Page:Some account of the wars, extirpation, habits.djvu/41

Rh cupping instrument, but were much large and further apart.

They never permitted their wives or children to accompany them in their war expeditions, either against the whites or enemies of their own race, but left them in places of security and concealment; and Robinson told me that though their wives went with them in their hunting excursions, they did not allow them to participate in the sport, and that they acted only as drudges to carry their spears and the game; but that the fishing business (for shell-fish only, obtained by diving) was resigned wholly to them. The men, he said, considered it beneath them, and left it and all other troublesome services to them, who, in nine cases out of ten, were no better than slaves. If a storm came on unexpectedly, the men would sit down while the women built huts over them, in which operation, as in all others of a menial nature, the man took no part. To make his own spears, to hunt, fight, and salve himself with his ochreous mixtute, were his principal, and perhaps only, occupations.

The huts of this people were the frailest and most temporary structures conceivable. They were often meant only for a night, and perhaps were seldom occupied for a week, though those of some of the west coast tribes were most substantial. Uniformity of design was, of course, quite out of the question; for these hovels were suited to the circumstances of the moment only. Some that I once met with in the Western Mountains seem to have been constructed in a great hurry, and were composed of a few strips of bark laid against some large dead branches that were used just as they had fallen from the trees above. Others that I have seen had, pretty evidently, been occupied for several nights. These were also of bark, supported on sticks driven a little into the ground, and were adorned, according to their ideas of ornament, with several rude charcoal drawings, one representing a kangaroo of unnatural appearance, that is, with its forelegs about twice as long as the hinder ones; another was meant for an emu; a third was also an animal that might have been either a dog, a horse, or a crocodile, according to the fancy of the connoisseur. But the chef-d'-œuvre was a battle piece, a native fight—men dying and flying all over it. These huts were closed only on the weather side, and perfectly open in front, some large enough for several persons, others less; and the one with the elaborate designs was, I suppose, the residence of a single man, being the least of all.

His spear was a long thin stick pointed at both ends, made of a hard heavy wood, called by the colonists tea-tree. The weapon of the adult was 10 ft. long or more, and was thrown from the hand only, with great force and precision, having a range of, I believe, about 60 or 70 yards. Both the throwing-stick and