Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/131

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III
SOCIAL ORGANISATION
105

at once apparent. It is clear that the difference consists in the interpolation between the totems and the two classes of four sub-classes; or perhaps the more correct statement would be that each primary class has been divided into two moieties, and that the totems either remain with the primary, and are common to both, as in some tribes, or as in others, have been divided between the sub-classes. When this occurs it is evidently a further stage in the process of subdivision.

The consideration of the effects produced by these changes will be found in the following pages; but it may be said now that descent runs directly in the primary classes and the totems, and indirectly in the sub-classes.

As an appendix to the Kamilaroi tribe, I add some particulars about the Geawe-gal of the Hunter River. I learn that this tribe had the complete sub-class system of the Kamilaroi, but my informant, Mr. G. W. Rusden, said that although he could not recollect all their class divisions, they had certainly the great divisions Yippai and Kombo.

There was a small tribe on the Bellinger River on the east coast of New South Wales called Kombaingheri, which had the following four sub-classes, each having a separate male and female name. This peculiarity has not come under my notice in any other tribe of South-Eastern Australia.

Male. Female.
Kurbo . . . . . . . Kuran
Wombo . . . . . . . Wirikin
Maro . . . . . . . Kurgan
Wiro . . . . . . . Wongan[1]

I have no information which would enable me to say which of these form the pairs representing the two moieties of the tribe, and therefore the line of descent cannot be given.

To the West and South-west of the Kamilaroi is the Wiradjuri nation, and as an example I take that tribe of it which occupied the greater part of Riverina. The following table gives its social organisation as far as I have been able to ascertain it:[2]

  1. E. Palmer.
  2. J. B. Gribble