AUSTRALIAN GROUP RELATIONS. 799 



lationship may be assumed to have arisen. In Australia, moreover, 

 aboriginal society has bad a continental development, free from disturb- 

 ing influences from without. It affords therefore an unrivaled field for 

 inquiry ; and here, if anywhere in the wide world, it should be now pos- 

 sible to trace out some of the causes which have been at the root of the 

 classificatory system of relationship. 



In this memoir I propose to draw attention to the connection which 

 I find to exist between certain group relations of the Australian abo- 

 rigines. In the term "group relations" I include not ouly those which 

 are indicated b;> the terms of relationship, but also those shown by the 

 groups formed in the aboriginal communities by the action of those 

 social laws which have divided them into what, for the sake of con- 

 venience, have been termed u class divisions." For the purposes of this 

 memoir I shall rely for my evidence mainly upon the custom of certain 

 tribes of Central Australia, whose condition is socially * the lowest of 

 any with which I have acquaintance. 



II. — THE TRIBAL STRUCTURE. 



An Australian tribe may be defined as a larger or smaller aggregate 

 of people, who occupy a certain tract of hunting and food ground in 

 common, who speak the same language with dialectical differences, t 

 who acknowledge a common relatedness to one another, and who deny 

 this relatedness to all other surrounding tribes. This tribal aggregate 

 may be so small as to cover a tract of country less than fifty square 

 miles, with under a hundred individuals, or it may extend over hun- 

 dreds of miles of country and number thousands of souls. 



Such a tribe, as a whole, occupies a certain tract of hunting and 

 food grounds, but it is invariably divided into well defined local groups, 

 each having its own portion of the common country. These are again 

 divided into smaller groups, until the smallest unit consists of a few 

 people of the same blood, under the- direction and guidance of the 

 oldest or most able of the elder men. $ Thus a tribe is composed of a 



* " Socially " — I use this term in a certain special sense — referring only to what I 

 call the socially social organization. When I say that an Australian tribe is socially 

 more advanced than others I do not mean that they have a better knowledge of the * 

 arts of life, but that their social orgauizatiou is of a comparatively advanced type. 

 And I take it that the line of advance is from group marriage to individual marriage, 

 and from uterine descent to agnation. 



I may note here that " individual marriage " does not necessarily imply monogamy. 

 It is consistent with that form of polygamy under which a man may have more wives 

 than one, he having .an exclusive right to them, as against all the rest of his tribesmen. 



t There are certain exceptions where, for instance, the husbands and wives are 

 found to speak different languages, that is, different languages of the Australian 

 stock, but this arises through the connubium between two tribes. 



t In most tribes, if not in all, the old men constitute what may be called the Groat 

 Council of the tribe. For instance, in the Dieri, this council is composed of the 

 heads of totems and of men of mark, such as warriors, counselors, orators, &c. 

 The council has, among other functions, jurisdiction over breaches of tribal morality 

 and offenses against the tribe. In short, it is the governing power. 



