MARRIAGES Ninety-nine marriages were recorded among the Central Sierra Miwok, thirty-two of these being from Big Creek alone. In the following table proper marriages, that is, between individuals of different moieties, are indicated by W-L; improper marriages, that is, between individuals of the same moiety, are indicated by W-W for the water moiety and L-L for the land moiety. Percentage Percentage of improper In the genealogical information obtained there are forty-eight male lines of descent. Some of these are rather long, covering four or five generations. Others consist merely of two generations-a man and his offspring. Of these lines of descent only nine show complete transmission of the eponym of the paternal ancestor to the descendants. In other words, less than one-fifth of the Central Sierra Miwok families named all their children after the eponym of the father or other male ancestor of the group. Plainly, there is no rule of transmission of the eponym of the male ancestor, and consequently no widespread belief in descent from the eponymous animal. . . ... CROSS-COUSIN MARRIAGE When asked if it were proper for a man to marry a cousin, Miwok informants always replied in the negative. In obtaining genealogical information, however, cases came up in which a man married his mother's brother's daughter. I called my informant's attention to this fact and received the reply that the individuals concerned were not regarded as cousins, for they stood in the relation of añsi and anisü to each other, which translated into English would be son and aunt, or potential stepmother. This affords an excellent example of the futility of using English terms of relationship with natives when discussing native customs. Every Miwok to whom the question was put stated that the proper mate for a man was a woman who stood in the relation of anisü to him, providing she was not too closely related to him. Although a man might marry his anisü cross-cousin, who was the daughter of his mother's brother, he could under no circumstances marry his lupuba cross-cousin, who was the daughter of his father's sister. This one-sidedness of cross cousin marriage among the Miwok in no way affected its popularity, or, to be more exact, the popularity of anisü-añsi marriages, of which the cross-cousin marriage is one form. In many cases my informants would state that a certain man and his wife stood in the relation to each other of añsi and anisü. Although these instances were not substantiated, except in four cases, by genealogical proof, they show the popularity of this form of marriage. At Big Creek six of the listed marriages are of this type, eight are not, and on the remaining eight I have no information. Cases were encountered in which a husband and wife claimed to stand in the añsi-anisü relation to each other, but, when asked to demonstrate the relation, were unable to trace the connecting links. This state of affairs shows clearly that añsi-anisü marriages must have been the vogue, otherwise married people who could not prove such a relationship would not lay claim to it. Even among the Northern Sierra Miwok at Elk Grove, among whom the moiety system does not seem to exist, añsi-anisü marriages were the custom. The Southern Sierra Miwok of Madera County state that these marriages were proper, but that the contracting parties must be only distantly related. Informants at Jamestown, while stating that anisü-añsi marriages were prevalent there as elsewhere, said that marriages between first cousins, who stood in this relation, were commoner higher in the mountains than at Jamestown. The men at Jamestown and lower in the foothills were inclined to marry an anisü further removed than a first cousin. There seems to have been a sentiment at Jamestown against the marriage of first cousins. One woman was asked if she would consider it proper for her son to marry her brother's daughter. She replied, "No, she is too much like his mother," meaning herself. Her reply may have been engendered by the Miwok custom of a man marrying his wife's brother's daughter. By this marriage his new wife, who is also his son's anisü cross-cousin, would become his son's stepmother; hence perhaps the woman's statement with regard to her son's anisü cross-cousin, "too much like his mother.'"' 37. AUSTRALIAN MARRIAGE CLASSES AND TOTEMS1 By BALDWIN SPENCER AND F. J. GILLEN MARRIAGE CLASSES We may now turn to the consideration of the Arunta tribe in which descent is counted in the male line, and we may regard. the Arunta as typical of the large group of tribes inhabiting the center of the continent from Lake Eyre in the south to near Port Darwin in the north, in which descent is thus counted. The tribes with the classificatory systems of which we have knowledge are the Arunta, Ilpirra, Iliaura, Kaitish, Walpari, Warramunga, Waagai, and Bingongina, which occupy a range of country extending from the latitude of Macumba River in the south to about that of Powell's Creek in the north, that is over an area measuring from north to south some seven hundred and seventy miles. In regard to the organization of the Arunta tribe, with which we shall now deal in detail, it may at the outset be mentioned that the existence of four sub-classes in the southern part of the tribe, and of eight in the northern, appears at first sight to indicate that in the latter the organization is more complex. In reality, though without having distinct names applied to them, each one of the four sub-classes met with in the south is actually divided into two. The four are Panunga and Bulthara, Purula and Kumara; the first two forming one moiety of the tribe, and the latter two forming another. In camp, for example, the Panunga and Bulthara always camp together separated from the Purula and Kumara by some natural feature such as a creek. The Panunga and Bulthara speak of themselves as Nakrakia, and of the Purula and Kumara as Mulyanukathe terms being reciprocal. Further details with regard to this, and evidence of this division into two moieties, are given in connection with the discussion of the Churinga and totems, and in the account of the Engwura. The marriage system is, in broad outline, omitting at present certain details which will be referred to shortly, as follows: A Bulthara man marries a Kumara woman and their children are Panunga; a Purula man marries a Panunga woman and their children are Kumara; a Panunga man marries a Purula woman and their children are Bulthara; a Kumara man marries a Bulthara woman and their children are Purula. 1 From pages 70-75 and 112-127 of Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, Macmillan, London, 1899. By permission. This may be graphically expressed following Mr. Howitt's plan (as already done by Dr. Sterling) in the following way: In these diagrams the double arrow indicates the marriage connections and the single ones point to the name of the class of the children. As a matter of fact these diagrams as they stand, though perfectly correct in stating, for example, that a Panunga man marries a Purula woman, are incomplete in that they do not show the important point that to a Panunga man the Purula women are divided into two groups the members of one of whom stand to him in the relationship of Unawa whom he may marry, while the members of the other stand in the relationship of Unkulla whom he may not marry. This fact is one of very considerable importance. Each of the four sub-classes is thus divided into two, the members of which stand respectively in the relationship of Ipmunna to each other. We can represent this graphically as follows, taking, for the sake of simplicity, only two sub-classes, the divisions of one being represented by the letters A and B, and of the other by the letters C and D. A stands in the relationship of Unawa to C, Ipmunna to B, and Unkulla to D. In other words a woman who is Unkulla to me is Ipmunna to my wife. All women of group C (myself belonging to A), my wife calls sisters-Ungaraitcha if they be elder sisters, and Itia if they be younger sisters; and all of them stand in the relationship of Unawa to myself; but the other Purula woman whom my wife calls Ipmunna are Unkulla to me and I may not marry them. It is somewhat perplexing after learning that Panunga man must marry a Purula woman to meet with the statement, when inquiring into particular cases, that a given Panunga man must not marry a particular Purula woman, but in the northern part of the tribe matters are simplified by the existence of distinct names for the two groups; the relationship term of Ipmunna still exists, but if I am, for example, a Panunga man, then all my Ipmunna men and women are designated by the term Uknaria, and in the following tables the eight divisions are laid down, and it will be noticed that the old name is used for one-half and a new name adopted for the other. The double arrows indicate the marriage connections. This division into eight has been adopted (or rather the names for the four new divisions have been), in recent times by the Arunta tribe from the Ilpirra tribe which adjoins the former on the north, and the use of them is, at the present time, spreading southwards. At the Engwura ceremony which we witnessed men of the Ilpirra tribe were present, as well as a large number of others from the southern part of the Arunta amongst whom the four new names are not yet in use. We have found the following table of considerable service to ourselves in working as, by its means, the various relationships fall into regular arrangement and can be readily indicated. This table was drawn up in the first instance in order to show the marriage relationships and the divisions into which the children pass. Thus, reading across the page, men of the sub-classes shown in column 1 must marry women of the sub-classes shown in column 2. For example, a Panunga man marries a Purula woman, an Uknaria man an Ungalla woman, and so on. Column 3 in the same way indicates their children, those of a Panunga. man and a Purula woman being Appungerta, those of an Uknaria man and a Ungalla woman being Bulthara, etc. In the same way if a man of one of the sub-classes in column 2 marries a woman in one of those in column 1, then their children are as represented in column 4. That is, a Purula man marries a Panunga woman and their children are Kumara, and so on. . . . In the Arunta tribe, unlike the Urabunna, there is, as soon as marriage has taken place, a restriction, except on certain special occasions |