Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/75

 MAKING "YOUNG MEN." 17 from increasing its number of men, by admitting those who have not yet arrived at the proper age, and thus prevents them from making a claim for a greater number of women than their proper share  an important consideration, where every tribe has to obtain wives from those which are adjacentas they never intermarry in their own tribe, all the members of which are regarded as of the same family. Generally two youths are made kainganis at the same time, so that they may afterwards during the time that they are narumbe assist each other. They are seized at night suddenly by the men, and carried off by force to a spot at some little distance from the wurley, the women all the time resisting or pretending to resist the seizure by pulling at the captives, and throwing firebrands at their captors. But they are soon driven off to their wurley and compelled to stop there, while the men proceed to strip the two youths. Their matted hair is combed or rather torn out with the point of a spear, and their moustaches and a great part of their beard plucked up by the roots. They arethen besmeared from the crown of their heads to their feet with a mixture of oil and red ochre. For three days and three nights the newly-made kainganis must neither eat nor sleep, a strict watch being kept over them to prevent either. They are allowed to drink water, but only by sucking it up through a reed; the luxury of a drinking vessel is denied to them for several months. And when, after the three days, the refreshment of sleep is permitted, they are not allowed a pillowa couple of sticks stuck in the ground crosswise are all they must rest their heads on. For six months they are obliged to walk naked or with merely the slightest covering round their loins. The condition of narumbe lasts until their beards have been pulled out three times, and each time have grown again to about the length of two inches, and during all that period they are forbidden to eat any food which belongs to women, and also from partaking of twenty different kinds of game. If they eat any of these forbidden things it is thought they will grow ugly. Only the animals which are the most difficult to obtain are assigned for their sub