Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/690

664 head of a totem, tends to give strength to the young man while he is undergoing it.

It is only when a young man has been made Kulpi that he is considered to be a thorough man, and in this sense Kulpi is the highest stage in the initiation ceremonies.

Professor Baldwin Spencer tells me that in all the tribes with which he is acquainted who practise subincision, all the men are subject to it. According to the information given me by Mr. S. Gason, twenty years ago, only a certain number of the men of the Died tribe were Kulpi.

From further inquiries which I have made I am now satisfied that the practice of Kulpi in the Dieri tribe was, and is, universal, and that Mr. Gason must have been in error in the above statement.

On the young women coming to maturity, there is a ceremony called Wilpadrina, in which the elder men claim, and exercise, a right to the young women. The other women are cognisant of it, and are present.

In the Yerkla-mining tribe the rite of circumcision is very strictly observed. For some time before a youth is circumcised no woman, married or single, is allowed to take food from him, nor are they permitted to see him take food from any one else, if they can avoid doing so.

When it is decided that a certain boy shall be circumcised, the medicine-men, having held a council, call upon some of the old men to assist in capturing him. He, being aware of their intention, has previously taken to the bush, living a watchful and lonely life. The natives call him Kokitta-mining, that is, wild man. If they can get on his track, he is easily surrounded, but he sometimes evades them for months. The time for circumcision is when the youth is about eighteen years of age, that is, after he has got whiskers.