Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/108

 46 NATIVE DOCTORS. wurley to see a sick youth, perhaps, and to find his grey-bearded old father, stark naked, performing a solemn dance before his son, singing and beating time with the tartengk. I have known an old native keep it up for an hour, and, of course, feel convinced that he had done wonders towards restoring his boy to health. There used to be a class of doctors amongst the natives called kuldukke men. They were great impostors; their impositions and lying became notorious around the lakes. Their method of procedure was by dancing, whistling, incantations, and squeezing the diseased part. They used by sleight-of-hand to produce extraordinary substances from those parts which were afflicted. I knew a white man who for a joke submitted himself to the kuldukkes, in order to cure an attack of rheumatism in the shoulder. The doctors muttered charms, and whistled, and blew, and danced, and at last produced a small piece of the leg of an old chair, which had been kicking about in the back yard for weeks before, and solemnly declared that they had extracted it from the diseased shoulder. These kuldukkes soon ceased to exert influence amongst the natives, and their practice has died out. One circumstance which contributed to this result was the following: There was an intelligent native at Goolwa, named Solomon. He used to be regularly employed by settlers in that neighbourhood. One day Solomon went to work after breakfast, leaving instructions with his wife to make a couple of dampers for their dinner. This was soon accomplished, and two dampers and a small cake awaited the return of their owner to his midday meal. Just then a lot of kuldukke men passed the hut, and looked in rather inquisitively. Presently they told Solomon’s wife, who was known to be a superstitious body, that they could see a spirit, the dreadful Melapi, coming across the ocean, and that he would be certain to hurt her husband unless he were driven away. This they offered to do by their enchantments if she would give them one of those dampers. The poor foolish woman believed their story, and one of the dampers was soon devoured. The kuldukkes then began dancing, whistling, pointNATIVE