reports by literate Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
when the herders and their livestock seemed to threaten their control of the
land and its resources, the aborigines resisted. Treating sheep and cattle as
fair game, they shot them with their poisoned arrows. Symbiotic relations
often developed, however.Herders provided hunters with milk in exchange
for game, and this sometimes led to structured relations. Hunter clients
served their herder patrons, not only providing them with meat but also
defending them against human and animal aggressors and even looking
after their sheep and cattle. Eventually, aboriginal individuals, and some-
14