Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/272

246 place. This was for two reasons: first, because of the right of access which they had in accordance with custom in this tribe to the bride; and second, because if they had remained behind, the girl's kindred would have attacked them as being participators in the elopement. In cases of elopement all the girl's male kindred, both paternal and maternal, followed the couple, and if they found them, brought them back with them. The man had then to stand out and fight her male kindred, being armed with a shield and spear-thrower, the former to stop spears thrown at him, and the latter to turn them aside. It was the girl's father and brothers who first threw their spears at him, and subsequently the other men did likewise. If skilful, he probably remained uninjured. The girl when brought back was beaten by her father and brothers, as also by her mother and sisters, against all of whom she defended herself as best she could with a digging stick. After this ordeal, the man was permitted to keep her, but he had to find a sister to give in exchange for her. These facts, occurring, as has been already shown, in so many places, show the wide extension of the ordeal.

Such cases of elopement were between those who might lawfully marry, if the necessary consent had been obtained on both sides. The combat, or rather the ordeal by spears, with the relatives of the woman, and especially with her brothers, was clearly an expiation for the injury done to them in thus depriving them of a valuable asset. But there were other cases in which the parties were in the prohibited degrees of relationship, and therefore on an entirely different footing, the offence being against tribal morality, which with the Wotjobaluk, as in all other tribes with which I am acquainted, is punished with great severity. In such a case there was, in addition to the moral offence, the fact that her brother was deprived of the benefit which he would have derived by her exchange for a wife for himself.

Some instances will show how this class of offences was dealt with by the component tribes of the Wotjo nation. I take a case where a Wotjo man ran off with a woman who stood in the relation of sister, or was of the same Yauerin with him. All the men of both of the class names would