The Australian aboriginal

Although under ordinary circumstances the aboriginal of Australia is a peaceable, placid individual, who prefers to talk of what he could do to his enemy rather than look for trouble in a hostile camp, yet, being human, there are naturally extenuating circumstances, which might thrust the obligation upon his shoulders to pick up arms and fight for the sake of his individual honour or of his tribe’s safety. In the former case a duel is arranged, in the latter a regular warfare is waged, which might last a day or continue, off and on, for years at a time.

Duels are perhaps more frequently fought among the women than the men, the cause in most cases being trivial. A common disturbance of the peace is brought on by petty theft. One woman might, intentionally or otherwise, appropriate a small article belonging to another. When the article is missed by the owner, an argument ensues, which soon warms up to a strained pitch of excitement. Abusive epitaphs become prolific, which repeatedly embody references to excrement and other filth. Eventually the irate hags can constrain themselves no longer and each produces her fighting stick, known throughout central and northern Australia as “kutturu.” Walking towards each other, and all the time striking the ground in front of them, from left to right, and from right to left, the women continue their vilification. In the Arunndta tongue this is something after the following style: “Uttnarranduddi, uttnatikkia, atutnia, arrelinjerrai!”

The ground is struck with the heavy sticks immediately in front of the opponent’s feet, so vigorously that dust and dirt fly into the air. It is not long before the foot of one of the gins is struck; and then the fight begins. The gin that was hit immediately lifts her kutturu and aims a blow at the head of the offender. But the latter in all probability will have been prepared to ward off the blow.

The kutturu consists of a heavy “ironwood” stick, on an average about three feet long and of circular section; it is bluntly pointed at each end and usually has a carved decoration upon its surface. The parrying party holds the stick with its pointed ends between her palms, and, by moving or swaying it from side to side in an inclined position, diverts the force of the impact from her head. The duellists take it turn about to strike and parry. The head is the principal mark, but it is not against the rules to aim at the fingers. When the latter are struck, it not infrequently happens that one or two of them are broken.

If the antagonist is too clever at warding off a blow, a gin might occasionally alter her tactics and try to stab the head opposite her with the point of the kutturu. If the attempt proves successful, a very deep gash often results, followed by a prolific flow of blood. The damaged gin wails aloud and drops her kutturu whilst she catches the blood, which is pouring from her wound, in the hollow of her hand and throws it in the other’s face.

The triumphant assailant does not take a mean advantage of her “score,” but replies to the blood-slinging by rushing to the nearest fire, from which she scoops a double handful of hot ashes to throw at the lamenting one. This is by no means the end of the trouble, but really incenses the combatants to more desperate action.

So soon as the wounded gin has overcome the shock, she plucks fresh courage and again takes up the argument with her kutturu. The fight continues until one of the gins receives a blow on the head severe enough to disable her, or until both have kept the strife going to a stage of complete exhaustion.

When a gin has been disabled, and lies more or less in an unconscious condition upon the ground, the victor stands over her, triumphantly swinging her kutturu, whilst her tongue dispels the hatred by talking incessantly without opposition.

During the whole time of this heated altercation, the camp has been generally disorganized. Other women are vociferating wildly, children are screaming, a few score dogs yelping, and the men are sitting around quietly and gloomily, with their eyes turned from the scene of the duel, and only occasionally exchanging a few words in a subdued whisper.

The method the men adopt for settling their disputes among themselves is not unlike that of the women, but more systematic. They place themselves face to face upon a clear piece of ground, with their kutturus in their hands, and about half a chain apart. After the customary abusive preliminaries, the psychological moment arrives, when one man rushes at the other carrying his weapon in both hands behind his back, and, as he runs, preparing for a monstrous blow. When he reaches to within striking distance of his opponent, he pulls up short, and, with the momentum created by his run behind him, deals an awful whack. But the other man has placed himself in the defensive attitude, and, as the weapon falls, he springs forwards and upwards to parry the blow destined to crash upon his skull. The striker now retraces his steps and prepares to receive the onslaught from the opposite side. This procedure of alternate attack and defence continues until one of the men falls or both combatants are thoroughly exhausted. All through the fight, however, there is a wonderful display of power, agility, and chivalry, the figures of both the striker and receiver being conspicuously graceful in their movements (Plate XIII, 2).

Where the boomerang is known it, too, is extensively used, in conjunction with the shield, by duellists to settle minor altercations. The offended party throws one of his missiles into the camp of his rival as a summons to the fight, whereupon the latter immediately responds by throwing another back, and walks out into the open, carrying with him a single boomerang and a shield. Both men now start a war-dance, during which they gradually approach each other, lifting their legs high in the knees, brandishing their boomerangs in the air, and holding their shields in front of their bodies. After a while, they close in; and the real fight begins. Whenever an uncovered spot presents itself on either man, the opponent, with the quickness of lightning, attempts to strike it with his weapon. The hands in particular are selected as the best marks to quickly put the rival out of action; and this opportunity is never missed when it presents itself to the quick eye of the native.

Waddies and clubs of various forms are used all over Australia, both with and without shields, to decide the rights or wrongs of individual grievances.

There is no hard and fast line of demarcation between a waddy or fighting-stick and a club. The original conception of either is a short stick or truncheon, which is used both for beating and throwing.

The commonest form is a cylindrical rod of hard wood with a smooth or vertically grooved exterior and rounded ends. It is either straight or curved.

The Bathurst Islanders have a type similar to the above, but with a slightly swollen distal end. The stick often carries a sharp spike, which projects from the same end.

The largest fighting-sticks are to be seen in the Forrest River district in the far north-western district of Western Australia, measuring up to four and a half feet in length. The stick tapers from the top towards the handle end, and has a flat face at either extremity. A gripping surface is made by roughly incising the thinner end all round for a distance of four or five inches.

A peculiar combination of implement with weapon was used by the women of the lower River Murray tribes. It consisted of a stick with a blade at one end and a knob at the other, the one moiety serving as a digging stick, the other as a club.

Along the Cooper Creek, a large, stout baton of mulga, with a globate knob at the handle end, was used by the Wongkanguru, Yantowannta, and other tribes.

Some very shapely clubs belonged to the Narrinyerri. They were made of casuarina wood, and had a heavy, inflated head, which was usually pointed off at the top. The handle was moderately thin and had a number of circular grooves cut near its end to prevent the hand from slipping when the wood was wielded. Further west, on the Nullarbor Plains, the thick end was not pointed off, but, on the contrary, was perceptibly flattened. In both types mentioned, the surface was well smoothed and polished, although the clubs of the coastal tribes along the Great Australian Bight were generally longitudinally grooved.

A rather fanciful form of club, reminding one of the medieval spiked clubs, was found in the possession of the fast disappearing Yantowannta tribe at Innamincka. A stick, nearly two feet six inches long, and circular in section, had an enlargement near the head-end, which was deeply grooved vertically and, in the upper portion, circumferentially also, the intersection of the grooves producing a number of pointed prominences.

Used in conjunction with a heavy three-sided shield, the south-eastern tribes of South Australia fought most of their duels with a dangerous type of waddy, some two feet or more long, which had an attenuated knob at the handle end and a flat, angular projection at the opposite end; the latter was sharp and pointed. The weapon was known as “lionila,” and, from our point of view, might be classed as a battle axe.

In the Roebuck Bay district, a flat, hard-wood club is found, the sides of which are straight and slightly tapering towards the handle end; the edges being rounded off. One of the flat sides is usually ornamented with an engraved geometrical pattern.

The Larrekiya and Wogait construct a flat throwing weapon, not unlike a small cricket bat in shape, from six to twelve inches long, which they call “damatba.” It has a short handle and very sharp edges, and, being hurled at an enemy edgewise, it flies through the air with a revolving motion. If any part of the native’s naked body is struck with this weapon, a very deep wound is always inflicted, from the effects of which the unfortunate victim might easily bleed to death.

Under the category of fighting-sticks we might also mention the wooden swords, of which some form or other is known all over the continent.

In its normal form, the sword is a long and narrow, lanceolate blade of hard and heavy wood, up to five feet in length. The sides are convex, and the edges fairly sharp. The surfaces are either smooth or longitudinally grooved, and in addition decorated with finely incised patterns of different descriptions. These swords are much used by the Minning tribe of the Eucla district.

The Cooper Creek tribes make the weapon with a slight curve in it, like a boomerang, the length being about the same as in the previous type. Among the Dieri it goes by the name of “marriwirri.” The Arunndta and Aluridja forms are not made so long, but slightly wider, and of very heavy mulga wood.

In the northern coastal districts, the type is different in so far as it tapers towards that end, which is to serve as the handle, and terminates there in a flat or slightly concave base. The haft is not infrequently bound round with vegetable fibre, and subsequently covered with beeswax, to prevent the hands from slipping.

These weapons are all used with two hands for striking and parrying blows during a duel. When about to “receive” a blow, the native takes the precaution to keep his elbows close against his body to avoid the risk of having his arm broken by the ricochet of the heavy weapon. A favourite mark is the opponent’s hands; and the fighter has to carefully guard them by adroitly and instantly shifting the sword sideways the moment he perceives that the blow has been aimed at them.

The northern and north-western tribes use light reed spears when settling quarrels between two individuals. The spear is about five feet long and has a tapering head of mangrove wood, which is inserted into the top end of the reed shaft. All coastal tribes, from the Adelaide River westwards to the Ord River, use this spear, but it is not known in central Australia. The opponents, standing about forty or fifty feet apart, throw the weapons at each other with wonderful precision, but before the dangerous little missile can reach its mark, the would-be recipient dodges it with equal skill. A number of such spears is carried by each combatant. Whilst the duel is proceeding, the two natives dance in defiance to taunt the rival, grotesquely jumping from one foot to the other, holding the arms semi-erect and bent at the elbows and wrists, whilst the body is thrown forward and the head kept back. When a spear passes very near to or grazes its mark, the native greets his escape with a short but strangely articulated exclamation sounding like “irr.” The throwers are constantly on the move, and, whenever possible, one stoops to pick up a new spear from a bundle of them lying at his side. The little missiles are so light that, when they hit the ground, they skip along the surface and can be recovered uninjured. Although these spears seem more like toys than weapons, they are nevertheless most formidable on account of their sharp point and the velocity with which they travel.

A method which is in vogue among the central Australian tribes, like the Arunndta and Dieri, is the dagger duel. The dagger employed is a long stone-knife with a grip or haft of porcupine resin; the Arunndta name for it is “putta ildurra.” The combatants hold one of such daggers in one hand and a light shield of kurrajong wood in the other, and thus equipped they approach each other. After some preliminaries in the way of dancing and an accompaniment of excited shrieking, the men close in upon one another. With the shield they not only catch the well-directed stabs before any bodily injury is done, but they also thrust the opponent back to keep him at arm’s length. It is not an uncommon event for such a duel to be fought for a considerable time without any bloodshed, the skilful parrying checking many a fatal blow until eventually utter exhaustion appeases the thirst for revenge and soothes the hatred, which was only too evident at the beginning of the duel. At other times severe gashes are inflicted, which occasionally terminate fatally. Vide Fig. 4.

The most serious of all duels is undoubtedly that in which the heavy spear is used. The method is similar to that of the light spear fights, with the distinction that those engaged in the strife stand further apart, and do not run the same amount of risk by exposing themselves to the same extent as in the former case. It is recognized that a “hit” by one of the large heavy-bladed spears will result in a dangerous wound, and, therefore, the men face the ordeal in all conscientiousness, knowing that if they can prove themselves equal to their opponent’s dexterity for a reasonable length of time, the moment will arrive when the strife might be terminated by arbitration. One occasionally meets with a person who has a broken portion of a spear-head deeply embedded in the musculature of his thigh or other region of his body, where a violent inflammation around the lesion has caused the sufferer much pain because he has not been able to extract the offending piece of wood or stone from the tissue.

In the Balmaningarra district of the northern Kimberleys of Western Australia, the warriors hold the shield (which they call “karwinnunga”) in their left hand, but, if necessity arises, they quickly change it to the right. As a spear whizzes by harmlessly, or is skilfully warded off, the defendant sounds a short triumphant “p-r-r-r” with protruding and vibrating lips. When about to “receive” a missile, the native stands in much the same attitude as that adopted by a modern rapier-duellist. The moment, however, he realizes that his antagonist’s aim has been inaccurate, or he has been successful in dodging or warding off the death-bringing stick, he balances himself on one leg, cocks the other under his buttocks, and defiantly throws his arms above his head, jeering at his enemy and inviting him to throw once more, crying: “Look! I am defenceless, and I am exposing my body to you! I have no fear of you; your spears can only scratch the ground as the yam-stick of a woman digging for grubs!”

Barely has he finished his taunting sentence, and before the other man has had time to prepare for another throw, he bounds forward and projects his weapon. During the fight, the antics of the men, especially of the one on the defensive, are remarkable, jumping from leg to leg, at one time holding the shield straight in front of the body whilst covering the head, at another, standing erect with the shield at about the level of his chest.

During their duels, an admirable spirit of chivalry is displayed by the combatants. If, for instance, a shield breaks, the man who has the advantage refuses to fight until the broken weapon has been replaced. The same regulation applies to a broken spear, but not to a broken spear-head; if the latter breaks, the circumstance is looked upon as the result of bad workmanship, and the fight continues. Only a certain number of spears is carried by the parties; and any damaged weapon might be replaced from a bundle held in reserve by the gins, who stand in readiness. When the missiles have been spent on both sides, the parties change ends to collect their spears, after which the hostilities are resumed.

Irrespective of any of the methods here described, whereby the natives actually fight with weapons for the sake of honour or revenge, it is quite as customary among all Australian tribes to bring about the downfall of a rival or enemy by the magic influence of suggestion. This is the wonderfully potent method of “pointing” death at a man, who may or may not be present or visible. The process is usually referred to as “pointing the bone,” or simply “boning.”

In the Alligator district of the Northern Territory, the excrement of a man, who is to be sent to his death, is collected and roasted over a fire; after which a little of it is taken and mixed with the resin of porcupine grass. A ceremonial dance follows during the night, which is of a very secret character, men as well as women participating. The chants which are sung implore the birds of night—the owl, the plover, and the curlew—not to betray the men who are seeking revenge. At the far end of the ground, cleared for the occasion, a hole is dug, in which a fire is burned while the ceremony is in progress. Enchanting songs are now rendered, which are to entice the spirit-father of the doomed man to attend. A little later one of the principal performers marches forwards, carrying a small ball of resin mixed with the burned excrement, together with a short stick representing the spirit-father. At a given moment, he begins to dance and, with his free hand, catches hold of his scrotum. When he arrives at the hole, in which the fire is burning, other men snatch the glowing embers and clear the ashes out of the way. The dancer throws the resin-ball containing the excrement into the hole and covers it with hot sand. The moment it strikes the hot ground, the resin fizzles and crackles; and those sounds are taken to be the voice of the spirit calling the victim from the earth.

Shortly after the ceremony these facts are made known to the unfortunate who has been selected to die; they are usually conveyed to him by one or two eye-witnesses of the ceremony. Overcome with consternation and terror, the fellow immediately begins to fret; and death will inevitably be the outcome, unless the counter-influence of a medicine man or other tribal power can make itself felt beforehand.

Upon other occasions in the same district, the footprint of a man, who has been decreed to die, might be found upon a clay-flat or a river bank. The track must be intact; if it be in the least degree imperfect, it is considered useless for the purpose. Taking for granted, then, that it is clear and well-defined, the mould is cut out of the clay in toto and buried in an anthill. There it is secreted until such time as the spirit of the doomed man’s father is supposed to be in attendance at a tribal ceremonial, when it is fetched and broken over a blazing fire. This act answers the same purpose as the burning of the resin and excrement in the previous case.

An old Arunndta custom was to “cut the shadow” of a man, who was to die, with a sharpened mussel-shell knife called “langa langa.”

When a man of the Worora tribe dies, his relatives resolve to avenge his death, which they suppose was the work of an enemy, whom they name. During the obsequies, a bone is taken from the arm of the deceased, usually the humerus, but occasionally the radius, and small portions cut or scraped off it, to be handed to the nearest of kin, who officiate as the avenging party. The little group sit facing the direction in which the supposed murderer is seen, or at any rate is known to be residing. Together they place some of the pieces of their relative’s bone, which they call “gibba,” into their mouths, and, after chewing them for a while, they spit the pulp towards their victim, at the same moment naming him as the perpetrator of the deed—the cause of their bereavement. The Sunday Islanders adopt a similar method, but refer to the bone as “käu-käu”.

Most of the tribes are in possession of differently shaped sticks and bones, with which the death-pointing is done. These are usually about three or four inches long, pointed at one or both ends, and containing a small bleb of resin at one end, to which a piece of human hair-string is attached. When the instrument is of bone, it is usually a piece of the dead man’s skeleton. The Aluridja take the fibula of the man whose death is to be avenged, and construct a flattish “bone,” pointed off at both ends. The Arunndta select the same bone, or the ulna, which they scrape down to a long tapering point at one end; to the opposite extremity they attach a little porcupine resin. Occasionally one finds these objects carried in hollow bone or bark-receptacles. Another common form of the Arunndta is a short stick, at either end of which a blunt arrow head knob is carved, round one of which a long piece of human hair-string is tied. A simple punctate design is at times burned into the stick. Some of the southern tribes of the Northern Territory have pointing stones, which are shaped much like a stone-knife, hafted with porcupine resin and suspended by a long piece of human hair-string.

A number of such pointing instruments are constantly carried about by certain men of the tribe, whilst others are kept buried in places only known to a few. Often a stick is constructed just when the occasion requires one, and when there happens to be none available.

Any fully initiated men may make use of a pointing-bone or stick, but when the grievance concerns the tribe in general, the operation is performed by the magician or medicine man. Women do not generally carry these sticks, but the Aluridja, and no doubt others also, allow their gins to charm their yam-sticks, with which they then “kill” their antagonists. A charmed yam-stick is believed to paralyse the arms of any person, whom it touches, when appealed to by the owner; consequently one of this kind is chosen for duelling whenever possible.

When a man has been condemned to death, the person or persons, who are to administer the fatal charm, are nominated. The “pointing” apparatus are produced, and with them the men take up a kneeling position a little distance away from the camp. Facing the doomed man’s habitation, they lift the bone, or stick, to shoulder height and point it at the victim. The long piece of hair-string, which is attached to the instrument, is tightly tied around the charmer’s arm, above the elbow. This is done to endow his system with the magic influence of the pointing-stick he is holding; and that magic, he believes, passes into the destructive words, which he is uttering: “May your skeleton become saturated with the foulness of my stick, so that your flesh will rot and its stench attract the grubs, which live in the ground, to come and devour it. May your bones turn to water and soak into the sand, so that your spirit may never know your whereabouts. May the wind shrivel your skin like a leaf before a fire, and your blood dry up like the mud in a clay-pan.”

There is a great number of different methods employed in administering the fatal charm of the pointing-stick, all of which, however, are after much the same principle. A common practice amongst the Aluridja is for the man, about to use the stick, to leave the camp and seclude himself behind a tree or other obstacle. He squats upon the heel of one foot which he has tucked under his body. He points the bone or stick straight at the man who is to die, or, it may be, merely in the direction he imagines he would strike him. Whilst administering the curse, he holds the object in the hand of his outstretched right arm.

Both the Arunndta and Aluridja often work in pairs after the following style: One man cowers upon the ground, with or without his pointing-stick in his hand, whilst the second, kneeling at the side of him, holds his pointing-stick at arm’s length over the former man’s back, and directs it towards the person who is about to receive the evil charm. Vide Plate XXIII.

To make their charm more effective, and the death-penalty more certain, central Australian tribes not uncommonly tie the claws of a bird of prey, the eagle-hawk by preference, to the pointing instrument. It is believed that by this trick the evil magic works like the grip of a bird, by clutching the doomed one’s chest and crushing it. If by accident the unfortunate fellow becomes cognizant of this, and it happens that, as actually is frequently the case after a big feast, he suffers from indigestion, he naturally interprets the symptoms of his indisposition as being due to the invisible, tightening girth, which the charm has laid about him. The fatal termination arrives at a much earlier date in consequence.

A man who discovers that he is being boned by an enemy is, indeed, a pitiable sight. He stands aghast, with his eyes staring at the treacherous pointer, and with his hands lifted as though to ward off the lethal medium, which he imagines is pouring into his body (Plate XXIV). His cheeks blanch and his eyes become glassy, and the expression of his face becomes horribly distorted, like that of one stricken with palsy. He attempts to shriek, but usually the sound chokes in his throat, and all one might see is froth at his mouth. His body begins to tremble and the muscles twitch involuntarily. He sways backwards and falls to the ground, and for a short time appears to be in a swoon; but soon after he begins to writhe as if in mortal agony, and, covering his face with his hands, begin to moan. After a while he becomes more composed and crawls to his wurley. From this time onwards he sickens and frets, refusing to eat, and keeping aloof from the daily affairs of the tribe. Unless help is forthcoming in the shape of a counter-charm, administered by the hands of the “Nangarri” or medicine-man, his death is only a matter of a comparatively short time. If the coming of the medicine-man is opportune, he might be saved.

The medicine-man of Australian tribes is not so much an individual who has the knowledge of medicinal values of herbs and of surgical practices as one who is the recognized sorcerer, capable of rebuking the ills wrought by an enemy or evil spirit (Plate VIII). He attains his distinction either by heredity or by accidental, but maybe exemplary, craftiness. In the former case, he is looked upon as a favoured son, who has inherited from his tribal and ancestral fathers the magic art of neutralizing the evil charm of a spirit or enemy, which manifests itself in prostration or disease; at the same time he is the official power of the community, who alone can outwit the evil spirit, control the elements, and keep pestilence away from the camp. This hereditary art is recognized as a concrete matter, which is believed to have been deposited within the body of the particular individual by spirit-ancestors or nearer spirit-relations; this matter might have taken the form of a special variety of wood, small bones of animal or man, and a number of sacred stones, all of which the made medicine-man carries about with him in his abdomen, more or less replacing the ordinary entrails originally occupying the cavity. Each tribe has a number of these medicine-men, whose rank is gauged according to age and the principle they have lived up to. For instance, in the qualification of the early medicine-men of the Adelaide tribe, it was deemed necessary that the candidate should taste human flesh at least once is his life. In the central Australian tribes a medicine-man should not eat of kangaroo which has been feeding upon new green grass; if he does, some of his mystic powers will leak out of his body, and he will immediately drop in the estimation of his tribal admirers. If the offence is repeated a number of times, he is disrespected entirely as a professional sorcerer. There are, of course, a great number of restrictions, which the conscientious practitioner observes most punctiliously.

Every medicine-man of any standing at all has his own history of qualification, which he does not hesitate to make known to the public at opportune moments. Old Kai Kai, the leading Nangarri of the western Arunndta on the Finke River, relates how he, as a young hunter, became detached from the rest of the party, and, after tracking a wounded kangaroo for a whole day, he eventually abandoned the pursuit to make for a rock-hole in the stony James Ranges. It was nigh on sunset when he arrived at the hole, tired and thirsty. He threw his wommera and spears upon the ground, and eagerly lay over the cool fluid to still his parching thirst. But when he sipped the water a tadpole entered his mouth, and, before he could spit it out, it slipped down his gullet and dropped into his abdominal cavity with a bump that caused him much pain. When he recovered, he again tried to soothe his burning lips, but met with a similar fate. Several times more he tried, but in vain; as soon as his burning lips touched the surface of the water, a slimy tadpole slipped into his mouth and fell into his stomach with a painful thud. In desperation he made a final attempt to carefully approach the water’s level, when he beheld what he took to be the image of his face and body reflected from below. Horror overcame him, however, for the image was that of another man! And, as he looked again, he noticed that the body of the image was transparent, and inside of it there were just as many rounded pebbles as he had swallowed tadpoles! He collapsed at the side of the waterhole and slept like a dead man, for how long he could not say. When at length he woke up, he found himself among the reeds of the flowing sheet of water on the Finke River, which the white people call Running Waters. He now quenched his thirst. And when the recollections of his experience at the rock-hole came back to him, he realized that the man who had looked at him through the water had been a spirit, and he could still feel the pebbles he had placed inside of him. Now it was obvious to him that he had been ordained a Nangarri, and he returned to his camp, where his relatives were anxiously awaiting him.

Having been called to the side of a “boned” patient, the Nangarri allows a number of the relatives to be present when he applies his weird method of treatment. At first he cuts some ridiculous antics, during which he mumbles or chants some almost inaudible verses. The patient is, in the meantime, laid flat on the ground. The Nangarri approaches the sufferer from the foot end and, throwing himself upon the ground, crawls right on to the chest of the former, biting the skin of his patient at several places as he crawls on to the body. Having “located” the seat of the trouble, the “doctor” slips on to the ground, and, picking up a fold of the skin with the underlying fatty tissue between his fingers over the vital spot, applies his lips, and, perhaps, his teeth, too, to it. He sucks, bites, and kneads the skin, frequently lifting his head and spitting blood on to the ground. The patient is all the while groaning with pain; if he becomes unmanageable, he is called to order by the Nangarri. At length the climax arrives. The Nangarri withdraws from the patient, his cheeks visibly inflated, and, conscious of the expectant eyes of all present, he empties the contents of his mouth into his hands, which he holds like a receptacle in front of him. The fluid, consisting of saliva and blood, is allowed to trickle to the ground or into the fire. Then a triumphant chuckle announces that the malignant element has been discovered! With feigned exaltation, the great healer steps towards the awe-stricken relatives, holding between the index-finger and thumb of his right hand an article, such as a small stick, a bone, a pebble, a meteoric bomb, or a talon, which he avows is the cause of the “boned” man’s affliction, and, having now been skillfully and permanently removed, the unhappy fellow has nothing more to tear.

The good news is immediately conveyed to the prostrate form on the ground. The effect is astounding. The miserable fellow, until that moment well on the road to death, raises his head to gaze in wonderment upon the object held by the Nangarri, which, in all seriousness, he imagines has been extracted from the inside of his body. Satisfied with its reality, he even lifts himself into a sitting position and calls for some water to drink. The crisis has now been passed, and the patient’s recovery is speedy and complete. Without the Nangarri’s interception, the “boned” fellow would have fretted himself to death for a certainty, but the sight of a concrete object, claimed by the recognized authority of the tribe to be the cause of the complaint, signifies recovery to him, and with its removal comes a new lease of life. The implicit faith a native cherishes in the magic powers of his tribal medicine-man results in cures, which exceed anything recorded by the faith-healing disciples of more cultured communities.