ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 113 
power and influence was wider and better established than in others. In some tribes 
there was certainly a tendency for the power of the Headman to be transmitted from 
father to son, if the latter were worthy. 
I have chosen the term Headman as being less likely to be misunderstood than that 
of Chief, for with this title there is in the mind of the reader an insensible connection 
with the idea of a Highland Chieftain or an Indian Sachem. Vich Ian Vohr, or 
Chingahgook, are not to be found in Australian tribes. But if the word “chief” 
imphes the idea of a person having power to direct the people of his clan or tribe, 
and that his directions or orders are obeyed by them, then I say that the Gweraeil 
Kurnai, the Gommera, the Ngurungaeta, the Pinnaru are Chiefs. For although, 
when compared with the power of the Chiefs of other well-known tribes, their power 
is but limited, yet it has and is an actual power of command, coupled with a certain 
measure of ability to compel obedience thereto. 
The authority which was possessed by the Headman and the council of old men 
in an Australian tribe is ‘‘ the power which enforces custom,” which, according to 
the belief of the late Mr. HK. M. Curr, is ‘‘ mostly impersonal.” 
MARRIAGE. 
The status of marriage in Australian tribes has been for some time an object of 
study, and it is only now that true views as to its nature are beginning to be 
established. Harly observers, who saw the outside features of Australian marriage, 
saw what appeared to some of them merely the almost lawless cohabitation of a male 
savage with a woman of some tribe other than his own, who had been seized upon 
and reduced to subjection by violence. 
Later observers came to see that marriage in these tribes is subject to strict 
rules, and then came the time when these rules were discovered and recorded, and 
the class names connected with them.* It was then seen that the laws of inter- 
marriage were very complicated, and by their restrictions permitted only of marriage 
between certain persons. These rules were so complicated that probably until lately 
no white man understood them, and even now there is, probably, not a single case 
in which all the laws which rule the classes, the sub-classes, and the totems, and 
which regulate their intermarriage, and the course of descent in them, have been 
fully and completely recorded and explained. The latest advance which has been 
made in the subject of Australian marriage was the conception of marriage in the 
croup, and of group to group, and of the filial relation of one group to another. This 
view was advanced first in the joint work of the Rev. Lorimer Fison and myself, and 
* The class names were first noted by Mr. T. E. Lance, who informed the Rey. W. Ridley of them. Mr. Fison 
called Mr. Ridley’s attention to the effect of the totemic divisions on marriage rules. 
