Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/208

 134 BELIEF IN SORCERY. the skull. It burst, and Pelican recovered, quite convinced of the dangerous effects of a kick from a supernatural wild Hackfellow. I had another adventure with Pelican, which I will relate. A lad had died at the camp from inflammation of the stomach, aggravated by its happening to come on just after an old heathen had threatened the boy with sorcery for some trifling offence. This boy, as he lay ill, complained of burning in his stomach. Soon after his death, Pelican’s son (Bulpuminne) was taken ill with inflammation of the chest. I attended to him, and put on a mustard poultice. I left him after applying it, telling him that I would return in twenty minutes. When I did so I found him crying with the pain, and his old father sitting by looking rather queer. I stooped down, took the plaster off, and proceeded to dress the place with some simple ointment. As I was busy doing this I felt a sort of flicker above my head. I started round and caught my friend Pelican brandishing a heavy waddy over me as if he would like to crack my skull. "Halloa, Pelican!" I shouted, "what are you up to?" "I was only going to throw at that crow," he replied, with assumed calmness, and pointing to one which sat on a neighbouring fence. I went on and finished my work; but I knew very well that the old fellow had hard work to keep from breaking my head. His reason was that his boy had complained that the mustard burned him, and he concluded that I was going to make him die in like manner as the other lad did, and thus his feeling of revenge was aroused almost to a higher pitch than he could resist. Now, this is all in accordance with native ideas. Their doctors, or kuldukkes, are as much sorcerers as practisers of the art of healing. When the ngaitye of the tribe is killed, if a hostile kuldukke of another tribe gets a piece of itsuch as a bonehe ties it in the corner of a wallaby skin and flicks it at the people whose ngaitye or totem it is, and they are made sick by it. This action is called pernmin. These kuldukkes are made by some old sorcerers taking two heavy black spears; these they tie side by side, and point them at the intended kuldukkes and then strike them with