Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/200

174 Commune, when it assumed dimensions greater than the immediate locality could provide with food, to break up into two or more Communes of the same character. In addition to this it is clear, after a long acquaintance with the Australian savage, that in the past, as now, individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, admitting the existence of common rights between the members of the Commune, these rights would remain in abeyance, so far as the separated parts of the Commune were concerned. But at certain gatherings, such as the Bunya-bunya harvest in Queensland, or on great ceremonial occasions, all the segments of the original community would re-unite. In short, so far as the evidence goes at present, I think that the probable condition of the Undivided Commune may be considered to be represented by what occurs on certain occasions when the modified Communes of the Lake Eyre tribes re-unite. It will be shown later on that each Divided Commune carries in itself strong evidence of this early condition.

The division of the community into two intermarrying moieties, the "class divisions," is the simplest form of the social organisation in the native tribes.

This fundamental law of communal division underlies and runs through all the more developed systems of four or eight sub-classes, and even shows traces of its former existence in tribes in which the class system has become decadent, and the local organisation has taken place and assumed control of marriage.

The division of the tribal community into two classes is the foundation on which the whole structure of society is built. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how an organised society in primitive savagery could exist without a control such as that of the intermarrying classes and the strict rules which preserve their existence. One is led direct, when inquiring into the marriage customs of the native tribes, to a further inquiry into the principles of the complicated system of terms which define their relationships, and which connect in various ways the different members of the community.