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III descent obtains, the discussion of this will be deferred to a later part of this chapter.

Passing over for the present those tribes which have four sub-classes and male descent, the next tribe to be noted here is the Kuinmurbura, which claimed the peninsula between Broad Sound and Shoal water Bay. This tribe is one of a considerable number which may be merely sub-tribes, hordes of a larger one, or possibly component parts of a nation, but I can form no conclusion on the subject.

The female name is formed by the postfix an, as (male) Kurpal, (female) Kurpalan. This postfix is also attached to the class names and totems.

This is one of the rare instances of class or sub-class names being totems; the others are the Kulin tribes of Victoria, and the Wolgal and Ngarigo of New South Wales, and the Annan River tribe in Queensland.

The country between the Mackenzie River and the Lower Dawson, therefore south-westerly from the Kuinmurbura tribe, was occupied by the Kongulu tribe up to 1895. Probably it has become extinct, because at that time it was terribly demoralised by the wholesale distribution of opium in lieu of wages, and given as bribes, as well as by the retail distribution of it.

The class system of this tribe is as follows:—