Thus while the headmen have certainly to perform what we should call civil duties, such as to inflict punishment for breaches of tribal custom, their principal functions are sacred or magical.​[1194] [Sidenote: Social importance of magicians among the aborigines of South-Eastern Australia.] Again, in the tribes of South-Eastern Australia the headman was often, sometimes invariably, a magician. Thus in the southern Wiradjuri tribe the headman was always a wizard or a medicine-man. There was one for each local {p336} division. He called the people together for the initiation ceremonies or to discuss matters of public importance.​[1195] In the Yerkla-mining tribe the medicine-men are the headmen; they are called _Mobung-bai_, from _mobung_, “magic.” They decide disputes, arrange marriages, conduct the ceremonies of initiation, and in certain circumstances settle the formalities to be observed in ordeals of battle. “In fact, they wield authority in the tribe, and give orders where others only make requests.”​[1196] Again, in the Yuin tribe there was a headman for each local division, and in order to be fitted for his office he had, among other qualifications, to be a medicine-man; above all he must be able to perform magical feats at the initiation ceremonies. The greatest headman of all was he who on these occasions could bring up the largest number of things out of his inside.​[1197] In fact the budding statesman and king must be first and foremost a conjuror in the most literal sense of the word. Some forty or fifty years ago the principal headman of the Dieri tribe was a certain Jalina piramurana, who was known among the colonists as the Frenchman on account of his polished manners. He was not only a brave and skilful warrior, but also a powerful medicine-man, greatly feared by the neighbouring tribes, who sent him presents even from a distance of a hundred miles. He boasted of being the “tree of life,” for he was the head of a totem consisting of a particular sort of seed which forms at certain times the chief vegetable food of these tribes. His people spoke of him as the plant itself (_manyura_) which yields the edible seed.​[1198] Again, an early writer on the tribes of South-Western Australia, near King George’s Sound, tells us that “the individuals who possess most influence are the _mulgarradocks_, or doctors. . . . A _mulgarradock_ is considered to possess the power of driving away wind or rain, as well as bringing down lightning or disease upon any object of their or others’ hatred,” and they also attempted to heal the sick.​[1199] On the {p337} whole, then, it is highly significant that in the most primitive society about which we are accurately informed it is especially the magicians or medicine-men who appear to have been in process of developing into chiefs. [Sidenote: Social importance of magicians in New Guinea.]