Note 197 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

4º. Trade and industry. Bartering is not at all unknown among the Australians. Fraser, speaking of N. S. Wales, remarks: “I have already spoken of pipe-clay and ruddle as articles of trade; the Mindi-mindi gatherings are the markets at which this trade is carried on. The necessity for these fairs is not far to seek. A black man’s own “taurai” does not furnish everything he requires for his daily life. In it there may be food enough, but he wants suitable stone for an axe, wood for his spears, and “bumerangs” and shields and clubs, flint for cutting and skinning, gum to be used as cement, and lumps of gritty sandstone, on which to sharpen his stone-axe; for adornment, the pipe-clay and the red-ochre are much valued, and so are swan-down feathers and the rose-coloured crests of a certain kind of cockatoo; some of these he can supply, and for them he gets in barter others that he wants. Then also there are manufactured articles which he can give in exchange,—cloaks, rugs, baskets, knitted bags, nets, weapons, and tools; most of these articles bear the “brand” of the maker. In this way the black man’s wants are supplied by the mutual interchange of commodities. I suppose that, at these fairs, the usual amount of haggling goes on in the making of bargains, but there is no quarreling; for, during the time, universal brotherhood prevails. The fairs are held whenever there is a need for them”197. Intertribal commerce is also carried on by the Narrinyeri and Dieri198. It seems, indeed, that there is hardly any savage tribe, among which the interchange of commodities is quite unknown.199 And in N. S. Wales it is not only the spontaneous products of nature that are exchanged, but manufactured articles, so the trade requires industry. Yet trade and industry are not nearly so fully developed here as on the Pacific Coast. Nowhere are there particulars given, showing that any Australian tribe is, like the Koniagas of the Pacific Coast, “adapted to labour and commerce rather than to war and hunting.” On the Pacific Coast the coast tribes exchange their manufactured goods for the raw products of the hinterland; but in Australia there is nothing but hinterland.