CHAPTER IV.
PROPERTY IN LAND--DWELLINGS--WEAPONS--IMPLEMENTS--GOVERNMENT--CUSTOMS-- SOCIAL RELATIONS--MARRIAGE--NOMENCLATURE.
It has generally been imagined, but with great injustice, as well as incorrectness, that the natives have no idea of property in land, or proprietary rights connected with it.

Nothing can be further from the truth than this assumption, although men of high character and standing, and who are otherwise benevolently disposed towards the natives, have distinctly denied this right, and maintained that the natives were not entitled to have any choice of land reserved for them out of their own possessions, and in their respective districts.
In the public journals of the colonies the question has often been discussed, and the same unjust assertion put forth.

A single quotation will be sufficient to illustrate the spirit prevailing upon this point.
It is from a letter on the subject published in South Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840:--"It would be difficult to define what conceivable proprietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a sufficiency of pieces of white chalk and red ochre wherewith to bedaub their bodies for their filthy corrobberies." Many similar proofs might be given of the general feeling entertained respecting the rights of the Aborigines, arising out of their original possession of the soil.

It is a feeling, however, that can only have originated in an entire ignorance of the habits, customs, and ideas of this people.

As far as my own observation has extended, I have found that particular districts, having a radius perhaps of from ten to twenty miles, or in other cases varying according to local circumstances, are considered generally as being the property and hunting-grounds of the tribes who frequent them.