Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/291

 WEAPONS. 213 of necessity have stood in a different relationship to the several survivors, which the various modes of painting are meant to denote. WEAPONS. The weapons of the Port Lincoln tribes are rather clumsily made, but yet fully as efficacious as those of the Adelaide natives. Their spears are made of thin gum-scrub saplings, seven or more feet long, and are straightened in hot ashes. The root end, which is about as thick as a man’s thumb, is pointed, being previously hardened in the fire, and at the taper end a small hole is bored by means of a sharp kangaroo bone, into which the catch of the wommara is hooked in throwing the spear. To prevent the edge of the hole splitting or breaking away, a thin kangaroo sinew is firmly tied round it. Of the bundle of spears that each man carries about with him, two or three are generally barbed, and for those that are not they have ready-made barbs in their knapsacks, to be fixed to the spears when required. This barb is merely a chip of wood two inches in length, pointed at both ends, and so shaped that when the one end is laid even with the point of the spear, the other projects from it at a sharp angle, thus forming a hook, similar to one side of a harpoon. Although it is fixed to the spear only by a thin thread of sinew, yet it is so secure that it will never slip, and it is impossible to draw a barbed spear out of the body of a man or animal. This weapon is always used in spearing game, but the natives seem to consider it very reprehensible to use a barbed spear in fight. All these spears are thrown with the wooden lever, known by the name of wommara, but here called midla, and the only other kind in use is the winna, which is only five feet long, very strong and clumsy, and only made use of in spearing large fish. The midla is about two feet long and as many inches broad, the upper end is rather pointed, and a small peg is fixed by means of sinews and gum on the inside, to serve as a catch for the hole in the small end of the spear. The handle end has a broad sharp-edged piece of quartz attached to it with gum, which answers the double purpose of pointing the spears, and also of preventing the instrument from