ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF NEW SOUTH WALES AND VICTORIA. 301 



call each woman mother, and each mother would look upon 

 all the children as her own. It must, however, be borne 

 in mind that each man, his wife and their own actual pro- 

 geny form one family and camp by themselves. The broader 

 terms of kinship just referred to being used merely as a 

 matter of courtesy and friendship. 



In all the tribes of the eastern half of Victoria, 1 the boys 

 and girls alike inherit the same totem as their male parent ; 

 thus, if the father be a kangaroo, the sons and daughters 

 will be kangaroos too, irrespectively of the totem of the 

 mother. Marriage between individuals of the same totem 

 is strictly interdicted ; for example, a man who is an 

 opossum cannot marry a woman who is an opossum. It 

 appears, then, that the individuality of the wife, as well as 

 that of her totem, is lost. In the first place she is taken 

 into the tribe of her husband, her children are born there, 

 and belong to that tribe, and take the totem of their father. 

 The woman of course retains her own totem as long as she 

 lives. In a community such as this, one can readily under- 

 stand how clans or small triblets could be formed or 

 develop. Not only do the sons remain in their father's 

 family or tribe, but their children are all brought up there 

 and learn to speak their father's dialect, as stated in the 

 description of the Wonggoa ceremony in later pages of this 

 treatise. 



By studying the genealogy given a few pages back, it 

 appears that A obtained a spouse from the same family or 

 clan which supplied his paternal grandfather with a wife, 

 and that his sister went away there in exchange. 2 If the 



1 For the dialects of these people, see my "Aboriginal Languages of 

 Victoria/' Journ. Roy. Soc, N.S. W., Vol. xxxv., pp. 71 - 106 ; also "Notes 

 on Native Dialects of Victoria/' Vol. xxxvn., pp. 243 - 253. 



2 In 1900 I described the sociology of a Gippsland tribe known as Kurnai. 

 On that occasion I followed the genealogy through the father's cousin, 

 instead of tracing it, as now, through the father's father, which although 

 amounting to the same thing, is more explicit. See "The Origin, 

 Organisation and Ceremonies of the Australian Aborigines," Proc. Amer. 

 Philos. Soc, Philadelphia, Vol. xxxix., pp. 560 - 562 and 577, with map 

 showing the boundaries of the several aboriginal nations of Australia. 



