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The term for the being called 'The All Father' by Mr. Howitt is also the term used by the Wir djuri and Kamilaroi, 'Baiame' or 'Byamee. The Euahlayi, however, possess myths, beliefs, and usages not recorded as extant among the Kamilaroi, but rather forming a link with the ideas of peoples dwelling much further west, such as the tribes, on Lake Eyre, and the southernmost Arunta of the centre.
Moreover, as is well known, among many tribes elsewhere it is the father who is put to bed, while the mother goes about her work as if nothing had happened.” Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 358. Another important advantage arising to women, through their identification with the early industrial process, was their position as the first property owners.
M'Lennan collected a very large mass of testimony to prove the wide existence of this cause of paucity of women. Till that evidence is published, I can only say that it was sufficient, in Mr. M'Pherson, and other English authorities. Mr. Fison's 'Kamilaroi and Kurnai' contains some notable, though not to my mind convincing, arguments on the other side.
Ridley's GURRE KAMILAROI, an illustrated manual of Biblical instruction for the education of the Kamilaroi: Mr.
He tells of “a withered crone, weighing apparently not more than 80 to 90 lb. who carried a kilio containing a stone mortar 196 lb. in weight for more than half a mile on a sandy road without any perceptible exhaustion. The proportion of the active aged is much larger than among civilised people.” Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 133, 147. Cited by Ellis, Man and Woman, p. 4.
Among the great Kamilaroi tribe, akin in speech to the Euahlayi, the names of phratries, DILBI and KUPATHIN, are of unknown significance. The Euahlayi names, we have seen, are Gwaigulleeah, Light blooded, and Gwaimudthen, Dark blooded.
Perhaps the most peculiar feature in the organisation of the Euahlayi is the existence of Matrimonial Classes, which are named as in the Kamilaroi tongue, while the phratry names are not those of the Kamilaroi, and alone among phratry names in Australia which can be translated, are not names of animals.
Among the Kamilaroi and the Arunta of S. Australia the tribe was divided into classes or clans, sometimes four, sometimes eight, and a man of one particular clan was only marriageable with a woman of another particular clan say with or with , and so on. Customs with a similar tendency, but different in detail, seem to have prevailed among native tribes in Central Africa and N. America.
These classes bear the Kamilaroi names, of unknown meaning, Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, and Kubbi; but the names of the two main divisions, or phratries, are not those of the Kamilaroi DILBI and KUPATHIN. The Euahlayi language, or dialect, is not identical with that of the great Kamilaroi tribe to their south-east, but is clearly allied with it, many names of animals being the same in both tongues.
Thus warriors of the Theddora and Ngarigo tribes of South-Eastern Australia used to eat the hands and feet of their slain enemies, believing that in this way they acquired some of the qualities and courage of the dead. The Kamilaroi of New South Wales ate the liver as well as the heart of a brave man to get his courage.
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