86 MATHEWS—SOUTH AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES,  [Jan. 19, 
string, by which the natives swung it rapidly round, causing a hum- 
ming noise. Females and children were not allowed to see it. 
Mr. G. F. Angas reports that circumcision was in vogue among 
the Wirramayo tribe, who occupied the vast scrub country to the 
northwest of the river Murray, and that an instrument called W7foe 
Wettoo, an oval piece of wood fastened to a string of human hair, 
was whirled round with great rapidity, producing a loud, roaring 
sound." 
Owing to the similarity of the dialects of the Yorke Peninsula and 
Adelaide tribes, the prevalence of circumcision and other customs, 
together with the fact of their being adjoining neighbors, seems to 
me to justify the assumption that they were practically the same 
people. I have therefore included these two tribes in one nation. 
Mr. McEntire and Mr, Sutton say that in the Yorke Peninsula 
tribe the children followed the father. Having read all that both 
these writers have to say on the subject, [am nevertheless of opinion 
that the descent of the children depended directly on the mother, 
being led to this conclusion by inquiries I have made from old resi- 
dents of that part of the country and from natives of adjacent tribes. 
Whether or not they were divided into two intermarrying phratries, 
like the nations to the north and west of them, appears to have 
escaped the notice of early investigators. 
V. THE NARRINYERI NATION. 
The tribes composing this nation have been dealt with in my 
article on ‘* The Victorian Aborigines,’’* so that a brief reference 
will be sufficient in the present treatise. Their territory was chiefly 
in South Australia, but extended a little way into the adjoining 
colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. Their southern limit 
was Lacepede Bay, whence they reached along the coast to Cape 
Jervis and up the Murray river almost to the junction of the Dar- 
ling (see map). They did not practise circumcision, and their lan- 
guage differed from that of their neighbors. The Rev. G. Taplin, 
who is the most experienced of the early writers on the customs of 
these people, gives no group divisions, and says descent was counted 
through the father. In the Barkunjee and Booandik tribes, who 
1 Savage Life in Australia and New Zealand, Vol. i, p. 99. 
2? American Anthropologist (Washington), xi, 336-343. 
3 Folklore, Manners, etc., S. A. Aborigines (Adelaide, 1879), p. 157. 
