A TRIBAL WAR

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 47, Issue 2666, 6 September 1937, Page 5

A TRIBAL WAR

CAUSE—AN ELOPING WIFE ABORIGINALS MOBILISING. A black Helen is the cause of a pending tribal war among the aborigines of Bathurst and Melville Islands, off the north coast of Australia. Trouble about this slim lubra has begun a great mobilisation. Manyatopi, a member of the Monopolor tribe, had three wives, but recently he cast out the eldest, as being of no further use to him. Then Paddy, another member of the same tribe, abducted the youngest and best worker, a lubra named Eileen, and her piccaninny, and eloped into the interior of Melville Island. Manyatopi thereupon sent out stick messages to all members of his tribe, calling on them to return to the island and assist him in the fight for the return of his lubra and piccaninny. The stick messages summon the recipients to warfare with spears to vindicate the honour of an old man of the tribe. They have reached even as far as Darwin, where many of the Melville and Bathurst Islanders live. They carry the declaration of war in a few weird symbols. Monsignor Gsell, head of the Bathurst Island Mission, and the leading authority on the islanders’ customs, said that he had no doubt the rival factions would engage in a spear battle. In his twenty-five years’ residence at the mission, many such fights had taken place, and nothing could prevent them. It was seldom that many lives were lost in such fights, although numerous cases of spear-wounding occurred. It may take at least two years to mobilise the warriors, and they have to find their way home in canoes and luggers willing to grant them working passages, but they will go just the same—even the white-coated houseboy of a Darwin Government official who received his stick message. By the time the battle takes place, the deserted husband may be dead, and the young lubra stolen from him may be the mother of her abductor’s children, but honour nevertheless must be satisfied. Those who know the natives declare that the old husband may be more concerned at the loss of his principal “tucker” gatherer than with his honour.