ABORIGINE'S REVENGE.

Putaruru Press, 5 January 1928, Page 3

ABORIGINE'S REVENGE.

A GHASTLY CUSTOM. “ Bone-pointing ” Sequel. Among the customs of primitive Australian aborigines, none has mystified the white man more than the natives' belief that a “medicine man" of a tnoe can secure a man's death by pointing a bone from a human body at him. So ingrained is the certainty of natives wk j become victims of such a medicine man that the bone-pointing ceremony will ensure a marked man’s death that the explanation accepted by white men is that the power of the bone-pointer lies in the ail-conquering influence of suggestion. In other words, the fear of the bone-pointer \s curse is responsible for death, and not the evil spirit which the bone-pointer is supposed to command. In some corners of Australia, the medicine man is still a power for natives to fear. Evidence of this is forthcomng from Palm Island, eff the North Queensland coast, near Towns-

ville, where detectives have recently nvestigated a queer story of the revenge of an aged aborigine on a medicine man whom he believed to have been responsible for his son’s •death. There wore a number of native camps on Palm Island and at one of them a native, Tommy Burketown. had acquired a reputation as a medicine man. It was believed by the natives that if Tommy pointed a bone at an enemy death would follow in six hours, and when an aborig : ne, Coldwater, died suddenly, his father swore vengeance on the medicine man. Tommy was lured away from his camp, arrested by a native policeman, chained up, an.d then attacked by Coldwater's father and several other aborigines. Tommy was taken to a gully, and there a terrible tribal custom was carried out. Strips of flesh from the shouVW to the hip hone were cut from his bed v, and the human steaks were handed out among the mutilators with the remark, “this piece is for you." Before, the aborigines had time to prepare them for eating. detectives summoned from the mainland had reach ed the scene of the atrocity. They found the erstwhile medicine man senseless w»th his r : bs and spine bare,'! bv the mutilations carried out on him The defectives arrested seven of the natives and charged them with attempting to kill Toni in v. The victim, do spite his terrible wounds, ts not likely to die. and the pi ee PS of flesh cut from him will be used as gruesome exhibit® when the charges n gainsf his fellowtribesmen are heard in Court.