with Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen.

The first point of importance to note about the Arunta people is that
they occupy the least favourable districts for food supply.[372] This
means that they have been pushed there. They did not choose such a
location--in other words, they are among the last units of the
migration movements which peopled Australia; they are among the last
people to have become stationary as a group, and to have been
compelled to resort to the development of social organisation in lieu
of constantly swarming off from the centre or from the last stopping
place to the ends. This tells for primitive, not advanced, conditions.

The next point is the totem system. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,
describing one special case as an example of the rest, give us the
following particulars. The Arunta believe that the most marked
features of the district they inhabit, the gaps and the gorges, were
formed by their Alcheringa ancestors. These Alcheringa are represented
as collected together in companies, each of which consisted of a
certain number of individuals belonging to one particular totem. Each
of these Alcheringa ancestors carried about with him or her one or
more of the sacred stones called churinga. These are the general
traditions related by the Arunta of to-day to explain their own
customs, and let it be noted that the explanation does not necessarily
lead us to the primitive conceptions of the Arunta people, but to
their present conceptions as to unknown facts. The local example is
found close to Alice Springs, where there are deposited a large number
of churinga carried by the witchetty grub men and women. A large
number of prominent rocks and boulders, and certain ancient gum
trees, are the nanja trees and rocks of these spirits. If a woman
conceives a child after having been near to this gap, it is one of
these spirit individuals which has entered her body, and when born
must of necessity be of the witchetty grub totem; "it is, in fact,
nothing else but the reincarnation of one of the witchetty grub people
of the Alcheringa;" the nanja tree, or stone, ever afterwards is the
nanja of the child, and there is special connection between it and the
child, injury to the nanja object meaning injury to the nanja
man.[373] There is evidence that the reincarnation theory is not
admissible,[374] and, indeed, it does not seem warranted on the facts
presented by the authors. With this unnecessary element out of the
wa