Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George's Sound In The Years 1840-1: Sent By The Colonists Of South Australia By Eyre, Edward John
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The Nar-Wij-Jerook Tribe Was Now Seen
Approaching.
The men were in a body, armed and painted, and the women and
children accompanying them a little on one side.
They occasionally
halted, and entered into consultation, and then, slackening their pace,
gradually advanced until within a hundred yards of the Moorunde tribe.
Here the men came to a full stop, whilst several of the women singled out
from the rest, and marched into the space between the two parties, having
their heads coated over with lime, and raising a loud and melancholy
wail, until they came to a spot about equi-distant from both, when they
threw down their cloaks with violence, and the bags which they carried on
their backs, and which contained all their worldly effects. The bags were
then opened, and pieces of glass and shells taken out, with which they
lacerated their thighs, backs, and breasts, in a most frightful manner,
whilst the blood kept pouring out of the wounds in streams; and in this
plight, continuing their wild and piercing lamentations, they moved up
towards the Moorunde tribe, who sat silently and immoveably in the place
at first occupied. One of the women then went up to a strange native, who
was on a visit to the Moorunde tribe and who stood neutral in the affair
of the meeting, and by violent language and frantic gesticulations
endeavoured to incite him to revenge the death of some relation or
friend. But he could not be induced to lift his spear against the people
amongst whom he was sojourning.
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