North Queensland Ethnography. Bulletin No. 18. Social and individual nomenclature

Abstract

[Excerpt from p. 82]. 3. As a general rule, however, within certain limits, each group has more or less friendly, commercial, or other interests with some one or other of its neighbours; its members, though speaking· different dialects may render themselves pretty mutually intelligible and possess in common various trade-routes, markets, hunting-grounds, customs, manners and beliefs with the result that they might as a whole be well described as messmates, the one group sometimes speaking of another by a term corresponding with that of friend. There may, or may not (e.g., Boulia District) be one single term applied to such a collection of friendly groups, i.e., a tribe occupying a district, the meaning of the collective name being either unknown (e.g., Kalkadun, Workai-a), or bearing reference to the physical conformation of the country, or else depending apparently upon the nature of the language spoken.