Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/141

III together on some ceremonial occasion, the two pairs of sub-classes will camp on opposite sides of a creek. In ceremonial or expiatory encounters, one pair of fellow sub-classes will always side together against the other two.

I have found a simple diagram of very great assistance in working out the class system of a tribe, especially as a test of the line of descent.

In this diagram I substitute letters and numerals for the primary classes and sub-classes. Where I introduce the totems I use numbers. The Kamilaroi will serve as the type of tribes which had four sub-classes and female descent, and the class system is thus diagrammatically represented, "A" being Kupathin and "B" Dilbi; then a is Ipai, b Kumbo, c Murri, and d Kubbi. Anticipating the statement in the next chapter, that Ipai marries Kubbitha, and that the children are Murri and Matha, the diagram, using the above symbols, would be as under, m. = male, and f. = female.

This diagram shows clearly that the child Bc inherits its mother's class name, and the fellow sub-class to hers.

Tribes having four sub-classes, and also in some cases the two primary classes, with male descent, extend for some 200 miles inland from the coast at Maryborough (Queensland), and also are surrounded inland by tribes with four sub-classes, but with female descent.

I take the Kaiabara tribe living in the Bunya-Bunya Mountains as my example, because I first obtained, in its class system, the two primary classes which connect it with the great Kamilaroi organisation. The system as I have obtained it is as follows:—