Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/286

260 According to the old men whose memories went back to the times before Yorke Peninsula was settled, there were then wars between them and the tribes outside their country. In them, men were allowed to keep women whom they captured, because there was no law which restricted a man to any particular class or totem.

When the local totem clans met at some tribal ceremony, brothers exchanged wives for a time, but did not lend them to strangers.

A man is only permitted to communicate with his wife's mother through the former, and a breach of this rule is a cause of quarrelling.

On the opposite side of the Gulf of St. Vincent was the Narrinyeri tribe, or that part of it which extended to Cape Jervis. As before stated, it was composed of local totem clans.

Marriage was not permitted within these clans, but where one was divided into three parts, as the one following Karat-inyeri in the list already given, then these divisions, or perhaps speaking more correctly, these sub-clans, might intermarry just as if they were independent of each other. Thus Pilt-inyeri, Talk-inyeri, and Wulloke might intermarry, always premising that the parties were not too closely related. But, as contrasted with this, where there were two or more totems in a totem clan, marriage was totally forbidden between them, for they only formed parts of the same totem clan. This is another instance of the attachment of the totem to the locality, under the action of male descent, and of the transfer of the prohibition of marriage within the totem to the totem clan, that is, to the locality.

A girl was given in marriage, usually at an early age, sometimes by her father, but generally by her brother, and there was always an exchange of a sister, or other female relative, of the man to whom she was promised. A man had the right to exchange his wife for the wife of another man, but the practice was not looked upon favourably by his clan.