ed mass, in which only the outline of the
different parts of the body could be vaguely perceived. Coming down
from their home in the western sky, armed with great stone knives, the
Ungambikula took hold of the embryos, one after the other. First of all
they released the arms from the bodies, then making four clefts at the
end of each arm they fashioned hands and fingers; afterwards legs, feet,
and toes were added in the same way. The figure could now stand; a nose
was then moulded and the nostrils bored with the fingers. A cut with the
knife made the mouth, which was pulled open several times to render it
flexible. A slit on each side of the face separated the upper and lower
eye-lids, disclosing the eyes, which already existed behind them; and
a few strokes more completed the body. Thus out of the rudimentary
creatures were formed men and women. These rudimentary creatures or
embryos, we are told, "were in reality stages in the transformation
of various animals and plants into human beings, and thus they were
naturally, when made into human beings, intimately associated with the
particular animal or plant, as the case may be, of which they were the
transformations--in other words, each individual of necessity belonged
to a totem, the name of which was of course that of the animal or plant
of which he or she was a transformation." However, it is not said
that all the totemic clans of the Arunta were thus developed; no such
tradition, for example, is told to explain the origin of the important
Witchetty Grub clan. The clans which are positively known, or at least
said, to have originated out of embryos in the way described are the
Plum Tree, the Grass Seed, the Large Lizard, the Small Lizard, the
Alexandra Parakeet, and the Small Rat clans. When the Ungambikula had
thus fashioned people of these totems, they circumcised them all, except
the Plum Tree men, by means of a fire-stick. After that, having done the
work of creation or evolution, the Ungambikula turned themselves
into little lizards which bear a name meaning "snappers-up of flies."
(Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen, "Native Tribes of Central Australia"
(London, 1899), pages 388 sq.; compare id., "Northern Tribes of Central
Australia" (London, 1904), page 150.)

This Arunta tradition of the origin of man, as Messrs Spencer and
Gillen, who have recorded it, justly observe, "is of considerable
interest; it is in the first place evidently a crude attempt to describe