Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/168

 102 DIFFICULTIES WITH NATIVE YOUTHS. the members of which should be understood to make a profession of faith in Jesus, and to be on trial to see whether they would continue steadfast or not. On the 26th of the same month I baptised three adult nativestwo men and a woman. They had for three months made a consistent profession of faith in Jesus. One of them had lived as a Christian for above a year: his name was James Jackson. He died on the 17th of the March after his baptism. I had no doubt of his conversion. Another of those whom I thus baptised was William Kropinyeri. When he embraced Christianity he had two wives one a young woman who was a Christian, and another who was a girl of fourteen. I told him he must put away the youngest wife. He willingly consented to do so. He was then baptised, and his wife with him. After he had put away his youngest wife the old blacks were very much offended. They began to perceive whereunto this thing would grow; so first of all the father of the girl Tina who had been put away beat her and used her cruelly to compel her to return to Kropinyeri, but he could not succeed in inducing her to do so. Then the heathen natives turned their wrath upon the husband who had dared to break their customs. They lay in wait for him continually, and thus obliged him to go armed. It is a custom of the natives, if they cannot be revenged on an enemy, to take vengeance on his nearest relative; so one day two of the heathen blacks found the father of Kropinyeri in a solitary place, and beat him almost to death. His son found him and brought him in a helpless condition to the station. Eventually he recovered; but this led the Christian natives to be very cautious about exposing themselves, and they always went armed and in parties after dark in the evenings. Poor Waukeri, whose name has been mentioned in these pages, fell a victim to that scourge of the natives, pulmonary consumption. He died in firm faith in Jesus Christ. When the boys who had been in the school grew up to be youths of 16 or 17, we found great difficulty in dealing with them at the first. Their education made them superior to their