Page:Handbook of Western Australia.djvu/101

Rh The dances or corroborees of the natives are adapted to the various circumstances of their lives, marriage, birth, death, hunting, or war. It is commonly said that women do not take part in them except as spectators, but on occasions, no doubt comparatively rare, they mix with the men, and their dances then resemble those of the islanders of the Pacific, as described by Cook, and the women carry a peeled stick tufted at one end like the thyrsus of the ancient Bacchanals. These dances are now often performed solely for the amusement of the settlers, and are therefore becoming less characteristic. The effects of these laws and customs on the relations between the natives and settlers in the Colony will be readily apparent.

The occupation of the land of any family would cause, of necessity, their intrusion on that of others. The cohabitation of the women with the white men (whom they naturally prefer as the more powerful race, and as more able to give what to them are luxuries, and as, generally, treating them with more kindness and consideration,) would call for the immediate punishment of both parties; the death or wounding of any native, from whatever cause, equally required retaliation, to the same or greater amount of injury, by the nearest relation.

Female children, when taken charge of out of kindness by settlers, were liable to be forced away by, or for, those to whom they had been betrothed. These, and similar causes, will account for most of the crimes perpetrated by natives on settlers, but, in addition, there was the temptation offered by sheep, cattle, food, clothing, commonly exposed and unprotected, and as the Benedictine Father Garrido justly remarks "they would find a difficulty in defining the difference between