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Anthropological Notes on the Aboriginal 

 Tribes of the Daly River, North 

 Australia. 



By the Rev. Doxald Mackillop, S.J. 

 [ComDiunicated by Prof. R. Tate.] 



The Daly River tribes best ivnown to us are the Cherites, the 

 Ponga-pongas, the Mulliik-mulluks, and the Mat-ngelli. The 

 Cherites, a small but intelligent tribe, occupy the land between 

 the sea and the river on its right bank. Opposite them, on the 

 left bank, is a powerful tribe called Wogites, of whom we know 

 very little. Next to the Wogites, on the same bank, come the 

 Ponga-pongas, whose language is just the same as that of the 

 Cherites. Next to the Cherites, on the right bank, are the 

 Mulluk-mulluks. Their language differs from that of the 

 Cherites, yet only as one Greek dialect differs from another. This 

 brings us more than 60 njiles up the river. The Mulluks are 

 also on the opposite or left bank. But a few miles inland and 

 to the west, begins the region of the Mat-ngelli, r)r Hermit-hill 

 tribe. The Mat-ngelli have the Ponga-pongas on their north. 

 Their language, although in structure and idiom very similar, 

 differs much from that of the other tribes mentioned. 



All these natives are powerfully -built men, who have at times 

 shown very great hostility to the whites. Indeed, some years 

 ago they had the name of being the fiercest blacks of the 

 Territory. 



All these tril^es intermarry. I should think that there was a time 

 when the laws regulating marriage, so marked in other parts of 

 Australia, obtained also among the Daly River tribes. At pre- 

 sent they do not. A man may not marry a blood-relation, how- 

 ever remote the kinship be, but marriage within the tribe is 

 permitted and common. Very often, however, the woman is of 

 another tribe. Marriage by capture was certainly at one time 

 the rule. Even now the phrase to steal a luhra is the only equiva- 

 lent known to me for the phrase to marry. In their gesture- 

 language, to clasp the left wrist with the right liand expresses 

 the same idea. It is in fact ducere uxorejn, but it means more 

 than to lead the bride home ; it is to lead her off captive. 



Marriages, or rather espousals, are arranged by the old people, 

 while the children are very young, sometimes even before they 

 are born, but then, of course, conditionally upon the child being 



