1890.] on Manners and Customs of Torres Straits Islanders, 147 



members of each of which inhabit certain intermarrying groups of 

 islands. 



Independently of the above-mentioned subdivisions, the islanders 

 were divided into clans, each clan having some animal for its 

 augiid or " totem." For example, in the Western Tribe there were 

 the dugong, turtle, dog, cassowary, snake, shark-clans, and so forth. 

 There was supposed to be some relation between the clans and their 

 respective auyud, " all same [i.e. similar to] family," as it was 

 expressed to me. A dog-man, for instance, was credited with under- 

 standing the habits and feelings of dogs, or a cassowary-man prided 

 himself on having thin shanks like a cassowary, which would enable 

 him to run quickly through the grass. With the exception of the 

 first two clans, no one was allowed to kill or eat the totem of his own 

 clan ; if he did, his other clansmen would probably kill him for 

 sacrilege. On a dugong ex23edition, no dugong-man might keep the 

 first dugong he captured, but he might partake of the rest ; the same 

 restriction applied also to the turtle and the turtle-clan. If only one 

 dugong or turtle was caught on the first day, the dugong- or turtle- 

 man had to relinquish it ; supposing only one was caught on the 

 succeeding day, the account was, so to speak, "carried forward," and 

 there was no sahi (" tabu ") on it. The dugong and turtle were too 

 important articles of food for the clan members to be entirely 

 deprived from partaking of their augiid. 



The women, or at all events some of them, used to have a repre- 

 sentation of their augiid cut on the small of the back. I made 

 inquiries on this point on most of the islands in the Straits, but 

 could only find four old women who had them ; these I sketched, and 

 two of them I also photographed. 



[Various photographs illustrating the appearance of the natives 

 were then thrown on the screen ] 



I have alluded to the fact that different customs characterise the 

 Eastern and Western Tribes ; as an example of this I may mention 

 that in the latter tribe the girls proposed marriage to the men, while 

 in the Eastern Tribe the more usual course was adopted. 



It might be some time before a lad had an offer ; but should he be 

 a fine dancer, with goodly calves, and dance with sprightliness and 

 energy at the festive dances, he would, not lack admirers. 



Should there still be a reticence on the part of his female 

 acquaintances, the young man might win the heart of a girl by 

 robbing a man of his head. Our adventurous youth could join in 

 some foray ; it mattered not to him what was the equity of the 

 quarrel, or whether there was any enmity at all between his people 

 and the attacked. So long as he killed some one — man, woman, or 

 child — and brought the head back, it was not of much consequence 

 to him whose head it was. Possibly a man killed would redound to 

 his greater glory, but any skull was better than none, and its posses- 

 sion was recognised as an order of merit. How much more distinction 

 would a man gain when he could boast of a whole trophy of skulls ! 



L 2 



