This organization upon sex has not been found, as yet, in any tribes of savages out of Australia, but the slow development of these islanders in their secluded habitat, and the more archaic character of the organization upon sex than that into gentes, suggests the conjecture, that the former may have been universal in such branches of the human family as afterwards possessed the gentile organization. Although the class system, when traced out fully, involves some bewildering complications, it will reward the attention necessary for its mastery. As a curious social organization among savages it possesses but little interest; but as the most primitive form of society hitherto discovered, and more especially with the contingent probability that the remote progenitors of our own Aryan family were once similarly organized, it becomes important, and may prove instructive.
The Australians rank below the Polynesians, and far below the American aborigines. They stand below the African negro and near the bottom of the scale. Their social institutions, therefore, must approach the primitive type as nearly as those of any existing people.[45]
Inasmuch as the gens is made the subject of the next succeeding chapter, it will be introduced in this without discussion, and only for the necessary explanation of the classes.
The Kamilaroi are divided into six gentes, standing with reference to the right of marriage, in two divisions, as follows:
I. 1. Iguana, (Duli). 2. Kangaroo, (Murriira).[46] 3. Opossum, (Mute).
II. 4. Emu, (Dinoun). 5. Bandicoot, (Bilba). 6. Black-snake, (Nurai).
Originally the first three gentes were not allowed to intermarry with each other, because they were subdivisions of an original gens; but they were permitted to marry into either of the other gentes, and vice versâ. This ancient rule is now modified, among the Kamilaroi, in certain definite particulars, but not carried to the full extent of permitting marriage into any gens but that of the individual. Neither males nor females can marry into their own gens, the prohibition being absolute. Descent is in the female line, which assigns the children to the gens of their mother. These are among the essential characteristics of the gens, wherever this institution is found in its archaic form. In its external features, therefore, it is perfect and complete among the Kamilaroi.
But there is a further and older division of the people into eight classes, four of which are composed exclusively of males, and four exclusively of females. It is accompanied with a regulation in respect to marriage and descent which obstructs the gens, and demonstrates that the latter organization is in process of development into its true logical form. One only of the four classes of males can marry into one only of the four classes of females. In the sequel it will be found that all the males of one class are, theoretically, the husbands of all the females of the class into which they are allowed to marry. Moreover, if the male belongs to one of the first three gentes the female must belong to one of the opposite three. Marriage is thus restricted to a portion of the males of one gens, with a portion of the females of another gens, which is opposed to the true theory of the gentile institution, for all the members of each gens should be allowed to marry persons of the opposite sex in all the gentes except their own.
The classes are the following: