given them a right to it. Such a singular condition of things could never have arisen but in an old over-populated country, the laws of which had acquired that immutable character which is conferred only by immemorial custom."[1]
There is evidence constantly cropping up in the narratives of travellers—evidence not always very clear—that there were areas in Australia common at certain periods, by prescriptive right, to strange tribes. To these the strangers would resort to procure what was there in profusion—it might be red-ochre, stones for tomahawks, fruits, or gums. Grey says that in one part of Western Australia, known to him—there may be, and probably are, many other localities—the acacia trees, growing in swampy plains, are literally loaded with a tragacynth-like gum (Kwon-nat), affording a sufficient supply of food to support a large assemblage of persons. These kwon-nat grounds are generally the spots at which the annual barter meetings of the natives are held; and during these, fun, frolic, and quarrelling of every description prevail.
Mr. Gideon S. Lang refers to this matter in his pamphlet, and states that "there is also the nurp, a sort of raspberry, which grows in large quantities over the sandhills on a run which I took up on the Glenelg. All the neighbouring tribes had the right to go there, and did so in large numbers when the fruit was in season. A hill in the interior of the Sydney district which produced a very hard stone, peculiarly suitable for the manufacture of stone tomahawks, was the subject of similar regulations; and so was a certain quarry of sandstone at St. Kilda, near Melbourne, which was peculiarly adapted for grinding down and sharpening the stone tomahawks."
That this much-despised people have, under certain circumstances, interests in common; that these should be respected, and that hostilities and deadly animosities during periods longer or shorter should be suspended or buried—suggest new views respecting their moral perceptions and the laws that govern their actions.
Amongst other savage races we find a community of property in places specially favored by the occurrence of rocks or clays or food which were a necessity or a luxury to tribes living far distant. Speaking of the Great Red Pipe Stone Quarry of the Coteau des Prairies, between the Minnesota and Missouri Rivers in the Far West, Catlin tells us "that this place should have been visited for centuries past by all the neighbouring tribes—who have hidden the war-club as they approached it, and stayed the cruelties of the scalping-knife, under the fear of the vengeance of the Great Spirit who overlooks it—will not seem strange or unnatural when their customs are known. That such has been the custom there is not a shadow of doubt, and that even so recently as to have been witnessed by hundreds and thousands of Indians of different tribes now living, and from many of whom I have personally drawn the information; and as additional and still more conclusive evidence, here are to be seen the totems and arms of the different tribes who have visited this place for ages past, deeply engraven on the quartz rocks."[2]
- ↑ The History of Australian Discovery and Colonization, by Samuel Bennett, Sydney, 1867, pp. 268-9.
- ↑ Illustrations of the Manners, &c., of the North American Indians, by George Catlin, vol.II., p. 167.
