Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/97

 35 full inquiry, he is found to have committed the crime, he will be punished according to the degree of guilt. If it were a case of murder, with malice aforethought, he would be handed over to his own clan to be put to death by spearing. If it should be what we call manslaughter, he would receive a good thrashing, or be banished from his clan, or compelled to go to his mother’s relations. All cases of infraction of law or custom were tried thus. A common sentence for any public offence was so many blows on the head. A man was compelled to hold his head down to receive the stroke of the waddy, and would be felled like a bullock; then get up and take another and another, until it was a wonder how it was that his skull was not fractured. It is this tendi which so often causes natives to leave work suddenly and mysteriously, and go off to some meeting of their people. An interesting trial is to come off, in which, perhaps, they are witnesses, or, at any rate, concerned. I have been at the tendi. I find the following entry in my journal:  I went to the camp to-day. They were holding the tendi. There are about 200 natives here, and they were nearly all present. It appeared to be a united tendi of two clans which had met to settle some dispute. There were forty-six men present, who took part in the talking, either as councillors or witnesses, I suppose. The tendi took place at a distance from the camp, and was arranged in two parties all decently seated on the ground, opposite each other. On one side was our clan, with King Peter sitting in a very dignified manner at their head as president, and on the other was the Coorong clan, over whom old Minora presided. Several men of the Murray and Mundoo clans sat at the side, between the two parties, and joined in the discussion, apparently as amici curiæ. The matter under consideration was a case of suspected murder. The Point Malcolm clan were accusers, and the Coorong clan defendants. A young man had died under suspicious circumstances; the latter clan asserted the death to have been purely accidental, while the former brought forward witnesses who deposed to reasons for suspecting that certain men of the Coorong had been guilty