45. The Boulia District, the limits of which have already been defined in section 2, comprises in all a score or so of tribes, each having its head centre or chief encampment. Speaking generally, these same tribes are able to render themselves pretty mutually intelligible, and possess in common various traderoutes, markets, and hunting-grounds, customs, manners, and beliefs; in other words they might, as a whole, be well described as “messmates,” though in the aboriginal language there appears to be no one word which would express them collectively. Still deeper bonds of comradeship connect them in that all these tribes, within certain individual limitations to be subsequently discussed, are intermarriageable, and furthermore, in cases of warfare with outsiders, would join in making common cause against the enemy.

Owing to the opening up of the country with the advent of the Europeans, some of these tribal camps have been shifted of late years from their original quarters or else amalgamated with others, while in a few cases, what with privation, disease, alcohol, and lead, the whole community has been annihilated. Even during my sojourn at Boulia, the head-centre of the Pitta-Pitta tribe, I have never seen more than about 50 of these individuals congregated there on any one occasion, though this number might occasionally have been augmented by visitors coming in from neighbouring districts for purposes of trade and barter.