AUSTRALIAN GROUP RELATIONS. 819 



ing instance; a man who is Krokitck-Wartwut (Hot wind) claimed to 

 own all the five snbtotems of Hot wind (three snakes and two birds), 

 yet of these there was oue which he specially claimed as " belonging'" 

 to him, namely, Moiwnk (carpet-snake). Tims his totem Hot wind seems 

 to have been in process of subdivision into minor totems, and this man's 

 division might have become Hot wind carpet-snake had not civilization 

 rudely stopped the process by almost extinguishing the tribe. 



Marriage in this tribe might take place between a totem of one class 

 and any totem of the other class. Thus a man of A 1 might marry a 

 woman of B 4, or B 5, or B G, and so with the other totems. The sub- 

 totems have no influence on marriage. In this tribe, therefore, the class 

 law prohibits a man from marrying one-half of the women in the com- 

 munity.* 



2. Prohibition arising out of blood relationship. — By the action of the 

 primary divisions a man is restricted in his choice of a wife to one half 

 of the women. Of these again a certain number are ineligible by reason 

 of their standing in some of the forbidden degrees of relationship to him. 

 In the Wotjoballuk tribe with uterine descent, all the womeu standing 

 to an aspirant in the relation of "father's sister" are forbidden to him, 

 as also are all the daughters of these women. Nor would he be per- 

 mitted to take the daughter of his mother's own brother, although, being 

 of the class intermarrying with his own, she belongs to the group of 

 women, who, according to the general class law, are his "potential 

 wives." Further than this, by the class law itself, all the daughters of 

 his father's brothers, as well as those of his mother's sister's, are held to 

 be too near in blood to admit of a lawful union with them. It must be 

 remembered that in this tribe marriages were settled by the elders, the 

 girls being betrothed often in early childhood, so that those who made 

 the marriages were not liable to be swayed by passion, but could calmly 

 consider how far any proposed alliance was or was not admissible. It 

 must also be remembered that the relatives which I have spoken of as 

 individuals are in fact groups, and that individuals counted in these 

 groups came into them through others — in other words, that they are 

 "very far away" group relations. The prohibition as to some of these 

 might be disregarded where all else was desirable ; but otherwise they 

 would certainly be insisted upon, and probably by the old women of the 

 tribe more strenuously than by any one else. 



3. Prohibition arising out of locality. — A further prohibition arises out 

 of locality. Local proximity by birth is quite an insuperable obstacle 

 to marriage in many tribes, in which a man is absolutely forbidden to 



* The four classes into which A and B divide in the Kamilaroi and many other 

 tribes restrict matrimonial choice to one- fourth of the women. And, after the com- 

 pletion of this memoir, I received from Mr. Allan M. Giles, of Tennant's Creek, North- 

 ern Territory, an extremely interesting and valuable communication on the Wara- 

 muuga tribe, which is divided into eight classes, demonstrably subdivisions of the 

 four classes above mentioned. The Waramunga classes limit the choice of a wife to 

 one-eighth of the women. 



