Volume 03 Item 08: Walter Edmund Roth Bulletin No. 18 Social and Individual Nomenclature, 1904-1906 - Page 74

page 74

in the top right hand corner of the page is the number 16
been overlooked, when returning home from a hunting party etc. Both sexes have thus been known to commit (can't read) but it is the males who are the worse offenders. Each family group has its own bit of land, the head (male) of the family owning it : inheritance passes through the blood-brothers and blood-sons who claim it conjointly, the last survivor of these ultimately owning it, whence it passes on again through blood-brothers and blood-sons conjointly again. The patches of zamia plants are the the only things which are apportioned among the women, each gin either before or at death's door bequeathing them to her daughter or others of the family, or even to outsiders. Trespass is not taken notice of as anything very serious : it results in a slanging, both parties indulging in the use of obscene epithets and reference to the private parts - the words so employed are different to the terms expressing the same parts as used in refined society. Theft is recognised among the gins with mutual slanging or by pelting one another with sticks or stones : among the men by fighting or sometimes by maiming, but such cases they may have to undergo retaliation. As a rule however, among the men, and where the question of theft is concerned, the offender when discovered will as often as not come forward to express contrition and with a promise not to let it recur, duck his head to receive a wommera-blow and thus settle things amicably at once. Fraud is punished by the ridicule of the community, but if involving serious consequences, the culprit is hammered with a wommera either by the father, blood or group-brother of the victim, the community acquiescing in its justice. Public ridicule is effected by painting an effigy of the offender on a large variety of bull-roarer (see sect. 48) and hanging it up on a tree patent to the gaze of all.
(C) against the state or community in general.