Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/294

268 peace with each other, friendly visits were exchanged, at which times the unmarried females were carried off by either party. The friends of the girl never interfered, and in the event of her making any resistance, which was frequently the case, her abductor silenced it by a severe blow on the head with his club while carrying her off. He kept her at a distance till her friends were all gone, and then returned with her to his tribe. But if the girl had no objection to her suitor, or had no one else in her eye that she liked better, she agreed to become his gin, thus rendering abduction unnecessary. The husband and wife were, in general, remarkably constant to each other, and it rarely happened that they separated after having considered themselves man and wife. When an elopement or the stealing of another man's gin took place, it created a great and apparently lasting uneasiness in the husband.

According to Collins, wives "are always selected from the women of a different tribe, with whom they are at enmity. Secrecy is necessarily observed, and the poor wretch is stolen upon in the absence of her protectors. . . . The women thus ravished become their wives, are incorporated into the tribes to which their husbands belong, and but seldom quit them for others."

I have with some hesitation placed these tribes on the Hunter River and at Port Stephens in this section of the chapter. Mr. Dawson's account of the abduction of women during friendly visits between the tribes appears to me to be an outsider's view of what I take to be a case analogous to that spoken of by Mr. Aldridge as occurring at the Dora ceremonies of the Maryborough (Queensland) tribes.

The Kombaingheri tribe of the Bellinger River had four sub-classes, each with a distinct female name, the rules of marriage and descent being those shown in the following table: —