CHAPTER III
RELATIONSHIPS AND TOTEMS
Some savants question the intellectual ability of the blacks because they have not elaborate systems of numeration and notation, which in their life were quite unneeded. Such as were needed were supplied. They are often incorporate in one word-noun and qualifying numerical adjective, as for example—
| Gundooee | a solitary emu |
| Booloowah | two emus |
| Oogle oogle | four emus |
| Gayyahgnai | five or six emus |
| Gonurrun | fourteen or fifteen emus. |
I fancy the brains that could have elaborated their marriage rules were capable of workaday arithmetic if necessary, and few indeed of us know our family trees as the blacks know theirs.
Even the smallest black child who can talk seems full of knowledge as to all his relations, animate and inanimate, the marriage taboos, and the rest of their complicated system.
The first division among this tribe is a blood distinction ('phratries'):—
| Gwaigulleeah | light blooded |
| Gwaimudthen | dark blooded. |
This distinction is not confined to the human beings of the tribe, who must be of one or the other, but there are the Gwaigulleeah and Gwaimudthen divisions in all things. The first and chief division in our tribe, as regards customary marriage law, is the partition of all tribes-folk
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