Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/129

III must be considered as having originated by the association of "broken men" from the adjacent tribes. A consideration of their social organisation also suggests the same conclusion. I found one family with the Ngarigo class name Yukembruk Crow, and the Ngarigo, Theddora, and Murring totem, Tchuteba, the rabbit-rat. Another family was Bunjil, apparently connecting the Biduelli with the Mogullum-bitch, a Kulin tribe on the Upper Ovens River. They had also the sex totems of the Kurnai, Yiirung, and Djiitgun, Emu, Wren, and Superb warbler.

These classes and totems descended through the female line, with the exception of the sex totems, which are everywhere respectively the brother or sister, as the case may be, of the individual.

There being female descent, the Biduelli may be conveniently placed as an appendix to the Ngarigo, their northern neighbours.

The pastoral settlers in the country of the Kamilaroi tribes must from early times have known of the existence of the four sub-class names of this nation, for it was common for an aboriginal to be addressed by the name proper to him or herself. But they were, so far as I know, first published by the Rev. W. Ridley, whose attention had been called to them by Mr. T. E. Lance. Mr. Ridley pointed them out to Dr. Lorimer Fison in 1871, who sent a memorandum on them to Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, following Mr. Ridley's method of spelling, and in that guise they appeared in Dr. Morgan's Ancient Society. Subsequently Mr. Lance informed Dr. Fison that the spelling aforesaid did not correctly represent the sound of the words. After a careful inquiry from several competent informants, he altered the spelling to that given in our work, Kamilaroi and Kurnai.

It was shown at that time which of these names intermarried, and also which names were borne by the children of the several marriages.