PART II

MODERN OBSERVATIONS OF RETARDED PEOPLES

CHAPTER VII

THE URABUNNA TRIBE

BY BALDWIN SPENCER AND F. J. GILLEN.

CHAPTER VIII

THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO

BY JOHN MURDOCH.

CHAPTER IX

THE SERI INDIANS

BY W J MCGEE.

CHAPTER X

WYANDOT GOVERNMENT

BY J. W. POWELL.

CHAPTER XI

KAFIR LAW

SECTION 1. THE AMAXOSA TRIBES

BY REV. H. H. DUGMORE.

SECTION 2. TAMBOOKIE USAGES

BY WARNER.

CHAPTER XII

FANTI CUSTOMARY LAW

BY JOHN M. SARBAH.

is

CHAPTER VII

THE URABUNNA TRIBE 1

1. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

In the great majority of Australian tribes, but not in all, there a very definite social organisation, which term we use in connection only with the division of the tribe into two (or more) exogamous, intermarrying groups without reference to the presence or absence of a totemic system. The two systems have become associated together in various ways in different tribes, but are perfectly distinct from one another in origin and

significance.

We can recognise three important types of social organisation in the tribes which occupy the country extending from Lake Eyre in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north. In the first, which exists amongst the Dieri and Urabunna tribes, there are only two main exogamous groups called respectively, in the case of the latter, Matthurie and Kirarawa. We have on a previous occasion, dealt more or less in detail with this, but, for the purpose of comparison, and of giving a general account of the central tribes, we will once more briefly refer to the Urabunna tribe as a typical example of a tribe in which descent is counted in the female line, the two original exogamous moieties.2 and in which division has not proceeded beyond the formation of

In the Urabunna tribe a Matthurie man must marry a Kirarawa

from "The Northern Tribes of Central Australia" (1904), by BALDWIN 1[Reprinted with the consent of The Macmillan Company, New York, SPENCER, M.A., F.R.S., sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, Professor of Biology in the University of Melbourne, and F. J. GILLEN, Special Magistrate and Sub-protector of Aborigines, South Australia. This work is supplementary to the "Native Tribes of Central Australia"

published by the same authors in 1899.]

terms:

the two original exogamous divisions; (b) class, the two divisions into which in certain tribes each class is divided. We purposely avoid the which each moiety is usually divided; (c) subclass, the two divisions into terms phratry, gens, clan, etc., as liable to be misleading.

woman, and their children pass into the kirarawa moiety. Vice versa a Kirarawa man must marry a Matthurie woman. A Matthurie man may not, however, marry any and every Kirarawa woman. In the first place, men of one totem can only marry women of another special totem.1 For example, a Matthurie who belongs to the dingo totem must marry a Kirarawa of the waterhen totem, so that we may represent the marriage and descent in the Urabunna by the following diagram, in which the letter " represents the man and "f" the woman.

m"

Further still, a dingo man can only have assigned to him as wife a woman who belongs to one out of certain groups amongst the water-hens. The members of the latter group stand to him in one or other of the following relationships: (1) Nauilli, father's sister; (2) Biaka, children or brother's children; (3) Apillia, mother's younger brother's daughters; (4) Nupa, mother's elder brother's daughter. It must be remembered of course that whilst, for the sake of convenience, we use the English terms there is no equivalence whatever between the terms nia, nuthi, and luka and those respectively of father, brother, mother, by which we translate them. The native terms all refer to groups of individuals and not to the individual. Amongst these individuals there are women of three different levels of generation - the nauilli belong to that of the father, the biaka to younger, and the apillia and nupa to the same generation as the individual concerned, and it is from amongst these that the woman must come with whom it is lawful for him to have marital relations. He can only marry women who stand to him in the relationship of nupa- that is, are the children of his mother's elder brothers, blood or tribal. A simple genealogical tree will make the matter clear. The Kirarawa man numbered 8 can only marry a woman who stands to him in the relationship of the one numbered 7. She is his nupa; the woman num

1 This appears to be the case in the northern part of the tribe.

bered 9 is his apillia, and he may not have marital relations

The mother of a man's wife is nauilli, and she is mura to him and he to her, and they must not speak to one another. Every man has one or more of these nupa women who are especially attached to him and live with him in his own camp, but there is no such thing as one man having the exclusive right to one woman; the elder brothers or nuthi of the woman, who decide the matter, will give one man a preferential right, but at the same time they will give other men of the same group to which he belongs that is, men who stand in the same relationship to the woman as he does a secondary right, and such nupa women to whom a man has the legal right of access are spoken of as his piraungaru. A woman may be piraungaru to a number of men and, as a general rule, men and women who are piraungaru to one another are to be found living together in groups. As we have said before, "individual marriage does not exist either in name or in practice amongst the Urabunna tribe." In this tribe we have:

(1) A group of men all of whom belong to one moiety of the tribe and are regarded as the nupas, or possible husbands, of a group of women who belong to the other moiety of the tribe.

(2) One or more women specially allotted to one particular man, each standing in the relationship of nupa to the other, but no man having exclusive right to any one woman-only a preferential right.

(3) A group of men who stand in the relationship of piraungaru to a group of women, selected from amongst those to whom they are nupa. In other words, a group of women of one designation have, normally and actually, marital relations with a group of men of another designation.

There is no evidence of any kind to show that the practice in the Dieri and Urabunna tribes is an abnormal development. The organisation of these tribes, amongst whom the two exogamous intermarrying groups still persist groups which in other tribes of the central area have been split into four or eight indicate 1 "Native Tribes of Central Australia," p. 63 (1899).