the totems varies in different tribes. In some, as for example the Dieri, a man of, say, class A, may marry a woman of any of the totems of B, and vice versa. I can speak of this with certainty, as the Rev. Mr. Siebert was so good as to draw up for me a number of tables of descents, in three or four levels of a generation, of actual occurrence in the Dieri tribe, so that the facts brought out extended back to the time when they were in complete savagery. A man could therefore only obtain a wife from one half of the tribe, that is from one class; but this does not even mean so much as it appears to do, because, as I shall show later on, there are other restrictions arising out of the classificatory system of relationships which still further restrain the scope of marriage.
In other tribes, such as the Urabunna,[1] a man, say, of class A, is restricted to women of certain totems, or rather his totem intermarries only with certain other totems of the other class. This will become more clear as the marriage rules of other tribes are detailed. In all tribes of which the Dieri is the type the child takes the class and totem name of its mother; and it may be as well to point out here that it takes the tribal name of its father, that is, it is of its father's tribe. This will be seen on reference to the Table in Chapter IV. By using the letters and numerals of the above diagram, another may be constructed of the marriages and descents in the Dieri tribe, which shows how the descents run, and which will be of use in more complicated cases.
| m. A | |
| f. B | |
| m. B | f. B |
| etc. | |
Males are indicated by m. and females by f. In the upper line A represents a Kararu man, B is his wife, a Matteri woman. In the lower line are their son and daughter, who are of the same class as their mother, so that descent is in the female line.
- ↑ Spencer and Gillen, op. cit. p. 60.
