Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/102

 40 WEAPONS. CHAPTER V. WEAPONSMANUFACTURESTAKING GAMECOOKING DISEASESMEDICAL TREATMENT. THE productions of a barbarous people are always scanty in quantity and inferior in quality; but they are interesting, and often direct our attention to materials which would probably be otherwise overlooked in our plenitude of resources, but which the necessities of the uncivilised have led them to search out for themselves. Each tribe of the Narrinyeri has been accustomed to make those articles which their tract of country enabled them to produce most easily. One tribe will make weapons, another mats, and a third nets; and then they barter them one with the other. WEAPONS. They make their weapons from the hard wood which grows in their country. Heavy spears generally come from the Upper Murray natives, and are highly valued. They are made of the hard and elastic miall wood, and are formidable weapons. Some of the spears made by the Narrinyeri are barbed with spicules of flint. They are called meralkaipari, or deadly spears. The commonest spear is the kaike, or reed spear. It is made by fastening a point of hard, heavy wood, about two feet long, to a shaft formed of a stout reed, or else a dried grasstree stick (Xanthorrhoea), called nglaiye. This spear is thrown with the hooked taralye, or throwing stick. I have seen it pierce a dead tree so deeply that it took a very strong pull to extract the point from the wood. Their shields are made of wood or bark of the red gum tree. Their clubs are of wood. The patience exhibited in the cutting of some of them with their rude implements is wonderful.