125 ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 
wives within and without the tribe, but he denies “the existence of any custom which 
requires or compels husbands to give up their wives to prostitution.”* The Pirauru 
practice is not “ prostitution,” but a well recognised and lawful “group marriage,” 
and to its laws, as Mr. Gason has shown, all the people of the tribe give obedience. + 
The group marriage, which exists in the tribes of Central Australia as a living 
fact, was inferred by Mr. Fison and myself, on theoretical grounds, to have existed in 
Australia. This was pointed out by us in our joint work, ‘“Kamilaroi and Kurnai,” 
and our inference was drawn from a consideration of the relationship terms used by 
the tribes. 
In the section of this memoir dealing with relationships, I have shown how the 
terms used to describe these fall in with the actual relations existing in the Pirauru 
groups, and are, indeed, their necessary consequence. 
It will now not be any longer possible to deny the existence of group marriage, 
which must be admitted as a fact, just as group relationship has come to be admitted 
after a severe opposition. 
RELATIONSHIP TERMS. 
The white man who has been born and brought up in civilisation, apart from 
contact with savagery, seems to consider the terms of relationship which he has been 
taught to use for the purpose of describing the nearness or remoteness to him of his 
kindred and relations, as something which must be of universal application amongst 
all mankind. 
When such a man is first brought into contact with races of men who use some 
other system of terms to denote relationships, he feels in most cases surprise, tinged 
perhaps with pity and even contempt, for those poor savages who are so benighted 
in intellect as to think it possible that a man can have several men in the relation to 
him of father, several women as mother, and an extraordinary number brothers, 
‘* sisters, cousins, and aunts.’ It seems to him that no human being possessing the 
ordinary amount of sense could think such to be possible. 
Eyen the white man in the character of a scientific investigator has not, it would 
seem, been free from such feelings, for he has declared that savages using such 
classificatory terms of relationship must have invented them for the purpose of 
politely addressing each other, and thus avoiding the use of personal names. It 
has seemed almost impossible for many persons, including writers on savage custom, 
* «The Australian Race,” vol. I, p. 127. 
+ Mr. Curr seems to have quite overlooked Hyre’s remarkable Latin note, quoted by us in ‘‘ Kamilaroi and Kurnai,” 
p. 52, although he quotes Eyre as his authority for statements made at p. 121, vol. 1, of “‘ The Australian Race,” as to the 
position of husband and wife. 
