ibes
of North America by an article in _Archaeologia Americana_[38]; in which
the author, drawing his conclusions partly from earlier writers, partly
from his own investigations, showed that the totem kin was an exogamous
group, while in some cases the kin bearing the name of a given totem
were not only exogamous, but not even permitted to choose their wives
from any of the other kins at will, being restricted in their choice to
certain groups or, in many cases, to a single group of totem kins,
according as the tribe was arranged in two or more phratries.

At least two observers had detected the existence of Australian
organisations of the same nature as the American phratries, so far as
our scanty information from West Australia goes, even before the
publication of _Archaeologia Americana_. The honour of being the first
to publish information on the subject belongs to Nind, who had spent
some time in the neighbourhood of King George's Sound in 1829, and
published his observations on native customs in the _Journal of the
Royal Geographical Society_[39] for 1832. Close on his heels came the
authors of _Journals of Explorations in West Australia_, which appeared
in 1833, and described journeys undertaken between 1829 and 1832.

The phratries were discovered in South Australia by the Rev. C.W.
Schuermann, whose Vocabulary[40], published in 1844, contains a mention
of the Parnkalla phratries, without, however, any indication of their
connection with marriage customs and exogamy. Five years earlier,
however, Lieutenant, afterwards Sir George Grey, had observed
institutions of the nature of totem kins, phratries, or intermarrying
classes in West Australia, and had detected their connection with the
marriage laws of the natives[41].

In 1841 and 1842, G.F. Moore[42] called attention to the grouping of the
native divisions or kins, and anticipated Schuermann, as will be shown
later. Grey, before the publication of his _Journal_, had read the
_Archaeologia_; but though he mentions the naming of "families" after
animals, he makes no mention of any grouping, but merely distinguishes
between "families" and "local names." Some of the names which he gives
seem to be those of phratries, and if he had been led by his study of
_Archaeologia Americana_ to the discovery of exogamic regulations
dealing with the relations of individual totem kins to one another, it
seems on the whole probable that he would not have overlooked the
groupin