Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/315

 SUPERSTITIONS AND TRADITIONS. 237 could give any information of two black men who had gone with Mr. Eyre to the far west, and returned from thence by themselves, recollected having heard that two strange young men, carrying a peculiar kind of nets or netbags, had been killed by the Kukatas, in the belief of their being Purkabidnis. The worst kind of superstition, and one that does comparatively as much mischief among the Aborigines as the belief in witchcraft ever did in Europe, is the idea that one person may, from spite or other motives, kill another party by a peculiar manipulation during the night, described as a poking with the fingers in the side of the obnoxious person, which will cause illness, and ultimately death. The evidence by which the guilty party is discovered is generally the deposition of the dying person, who is supposed to know the man who causes his death. In all cases of death that do not arise from old age, wounds, or other equally palpable causes, the natives suspect that unfair means have been practised; and even where the cause of death is sufficiently plain, they sometimes will not content themselves with it, but have recourse to an imaginary one, as the following case will prove: A woman had been bitten by a black snake, across the thumb, in clearing out a well; she began to swell directly, and was a corpse in twenty-four hours; yet, another woman who had been present when the accident occurred, stated that the deceased had named a certain native as having caused her death. Upon this statement, which was in their opinion corroborated by the circumstance that the snake had drawn no blood from the deceased, her husband and other friends had a fight with the accused party and his friends; a reconciliation, however, took place afterwards, and it was admitted on the part of the aggressors that they had been in error with regard to the guilty individual; but nowise more satisfied as to the bite of the snake being the true cause of the woman’s death, another party was now suddenly discovered to be the real offender, and accordingly war was made upon him and his partisans, till at last the matter was dropped and forgotten. From this case, as well as from frequent occurrences of a similar nature, it appears evident that