Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/780

754 notes a passage from Dr. Dunmore Lang, who gives it on the authority of his son, Mr. G. D. Lang, who, as the former puts it, "happened to reside a few months in the Wide Bay district." The passage is as follows: "At certain triennial gatherings of some tribes of Queensland, young girls are slain in sacrifice to propitiate some evil divinity, and their bodies likewise are subjected to the horrid rite of cannibalism. Girls are marked for sacrifice months before the event takes place by the old men of the tribe."

When I read this I remembered that some forty years ago I had heard a "bush yarn" that when tribes met at the Bunya feasts the people became so meat hungry after a long course of feasting on the fruit of the Bunya tree, that they killed a "fat gin" and ate her. Mr. G. D. Lang's statements appeared to me to be an embellishment of this "bush yarn," moreover, I disbelieved the "sacrifice to propitiate some evil divinity" as being contrary to all that I know of the native tribes, and I thought that the statements probably rested on the distorted account of the eating of those persons who are killed in the ceremonial combats that take place at these triennial gatherings.

I have also found the following reference to cannibalism at these meetings. R. Brough Smyth says, "When tribes assembled to eat the fruit of the Bunya-Bunya, they were not permitted to take any game, and at length the craving for flesh was so intense that they were impelled to kill one of their number in order that their appetites might be satisfied."

Mr. E. M. Curr makes the following statement about what occurred at his station called Gobungo in the Bunya-Bunya country. The season of the Bunya nuts was then at its height, and the majority of the blacks present were strangers invited by the Kabi to feast on the plentiful harvest of nuts. But they were forbidden to help themselves to any fish, flesh, or fowl within the territory. After some weeks