Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/137

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SOUTH AUSTRALIAN FOLK-LORK. 10t» grandmcithers ate of each other/* The tradition was that the rite was ordained in order to prevent inordinate grief at the death of relations. The *' South Australian Folk-Lore" (Taplin), pubHshed by the (loveriinient (1879), declared that the Narriiiyerri tribes, which oeciipit.ul the territory around Lake Alexandrina (extending from Cape Jervis to Laeepede Bay), shrank with horror from cannil^alism of any kind. The Narrinyerri were in some respects esteemed as having a more hi^^jhly- formed social polity than other tribes in the colony. They are distinctly athrmed to have believed in a future state,. and in a rulintj; Deity. They had numerous totemarl (derived, as usual io Australia, from natnes of animals), and marriages could only take place amongst them in strict compliance with defined law or custom, which pre- scribed the classes withhi which marriages were allowable. Contrary to the ordinary custom of the continent, the child was of the father's class. This exception occurred also amongst the Kurnai tribes, which occupied Gipps' Land, in Victoria, as well as in some other parts of the continent. The Kurnai tribes were made the subject of elaborate comment by Mr. A. W. Howitt^* in 1880. He became acquainted with them long after seizure of their comitry by Europeans had aiinihihited their organization, and when remnants of them were gathered at two mission stations maiiitaiued by aid from the government, and by the zeal of missionaries. The elder meml)erB doubtless retained knowledge of their smitten institutions,^ but reverence for what was once supreme law is impaired by its "» **KamiUroi auU Kurnai" (Melbnunie, 1880), by U Fiaoii and A. W Howitt» with IntrodoctioQ by Dr. Lewis H. Morgan, of America, ^^ An instance was fiirnijahed ]ty the able and excellent iloiiivian. Rev. F, A» Hftgenauer, wIkj presided over the Presbyterian mission, Naniahyuck in Gipps' Land, wbere waifs from various triliea wtsre asaendiltid. The dangbter uf an old man was selected on the station to marry a yomig man to whom, by Australian law^ she ought not to be married. The oUl man told Mr. Hagenauer : *' You may marry them like the whittJ people. I cannot, beeauHe it is agabist my law. I will come back when they am mfirrietl.'^ Ho abBeuted himself on the day of the eeremoiiy, and cm his retnrn proved by his friemlly demeanonr to bis forbidden aon-in-law that no personal dislike actuated him in clinging to the doomed law of Ins fore- fathers, (EWdeuec before Royal Comniitsaion in Victoria, 1H77. ) One man sttdly remarked to the author that perhaps the decay of the race was due to its modern disobodienee to iti^ »t)cient maictage law a.