Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/107

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II
THE TRIBAL ORGANISATION
81

the offended kindred, and only reappeared when the whites had settled the country, and he could thus find protection from tribal punishment.

I can feel no doubt that the Biduelli country was an Australian "cave of Adullam"; that the tribe was built up by refugees from tribal justice, or individual vengeance, and that they organised themselves, as far as they could do so, on the old-accustomed lines. It is a good example of what Dr. Hearn has called the formation of a non-genealogical tribe.[1]

While the Kurnai considered the Kulin on their western border, and the Theddora and Ngarigo on the north and north-east as enemies, they recognised in the Biduelli a sort of distant kinship, and spoke of them as Biduelli, not by the opprobrious names which they usually applied to other outsiders.

The Kurnai tribe carries us to the border of New South Wales, and the Wolgal, who extended down the Upper Murray to near Albury, leaves only a comparatively small part of Victoria, as to which I have not obtained information about the native tribes which inhabited it.

This is the country lying on the south bank of the Murray, and extending some distance up the Mitta-Mitta, Kiewa, Yackandanda, and Ovens Rivers. I feel pretty safe in saying that such a tract of country would be occupied by tribes in the same way as the Bangerang occupied similar country at the junction of the Campaspe, Goulburn, and Broken Rivers with the Murray.

The Coast Tribes of New South Wales

Reverting to the coast tribes, I now turn to the Murring, or more especially the Yuin tribes. These claimed the country from Cape Howe to the Shoalhaven River, in New South Wales. They formed two large sub-tribes or sub-divisions, called respectively Guyangal and Kurial, from the words guya, "south," and kuru, "north," gal being the possessive postfix. The inland extent of their country

  1. The Aryan Household, p. 297.