadatta to the Gulf of Carpentaria. During this journey among the Northern tribes of Central Australia as well, Spencer was corresponding with Frazer and others. In 1901 Spencer met members of the Kaitish tribe, the Northern neighbours of the Arunta, who seemed to eat freely of their own totem animals (letter to Frazer, 17 June 1901). This seemed to be the reverse of the taboo situation. Spencer added a caveat, however, saying: 'Natives are very difficult people to worm re- liable information out of' (Marett and Penniman 1932:61). The latter statement seemed to be very true. In another letter (to Frazer, 1 July 1901) Spencer said that he had obtained information about a belief that if the members of a totem group ate too freely of their totem, they might be 'boned', that is, become the victims of 'magie'. Spencer called the results of his and Gillen's stay among the Kaitish satisfactory (letter to Frazer, 15 July 1901), predicting that the Kaitish might prove a stepping-stone to something different up north (Marett and Penniman 1932:63). Much further to the north, however, Spencer lost sight of intichiuma ceremonies altogether (letter to Frazer, 12 November 1901). Looking back at the results of their expedition, he wrote to Frazer (7 June 1902): 'So far as the totems are concerned, the most important part of it is that it shows more clearly than before the fact that the members of the totemic group are held responsible for the continuous supply of the totemic animal or plant' (Marett and Penniman 1932:70). The central tribes, in particular the Kaitish, were regarded as the most primitive by Spencer and Gillen. Exactly a year later, Spencer in a letter to Frazer (7 June 1903) discussed the question of whether the Arunta intichiuma rituals might be regarded as a kind of 'sport', that is, as a curious development, as Lang had suggested. He himself denied that they should be regarded as such. The central tribes were more primitive than the northern ones, however: from the centre to

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the north an increase in 'father-right' was to be observed, and a decrease in intichiuma ceremonies. Lang had not found any intichiuma ceremonies among the Dieri, for instance. Spencer observed, however, that 'it would be a matter of very great surprise to me if we did not find intichiuma in full swing' (Marett and Penniman 1932:81). Spencer's reference to Roscoe, who had found traces of intichiuma ceremonies in Uganda, might suggest that he was beginning to develop a theory about the function of totemism in which the phenomenon was attributed a world-wide validity (Marett and Penniman 1932:81, see also 73). To refute Lang's theory and prove that there was no question of Arunta 'sport', Spencer and Gillen paid a brief visit to the matrilineal Urabunna. On 27 August 1903 Spencer was able to write to Frazer that he had actually found intichiuma ceremonies among this group. Frazer replied (19 April 1904) that Howitt had at last found intichiuma ceremonies among the Kurnai in Victoria, and had even discovered a kind of ritual for diminishing noxious totems. Intichiuma ceremonies were, therefore, a pan-Australian phenomenon. Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904 Spencer and Gillen sent their report of their tour to Port Darwin by the overland telegraph line. They started by refuting the conclusion of their 1899 book, stating that they had 'been able to extend widely the area over which the belief is held that the members of the totemic group are regarded as responsible for the increase of the animal or plant which gives its name to the group' (Spencer and Gillen 1904:xi). With Lang, they had until then regarded the Arunta ceremonies as 'sports', as the products of some curious development. They now changed their view diametrically, however, regarding these ceremonies as the yardstick of true totemism. In this connection they stated that 'the central tribes, which, for long ages, have been shielded by their geographical isolation from external influences, have retained the most primitive form of customs and beliefs' (Spencer and Gillen 1904:xii). The intichiuma ceremonies were not confined to the Arunta, nor to the tribes living in the very wide area over which Spencer's and Gillen's investigations had been spread, moreover. The fact that no such ceremonies had been recorded by ethnographers so far did not mean that they did not exist. In the chapter on intichiuma ceremonies they defined this concept as follows: 'The name intichiuma is applied by the Arunta tribe to certain ceremonies intimately associated with the totems, the object of all of them being that of increasing the supply of the material object from which the totemic group takes its name' (Spencer and Gillen 1904:283). Until then Spencer and Gillen were only acquainted with intichiuma ceremonies in patrilineal societies. By referring to their performance also by the matrilineal Urabunna, they tacitly introduced the notion of the existence of these rituals among, and their importance for, matrilineal societies as well. They pointed out that the differences between the Arunta and Urabunna

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 51 precluded the possibility of the latter having borrowed these rites from the former. They described the intichiuma rituals of the Urabunna and Wongkongaru societies, adding that they were 'amongst the most important and characteristic of any performed by these tribes' (Spencer and Gillen 1904:288). They then presented a list of essential features of Arunta intichiuma ceremonies. In their view, it was essential that: (1) members of the totem group ate only very sparingly or not at all of their totemic animal; (2) a ritual was performed in order to ensure the increase of the totemic animal or plant; (3) the leader of this ceremony should eat a little of the totem in order to be able to perform the ritual successfully; (4) after the leader had eaten, the members of the totem group in question permitted the members of some other totem groups to eat of their totem; and (5) this permission for participation was restricted to those men who belonged to the correct totem and moiety (Spencer and Gillen 1904:291). After describing the intichiuma ceremonies of some northern neigh- bouring tribes, Spencer and Gillen compared the relevant rites of the Arun- ta, Kaitish and Unmatjera tribes with those of the Warramunga people, who lived even further to the north. The aspect of 'magical' increase, the most important component of the ceremony among the Arunta, Unmatjera and Kaitish tribes, among the Warramunga had almost entirely disappeared. Among this people, the intichiuma ceremonies consisted simply in the performance of a complete series of rites representing the alcheringa (mythi- cal history) of the totemic ancestor (Spencer and Gillen 1904:297). Thus the Warramunga intichiuma comprised commemorative ceremonies. Sev- eral rituals were performed by a particular moiety on one day, solely at the request of members of the other moiety. During the ceremony only the actual performer(s) and members of the other moiety were present. Between 26 July and 18 September more than 80 such ceremonies were observed by Spencer and Gillen. The absence of special 'magical' rituals associated with these intichiuma ceremonies among the Warramunga and allied tribes was in marked contrast to the situation among the Arunta and Kaitish tribes. Though sacred totemic ceremonies were found among the Arunta and Kaitish, these were not important among the Warramunga, with the exception, perhaps, of the short ritual for the increase of the white cockatoo, which was 'evidently a relic of those special magical ceremonies which in the Arunta form the whole of the intichiuma and in the Kaitish the most important part of it' (Spencer and Gillen 1904:318). Instrumental ('magical') rituals were also absent among the northern Tjingilli and Umbaia tribes, in whose case intichiuma consisted in 'the performance of a long series of ceremonies having reference to the totemic ancestors'. On reaching the coast, Spencer and Gillen noticed that 'the intichiuma ceremonies [had] almost, but not quite, entirely' disappeared (Spencer and Gillen 1904:311). There were some rituals relating to the alcheringa ancestors, but there was

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no link with increase. Spencer supposed that the disappearance of these ceremonies here was due to the favourable climatic conditions.

Across Australia, 1912, and correspondence between 1904 and 1914 Whereas in their early publications Spencer and Gillen emphasized the intichiuma ceremonies, in their later publications they hardly mentioned these when describing rituals. In Spencer's popular book, Across Australia, they were merely referred to in passing. In two letters to Frazer, however, Spencer dealt with traces of the intichiuma in the Northern territory. Initially he had not found any intichiuma ceremonies at all in this area, which fact he attributed to the favourable climate of the region (letter to Frazer, 13 September 1911 (Marett and Penniman 1932:118-9)). Barely two years later, however, he was able to write that he had found some traces of them after all (letter to Frazer, 27 July 1913 (Marett and Penniman 1932:123)).

Native Tribes of the Northern Territory, 1914 At this stage Spencer distinguished two types of intichiuma. In the first, found among the Urabunna, Arunta, Kaitish and Unmatjera, it was the headman who acted as celebrant in one particular ceremony. The crucial feature of this was the offering of the totemic animal or plant to him. Only after he had eaten of it were all the other participants free to do so. Spencer further mentioned that the Kaitish combined their intichiuma rite with an alcheringa historical ceremony. The other type was the intichiuma ritual of the Warramunga, among whom and related groups special ceremonies for the increase of the totemic species were rarely held. Among the Kaitish people, a large number of extra elements had been added, and only a few hints of the features that were central in the Arunta intichiuma rituals were found, for example in the ceremonies for the increase of the white cockatoo and the carpet snake. Among the coastal tribes intichiuma ceremonies were very fragmentary. Spencer concluded, however, that 'The discovery of these intichiuma ceremonies among these northern tribes is of considerable interest as showing that they are widely scattered and form an important feature in the totemic systems of tribes extending from Lake Eyre in the south to the Coburg Peninsula in the north' (Spencer 1914:21). And in respect of the fragments found in the coastal area, Spencer remarked that 'in at all events many of the tribes ... the men perform ceremonies that are equivalent of the intichiuma' (Spencer 1914:179). This was true, for example, of the Kakadu, Waduman and Mudburra (Spencer 1914:20). The Arunta; A Study of a Stone Age People, 1927 Spencer and Gillen's 1899 and 1904 books on the tribes of Central Australia were republished by Spencer in the two-volume The Arunta in 1927. Here the native peoples of Central and Northern Central Australia

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 53 were grouped together as the Arunta. The book provided no new information apart from a few general remarks in the chapter dealing with what Spencer now termed mbanbiuma ceremonies. He had changed over to this term because intichiuma had turned out to be an Udnirringita term. He assumed that the mbanbiuma rituals in earlier times had been found in all Aboriginal societies throughout the Australian continent. They were now found mainly in Central Australian societies, though remnants of them were still found in the form of rain-making rituals among tribes in other parts. As essential features of these rituals Spencer listed: (1) a special ceremony by the men of the totem group with the sole object of securing an increase in the totem species; (2) the obligation for the Inkata (headman of the totem group) to eat a little of the totem if he were to perform the ceremony with success; and (3) the permission to eat of it freely granted by the men of the totem group to the other men (Spencer and Gillen 1927:147-8). The ceremonies dealt with are those described in 1899. Summary of Spencer and Gillen's interpretation of the intichiuma ceremonies In tracing the history of the development of the concept of intichiuma rituals as used by Spencer and Gillen over the years, we have observed how these scholars gradually widened the scope of the term. In 1896, Gillen described only one example, namely the witchetty grub intichiuma of the Alice Springs group. No relationship was established between the totem group and the ritual, the sole requirement being that the performers belonged to the right moiety. In these years the main problem was the eating of the totem, the explanation for which was formulated in terms of remains of cannibalism. The eating of the totem was not connected with any solemn sacrament, the eating of the witchetty grub being treated as an exception. Frazer was very enthusiastic about these descriptions and suggested that the theory about totemism be revised on the basis of Spencer and Gillen's data on intichiuma ceremonies. By 1899, the intichiuma ceremonies had been given a central place by Spencer and Gillen in their description of the tribes of Central Australia. In their Native Tribes of 1899 they followed Lang, however, in regarding the Arunta intichiuma rituals as a curious development and as mere 'sports'. By the time of his lecture to the Anthropological Institute of 16 December 1898, however, Spencer had already sided with Frazer against Lang, though he still had to resolve the problem of the relation between totemism and exogamy. In the years that followed, Spencer was constantly searching for more evidence in support of the explanation he had proposed. It was for this reason that he undertook research among the peoples of Northern Australia. He also provided a much more detailed outline of the ideal type of intichiuma ceremony in these years. Besides giving a detailed summary of the essential features of the intichiuma complex, Spencer and Gillen described its bifurcation into an Arunta and a

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Totem groups la Ib lc 2 3a 3b 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

PARTICIPANTS

totem members + + PH PH PH + PH PH PH PH PH PH PH PH moiety members

others OM OM OM OM OM OM OM

A1M magie rites songs

END solemn eating permission

PH: Performer = Headman; OM: Other moiety; +: explicitly present; -: explicitly absent; +/-: more or less present (or else not mentioned by Spencer and Gillen).

The ceremonies involved are: Arunta: la. Witchetty grub, 1896; lb. Witchetty grub, 27 September 1897; lc. Witchetty grub, 1899, 1904, 1927; 2. Irriakura, 27 September 1897, 1927; 3a. Okira or kangaroo totem, 1897; 3b. Okira orkangaroo totem, 1899, 1912, 1927; 4. Erliaoremu totem, 1899, 1927; 5. Unjiamba or hakea flower totem, 1899, 1927; 6. Ilpirla or manna totem, 1899. 1927; 7. Yarumpa or honey-ant totem, 1899, 1927; 8. Quatcha or water totem, 1899, 1912, 1927. Urabunna: 9. Rain totem, 1904; 10. Snake totem, 1904, 1912. Wonkgongaru: 11. Fish totem, 1904; 12. Louse totem, 1904; 13. Kadni or jew lizard totem, 1904. Kaitish: 14. Erlipinna or grass seed totem, 1904; 15. Water totem, 1904. Unmatjera: 16. Idnimita or grub totem, 1904. Worgaia: 17. Menadji or yam totem, 1904. Warramunga: 18. Thalualla or black snake totem, 1904; 19. Itjilpi or ant totem, 1904; 20. Muntikera or carpet snake totera, 1904, 1914; 21. White cockatoo totem, 1904, 1912, 1914. Tjingilli: 22. Rain totem, 1904. Gnanji: 23. Rain ceremony, 1904. Mara: 24. Honey bag totem, 1904; 25. Kangaroo totem, 1904; 26. Rain making ceremony, 1904.

Anula: 27. Dugong totem, 1904; 28. Crocodile totem, 1904; 29. Rain making ceremony, 1904. Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 55

Warramunga sub-type and ascribed the absence of the ceremony in the Northern Territory to the favourable climate.

3. A unified category? Spencer and Gillen were aware of the diversity of the rites which they subsumed under the heading intichiuma as a unified category because they were all performed for the sake of ensuring an increase in each particular clan's totemic animal or plant species. When we compare the features which Spencer and Gillen indicated as being crucial with their actual descriptions of these rites, however, these ceremonies prove not to form a single integrated category at all. In my attempt at comparison, it will not be possible for me to repeat Spencer and Gillen's descriptions in full. Instead, I will concentrate on three analytical issues. One is the question of who participated in each of these 'intichiuma' rites: were only the members of the totem group involved, or did the members of the moiety also participate, or was the headman of the totem group the sole celebrant? The second question concerns the aim of these rites: exactly which rites in each 'intichiuma' ceremony were believed to be instrumental in procuring the desired increase in the totemic species? Furthermore, were these rites 'magical', that is to say, were they deemed to be automatically effective? Or do we assume this to be the aim merely because it was expressed in the songs sung or in the interpretation given of these by the participants? The third issue is that of the solemn eating of the totemic species at the end of an intichiuma ceremony and the permission to eat of this species which was given to non-members of the totemic group. Do we find all the same 'essential features' in the ceremonies which Spencer and Gillen have grouped under the heading intichiumal The answers to these questions are set out in the table below. It is clear from this table that the members of the totem group acted as celebrants in only five of the twenty-nine rituals classed as intichiuma by Spencer and Gillen. In eleven, the headman fulfilled this role, while in fourteen it was the moiety members who performed this function. In seven, this role was reserved exclusively to members of the opposite moiety. 'Magical' rites for the purpose of increase formed part of eighteen of the ceremonies; the absence of such rites was explicitly mentioned in the case of the intichiuma ceremonies of the Warramunga and related groups. The solemn eating of the totem formed part of only eight ceremonies, as did the rite of granting permission to non-members of the totem group to do so, while the absence of this was explicitly indicated in two descriptions. Therefore the essential features of the intichiuma ceremony were found in only a limited number of ceremonies describe by Spencer and Gillen.

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4. Increase ceremonies and other researchers The category of intichiuma ceremonies is intimately Hnked with the work of Spencer and Gillen; it is hardly found mentioned in other ethnographies. It cannot be ruled out, however, that the phenomena which Spencer and Gillen classed as intichiuma were described by others in different contexts and under different labels. In this section I will therefore consider the publications of other ethnographers specializing in Australian Aboriginal studies in that period. The works of Carl Strehlow, Fison and Howitt, and Mathews are in fact found to contain a few vague hints at ritual behaviour with respect to the food supply. The German missionary Carl Strehlow, who lived in Hermannsburg, near Alice Springs, and was not on speaking terms with Spencer and Gillen, held that the class of ceremonies termed intichiuma, 'd[as] h[ei6t] einweihen in etwas, zeigen, wie etwas gemacht wird', were intended to serve as a kind of demonstration to novices during their initiation, not to secure an increase in the totemic species. Strehlow explicitly referred in a note to the misuse of the term by Spencer and Gillen. What they were actually dealing with were ceremonies of the mbatjalkaüuma class. These, he said, were performed 'in der Absicht ..., für die Vermehrung und das Gedeihen des Totems zu sorgen'. The word mbatjalkaüuma in fact means 'hervor- bringen, fruchtbar machen, in einen besseren Zustand versetzen' (C. Strehlow 1907 11:2, see also 38, 39). Participants in the mbatjalkatiuma ceremonies had to be members of the totem group themselves, or their mother had to belong to this group, in contrast to what was the case in the intichiuma ceremonies. Another point of debate between Strehlow and Spencer and Gillen was whether the members of a particular totem group were obliged to eat of the totemic species. Spencer and Gillen held that they were. Strehlow, on the other hand, was of the opinion that this was definitely not necessary for the efficacious performance of mbatjalkatiuma or 'intichiuma' rituals. Such members might eat of it before or after some other ritual, but this eating certainly never constituted an obligatory part of the increase ceremonies, according to him. He nevertheless conceded that Spencer and Gillen's remark about the eating of the totem species at the moment of the 'Freigabe des Totems zum allgemeinen Gebrauch ... ist richtig' (C. Strehlow 1907 11:7). Fison and Howitt, who were working in the south-eastern state of Victoria, were mainly interested in the social aspects of totemism. Their study of 1880, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, was subtitled Group-Marriage and Relationship, and Marriage by Elopement. It was dedicated to Lewis H. Morgan. Aside from some marginal notes on magie, for example (Fison and Howitt 1880:251), they did not refer to the religious aspects of culture and totemism. In Howitt's study The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904) we find more explicit information on magie and rituals. Rain-making ceremonies were performed by medicine men. Howitt did not give any

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 57 information about the totemic identity of the performers, saying only that in the Kuinmurbura tribe there 'is usually one in each totem' (Howitt 1904:399). In the section entitled 'Charms to influence food-supply' (Howitt 1904:399-400), Howitt gave several examples of increase 'magie'. In his view, these rituals were not comparable with the category of intichiuma ceremonies. He gave more detailed information on the Dieri Minkani ceremonies, the purpose of which was to obtain a plentiful erop of Woma and Kapiri. Referring to Spencer and Gillen's intichiuma ceremonies, Howitt put forward the hypothesis that the participants in the Dieri ceremonies belonged to the Woma and Kapiri totems. 'This, however, I have not been able to ascertain' (Howitt 1904:798), he was obliged to confess. The Aborigines of Victoria and New South Wales were described by R.H. Mathews. As a licensed surveyor, Mathews was 'continually in con- tact with the sable sons and daughters of the soil' (Mathews 1904:203). He was very interested in religious phenomena. A third of the 95 articles he wrote on the ethnology of the Australian Aborigines dealt with ceremonies (Mathews 1904:377-81), most of them initiation ceremonies, though with hardly any variation (see Swain 1991:173). In a general survey of the social organization, languages and general customs of the Aborigines in New South Wales and Victoria, Mathews did not deal with anything resembling the intichiuma ceremonies. He did describe the use of 'magie' during the search for food (Mathews 1904:252 f.). In this connection he stated that it was forbidden to kill the totem animal or piek the totem plant, adding that 'It is believed that thus allowing the animal to escape, or leaving the plant unplucked, will augment the supply and increase the fruitfulness of such game or vegetable' (Mathews 1904:261). Mathews therefore interpreted this kind of behaviour as serving to secure increase. We may conclude, therefore, that certain ritual practices aimed at the increase of the so-called totemic species did exist. Strehlow termed these mbatjalkatiuma ceremonies. Apart from asserting that they differed from the intichiuma rituals investigated by Spencer and Gillen, he gave no information on this category of rites. From Mathews' description it is clear that rules of abstinence were interpreted in terms of increase of the totemic species. There is not much ground for classifying these practices and rules as intichiuma ceremonies, therefore.

5. Totemistic theories and the intichiuma debate In this section I will give a short account of the leading theories about totemism in the period under discussion. The first anthropologist to deal explicitly with totemism as such was McLennan, who was a founding member of the Edinburgh Evening Club (1866). In a famous article in The Fortnightly Review of 1869-1870 he combined two contemporary schools of anthropological thought. The first school concentrated on the construction of a model of primitive society. Most authors here converged

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on a single model, according to which all primitive societies were organized by principles of matrilineal descent and exogamy, with property being held in communal ownership. Besides, there was methodological agreement among them about unilineal evolutionism as formulated by Tylor. The second school evinced a growing interest in man's intellectual development and in religion. In order to be able to study religion in lower-level cultures, the definition of religion had to be changed. Having rejected criteria such as belief in a Supreme Being or in judgement after death, Tylor proposed 'as a minimum definition of religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings' (Tylor 1871 11:8). The most primitive form of religion was based on 'the theory which endows the phenomena of nature with personal life' (Tylor 1866 as quoted by Kuper 1988:82). Tylor termed this religion 'animism'. McLennan combined the social model of matriarchy and exogamy with the religious model of animism. Totemism 'is Fetishism plus certain peculiarities. These peculiarities are, (1) the appropriation of a special Fetish to the tribe, (2) its hereditary transmission through mothers, and (3) its connection with the jus connubii.' (McLennan 1869-1870 as quoted by Kuper 1988:82.) Another member of the Edinburgh Evening Club to become very important in the totemistic debate was the theologian and Semitist W. Robertson Smith. He was the first scholar 'to study Semitic religion from the comparative anthropological point of view. This had not been done earlier because until then ... the Semitic peoples were feit to be unique and therefore incomparable.' (Ackerman 1991:41.) According to Robertson Smith, primitive religion consisted in ritual. The most important form of ritual was sacrifice. Among the Semites 'the fundamental idea of sacrifices is not that of a sacred tribute, but of communion between the god and his worshippers by joint participation in the living flesh and blood of a sacred victim' (Robertson Smith 1889:345). That was why the totem animal was eaten as a sacrament by totemic tribes in primitive times. From 1883 on Robertson Smith worked in Cambridge, where he exercised an enörmous influence on Frazer. An entry on totemism which Frazer was asked to write for the Encyclopaedia Britannica turned into a complete book. Frazer started with the definition that 'a totem is a class of material objects which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation' (Frazer 1887:1). He distinguished three kinds of totem, namely clan totems, sex totems, and individual totems. He also dealt with the religious and social aspects of totemism. Essentially his study comprised a collection and classification of data. At the end of a random list of material from all over the world, the author concluded that 'no satisfactory explanation of the origin of totemism has yet been given' (Frazer 1887:95). Frazer came up with an explanation in 1890. For this he referred to the existence of so-called external souls, as in the story of 'The giant who had

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 59 no heart in his body'. Just as in this tale, the 'totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life' (Frazer 1890 11:338-9). In his explanation of totemism he emphasized the religious aspect. 'Therefore the reason why a tribe revere a particular species of animals or plants ... and call themselves after it, must be a belief that the life of each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one animal or plant of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing that particular animal, or destroying that particular plant' (Frazer 1890 11:337). The definition in the index is more or less the same: 'Totem, a, is an object (animal, plant, etc.) in which a man deposits his soul for safety' (Frazer 1890 11:405-6). In a letter to Spencer in 1898 Frazer proposed a second explanation of totemism, at least as found among Central Australian societies, on the basis of descriptions of intichiuma rituals by Spencer and Gillen. 'It almost looks as if among these tribes totemism was a system expressly devised for the purpose of procuring a plentiful supply of food, water, sunshine, wood, &c.' (letter from Frazer to Spencer, 15 September 1898 (Marett and Penniman 1932:25)). In explanation of his hypothesis, he gave a very apt example of his 'If I were a horse' methodology, saying: 'I am, e.g., a Kangaroo man, and I want to make as many kangaroos come and be eaten as I can. Now if I kill and eat them myself, the kangaroos will regard me with fear and distrust as a dangerous creature, not as a genuine kangaroo at all ... in order to be (as I am) a real Kangaroo, it is necessary that I should occasionally eat kangaroo; for unless I have real kangaroo flesh and blood in me, how could I be a kangaroo?' (Marett and Penniman 1932:26.) Frazer actually postulated that the origin of totemism as an economie system and as a religious attitude towards the totem - including the rule of abstinence vis-a-vis it and the rule that it must be eaten on special occasions by the members of the totem group - lay in the way of reasoning of primitive man as he imagined it. The problem of exogamy remained unsolved by this 'explanation', however. Frazer solved this problem also by emphasizing the secondary nature of exogamy and treating it as something that had 'been tacked onto it subsequently, and not in all cases' (Marett and Penniman 1932:28). Having developed this theory, Frazer begah to put pressure on Spencer to make his and Gillen's fieldwork data on the intichiuma rituals public and interpret them in the light of his new theory. Spencer did so in a lecture given at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland on 14 December 1898. It was followed by some remarks by Frazer himself, who began by stressing the archaic nature of Aboriginal societies in Central Australia, saying that Australian man had 'remained on the whole down to recent times in a more primitive social and intellectual state than elsewhere'. He then addressed the part of Spencer's lecture in which the latter had dealt with the origin of totemism. He said that this 'most interesting part', giving an interpretation of intichiuma ceremonies, had given rise to a conclusion 'which two minds have reached

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independently', namely that in 'its origin totemism was ... simply an organised and co-operative system of magie devised to secure for the members of the community on the one hand a plentiful supply of all the natural commodities of which they stood in need, and, on the other hand, immunity from all the perils and dangers to which man is exposed in his struggle with nature' (Frazer 1899a:281-2). Raising the question of how this interpretation of the totemic group as a group of magicians working for the general good of the community could be reconciled with his earlier theory of totemism, according to which primitive man saw his totem as the safe deposit for his soul, Frazer argued that savage man solved this problem by refusing to kill and eat his totemic species and by practising exogamy. As regards the latter point, Frazer argued that exogamy had not been practised in the earliest forms of society. Just as kangaroos mated with kangaroos, so kangaroo men had married kangaroo women. Exogamy was a secondary phenomenon. To 'stimulate a close friendship for them', members of the totem group after some time stopped eating of the totem animal. The members of the several groups combined 'calculated on the total increase of the food supply'. Remnants of the original eating of the totem still survived in the intichiuma ritual. Frazer remarked: 'Here, it is plain, we have at last the long-sought totem sacrament which Robertson Smith with the intuidon of genius divined, and which it has been reserved for Messrs. Spencer and Gillen to discover as an actually existing institution among true totem tribes' (Frazer 1899a:283-4). Over the years, Frazer had become increasingly sceptical about Robertson Smith's thesis concerning the eating of the totem, because no evidence of this had been found (Ackerman 1987:154). He had, therefore, been highly excited by Spencer's report that the totem was eaten during the intichiuma ceremonies. He now wondered whether analogous ceremonies were to be found in other parts of the world. After reviewing some examples from widely different parts of the globe, Frazer concluded that 'it would be premature to say that the momentous discoveries of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have finally solved the problem of totemism; but at least they point to a solution more complete and satisfactory than any that has hitherto been offered' (Ackerman 1987:286). In two articles which Frazer further published in the Fortnightly Review he wrote that the Australian 'facts' were very important because with these 'we seem to touch the furthest past, the most rudimentary stage of human life'. In his view, the natives of Central Australia were of the highest importance for the study of religion because they lived 'in the totem stage, and (are) practically unaffected by European influence'. Among them we find 'humanity in the chrysalis stage' (Frazer 1899b:647- 8). Referring to the old theory of totemism again, Frazer now also emphasized the difference between religion and magie, the distinction between which was to become a very important motif in the second edition of The Golden Bough. The intichiuma ceremonies, he said, 'are in

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access The Long-Sought Sacrament 61 their essence magical rather than religious' (Frazer 1899b:657). He further concluded that in Central Australia totemism was 'an organised system of magie intended to procure for savage man a plentiful supply of all the natural objects whereof he stands in need' (Frazer 1899b:664). He then wondered whether the intichiuma ceremonies might possibly provide the key to the original meaning and purpose of totemism in general. Spencer and Gillen had not suggested this in The Native Tribes of Central Australia, but this only occurred to Frazer after reading the proofs of their work. In reply to a letter about this to Spencer, the latter stated that he 'had been coming independently to a similar conclusion' (Frazer 1899b:664). Frazer once more emphasized the importance of Spencer and Gillen's discovery, saying: 'Here, then, in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of which positive examples have hitherto been wanting' (Frazer 1899b:838). Frazer again referred to Robertson Smith's theory concerning the slaying and eating of the totem in the preface to the second edition of The Golden Bough. He admitted that he had been doubting whether totems actually ever had been slain and eaten, as no proof of this had been found. However, at the very moment that his 'doubts had almost hardened into incredulity ... the long-looked-for rite was discovered' among the most primitive totem tribes known to anthropology at that moment. 'This discovery', he wrote, 'I welcomed as a very striking proof of the sagacity of my brilliant friend, whose rapid genius had outstripped our slower methods and anticipated what it was for subsequent research positively to ascertain. Thus from being little more than an ingenious hypothesis the totem sacrament has become, at least in my opinion, a well-authenticated fact.' He warned, however, that one should not jump from data about a single set of tribes to a universal theory, saying that 'it is unsafe to make the [Arunta] custom the base of far-reaching speculations' (Frazer 1900 I:xix). For this reason he had not revised the chapters about totemism in this second edition, but had only added a cautionary note indicating that he had 'allowed the theory in the text to stand, partly because it is not as yet clear how far the particular theory of totemism suggested by the Central Australian evidence is of general application, and partly because, in the uncertainty which still hangs over the origin and meaning of totemism, it seems scarcely worth while to patch up an old theory which the next new facts may perhaps entirely demolish' (Frazer 1890 111:416, n. 3). These doubts about the correct interpretation resulted in a new theory, Frazer's third. In 1905 he published an article in the Fortnightly Review (reprinted in Totemism and Exogamy) in which he proposed to explain totemism by reference to the notions of the Central Australian Aboriginals about conception. He asserted that theses Aboriginals saw no connection between human sexuality and conception, but explained conception in

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 04:44:43AM via free access 62 W.W. Belier terms of an intrusion of a spirit. Referring to the earlier theory about the relation between totemism and intichiuma ceremonies, he remarked: 'Further reflection has led me to the conclusion that magical ceremonies for the increase or diminution of the totems are likely to be a later, though still very early, outgrowth of totemism rather than its original root' (Frazer 1910 1:160, n. 1). He stated his reasons for abandoning the Spencer and Gillen interpretation in his Totemism and Exogamy in 1910. Their theory assigned 'too rational' a motive for the origin of totemism and assumed 'too complex' a social organisation 'to be [truly] primitive' (Frazer 1910 FV:57). He moreover seemed to have doubts about whether the Australian Aboriginals could serve as starting-point in a scheme of unilineal evolution of human societies (Frazer 1910 I:viii). Malinowski in 1913 followed Frazer's second theory, however, emphasizing the economie aspects of the intichiuma ceremonies and taking Spencer and Gillen's description of these ceremonies at face value (Malinowski 1913:83-94).

6. Conclusion The intichiuma ritual as a category in the study of religion owed its existence to certain theoretical presuppositions. Spencer and Gillen questioned their informants almost exclusively about intichiuma ceremonies. They were really fïxated on the subject (see Mulvaney and Calaby 1984: passim). Their initial remarks about the eating of the totem and about the intichiuma ceremony of the witchetty grub totem at Alice Springs blossomed into quite an elaborate construction. Spencer was a great admirer of Frazer, and Frazer's enthusiasm about Spencer and Gillen's ethnographic discoveries led Spencer to attach increasingly greater importance to the interpretation of the intichiuma ritual as the origin of religious totemism. The ceremony, initially exclusively a witchetty grub rite, gradually developed into the typically Central Australian ritual as Spencer and Gillen found it. In the end, Spencer and Gillen could see it all over Australia, and even turned it into a universal phenomenon. Actually, the evidence for this category of rites was very thin. One finds no tracé of intichiuma ceremonies in the works of other scholars, apart from a vague indication of a connection between 'magie' and the food supply. Moreover, the intichiuma rituals described by Spencer and Gillen hardly display the features which these authors defined as the essential features of the intichiuma ceremony as an ideal type. Frazer grew so enthusiastic about Spencer and Gillen's data because the intichiuma ceremonies seemed finally to prove Robertson Smith right after all. The sacrament of the solemn eating of the totem after it had been sacrificed which he had theorized about had been found, so it seemed, in what he took to be the most primitive of human cultures. The intichiuma ceremonies shared the fate of most concepts in totemic studies. The concept of totemism was severely criticized by Goldenweiser,

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who questioned the uniformity of the totemic complex (Goldenweiser 1910). Van Gennep's study, in which he had made a compilation of the various interpretations of totemism in order to clarify the debate, which he predicted would go on for a long time, turned out to be the last one dealing with totemism as a primitive form of religion. Lévi-Strauss's approach to totemism as a system of logico-symbolic classification (Lévi-Strauss 1962) left no room for Spencer and Gillen's magico-realistic interpretation. All these considerations lead to the conclusion that the history of the development of the category of intichiuma ceremonies cannot be separated from the history of the problems presented in the European academie environment. The development of this particular category in Australia certainly provided an answer to the problem of at least one particular scholar in Europe.

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