Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/261

Rh spite of very careful search Messrs. Spencer and Gillen were quite unable to find anything like even the rudimentary moral character of Baiame or Daramulun attributed to them."

In this passage Mr. Hartland closely follows the generalization of Mr. Howitt in his Native Tribes of South-East Australia, pages 500-506. But Mr. Howitt's statement here does not agree with his own account of the social organization of these South-Eastern tribes. The majority of them are in the more primitive form of social organization, having (1) female reckoning of descent without "matrimonial" classes, or (2) female reckoning with four, not as in the North and Centre, eight matrimonial classes. Of the former type, the large and important "Barkinji" nation, and all tribes with the phratry names Kilpara and Mukwara, are the leading examples. The second type is represented by the no less large and important Kamilaroi "nation," with Dilbi and Kupathin phratry names, and by the Euahlayi with other phratry names, and with Kamilaroi names for the matrimonial classes. These tribes combine female descent with the All-Father belief, which was also held by the Kurnai and other South-Eastern tribes with male reckoning, and with totems and classes obliterated or faintly surviving. On the other hand it is among Northern and Central tribes with male descent and "organization based on locality" that Messrs. Spencer and Gillen find the All-Father belief weakest or absent. On this point there is a good deal to be said, but the Atnatu of the Kaitish (neighbours of the Arunta), the being who "made himself," "made the Alcheringa," gave the blacks "all that they possess," instituted rites, and expelled mankind from his sky-world for disobedience, is not "a shadowy being" like the Twanyirika of the Arunta, a confessed bugbear like the African Mumbo Jumbo. We are here on the ground of facts carefully recorded, though strangely overlooked, by Mr. Howitt in the passages summarized by Mr. Hartland, As to "group marriage" among these South-Eastern tribes, the only thing known to me which can be called "group marriage" is the Dieri and Urabunna pirrauru, and that, I think, is a "sport" confined to tribes with the Kararu Matteri phratry names; and in my opinion it is a late and special modification of individual marriage. Thus a number of tribes with the All-Father belief, and with female kin,