creature called
Wollunqua, amongst the Warramunga tribe, who, it may be remarked, is
most distinctly regarded as a snake and not as a human being."[134] Thus
far Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. From their testimony it appears that
with a single possible exception, to which I will return immediately,
the Central Australian aborigines are not known to worship any of their
dead ancestors; they indeed believe their remote forefathers of the
_alcheringa_ age to have been endowed with marvellous powers which they
themselves do not possess; but they do not regard these ancestral
spirits as deities, nor do they pray and sacrifice to them for help and
protection. The single possible exception to this general rule known to
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen is the case of the mythical water-snake
called Wollunqua, who is in a sense revered and propitiated by the
Warramunga tribe. The case is interesting and instructive as indicative
of an advance from magic towards religion in the strict sense of the
word. Accordingly I propose to consider it somewhat fully.

[Sidenote: The Wollunqua, a mythical water-snake, one of the Warramunga
totems.]

The Wollunqua is one of the many totems of the Warramunga tribe. It is
to be borne in mind that, though every Australian tribe has many totems
which are most commonly animals or plants and more rarely other natural
objects, all the totems are not respected by all the members of the
tribe; each totem is respected only by a particular group of men and
women in the tribe, who believe themselves to be descended from the same
totemic ancestor. Thus the whole tribe is broken up into many groups or
bodies of men and women, each group knit together by a belief in a
common descent from the totem, by a common respect for the totemic
species, whether it be a species of animals or plants, or what not, and
finally by the possession of a common name derived from the totem. Thus,
for example, we have a group of men and women who believe themselves
descended from an ancestor who had the bandicoot for his totem; they all
respect bandicoots; and they are all called bandicoot people. Similarly
with all the other totemic groups within the tribe. It is convenient to
have a name for these totemic groups or tribal subdivisions, and
accordingly we may call them clans, provided we remember that a totemic
clan in this sense is not an independent political community such as the
Scottish Highland clans used to be; it is merely a sub