Tribes without Class Systems
The Kurnai is a tribe without class divisions. There is, therefore, no social organisation in the sense in which that term is used by me, and the local organisation, as will be explained in Chapter V., controls marriage in so far that it can only properly take place between members of certain reciprocal localities.
The question arises whether the Kurnai ever had a class system, or whether having had one it has died out. There is no direct proof of the former, but I think that a fair case can be made out for the latter assumption. Similarity of language points to the Kulin tribes as the stock from which the Kurnai were an offshoot. Tradition and legend both point to the Bunurong or the Wurunjerri being the parent stock.
At the time when Gippsland was settled after 1842 the oldest man in the Kutwut division of the Rrataua clan, who lived on the Albert River, said that the fathers of his people came from the west, from a country where there were a great number of blacks.[1] A Wurunjerri legend relates that long ago Loän, who may be described, in the words of Mr. Andrew Lang, as a "non-natural man," wandered from the Yarra River, following the migration of the swans, first to the inlets of Western Port Bay and then to Corner Inlet, between Wilson's Promontory and the mainland, where he took up his abode. This is far within the country of the Kurnai, whose legends also speak of him living there with his wife Loäntuka, as the guardian of the Brataua clan.
To judge from the similarities of language, from tradition, and from common customs, the Kurnai may be considered an offshoot of the Kulin, and to have probably carried with them the Kulin class system. If the Kurnai use of the name Bunjil points to the former name of a class, then the reverence which they show to Ngarugal, the crow, may also indicate the second class name. The crow is said to be the friend of the Kurnai. It was wrong to kill a crow,
- ↑ J. M'Alpine.
