descent in one tribe and male descent in another, and the restrictions intended to bar what they consider to be incestuous marriages, when there was no other way to provide a wife for some tribesman.
The class organisation of the Lake Eyre tribes extended south to the Parnkalla tribe, whose country terminated at Port Lincoln.
I have not been able to obtain direct evidence as to the status of marriage in the Parnkalla tribe, but the remarks made on this subject by the Rev. C. W. Schürmann afford some data on which to form an opinion whether the Tippa-malku and Pirrauru marriage of the Dieri obtained in this tribe, as well as the two classes "Mattiri and Carraru." He says that "long before a girl arrives at maturity, she is affianced by her parents to some friend of theirs, no matter whether young or old, married or single. Although the men are capable of fierce jealousy if their wives transgress unknown to them, yet they frequently send them out to other parties or exchange with a friend for a night; and as for near relatives, such as brothers, it may almost be said that they have their wives in common. This latter practice is a recognised custom. A woman honours the brothers of the man to whom she is married with the indiscriminate name of husbands; but the men make a distinction, calling their own individual spouses Yungaras and those on whom they have a secondary claim, Kartetis."[1]
This appears to me just what an observer, who looked only at the surface of things, would see, indeed much as the early settlers in Central Australia regarded the female Pirraurus of the Dieri as merely "paramours." If we translate Yungara as Tippa-malku, and Karteti as Pirrauru, we may reasonably conclude that the Parnkalla were, as regards marriage, in much the same state as the Lake Eyre tribes. If that is so, then we may also conclude that all the tribes between Port Lincoln and the Yerkla-mining at Eucla have group-marriage, as well as the classes Mattiri and Carraru.
- ↑ The Native Tribes of South Australia, 1879. "The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln." C. W. Schürmann, p. 222.
