Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/87

 NGADHUNGI. 25 The Rev. W. Ellis, speaking of the Tahitians, says"The parings of the nails, a lock of the hair, the saliva from the mouth, or other, secretions from the body, or else a portion of the food which the person was to eat, this was considered as the vehicle by which the demon entered the person who afterwards became possessed..... The sorcerer took the hair, saliva, or other substance which had belonged to his victim, to his house, or marae, performed his incantations over it, and offered his prayers; the demon was then supposed to enter the substance (called tubu), and through it the individual who "suffered from the enchantment" ("Polynesian Researches," vol. ii., p. 228). When a person is ill he generally regards his sickness as the result of ngadhungi, and tries to discover who is the disease-maker. When he thinks that he has discovered him he puts down a ngadhungi to the fire, for the purpose of retaliating; that is, if he has one made of the bone of an animal from which his supposed enemy has eaten. And if he has not he tries to borrow one. Some time ago a blackfellow of my acquaintance, feeling himself unwell, as he supposed from the effects of this sorcery, rubbed himself over with soot in sign of desperation, and then taking his weapons went and fired two wurleys, and challenged the whole family to which he supposed the person who had bewitched him belonged, although he knew that the particular person whom he suspected of being the immediate agent was thirty miles away. I have seen as many as a dozen ngadhungi in a man’s basket, and have been told that one was for a man, another for a woman, another for a boy, and so on, mentioning the parties for whom they were intended. I also heard the man who had them say that when he died he should tell his relations to put them all to the fire, so as to be revenged on the people who may have accomplished his death; for no native regards death as natural, but always as the result of sorcery. Frequently, when a man has got the ngadhungi of another, he will go to him and say "I have your ngadhungi; what will you give me for it?" Per28