The society of the Murri or black fellows of Australia is divided into local tribes, each of which possesses, or used to possess, and hunt over a considerable tract of country. These local tribes are united by contiguity, and by common local interests, but not necessarily by blood kinship. For example, the Port Mackay tribe, the Mount Gambier tribe, the Ballarat tribe, all take their names from their district. In the same way we might speak of the people of Strathclyde or of Northumbria in early English history. Now, all these local tribes contain an indefinite number of stocks of kindred, of men believing themselves to be related by the ties of blood and common descent. That descent the groups agree in tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent, but from some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo, the emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Persons of the pelican stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia.
The creature from which each tribe claims descent is called "of the same flesh," while persons of another stock are "fresh flesh". Anative may not marry a woman of "his own flesh"; it is only a woman of "fresh" or "strange" flesh he may marry. A man may not eat an animal of "his own flesh"; he may only eat "strange flesh". Only under great stress of need will an Australian eat the animal which is the flesh-and-blood cousin and protector of his stock.
(These rules of marriage and blood, however, do not apply among the Arunta of Central Australia, whose Totems (if Totems they should be called) have been developed on very different lines.) Clearer evidence of the confusion between man and beast, of the claiming of kin between man and beast, could hardly be.
Dawson, Aborigines, pp. 26, 27; Howitt and Fison, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.
Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia.
But the Australian philosophy of the intercommunion of Nature goes still farther than this. Besides the local divisions and the kindred stocks which trace their descent from animals, there exist among many Australian tribes divisions of a kind still unexplained.
For example, every man of the Mount Gambier local tribe is by birth either a Kumite or a Kroki. This classification applies to the whole of the sensible universe. Thus smoke and honeysuckle trees belong to the division Kumite, and are akin to the fishhawk stock of men. On the other hand, the kangaroo, summer, autumn, the wind and the shevak tree belong to the division Kroki, and are akin to the black cockatoo stock of men. Any human member of the Kroki division has thus for his brothers the sun, the wind, the kangaroo, and the rest; while any man of the Kumite division and the crow surname is the brother of the rain, the thunder, and the winter.
This extraordinary belief is not a mere idle fancy--it influences conduct. "A man does not kill or use as food any of the animals of the same subdivision (Kroki or Kumite) with himself, excepting when hunger compels, and then they express sorrow for having to eat their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relationship, meaning almost a portion of themselves. To illustrate: One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (a man of the crow surname and stock), named Larry, died. He had been ailing for some days, but the killing of his wingong (totem) hastened his death." Commenting on this statement, Mr. Fison observes: "The South Australian savage looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate whereof he himself is part". This account of the Australian beliefs and customs is borne out, to a certain extent, by the evidence of Sir George Grey, and of the late Mr. Gideon Scott Lang. These two writers take no account of the singular "dichotomous" divisions, as of Kumite and Kroki, but they draw attention to the groups of kindred which derive their surnames from animals, plants, and the like. "The origin of these family names,"says Sir George Grey, "is attributed by the natives to different causes. . . . One origin frequently assigned by the natives is, that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being very common in the district which the family inhabited." We have seen from the evidence of Messrs. Fison and Howitt that a more common native explanation is based on kinship with the vegetable or plant which bestows the family surname. Sir George Gray mentions that the families use their plant or animal as a crest or kobong (totem), and he adds that natives never willingly kill animals of their kobong, holding that some one of that species is their nearest friend. The consequences of eating forbidden animals vary considerably. Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is, ghosts) avenge the crime. Thus when Sir George Grey ate some mussels (which, after all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed, and one of his black fellow improvised this stave:--Oh, wherefore did he eat the mussels?
Now the Boyl-yas storms and thunders make;Oh, wherefore would he eat the mussels?
Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169.
Travels, ii. 225.
Lang, Lecture on Natives of Australia, p. 10.