Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/175

III In the Kurnai tribe sometimes ill-feeling arose between the men and the women, and then some of the latter went out and killed one of the men's brothers to spite them. On their return to the camp with the victim, the men attacked them with their clubs, and they defended themselves with their digging-sticks. Or the men might go out and kill a woman's "sister," whereupon the women would attack them.

But the most remarkable feature of these fights over the killing of the man's brother or of the woman's sister, was when there were young women who were marriageable, but not mated, and when the eligible bachelors were backward. In this tribe, as I have explained in the chapter on Marriage, there was no practice of betrothal, the cases thereof being so rare as to prove the rule. Marriage was by elopement, and therefore the young woman had the power to refuse, unless constrained by the incantations of the Bunjil-yenjin.

Under such circumstances some of the elder women went out, and having killed a Yiirung, returned to the camp and casually let some of the men see it, who became enraged at one of their brothers being killed. The young men and the young women then armed themselves with clubs and sticks and fought together. In this fight it was only those young men who had been made Jeraeil, and who were now allowed by the old men to marry, who took part in these affrays.

On the following day the young men went out and killed a Djiitgun, which would occasion another fight when they came back. By and by, when the bruises and perhaps wounds received in these fights had healed, a young man and a young woman might meet, and he, looking at her, would say, for instance, "Djiitgun! What does the Djiitgun eat?" The reply would be, "She eats kangaroo, opossum," or some other game. This constituted a formal offer and an acceptance, and would be followed by the elopement of the couple as described in the chapter on Marriage.

Fights between the sexes on account of the killing of the brother or sister totem occurred in a great number of tribes, and probably in all the tribes now referred to; but it is only in the Kurnai tribe that I have met with the sex-totems as instrumental in promoting marriage.