In the same district, when it becomes known that a happy event is pending, the husband goes out with his lubra and kills a certain animal or collects certain vegetable products, which he hands to the woman to eat, believing that these articles when swallowed will ensure a successful birth.
To return to our story: Maiyarra was groaning with pains in the abdomen. She was alone with the old woman Indarrakutta, who was her mother-in-law, well beyond hearing distance from the main camp. A small fire was burning sluggishly by their side and throwing a thin column of bluish white smoke into the air. Maiyarra was sitting upon a small patch of ground cleared of the burrs, with her legs stretched before her. She was propping her writhing body, sloping slightly backwards, with her arms against the ground. The old woman sat closely behind, with her arms thrown around Maiyarra’s waist, and with her lower limbs, bent in the knee, enclosing and pressing against the younger woman’s buttocks on either side. Occasionally the old woman would relinquish her hold and make for the fire, over which she warmed her hands to subsequently massage the patient’s abdomen. Now and then she might even rub warm ashes over it. Then the two sat in patient expectation, and, whenever there came a pain, the old woman would tighten her grip, while she spoke encouragingly to the parturient Maiyarra. This method is very generally employed, except that when the final stage has arrived, the Arunndta and other neighbouring tribes in central Australia request the gin to squat on her toes, with her buttocks resting over her heels.
The event is almost invariably spontaneous. In my experience I have very rarely seen complications, and then usually when the lubra has been living under civilized conditions.
Twins are very exceptionally seen; we do not mean to imply, however, that multiple births do not occur more often than one sees or hears of. No authentic observations are available to satisfy our curiosity in regard to this point. We have been repeatedly assured that when twins are born, one has arrived as the result of the evil spirit’s witchcraft. The child, one is informed, will do no good for itself, and, on account of the evil within it, it will contaminate others with whom it comes into contact, and, if it were allowed to grow up, it would be in league with the evil spirit, whom it would look upon as a brother, and to whom it would betray all the tribal secrets. The evil spirit would carry this information to the enemy and their tribe would surely be wiped out of existence. In consequence of all this, the suspected one of the two infants is destroyed, usually by one of the old women in attendance, who places a red-hot coal in its mouth or smothers it with sand.
The placenta is waited for, and then the umbilical cord is severed two or three inches from the child’s abdomen in one of the following ways: It may be twisted off, cut with a sharp fragment of shell or splinter of rock, or pinched off with the finger-nails, or even bitten off with the teeth. Another method is to batter it through with a stone, after which the small remaining portion is packed with warm ashes. When it falls off, it is tied around the child’s neck with a piece of fur-string, where it is worn for a while as an amulet. The placenta is either burned or buried.
Intentional interferences with pregnancy are rare among the unsophisticated tribes, but rather frequent when the natives are living under more civilized conditions. At Fowler’s Bay a gin, who wishes to rid herself of prospective motherhood, collects a number of black beetles, known as “yarralyi,” which she roasts and reduces to powder. Of the powder she rubs some into her armpits, and some over her breasts and pubes.
PLATE VIII
Old Kai-Kai, the leading medicine man of the western Arunndta.
“The medicine man is not so much an individual who has the knowledge of medicinal values of herbs and surgical practices as one who is the recognized sorcerer....”