Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/274

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248
NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA
CH.

if possible to get that hair back. Spies having preceded the party, his camp was attacked before daylight, and he was killed. His wife was captured, and became the wife of the leader of the party, a White-cockatoo man.

In these tribes a widow plastered her head with clay, or burned gypsum, and renewed it for six or seven months. It was not customary among the Wotjobaluk for a widow to be taken by her deceased husband's brother. They had a feeling against this practice, which was explained to me once by one of the old men, because it was unpleasant to lie in the camp in the place of the deceased brother, and thus to be always reminded of him.

The widow did not remarry for two or three months after the white clay or gypsum had worn off, when her deceased husband's brother might say to her, "I think that it is time that you looked out for a husband." The case of one of my native informants is worth quoting, not only because of the tribal intermarriages of which it is an instance, but also showing the position of some men belonging to the borderland of one tribe, as to the tribes beyond. He was one of the Jajaurung living on their extreme eastern boundary, in the neighbourhood of St. Arnaud. To the west of the river Avon was the eastern division of the Jupagalk tribe, with the class names Krokitch and Kaputch, his class name being Bunjil, or in the Jajaurung language Wrappil, which is eagle-hawk.

His grandfather went to a place in the Jupagalk country, now called Pine Plains, where he obtained a wife, and lived with her tribe most of his time. His son was, however, born in the Jajaurung country, but also claimed the country of his mother. He lived in part of it and obtained his wife from Morton Plains. She was the daughter of a woman of the Leitchi-leitchi tribe from Kulkaine, on the south side of the Murray River, on the opposite side to Euston. This woman was Kilpara, which is the equivalent of Krokitch, from her mother. He speaks the languages of the three tribes in each of which he had relatives. The country which he claims is firstly that of his grandfather and father, namely, Marr in the Jajaurung country, and a place in it called