Whether Any Laws Exist Among Them For The Punishment
Of Offences Committed Against Society; Or Whether The Injured Party
In
All cases seeks for relief in private revenge, I will not positively affirm;
though I am strongly inclined to believe
That only the latter method prevails.
I have already said that they are divided into tribes; but what constitutes
the right of being enrolled in a tribe, or where exclusion begins and ends,
I am ignorant. The tribe of Cameragal is of all the most numerous
and powerful. Their superiority probably arose from possessing
the best fishing ground, and perhaps from their having suffered less
from the ravages of the smallpox.
In the domestic detail there may be novelty, but variety is unattainable.
One day must be very like another in the life of a savage. Summoned by
the calls of hunger and the returning light, he starts from his beloved
indolence, and snatching up the remaining brand of his fire, hastens
with his wife to the strand to commence their daily task. In general
the canoe is assigned to her, into which she puts the fire and pushes off
into deep water, to fish with hook and line, this being the province
of the women. If she have a child at the breast, she takes it with her.
And thus in her skiff, a piece of bark tied at both ends with vines,
and the edge of it but just above the surface of the water, she pushes out
regardless of the elements, if they be but commonly agitated.
While she paddles to the fishing-bank, and while employed there, the child
is placed on her shoulders, entwining its little legs around her neck
and closely grasping her hair with its hands.
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