the Adelaide Tribe. 
119 
to establish in their minds the forgotten ideas of social 
justice. Yet if they are to be protected by European 
power, they must be subjected to European law. Last 
year two natives were hung, whose relations are now 
called Ngarri-warinya , wihandi , or willo , son, father, or 
brother of the Rope. 
The answer of the Adelaide tribe to the Wirrameyu , 
or bushmen, who came down to charm the river, in 
revenge for this proceeding, was as follows ;—“ Charm 
not; it is now enough. The white man has and dis¬ 
tributes food. Enough, that those two men have been 
hanged : we are other men.”* 
Here is the true answer to the charge of tyranny in 
subjecting these people to the penalties of European 
law. The white man has and distributes food—he is 
generous to a selfish race. And the answer is true in a 
deeper sense than those who gave it can as yet conceive. 
He has food, not for the hungry alone, but for the igno¬ 
rant, and with him is the bread of which whoso eateth 
shall never die. The parent might as well be accused of 
tyranny over his child, as those men who have brought 
the chastisement of long-forgotten law' to bear on these 
childish and selfish beings—beings who kill their own 
offspring^ merely for being troublesome. 
Of course, the question here is not of the justice of 
any particular sentence, but of the right which Europeans 
have to execute their laws on savages who have none of 
their own. 
It may be worth while to notice a curious ordeal which 
they use in cases where murder is suspected by an 
unknown hand. The body is carried about on a bier 
-w 
* “ Charm not; it is enough. The Europeans, supplied with food, 
dwell here. It is quite sufficient that these two - men have been hung 
— we will live separately.” — T. 
\ By suffocating them over the fire. — T. 
