104 ON THE ORGANISATION OF AUSTRALIAN TRIBES. 
snake. He has been taught to believe that should he do so he would become sick, 
and gradually pme away and die, uttering the sounds peculiar to the bird, reptile, or 
animal eaten; and similar beliefs are so strong in probably all Australian tribes that 
well established cases can be given of men who have died through the dread 
produced by consciousness of having broken such a law. 
But there are other rules of conduct which are observed under other than 
supernatural sanctions. A man who is believed to have caused the death of another 
by arts magical is, among some tribes, ¢.g., the Dieri, killed by a Pinya,* or armed 
party, which is commissioned by the Council of the Tribe, or more commonly in 
other tribes, e.g., the Kurnai, is compelled to appear before the assembled tribe and 
submit to an ordeal of spear-throwing, or the recourse to some other weapon. Lesser 
offences, such as the abduction of women within the tribe, are also, in certain cases, 
dealt with by the offender submitting to a similar ordeal. 
These offences are clearly to be considered in the light of acts of violence 
towards an individual of a kindred, or injurious to them. But there are others 
which may be called offences against the moral code—such, for instance, as the 
cohabitation together of persons too nearly related. In most tribes such offenders 
would be killed. 
It is evident that there must be some executive power by which such offences as 
the above are dealt with and punished. 
It is sometimes said that this executive power 1s no more than public opinion, 
but public opinion as such is merely a moral influence, and requires some executive 
to give effect to its wishes or its commands. Mr. E. M. Curr, in his late work on 
“The Australian Race,” says: “The power which enforces custom in our tribes is for 
the most part an impersonal one.”} ‘This “impersonal authority’ must have been 
either public opinion or a supernatural sanction. According to Mr. Curr it is 
‘education,’ that is to say, a blackfellow is educated from infancy in the belief that 
departure from the customs of his tribe is invariably followed by one at least of many 
possible evils, such as becoming prematurely grey, being afflicted by opthalmia, skin 
eruptions, or sickness, but, above all, that it exposes the offender to the danger of 
death from sorcery.{ This is undoubtedly true as to food, or as to some rules 
regulating the sexes—for instance, that a novice must not receive food from the hand 
of a woman (Kurnai tribe), but it does not account for the actual punishment inflicted 
for such breaches of custom, or for offences against the tribe. Mr. Curr denies, in 
* The Pinya custom has been described by Mr. 8. Gason, whose statements as to the customs of the Dieri tribe are 
of the first authority, and I became acquainted with the existence of a similar custom in tribes allied to the Dieri during 
my explorations in Central Australia. We may see in the Pinya clearly a custom in which the offender is pursued by the 
avengers of blood, the Blutracher, under the sanction of the elders of the tribe. 
{ Op. cit., p. 52. 
+ PB. 54. 
