Firstly, exogamy and totemism, whether they be in origin distinct or not, tend in practice to go pretty closely together.

Secondly, lineage, or the one-sided system of reckoning descent, is more or less independent of the other two principles.[4] [Footnote 4: That is to say, either mother-right or father-right in any of their forms may exist in conjunction with exogamy and totemism.
It is certainly not the fact that, wherever totemism is in a state of vigour, mother-right is regularly found.

At most it may be urged in favour of the priority of mother-right that, if there is change, it is invariably from mother-right to father-right, and never the other way about.] If, instead of consulting the evidence that is to hand about the savage world as it exists to-day, you read some book crammed full with theories about social origins, you probably come away with the impression that totemic society is entirely an affair of clans.

Some such notion as the following is precipitated in your mind.

You figure to yourself two small food-groups, whose respective beats are, let us say, on each side of a river.