Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/92

 30 NEILYERI.

many a life has been taken. It is called neilyeri. When a heathen native wants a method of revenge he takes, either a spearhead, a piece of bone (often human), or else a piece of iron, sharpens it to a keen point, and cuts it a convenient length, generally about six or eight inches. He then sticks it into the fleshy part of a putrid corpse, and keeps it there for some weeks. He then takes either a bunch of spun hair, or feathers, and soaks them in the fat of a corpse extracted for the purpose. In this he wraps up the point of the short dagger-like neilyeri, and thus possesses himself of a most deadly poisoned weapon. Let him only get near his enemy when he is asleep, and a single prick with the neilyeri will cause him to be inoculated with the virus of death, and he will be doomed to horrible agonies and probably death. The effect is exactly the same as when a surgeon, in dissecting a human body, scratches himself with his scalpel, and, as we know, produces serious if not fatal results, called blood poisoning. The old natives are well acquainted with the virulent nature of the fluids of a corpse; and I have no doubt that they strenuously resist every attempt to make them bury their dead in order to retain this means of revenge in their hands. I heard of a case some time ago of the practice of neilyeri. A native of Mundoo Island was sleeping in his wurley, when he suddenly felt something prick his foot. He jumped up and saw a man by his foot doing something, and immediately seized him. The fellow burst from his grasp, dropping a small sharp pocket knife as he did so, and escaped; but the assailed person could see in his hand the bunch of spun hair, containing the deadly poison. The intending murderer had pricked his victim a little too sharply with the knife and awoke him; if he had been more skilful he would have just raised the skin sufficiently to draw blood, and then gently dabbed the wound with the venom of death, and departed. Probably the victim would have lost either his leg or his life. Neilyeri was not the invention of the Narrinyeri, it came from the upper river, but one can easily conceive how easily the old