Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/295

V {| align="center"
 * | Male. || | Marries. ||  | Children are.
 * | Kurbo || | Wirikin || Wiro and Wongan
 * | Wombo || | Kuran || Maro and Kurgan
 * | Maro || | Wongan || Wombo and Wirikin
 * | Wiro ||  | Kurgan ||  | Kurbo and Kuran
 * }
 * | Maro || | Wongan || Wombo and Wirikin
 * | Wiro ||  | Kurgan ||  | Kurbo and Kuran
 * }
 * }

In the absence of further information either as to the two classes or the totems, it is not possible to say how these four sub-classes are placed in pairs, representing the two moieties of the tribe; or, without knowing, for instance, which pair played in some game against the other pair, or camped apart from it, or aided it in some tribal combat. Without such knowledge it cannot be said whether descent is in the male or the female line. Either can be produced by the arrangement of the four sub-classes in two pairs.

The Kurnai had no class divisions. And although there are survivals of totems in this tribe, they do not affect marriage. Under the influence of paternal descent these animal names are segregated into localities somewhat in the manner that the class names of the Wurunjerri and Bunurong tribes were.

This is easily seen when one considers that a man brought his wife into his own district, excepting in the occasionally occurring cases among the Kurnai where a man joined the clan of his wife and lived in her district.

But in taking her to his own district she did not transmit her name to her children, but he did. and as this would be done generation after generation under paternal descent, the thundung names (totems) became fixed in definite localities.

As, moreover, a man could not marry a woman belonging to his own district, he necessarily married some woman whose thundung name differed from his, thus still following unconsciously the exogamous rule.

There was no betrothal in this tribe, nor was there an exchange of sisters by those men who married, except in