Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/139

III These two class names extend as far as Charters Towers, where the Akulbura tribe speaks a different dialect and has different names for the classes and sub-classes. At about Muttabura, on the Thompson River, and near Clermont, these class names cease with the Bathalibura.

The Bathalibura classes are Yungaru and Wutheru, but the sub-classes are the same as those of the Wakelbura. In this latter tribe there is a group of totems attached to each class division; this group divides between the two sub-classes, and yet there are some totems which are common to both, this being perhaps a survival of the time when the sub-classes had not yet come into existence.

Certain animals are the especial game of each class. Obu, for instance, claims as his game emu and wallaby, and if he wishes to invite his fellows of the same sub-class, in a neighbouring tribe, to hunt the common game, he must do this by means of a message-stick, made from the wood of a tree which is, like themselves, of the Obu sub-class. When a man desires to perform some magical act, he must use for it only objects which are of the same class as himself, and when he dies he is laid on a stage made of the branches and covered with the leafy boughs of a tree of his class. Among all the natural objects of his class, there is some one which is nearer to him than any other. He bears its name, and it is his totem.

Another example of the system is that of the Buntamurra tribe, whose country is on the Bulloo River, extending southwards as far as Thargominda, 400 miles in a straight line from the Wakelbura country.

The class system of the Buntamurra is as follows:—