Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/96

70 the tribal lands, which was named after its owner, and every child born on it was named after some object on it. When the boundaries met at lakes or swamps celebrated for game, well-defined portions of these were marked out, and any poaching or trespassing was severely punished. No individual of any neighbouring family or tribe could hunt or walk over the land of another without permission from the head of the family group which owned it, and a stranger found trespassing on it might legally be put to death.

We may assume that the tribes described by Mr. Dawson did not extend much to the east of Colac, where was the western boundary of one tribe of the Kulin nation. This nation occupied the country from Colac to Mount Baw Baw, and from Wangaratta and Murchison on the north to Port Phillip and Western Port on the south.

The following table shows all that I have been able to learn of the tribes which constituted the Kulin, and of their local organisation. It is a defective list, but will serve to give a general idea of the great extent of country covered by these tribes, who used, either wholly or alternatively with some other term, the word Kulin for man:—