In such encounters the women appear to suffer most, and in a great fight one or more of them may be killed; but the warriors are not often mortally wounded during an engagement.[1] Several of the men may be seriously hurt; and if the wounds be caused by jagged spears, they may be rendered helpless for a long time; but Nature is kind to creatures of her own rearing, and a gash that would kill a civilized European is easily repaired if inflicted on a black man, who has no mechanical contrivances, nor bitter medicines, nor spirituous liquors to vex him in his pain.[2] After a very serious battle, some of the conquered may be murdered—and in committing these crimes there is evinced a malignity which is not to be extenuated even amongst the most savage natives.
- ↑ Fights amongst the natives were common in the early days of the settlement at Sydney. Collins relates that hostile tribes were frequently engaged in combat, often during two days and more, and that much blood was shed, but there was scarcely ever any loss of life.—P. 303.
He says, also, that the women almost invariably are the cause of quarrels and fights, and sometimes, when hostile tribes meet, a woman begins the battle, scolding the enemy, and hitting the men on the head with a club.—Collins, 1804, pp. 375-6.
- ↑ "The natives pay but little regard to the wounds they receive in duels, or which are inflicted on them as punishments; their sufferings from all injuries are much less than those which Europeans would undergo in similar circumstances; this may probably arise from their abstemious mode of life, and from their never using any other beverage than water. A striking instance of their apathy with regard to wounds was shown on one occasion in a fight which took place in the village of Perth, in Western Australia. A native man received a wound in that portion of his frame which is only presented to enemies when in the act of flight, and the spear, which was barbed, remained sticking in the wound; a gentleman who was standing by watching the fray, regarded the man with looks of pity and commiseration, which the native perceiving, came up to him, holding the spear (still in the wound) in one hand, and turning round, so as to expose the injury he had received, said in the most moving terms, 'Poor fellow, sixpence give it 'um.'"—North-West and Western Australia. Grey,
vol. II., pp. 244-5.
A gentleman, formerly residing in Wellington Valley, in New South Wales, and holding a high position under the Government, informs me that on one occasion he saw a native pierced by a spear. It entered his chest, and the point came out under the blade-bone. When the spear was withdrawn, the man was seen by a surgeon, who declared that portions of the lungs were adhering to the spear. The sufferer plugged the holes with gum and grass, and recovered so rapidly as to be able to walk a distance of eighteen miles after the lapse of a week.
Another correspondent states that a blackfellow whose abdomen was perforated by a bullet used grass and gum in the same manner, and never seemed to suffer much from the wound.
Collins states that a black who had had a barbed spear driven into his loins, close by the vertebræ of the back, had recourse to the surgeons of the settlements. Their utmost skill failed to extract the weapon, and he went away trusting to nature for a recovery. He walked about for several weeks with the spear unmoved, even after suppuration had taken place. Finally the spearhead was extracted by War-re-weer, his wife, who fixed her teeth in it and drew it out. He recovered in a short time.—Collins, 1804, p. 316.
"Leigh relates the case of an Australian whose temporal bone had been fractured by a blow, and the temporal artery divided, and of another whose ulna and radius had been fractured in a terrible manner; that the first took part on the following day in some public meeting, and that, though worms appeared in the arm of the second, the recovery in both took place without any operation or even dressing."—Introduction to Anthropology, by Dr. Theodor Waitz, 1863, p. 126.
I have from time to time examined a large number of the skulls of natives, and I have seen on many of them indentations and marks of injuries, evidently, from the state of the bones and the sutures, inflicted long prior to death; and I have often wondered how Nature, unassisted, could repair such serious hurts. All the evidence I have collected goes to show that the native, uncontaminated by association with Europeans, is as independent of adventitious aids, in the cure of wounds and fractures, as the wild animals of the forest.
