River to where, between it and the Paroo, they would meet tribes belonging to the Itchumundi nation.
This, together with the tribes of the Karamundi and Barkinji nations, extended over the country along the Darling River between it and the Grey and Barrier Ranges, and for some 50 miles back from it towards the Bogan and Lachlan Rivers.
All these tribes had the two classes named Mukwara and Kilpara, and the marriage rule was that Mukwara married Kilpara, and vice versa.
There was a limitation as to totem marriage: for instance, in the Itchumundi, Mukwara-eagle-hawk married Kilpara-bone-fish; Mukwara-kangaroo married Kilpara-emu; Mukwara-dog married Kilpara-padi-melon, and so on.
When the question was put to several men of one of these tribes, "What would be done if a Mukwara took a Mukwara for his wife?" the reply was an emphatic "No good—suppose that, then we kill him."
The child takes the class and totem names of its mother.[1]
The Wiimbaio tribe, in fact, belonged to the group which occupied the lower part of the Darling, for its language, the Maraura, extended far up that river.
It had the same rules of class and totemic marriage. Girls were promised when infants, and there was inter-marriage between the Wiimbaio and the adjoining tribes both in the Darling and Murray.
Marriages were also brought about by elopement of girls who preferred other and younger men than those to whom they had been promised as children. In such a case the girl was pursued by her father and brothers, and the man she had eloped with would have to allow them to strike him on the head with a club, after which in some cases he would retain her.
But in other cases there was a fight between her kindred, male and female, and those of the man she went off with. The women were generally the most excited, and would stir up the men and assist them with their yam-sticks.
- ↑ J. W. Boultbee.
