Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/127

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III
SOCIAL ORGANISATION
101

any one recorded their totems, they would have been found to be analogous to those of the Ta-tathi tribe.

From the Loddon upwards the class names were the Bunjil and Waang of the Kulin, but to judge by the Bangerang tribe, descent was in the male line, and therefore such tribes will be spoken of later in this part.

In the absence of direct evidence of the range of such tribes up the Murray from the Bangerang, I can only conjecture that it may have been as far as where the class names of Bunjil and Waang ceased, and others came in. This was perhaps at the northern boundary of the Wolgal tribe at Walaregang on the Murray River.

The only remaining tribes, known to me, which can be included in this section, are situated on the upper waters of the Murray, Murrumbidgee, Snowy, and Tambo Rivers, the Ya-itma-thang, Ngarigo, and Wolgal.

As said before, the first named became extinct at an early date in the history of Victoria, and very little was recorded concerning it. All I can say is that among the totems were Tchuteba the rabbit-rat, and Najatejan, the bat, which also occur in the neighbouring Ngarigo tribe, with which the Theddora branch of the Ya-itma-thang intermarried. That these two totems were on the opposite side of the tribe is shown by the fact that when the people played at ball, Tchuteba was on one side and Najatejan on the other.

The Ngarigo adjoined the Theddora on the east and had the sub-joined class system.