820 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



marry a woman of the same subhorde or sub clan. However eligible 

 she may be in other respects, the fact that both parties belong to the 

 same locality is held by certain tribes, the Kurnai for example, to make 

 them "too near each other," that is, too near in blood. Even in some 

 of the tribes which have uterine descent and a vigorous class system I 

 find this to be the case ; and bearing in mind what the Pirauru prac 

 tice really is, one can easily understand how all the people of any given 

 horde may come to consider themselves, and with good reason, toe 

 nearly related to admit of marriage without mixing the same "blood" 01 

 " flesh." 



In tribes where the classes and totems have been weakened, or almost 

 extinguished the local organization in hordes, or in clans, has assumed 

 an overwhelming preponderance, and the local restraints upon marriage 

 are strictly enforced. The Kurnai tribe is a good instance. In it, as I 

 have already said, the totems have become practically extinct ; and the 

 local groups have become so strictly exogamous that sexual intercourse 

 between members of the same division of a clan is looked upon with the 

 utmost abhorrence. In olden times — that is, before Gippsland was 

 settled by the whites — these local groups must have been bound to- 

 gether in a most extraordinary network of relationships. For, as I have 

 already pointed out, the Kurnai terms of relationship exhibit a most 

 primitive type, and the parental and filial groups are of very wide ex- 

 tent and may be traced into surprising ramifications.* Moreover the 

 filial relations were inherited, carrying with them fraternal relations in 

 ever widening lines. Again, the children of brothers and the children 

 of sisters' own or tribal, were brothers and sisters to each other as far 

 as descents could be counted. It is not surprising that in such a tribe 

 the difficulties in the way of any young man finding a girl among those 

 locally eligible, who did not staud in some forbidden degree of relation- 

 ship, should have been next to insurmountable. 



Restrictions such as those I have now briefly noted are found in all 

 Australian tribes, but in some more than in others. "When one reflects 

 upon the wide prohibition of class and totem of relationships, and of 

 locality, and adds to these disabilities alb the further restriction of blood 

 feuds, one cannot feel surprise that the question of marriage between 

 any given couple should be the subject of deep and careful considera- 

 tion by the elders of the community, and that it should often prove an 

 insoluble problem to those who seek to bring it about.t No wonder 

 that under such conditions the young people of Australian tribes, being 

 still further hindered by the practice of betrothal of infant girls, so often 



* I have often noticed that the whole Kurnai community appeared to be related. 

 Every one seemed to be the father, mother, son, daughter, brother, or sister of every 

 one else, but when special inquiry was made, the ''tribal" relationship was distin- 

 guished from the " own" by more precise statement, as the "other (brebba) father," 

 " other mother," &c. 



t The " nation," consisting of the Aldolinga and at least three other tribes of Cen- 

 tral Australia, affords a good instance of the extensive marriage prohibitions arising 



