Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/246

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220
NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA
CH.

tion for individual marriage. In the Kurnandaburi tribe we see the practice in force on the occasion of marriage, and also sub rosa between the woman and her husband's brothers, while it is in the Dieri tribe a living fact among all the tribes-people as one of the two recognised forms of marriage, namely that following the Tippa-malku relation, and the other the Pirrauru marriage ceremony.

In the Kuinmurbura tribe a widow went to the elder brother (murang) or the younger (woern) of her deceased husband.

A man had to make presents of game to the parents of his wife. When a Kuinmurbura married a woman of another tribe he lived with hers, but would not take part in intertribal fights with his own, on such occasions being merely a spectator. A female captive was the property of her captor, if of the proper class and totem.

The marriages and descents in the Kongulu tribe, which occupied the country between the Mackenzie River and the lower Dawson, were as follows[1]:—

Male Marries Children are
Bunya Kaiyaragun Bunjur and Bunjurgun
Tarbain Bunjurgun Kaiyara and Kaiyaragun
Kaiyara Bunyagun Tarbain and Tarbaingun
Bunjur Tarbaingun Bunya and Bunyagun

Bunya and Tarbain represent the class name Yunguro, and Kaiyara and Bunjur the class Wutthuru.

I have no information as to the totem marriages excepting that the totem always descends from the mother to her child. The child therefore takes its mother's class and totem and the sub-class name which with hers represent her class. Descent is therefore in the female line.

Inland from the Kuinmarbura tribe there are other tribes with another set of class, sub-class, and totem names. The most southern representative of these is the before-mentioned Emon tribe. The best example of these tribes

  1. "Girroonbah," The Queenslander, 28th December 1895.