THE
DIEYERIE TRIBE OF AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.
PART I.
THE TRIBE, COUNTRY, NEIGHBOURS, GOOD AND EVIL QUALITIES,
LOVE OF BARTERING, FOOD, DOGS, TRADITIONS OF THE CREATION
AND OF THE SUN, SUBDIVISION INTO FAMILIES.
The Dieyerie tribe numbers about 230, the four neighbouring tribes,—the Yandrawontha, Yarrawaurka, Auminie, and Wongkaooroo, about 800—in all about 1030.
Their country is about 630 miles north of Adelaide, the capital of the Province of South Australia, and is bounded at the most southerly point by Mount Freeling, at the most northerly point by Pirigundi Lake (on the Cooper River), at the most easterly point by Lake Hope, and at the most westerly point at a part yet unnamed, but about eighty miles from Lake Hope. This country is traversed by Cooper's Creek—there only a chain of lakes without any defined channel.
Their language is understood by the four neighbouring tribes, with whom they keep up ostensibly a friendly intercourse, inviting and being invited to attend each other's festivals, and mutually bartering; but in secret they entertain a most deadly enmity to each other, although at the same time believing that they came from a parent stock, and even intermarrying.
A more treacherous race I do not believe exists. They imbibe treachery in infancy, and practise it until death, and have no
