SOME REMARKABLE CUSTOMS. 281 



tent of the interior, among tribes speaking different dialects, 

 there are four names for men, and four for women, Ippai and 

 Ippata, Kubbi and Kapota, Kumbo and Buta, Murri and Mata. 

 If we call these four sets A, B, C, D, then the rule is that a 

 man or woman of the tribe A must marry into B, and a mem- 

 ber of the tribe C into J), and vice verm, but the child whose 

 father is A, takes the name of D, and so on; A's = D; B's=C ; 

 C's = B ; D^s=A; and the mother's name answers equally well 

 to give the name of the child, if the mother is of the tribe B, 

 her child will belong to the tribe D, and so on. 



This ingenious arrangement, it will be seen, has much the 

 same effect as the Hindoo regulations in preventing inter- 

 marriage in the male or female line, but allowing the male and 

 female line to cross ; the children of two brothers or two sis- 

 ters cannot marry, but the brother's child may marry the 

 sister's. Lang, however, mentions a further regulation, pro- 

 bably made to meet some incidental circumstances, as, so far 

 as it goes, it stultifies the whole system ; A may also marry 

 into his or her own tribe, and the children take the name of C.^ 



In America, the custom of marrying out of the clan is fre- 

 quent and well marked. More than twenty years ago. Sir 

 Greorge Grey called attention to the division of the Australians 

 into families, each distinguished by the name of some animal 

 or vegetable, which served as their crest or kobong ; the prac- 

 tice of reckoning clanship from the mother ; and the prohibition 

 of marriage within the clan, as all bearing a striking resem- 

 blance to similar usages found among the natives of North 

 America. The Indian tribes are usually divided into clans, each 

 distinguished by a totem (Algonquin, do-daim, that is " town- 

 mark"), which is commonly some animal, as a bear, wolf, deer, 

 etc., and may be compared on the one hand to a crest, and on 

 the other to a surname. The totem appears to be held as 

 proof of descent from a common ancestor, and therefore the 

 prohibition from marriage of two persons of the same totem 

 must act as a bar on the side the totem descends on, which 

 is generally, if not always, on the female side. Such a prohi- 

 bition is often mentioned by writers on the North American 



VLang, p. 367. 



