# The Aborigines of Victoria/Volume 1/Introduction

INTRODUCTION.
Throughout Australia the natives exhibit a general conformity to one pattern, as regards features, color, and mental character. A man from Southern Gippsland would be recognised as an Australian by the inhabitants of Port Essington, and a native of King George's Sound would be surely known if taken to York Peninsula. The race however, is not pure in all parts. The people of the islands of Torres Straits and the natives of New Guinea visit the mainland, and Australians cross the straits to New Guinea. They intermarry, and the half-breeds mix necessarily with their southern neighbours, and this may account for the appearance, as low down as the latitude of Wide Bay, of men with thrum-like hair.
Cape York is distant no more than ninety miles from the shores of New Guinea, the straits are studded with islands, and the coral reefs offer so much protection that the sea is usually as calm as the waters of a pond. The natives easily traverse this smooth sea in their large canoes; and there is consequently regular traffic between the peoples of the mainland and the smaller and greater islands.
The infusion of Papuan blood may not have entirely changed the character of any tribe, but it is there; and it is apparent where the Papuans have never been. This affects the people of the north-eastern coast. On the north the Australians mix occasionally with the Chinese.
There have been found on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria "earthen jars, bamboos, lattice work, remains of hats made of palm leaves, pieces of blue cotton, boats' rudders, a wooden anchor, and other articles." On the north-west they have been visited periodically, for how many years no one can tell, by the Malays. The Malays go thither during the season of the trepang fishery, and Capt. King found on the beach of Vansittart Bay a broken earthen pot belonging to them.
Stokes, too, mentions his finding a broken jar on Turtle Island, which it was supposed had been left by some of the Macassar people, who are occasionally blown in upon that part of the coast.
Such influences as these have been at work probably for ages, and yet the effects are scarcely perceptible, either in the appearance of the natives themselves or in their arms or in their works of art—save perhaps over a limited ​area on the north-east coast, where the Australians build and sail canoes altogether different from those known elsewhere.
The Australian type is well marked. The Australian differs from the Papuan in form and in color—from the Tasmanian less perhaps in the features of the face than in the form of the body, in color, and in the hair. Still less does the Australian show any resemblance to the Polynesian, the Malayan, or the Chinese. He is darker, and his eyes are horizontal. If he has not a better head, he has probably, from what is known of him, a brain of a different quality. In his myths, his tales, and his superstitions, he differs from the Polynesians, the Malays, and the Chinese. If he is not a poet, he has in him the elements of poetry; and in many of his legends there is much that is not unlike the earlier forms of poetic conceptions that distinguish the Aryan race from other races that were subject to the same local influences but derived from them no such inspirations as the ancient Sanscrit peoples embodied in their traditions.
The natives of Australia dislike labor; and their muscles and their hands are those of sportsmen or hunters. It would be impossible to find in a tribe of Australians such hands as are seen amongst the working classes in Europe. An English ploughman might perhaps insert two of his fingers in the hole of an Australian's shield, but he could do no more.
The Australian can endure fatigue, but he is not one to bear burdens, to dig laboriously, or to suffer restraint. He likes to exert himself when exertion is pleasurable, but not for ulterior purposes will he slave, as the white man slaves, nor would he work as the negro works, under the lash.
He is courageous when opposed to a mortal enemy, and timid in the darkness of night when he believes that wicked spirits are abroad; he is cruel to his foes, and kind to his friends; he will look upon infanticide without repugnance, but he is affectionate in the treatment of the children that are permitted to live; he will half-murder a girl in order to possess her as a wife, but he will protect her and love her when she resigns herself to his will. He is a murderer when his tribe requires a murder to be done; but in a fight he is generous, and takes no unfair advantage. He is affectionate towards his relatives, and respectful and dutiful in his behaviour to the aged. He is hospitable. He has many very good qualities and many very bad ones; and in the contrarieties of his mental constitution there is much to remind us of the peculiarities of the people of our own race.
As may be supposed, there were no insane persons and no idiots amongst the Australians, and suicide was unknown when they were living in their wild state.
As soon as the white man established himself on the rich pastoral lands of Victoria, and the natives were driven first from one spot and then from another, in order that the cattle and sheep of the invaders might feed peaceably and grow fat, tribes that perhaps had never met before were compelled to mingle. The ancient land marks were obliterated, the ancient boundaries had ceased to have any meaning, and the people, confused and half-stupefied by the new and extraordinary character of the circumstances so suddenly forced upon ​them, almost forgot the duties their tribal laws imposed upon them when they were brought face to face with strange blacks. They speared the cattle of the settler, stole his stores, murdered his shepherds at lonely out-stations, and, unable to combine and offer determined resistance to the invaders, they were undoubtedly in many cases the more savage and cruel when they succeeded in getting the whites into their power. These offences compelled the settlers to make reprisals—to take measures in short to retain possession of the country; and many of the stories told of the olden time are not much to the credit of the Europeans. Neither the rifle nor the pistol, however, was so effectual in destroying the natives as the diseases and vices introduced by the pioneers. Arms were used, and perhaps very often in righteous self-defence; but it was the kindness of the civilized immigrant that swept off the native population. His spirituous liquors, and his attentions to the black man's wives, soon made havoc amongst the savages.
Very different estimates have been made of the numbers of natives who were living in that part of Australia now known as Victoria when the first white settlers arrived. Sir Thomas Mitchell saw very few natives, and in the parts he explored—amounting in the aggregate to about one-seventh of the continent—he believed there were no more than 6,000 Aboriginals. This estimate is too low. Mr. E. S. Parker thought there were 7,500 in Victoria, Mr. Wm. Thomas 6,000, Mr. Robinson 6,000, and my own estimate, from facts I have collected, is 3,000. The mean of the whole, including Sir Thomas Mitchell's low estimate, is 4,500.
It must not be forgotten that long prior to the explorations of Sir Thomas Mitchell the native population had suffered severely from a horrible disease which, there is every reason to believe, was introduced by the whites. Smallpox had destroyed large numbers; and it is not probable, even after the lapse of forty years, when Sir Thomas explored the Darling and the tributaries of the Murray, that the several tribes had recovered the losses they had sustained by the terrible affliction that first made itself manifest at Point Maskeleyne.
In Gippsland there were certainly more than one thousand natives; now the number is about two hundred. The two Melbourne tribes numbered in 1838 two hundred and ninety-two, and at the present time there are perhaps not twenty left. The Geelong tribe, when the first settler built his hut on the banks of the River Barwon, was composed of one hundred and seventy-three persons at least; in 1853, about twenty years after, only thirty-four remained; and I believe there is now not more than one alive. The "petty nation"—the Jajowurrong, consisting of seven tribes—that once occupied the basin of the Loddon and the country towards the west, has been dispersed, and there are very few of that sept to be found anywhere. The Goulburn tribes, that of Omeo, and many of those that formerly inhabited the banks of the River Murray, have disappeared. There are remnants of nearly all the tribes, however, in various parts of the colony, or persons who by birth are nearly or remotely connected with the extinct tribes; and because of the exertions of the noblemen and gentlemen who have at various times held the high office of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, much has been done to ameliorate ​the condition of the natives that survived the first contact with the vices and contaminations of the whites.
And the Government of Victoria has done much to benefit them. The Parliament of Victoria has been liberal in its grants of money, and stations have been formed, schools established, and lands reserved for the use and for the improvement of the blacks. Missionaries—able, earnest, and thoughtful men—have given their time, their energies, and their abilities to work they believe will have fruitful results. Some of the gentlemen in Victoria—clergymen—who have education and abilities that would place them in the first rank in their profession, have voluntarily sacrificed all hopes of preferment, and have devoted their lives to the task of ameliorating the condition of our native population, knowing that, whatever measure of success may follow on their labors, no reward will be theirs, and perhaps not even a grateful memory of their services will survive.
The natives of Victoria were under the protection of guardians during the period extending from the 1st July 1851 to the 18th June 1860, and the aggregate sum expended under that system was £14,181 8s. The results were not such as to satisfy the colonists. The blacks wandered from place to place, and everywhere readily obtained the means of purchasing intoxicating liquors. There were few children, and the condition of the people generally was deplorable. In 1858 a select committee of the Legislative Council was appointed, on the motion of the Honorable T. McCombie, to enquire into their state, and to suggest means for alleviating their wants; and a report containing many very interesting statements from colonists in all parts of Victoria was printed in February 1859. On the 18th June 1860 a Board was appointed for the Protection of the Aborigines, and on the 11th November 1869 an Act was passed providing for their protection and management.
The moneys expended under this system amount altogether to more than £100,000.
Savages and barbarians are kind to their offspring. When a child is born in Australia, and it is determined by the parents that it shall not be destroyed, every care is taken of it, and the mother also receives for a brief period all those attentions which are proper under the circumstances.
The mother usually carries her infant in her opossum rug, which is so folded as to form a sort of bag at her back; and this is not at all an inconvenient position for the infant, as it enjoys all the comforts which the young of the kangaroo is entitled to when in the marsupium. In the northern parts of Australia—in Arnhem Land—where the natives do not make rugs, the infant's legs are placed over the shoulders of the mother; she holds the legs in her hands when necessary, and the little creature grasps with its small hands her abundant hair.
It is worthy of remark that the practice of placing infants born near the sea-shore in hot sand, from which all sticks, stones, and rough materials have been removed, is known not only in Australia, but also in New Guinea; and adults, on the northern coast, sometimes scoop holes in the sand, cover themselves, and sleep there.
​The Australian mother has no great reason to rejoice when a babe is born. As soon as she can move about—perhaps after the lapse of twenty-four hours or more—she is obliged to resume her duties in the camp. She is the servant of her husband; and sometimes she is compelled to carry, as well as her baby, heavy loads, and to march with the tribe as it seeks fresh hunting-grounds or repairs to old-established cooking-places.
The Australian child is precocious. It begins to look about for food almost as soon as the young of the kangaroo. A child has a little stick placed in its hands, and it follows the example of older children, and digs out small roots and the larvae of insects.
Its education begins at an early age. Like the natives of Africa, of Fiji, of Borneo, and other parts where civilization, as regards some of the tribes, is yet unknown, games of skill, so contrived as to exercise the children in useful arts, are played. The males amongst the Australians are taught to throw the spear and to use the shield; and the females are instructed in the art of weaving cord and making baskets.
That the children are sometimes neglected is true, but as a rule they are kindly treated.
The parents do not use any of those contrivances for producing distortion which are common in other countries.
When, for reasons that are satisfactory to themselves, they decide to kill a newly-born infant, they are often unnecessarily cruel; and though infanticide amongst savages is probably a custom which has its origin in the peculiarity of the conditions under which they exist, and not in its nature a crime as it is in civilized communities, yet the details which are given by various observers make one forget this, and regard their deeds with the same abhorrence as those so constantly presented to notice in the daily records of the life of races that possess all the advantages of culture and refinement.
Young mothers kill the first-born child because it is a burden, because it is weakly, perhaps because it is deformed. She has to find food, to build her husband's miam, to fetch water, and to be ready at all times to obey the commands of her protector; and the temptation to follow the custom of her tribe would not always be overcome by the maternal instinct.
In the laws known to her, infanticide is a necessary practice, and one which, if disregarded, would, under certain circumstances, be disapproved of; and the disapproval would be marked by punishment, not so degrading perhaps, but nearly as severe as that inflicted by the lower class of whites when their wives displease them. Instead of the hob-nailed shoe, the Australian uses a weapon of war—a waddy.
It is curious to find that the ancient custom of naming a child from some slight circumstance that occurs at its birth is common throughout Australia. Like the nomadic Arabs and the Kaffirs of Africa, they look for a sign; and the appearance at the time of birth of a kangaroo, or an emu, or the event happening near some particular spot, or under the shelter of a tree, decides by what name the infant shall be called. This name is not the one by which a man will be known in after-life. Another is given on his initiation to rank in the ​tribe; and if his career should be marked by any striking event, he will then receive a fitting designation, and his old name will be perhaps forgotten. Or, if he has had conferred on him, on arriving at manhood, a name similar in sound to that of any one who dies, it is changed by his tribe.
There is no kind of formality used when a child is named. Up to the age of two or three years it is called "child," or "girl," and then, when it can walk, the name that has lived in the memory of the father or mother, or the people of the tribe, is given to it.
The Rev. Mr. Taplin refers to a curious custom. It appears that in some families it is usual for the father or mother to bear the name of a child, and in such cases the termination arni for father, or annike for mother, is added.
Nick-names are given; and the natives are often peculiarly happy in choosing designations that aptly describe eccentricities, peculiarities of face, or ways of walking or speaking.
As soon as the whites settled in Victoria, the Aborigines gave nick-names to the invaders, and some of these have been preserved.
It is said that in Gippsland the word Bungil is one of respect, and is equivalent to "Mister." It is borne only by the old men.
The ceremonies attending the coming of age of young men and young women are in Victoria simple, and easy to be borne, compared to those which young persons have to submit to in other parts of the continent. The mysteries of Tib-but and Mur-rum Tur-uk ur-uk one can regard as merely painless follies, after perusing Mr. Schürmann's descriptions of the rites as practised by the Parnkalla—where a youth of the age of fourteen or fifteen enters the first degree, and is enrolled amongst the Warrara; after the lapse of one or two years the second, when he is circumcised, and becomes a Pardnapa; and the last when his skin is scarred, and he is named afresh, and made a Wilyalkinje.
Mr. Samuel Gason's accounts of the tortures that have to be endured by the rising generation at Cooper's Creek would lead the reader to suppose that the Aboriginal race in that area must soon become extinct. They are horrible; and greatly contrast the comparatively harmless exercises of the natives of Gippsland when a youth is made Jerryale.
The interesting descriptions given of these ceremonies, as practised in the central parts of Australia, near the mouth of the Murray, in various parts of New South Wales, near Sydney, and on the Macleay and Nambucca Rivers, are exceedingly valuable. The practices are different not merely in details, but in essentials.
Women are not allowed to witness the savage scenes attendant on these ceremonies; and if one intruded on the occasion of initiating youths to manhood, she would probably be killed at once. They are forbidden to see or hear anything connected with the events, and indeed it would be impossible for the men to continue the tortures if women were present. Warriors shed tears, and evince pity at certain stages; and women would, by their weeping and wailing, ​utterly unnerve the candidates, and discompose the principal actors in the performance.
In Africa, where similar customs are observed, the fetich-man blows a kind of whistle made of hollowed mangrove wood, and the sound is probably a signal to those not privileged to keep away; just as the Witarna is used for this purpose in Australia.
The practice of mutilating the body prevails in all parts of Australia. In New South Wales, the women, at an early age, are subjected to an uncommon mutilation of the two first joints of the little finger of the left hand. The operation is performed when they are very young, and is done under an idea that these joints of the little finger are in the way when they wind their fishing lines over the hand. This amputation is termed Mal-gun.
Knocking out the teeth, boring the septum of the nose, cutting and scarring the skin, and circumcision, division, perforation, and depilation are practised—some in one part and some in another—throughout the continent. In all these strange customs, as used by them, the natives do but follow the habits of savages and barbarians in other parts of the world; and one is made to believe and to repeat that man, spring from what race he may, will, under the same set of circumstances, and under like conditions of food and climate, originate and adopt similar practices. The mutilation known as Mal-gun is not confined, it is believed, to New South Wales. Knocking out the teeth is an ancient custom, and has spread widely. Dampier observed it amongst the natives of the north-west coast, and it is perhaps the most common of all their superstitious observances.
Circumcision and other similar mutilations are, it has been suggested, of modern date, and may have been derived from intercourse with the Malay trepang-fishers. The custom, as observed by the most ancient amongst the peoples of the earth, is, and was some thousands of years ago, a religious rite, and differs altogether from the practice of the blacks, who in this merely endeavour to test the powers of endurance of a candidate for admission to a certain rank in the tribe. In considering the effect, however, of this and other practices that are mentioned, one may believe that they are really indigenous, and that they have originated either in consequence of a peculiarity of climate or from the necessity of limiting the population.
It is undoubtedly true that some customs that could have originated in no other manner than in the pressing necessities of their mode of existence are exactly similar to many that have been regarded heretofore as peculiar to ancient forms of civilization, and it is unwise and unphilosophical to decide hastily that even such a rite as that of circumcision is not born of the circumstances of the people.
The savage, in many things, is—as it were by nature—cruel. What, for instance, could be more dreadful than to seize an unsuspecting youth, drag him from the camp, and subject him to hunger and cold for days and nights, knock out a tooth with a piece of wood, scar his skin, and compel him to submit to ​other frightful mutilations? Some, among the weaker, die in consequence of their sufferings under such ordeals, and others have implanted in them the seeds of diseases which ultimately prove fatal.
When a young man has undergone all the ceremonies which are necessary to his attaining the rank of a warrior, he may look out for a wife. If he is the child of a distinguished man, perhaps because of the influence of his father, a girl may have been promised to him, and his wedding may cause but little trouble; but, as a rule, he must steal a girl, or elope with one, or exchange some girl over whom he has control as brother, uncle, or relative in some other degree, for a girl of a neighbouring tribe. Exogamy, it is perhaps true to say, is universal. A tribe is in fact but an enlargement of a family circle, and none within it can intermarry. A man must get a wife from a neighbouring tribe either by consent, or by barter, or by theft.
If a man steals a girl, there is sure to be a quarrel of some sort. It may be settled amicably, or the culprit may be required to stand in front of those he has wronged by the abduction, and allow them to hurl their spears or boomerangs at him. A trial by combat may result in various ways. The lover may prove victorious and win his bride, or he may be wounded and beaten and lose her; or, as not seldom happens, either in the ordeal, when spears are thrown, or when two are fighting with club and shield, the old men may interfere, if enough has been done to satisfy justice, and declare a verdict. On some occasions, but seldom, a general fight occurs, and one or two may be killed.
From the evidence that has been gathered, it would seem that very often love—in our sense of the word—prompts the young people to seek each other's society, and it is certainly true that the husband and wife, in some cases, evince the strongest affection towards one another; but marriage—if the word can be properly used in reference to such unions—is usually a matter in which love has no part. The bride is dragged from her home—she is unwilling to leave it; and if fears are entertained that she will endeavour to escape, a spear is thrust through her foot or her leg. A kind husband will, however, ultimately evoke affection, and fidelity and true love are not rare in Australian families. A widow will die of grief on the grave of her husband, and a widower will mourn and refuse to be comforted until death also claims him. Such instances cannot be otherwise than few. A widow, under ordinary circumstances, has by law another husband as soon as the first dies; and a widower deprived only of one wife may have already too many—perhaps three, or the deprivation may allow of his taking another—and he may rejoice instead of giving way to grief.
All arrangements connected with marriage cause trouble in the tribes. Even before a child is born a promise may be given that if it be a girl it shall be the wife of some warrior; and nearly all the girls are betrothed at a very early age. And any young warrior who casts kind looks towards a dark beauty, or any young woman who favorably regards a painted youth as he returns from an expedition, is sure to give rise to jealous suspicions.
Women are regarded almost as so much property which may be exchanged for better goods, or given away as friendly presents, or abandoned when not wanted. A child may be betrothed to a man, and that man may die, but his ​heir succeeds, and the girl goes with the other possessions of the deceased. Contrary to received opinions, it is shown in this work that the children of the native women are often numerous, some having as many as thirteen, and twins are not rare. It is also proved that the Australians are really human beings, and not creatures of another species, as so many have represented them in their works. Numerous cases are mentioned which fairly dispose of the theory so long maintained that they are—regarding man merely as an animal—different from Europeans.
The customs of the natives of Australia are so like, in many respects, those of other existing savage or barbarous races and those of the people of ancient times, that one feels more and more the necessity of a classification, in which would appear every known custom and the place where it is practised, exactly after the manner that the geologist elaborates his system of the classification of rocks.
In Australia, the mother-in-law may not look upon her son-in-law, and the son-in-law hides himself if his path be crossed by his mother-in-law. The Kaffir places his shield before his eyes and shuns the mother of his wife, and the same strange fear of meeting or seeing a mother-in-law has been observed in South America and amongst savages in other parts of the globe. What may have given rise to this rule can only be guessed, but that it is recognised and obeyed under circumstances which must necessarily prove most embarrassing is beyond doubt.
Marriages between black men and white women are, as may be supposed, not common. Invaders invariably regard the women of the country invaded more or less favorably, and they are chosen as wives or concubines; but the men who lose their country lose also their influence, and it is not often that they can obtain wives from the stronger race. But sometimes, under favorable conditions, an Australian black marries a white woman. Nothing is known to the writer of the results of such unions.
The restrictions on marriage, as they exist in Australia, certainly invite enquiry; and a complete knowledge of these, and the exact meaning of such native words as are usually but not accurately translated as mother, father, sister, brother, step-mother, step-father, aunt, uncle, &c., would be of the highest value, and enable the ethnologist to unravel many intricate and complex lines in relationships amongst savages. A man knows that his mother's sister is not his mother, and that his father's brother is not his father; the exact relationship is known to him; and it is highly probable that, in addition to the nomenclature which points to a time when the intercourse between the sexes was different from what it is now, there are also terms which express correctly the relationship that exists. If such terms do not exist, it is plain that the growth of the language has not kept pace with the requirements of their condition as it advanced from a lower to a higher state. It is not disputed that the terms as translated very nearly express the meanings commonly assigned to them, nor that the enquiries into this branch of ethnology are of the greatest importance, nor is it doubted that the results will ultimately far more than repay the labors that have been bestowed on such investigations; but when a son tells you that ​he "calls" his father's brother "father," he asserts merely that he follows a custom; and the system which gave rise to the custom being no longer in existence, it may surely be supposed that he could indicate distinctions and find words to express his meaning. It is highly desirable to ascertain the ideas that are in the mind of the savage as well as the words in common use when he speaks of his aunt, his uncle, or his cousin. The facts, as regards the nomenclature in Australia, disclose, according to the Rev. Lorimer Fison, the characteristic peculiarities of the Tamilian system, which would support the theory of the migration southward of the progenitors of the native race that occupies Australia, if we did not find the same system amongst the Indians of North America. The theory of migration rests on other grounds; and the likeness in the nomenclature as applied to people akin only shows how from the communal marriage system have arisen gradually other systems under which in-and-in marriages were, if not interdicted, made less numerous, and those between brother and sister absolutely prohibited. The enquiries instituted by the Rev. L. Fisson, the Rev. W. Ridley, and others, and the careful summary of the facts collected by them which is contained in Mr. Lewis Morgan's works, show clearly how the tribes are governed in intermarriage by a kind of sexual classification. But all the facts are not known. The statements made in his letter to me by Mr. Bridgman, of Queensland, and the peculiar arrangement under one and the same division, as ascertained by Mr. Stewart, of Mount Gambler, of things animate and inanimate, show that much is yet to be learnt respecting the principles which guide the natives in placing in classes all that comes within their knowledge. The two classes of the tribes near Mackay in Queensland are Youngaroo and Wootaroo, and these are again subdivided, and marriages are regulated in accordance therewith. But the blacks say alligators are Youngaroo and kangaroos are Wootaroo, and that the sun is Youngaroo and the moon is Wootaroo. Strange to say, this, or something as nearly like this as possible, is found at Mount Gambler. There the pelican, the dog, the blackwood-tree, and fire and frost are Boort-parangal, and belong to the division Kumite-gor (gor = female); and tea-tree scrub, the duck, the wallaby, the owl, and the cray-fish are Boort-werio, and belong to the division Krokee. A Kumite may marry any Krokee-gor, and a Krokee may marry a Kumite-gor. And Mr. Stewart says a man will not, unless under severe pressure, kill or use as food any of the animals of the division in which he is placed. A Kumite is deeply grieved when hunger compels him to eat anything that bears his name, but he may satisfy his hunger with anything that is Krokee. These divisions and subdivisions have an important influence in all arrangements between natives, not only as regards marriage, but also in revenging injuries, in imputing witchcraft, and in the fights that so constantly occur.
The funeral ceremonies of the natives of Australia are perhaps in some respects unlike those of the savages of other parts of the world, but the modes of disposing of the bodies of the dead are similar. The common practice is to inter the corpse; but some are placed in the hollows of trees, some in the beds of running streams, some in caves, some on artificial platforms made of ​branches of trees, some in trenches lined and covered with flat stones, and some are burnt.
When death is imminent, it is usual to remove the dying man to a spot at some little distance from his miam, and his relatives and friends prepare all that is needful for his interment even before dissolution. Much attention is shown to him, and when finally he breathes his last breath, arrangements are made for the disposal of the body. The facts which are given in this volume show that savages are not indifferent to the solemn events which amongst civilized peoples give occasion for pageantry. The natives are serious and decorous around the graves of their warriors; and the mourners cut themselves and lament after the manner of the ancients.
The body is not placed at fall length in the grave. The grave is usually four or five feet in length; and the corpse is bent and doubled so as to admit of its being laid in a small space. A warrior is usually wrapped in his opossum rug, tied tightly, and buried with his weapons and all his worldly possessions. Amongst the southern tribes of Victoria the body was not touched by hands. It was so moved and carried as to prevent the contact of the living with the corpse, and the utmost care was taken in interring it to protect every part of it with a covering. Amongst the people of the west and elsewhere no such feeling seems to have prevailed; the body was sewn up, it was greased and rubbed with red-ochre, and handled apparently without repugnance.
Sometimes a long speech is delivered over the grave by some man of consideration in the tribe. Mr. Bridgman, of Mackay in Queensland, states in a letter to me that on one occasion he heard a funeral oration delivered over the grave of a man who had been a great warrior which lasted more than an hour. The corpse was borne on the shoulders of two men, who stood at the edge of the grave. During the discourse he observed that the orator spoke to the deceased as if he were still living and could hear his words. Burial in the district in which Mr. Bridgman lives is only a formal ceremony, and not an absolute disposal of the remains. After lying in the ground for three months or more, the body is disinterred, the bones are cleaned, and packed in a roll of pliable bark, the outside of which is painted and ornamented with strings of beads and the like. This, which is called Ngobera, is kept in the camp with the living. If a stranger who has known the deceased comes to the camp, the Ngobera is brought out towards evening, and he and some of the near relations of the dead person sit down by it, and wail and cut themselves for half an hour. Then it is handed to the stranger, who takes it with him and sleeps by the side of it, returning it in the morning to its proper custodian. Women and children who die, Mr. Bridgman says, are usually burnt.
It is the firm belief of the natives that no man dies but by witchcraft. Some sorcerer in a neighbouring tribe has compassed his death, they say, and they seek to discover in what direction their warriors shall go to avenge the murder. Usually they scrape up the earth around the dead body in order to find the track of some worm or insect, sometimes they watch the movements of a lizard, and again they will wait until cracks appear in the damp clay that covers the grave. Sooner or later the wise man of the tribe determines in what direction ​the warriors must travel to find the sorcerer, and they go at once, and kill one or more, in expiation of the crime which has caused the death of their friend. It is curious to note the general similarity in the modes adopted by the cunning men to cause injury to neighbouring tribes when a death occurs, and also the differences in the modes. For instance, the Western Port tribe in Victoria, and the tribes near Perth in Western Australia, watch the movements of a living insect that may accidentally be turned up in digging the earth; the Melbourne tribe look for the track of a worm or the like; the Yarra blacks watch the direction which a lizard takes; at Cooper's Creek the corpse is questioned; the tribes at the mouth of the Murray and at Encounter Bay rely on the dreams of a wise man who sleeps with his head on the corpse; and on one part of the Murray they watch the drying of the damp clay that covers the grave, and see in the line of the principal fissure where they are to look for the wicked sorcerer who has done to death, by his charms, their late companion.
The natives believe that the spirits or ghosts of the dead remain for at least a little time near the, spots that they loved when living, and it is to satisfy and appease the shades and ghosts that, when a warrior dies, they murder some of the people of a neighbouring tribe. If blood were not shed, the ghost of the departed would haunt them, and perhaps injure them. They believe that the ghosts depart and find rest in regions either towards the setting sun, or in the east, where he rises. Stanbridge says that the heaven of the Murray people is towards the setting sun; Wilhelmi says that the head of the corpse was placed at the west end of the grave, because the people of Port Lincoln believe that the departed spirits reside in an island situated eastward; Oxley found on the Darling a body laid with the head to the eastward; and Grey says that the face in West Australia is turned towards the east. The Goulburn blacks placed a fighting-stick at the east end of the grave. Buckley states that in his first wanderings he found a spear sticking in the centre of a mound of earth. It was the grave of one recently interred. He carried away the spear, and when the natives found him and saw the spear of their dead friend, they called him Murran-gurk—which was the name of the dead man. They believed that he had come to life again, and that he had taken the form of Buckley.
All the methods employed by the Australian savages in disposing of their dead are curious and full of interest. Though they have no such monuments as that erected by Artemisia in Caria, they have advanced beyond the state in which it is lawful for a sister to marry a brother; and they have sought to express by many ingenious devices their respect and affection for their deceased relatives and friends. On the swampy reed beds of the Aire River, in the Cape Otway district, are found even now the remains of the rude platforms on which the natives placed their dead; in the mirrn-yong heaps of the western plains are found interred the bones of departed warriors; and under the umbrageous pines of the north-west are seen here and there the mounds which they had raised over the relics that perhaps had been carried with them, and mourned over for many a day. These are respected by the old people, and they grow sorrowful as they approach them. Though the natives generally buried the body very near the spot where the death occurred, they had in some parts ​appointed burial-grounds, where the surface was cleared of grass, and cut in the form of a spear-shield. Some seen by the first explorers occupied a considerable space, and were intersected by neatly-made walks, running in graceful curves; others consisted of well-constructed huts, thatched and secured with a net; and a few buried their dead in graves not unlike those in a modern cemetery.
The bodies of young children and persons killed by accident were usually placed in a hollow tree. The space was cleared of rotten wood and well swept, the bottom was lined with leaves, and the whole was covered with a piece of bark. And sometimes a rude coffin was made by stripping a sapling of its bark.
The manner in which bodies were burnt is fully described in this work. It will be observed that the pile is lighted, not by a priest, but by one of the women.
The Narrinyeri dry the bodies of the dead, and during the process they paint them with grease and red-ochre. They preserve the hair, which is spun into a cord, and the cord is wound round the head of some fighting-man. It gives him, they say, clearness of sight and renders him more active.
When the body is dry, it is wrapped in rugs or mats, and carried from place to place for several months, and is then placed on a platform of sticks. The skull, it is said, is used as a drinking vessel.
The natives in some parts of Queensland, when they burn the bodies, keep and carry about with them the ashes of their dead.
There is evidently a strong belief generally in the virtues communicated by rubbing the body with the fat of a dead man, or with portions of his singed beard, or by eating pieces of his fat or skin. It is thought that his strength and courage will be acquired by those who perform these ceremonies.
The blacks exhibit the greatest sorrow when one of their number is sick and near death. It is impossible for any one to stand by and see a native breathe his last without feeling the deepest compassion for those who surround the death bed. Both men and women exhibit acute anguish; they mourn the departed, and with such gestures and accents as betray the misery that is in their hearts. Some tear the flesh from the fingers until blood comes, others cut their cheeks with shells and chips, and many burn themselves with fire-sticks, all the while scattering hot ashes on their heads and on their bodies until the mutilations are dreadful to behold. And the grief of the friends of the departed is naturally increased when they know that his death was not due to natural causes, but to the vile arts of some sorcerer dwelling amongst wild blackfellows.
A sudden death is often the cause of fighting amongst men of the bereaved tribe. They will exhibit their grief by spearing each other; and men have been killed at such times. One case of this kind occurred on the River Darling. A man died suddenly of heart disease, and the men commenced to quarrel over his grave. The cause of the quarrel was not ascertained, but the results were fatal. One young man was killed, and he was buried in the very grave around which all had assembled for the purpose of paying respect to their dead relative.
The Murray blacks, Mr. Bulmer informs me, never keep the dead long. They are generally buried on the day of their death, or, at latest, the next day. In ​this respect the Gippsland blacks differ from the people of the Murray. They will keep a body eight or ten days, or even longer. They will keep it until all their friends can be got together, so that the last duties may be performed with some pomp and ceremony. The Gippsland blacks differ from the Murray blacks in another matter. The blacks of the Murray never keep anything belonging to the dead — always burying the property of the dead man in the grave which they have dug for his body; the Gippsland people keep the relics of the departed. They will cut off the hands to keep as a remembrance, and these they will attach to the string that is tied round the neck. It is said also that they will sometimes keep the head; but this custom is not common.
When mourning for the dead, the women plaster their bodies and the men smear their faces with pipeclay. White is not always used. Black, and in some places red, indicate mourning. Ordinarily, a woman laments the death of her husband, and uses the clay appropriate to her condition for about six months; after the lapse of that time she may marry again. A widow on the Murray is called Mam-ban-ya-purno, and in Gippsland, Wow-a-lak.
On the Lower Murray and elsewhere the widows plaster their heads with a white paste made of powdered gypsum; and the white caps seen by Mitchell were discarded emblems of mourning.
When any one dies, his miam or wurley is pulled down, and the materials are often burnt. No one will inhabit a place where a death has occurred.
I have mentioned, in the chapter devoted to a description of the modes of burial common amongst the Australians, some few instances wherein their practices agree with those of other savages, but many more might be given; and here — as in their language, their modes of ornamenting their weapons, the treatment of their infants, their marriage customs, and their myths — there is so much which is undoubtedly truly indigenous, and arising wholly out of their condition and the physical forces by which they are moved, that is yet like what is seen in other parts of the world, that one has cause to regret again and again that no one has, up to the present time, placed the facts in order, and set down after a system and under proper heads all that is known of savages — in what respects they agree, in what they differ, and to what extent they resemble in their customs the people amongst whom civilization was born and nurtured, and to whom we owe the advancement which modern society so proudly regards as the results of its own efforts. Such a work — and it would not necessarily be at first a very large one — would do much to help towards a better understanding of man's actual duties and responsibilities; and let us hope it will be undertaken by some one who has the ability to construct a system and to use the details in subordination to it.
The encampments of the natives, and indeed all their movements, are ordered by the old men. They do not wander about aimlessly: there is order and method in what they do; and when several tribes meet, the sites for the miams are selected in accordance with rules, the arrangement generally being such as to show exactly from what direction each tribe has come.
In some parts of the continent their dwellings are large and well built; stout poles are used in their construction, and they are thatched with grass.
​The people are governed by the heads of families, who settle quarrels and preserve order. The unmarried men have a place set apart for them, and they are not permitted to associate with the females.
They receive messengers and visitors at their encampments; and plenty of employment is found for all in hunting or fishing, or gathering roots and seeds, in cooking, in eating, and in fighting. They have many amusements—and a corrobboree is to them what a great ball is to the whites in a European city. The dancers have to paint themselves, and the women have to be in readiness to sing and to beat time. There are endless sources of enjoyment when a large meeting takes place; but on the whole the life of a savage is one of trouble. He is either very hungry or has eaten too much. He is often very cold, or suffering from the heat. He is never sure of his life. He may be speared by an enemy lurking in the bush—the Nerum may be in the hands of a foe at night; a sorcerer may have taken some of his hair, or a distant doctor may be arranging measures for securing his kidney-fat—and there are noises at night that terrify him. His wives, too, give him trouble, and his children need guidance.
He is, however, often a cheerful, merry fellow, willing to be amused, and finding amusement in childish entertainments.
I have given an account of his mode of life during the four seasons, of his methods of climbing trees, his manner of signalling by the smoke of fires; his fights, his dances, and of other matters that are of importance to him in his life in the forest; but his history is yet to be written. I am compelled by circumstances to present fragments only of a work that was intended to include all that relates to the habits of the natives.
The section of this work which treats of the several kinds of food upon which the natives had to depend for subsistence before the country was occupied by the whites has been prepared with great care. Many correspondents have rendered much assistance; and the facts that have been gathered together will be useful to settlers in all parts of Australia, and will, it is hoped, also prove interesting to the naturalist.
An attempt has been made to give as complete an account as possible of all the animals and plants that are eaten by the blacks; and there are now put in a small compass, in addition to what is new, many facts that the reader could not find without a laborious search, scattered as they are through books of travels, pamphlets, and scientific papers—some of which are now rare.
It was at first intended to restrict the descriptions to the products of Victoria; but as the southernmost part of Australia is deficient in many vegetables in the treatment of which the natives display remarkable skill, and as they practise in other parts of the continent methods of capturing animals that are here altogether unknown, it was decided to enlarge the section. Indeed it would have been unjust to the natives not to have mentioned some of the facts referred to by Grey, by the Jardines, by Thozet, and others. The extraordinary perseverance and skill exhibited by the blacks in hunting and fishing, their ready adaptation of the simplest means to accomplish any given purpose, and their power to combine when they find it necessary to construct such a work of art ​as that described by Mr. Gideon S. Lang, must surely result in a change in the opinion that is generally entertained of their character and mental faculties.
In hunting the kangaroo the native employs various methods. He tracks him day after day and night after night until he secures him, or, hidden by an artificial screen of boughs, he spears him as he comes to drink at a water-hole; or he digs a pit for him, or catches him with other animals by setting fire to the bush in various places until the scared creatures are surrounded by a circle of flames, when they are easily speared or knocked on the head with a club.
Fastening the skin and feathers of a hawk to the end of a long stick, and uttering the cry of the hawk, he startles the wallaby, which at once takes refuge in the nearest bush, and is there speared. By the appearance of a hair or two, or a few grains of sand, or the faint scratch of a claw, on the bark of a tree, he knows whether or not the opossum is in his hole, and, if there, he rapidly climbs the tree and catches him. He works harder than a navvy when he is employed in digging out the wombat. In netting and noosing ducks, in swimming to a flock, either under water, breathing through a reed, or with his head covered with aquatic plants, he displays as much cunning as a North American Indian. Holding a few boughs in front of him, and carrying a long stick with a butterfly and a noose at the end, he walks up to a turkey and snares him.
The native makes a bower, and, using one bird as a decoy, he snares numbers of small birds during the course of a day. Holding a piece of fish in his hand, and lying as if asleep, he entices the hawk or the crow, and by a quick movement catches it. One black will approach a tree, on a limb of which a bird is sitting, and by singing and by strange motions of his hands and contortions of his body (always keeping his eyes fixed on the bird) so completely engage its attention that another black will be able to ascend the tree and knock the bird down with a stick.
He is active in the water. He will attack the green-turtle in the sea, and, avoiding the sharp edges of the shell, turn it on its back and drag it to his canoe. Like the people of the coasts of China and the Mozambique, he uses the fisher-fish—the Echeneis—in taking the hawk's-bill turtle, thus verifying the observation of Columbus. He catches and cooks poisonous snakes as well as the harmless frog. He has at least five different modes of procuring fish; and his hooks and nets are better than could be made by any European who did not practise the making of hooks and nets as a trade. His fishing-lines, made of any raw material within his reach, are strong and good and lasting.
He goes out in his canoe in the night and uses torches to attract the fish, exactly after the manner of the poachers of the North Tyne in England, who in their trows, and with lights burning and provided with leisters or spears, robbed that river of its salmon. He uses the bident in the shallow weedy waters of the Murray, and follows the fish by the same signs as those that guided the ancient Egyptian when he pushed his papyrus punt through the broad leaves of the lotus in the lagoons and ponds that were filled by the waters of the Nile.
​He builds, in the great rivers, weirs having crooked but continuous passages, and so contrived as to enable him to take the fish by hand. He kills seals, and catches the dugong: and when the whalers visited the southern shores of the continent, he was cunning enough to make signals so as to set many boats in pursuit of any whale that came near the shore, thus rendering the chances of its being stranded almost certain.
He followed the bee to its nest and took its honey, and found a plan of freeing the pupæ of ants from sand and dust so as to make of them a palatable meal. The grubs that are found in the wattle, the honeysuckle, and the gum, the worms that crawl in the earth, and the moths that crowd the granitic rocks of the mountains—each in turn were made to contribute to his support.
His vegetable food was various. The natives of Victoria had to depend mostly on the yam, quandang, currant, raspberry, cherry, the fruits of the mesembryanthemum, the seed of the flax, the sow-thistle, the roots of the flag, water-grass, geranium, and male fern, the pith of the dwarf fern-tree, the native truffle, the leaves of the clover sorrel, the gums of the wattle, &c. He gathered manna, and made sweet drinks of the flowers of the honeysuckle. In the north-western parts of Victoria, he gathered the seeds of the nardoo, and other seeds, and pounded them, and ate the flour either in the form of paste or cakes.
The kumpung, a bulrush almost identical with one found in Switzerland—a species of typha—is eaten during the summer either raw or roasted, and the fibres are used for making twine. In other parts of Australia there are the nuts of palms and the fruit of the Bunya-bunya; and in the more northern districts of the continent, many nuts, seeds, piths, and roots, some of which, though poisonous when gathered, are so treated as to yield excellent fecula and pastes.
The natives, belying the low opinion that has been formed of their intellects, show in many ways that they were not without foresight. They could see the necessity for making provision for the future. It has been shown that they could construct permanent works of art. Grey tells us how he came upon a store of by-yu nuts (fruits of the zamia) in West Australia; and Coxen relates the methods the natives employ in preparing and securing in bags, grass seeds, gums, and other food, in the north-eastern parts of the continent. It was their custom to burn off the old grass and leaves and fallen branches in the forest, so as to allow of a free growth of young grass for the mammals that feed on grass; they protected the young of animals in some parts so as to secure a natural increase; and if they did not actually resort to cultivation (in the ordinary sense), they were at least careful to see that harm was not done to vegetables that yielded food.
That there was a common property in at least some things, is beyond doubt. Many tribes, in other respects having nothing in common, resorted to the Bunya-bunya forest when the fruit was ripe; and the raspberry grounds mentioned by Gideon Lang were also freely given up to neighbouring tribes when the food they yielded was abundant. When a whale was stranded, notice was given, by sending up columns of smoke, that a feast was ready, and hundreds of natives—by right—assembled to share in the bounty of the seas.
​They respected each other's rights. The person who first struck a kangaroo—whether boy or man, and whether the animal was killed or not by the stroke—was held to have captured him, and, when taken, the animal was his property. And then he had to divide the kangaroo into portions if any of those with whom he had covenanted, as regards kangaroo flesh, were present; and the division was always fairly made.
The account given by Thozet of the plants eaten by the natives of North-Eastern Australia is full of interest for the naturalist; and Mr. Gason's lists of the animals and plants which afford food to the natives of Cooper's Creek, though not likely to raise this people in the estimation of Europeans, containing as they do the names of many creatures which are abhorred in civilized communities, are still curious, and certainly worthy of attention.
Victoria, like other parts of Australia, presents diverse physical features; in one area the larger animals are numerous, in others rare. In some parts the natives had to depend for their means of subsistence mainly on fish; in other parts mainly on the kangaroo; in well-timbered tracts opossums were numerous, and on the plains they caught the emu, the turkey, and the native companion. In and on the margins of the forests they took the bear, and in the volcanic tracts wombats multiplied. Many of these animals, the larger weighing as much as 150 lbs., were not very difficult to capture; and the black, with his family, lived in comfort as long as the flesh of these was procurable.
It is not at all probable that the natives penetrated the tracts covered with scrubs or thick timber. The dense forests of South-Western Gippsland and Cape Otway were not often entered, if at all; and the blacks who fished on the shores at the mouth of the Parker had probably no communication with their near neighbours, the natives of the Gellibrand; and it is almost certain that the Cape Otway blacks never travelled through the forest to Colac. The road is now open and easily trodden; but before the advent of the whites, before the scrub was cut and the huge trees hewn, before it was known what was beyond the coast, it was a tract having an aspect that would naturally deter the native from encroaching on it, even if his duty, directed by superstitition, required that he should traverse it.
There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger; but Grey mentions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the Mene (a species of Hæmadorum) is eaten by the natives of West Australia.
The only plants that are known to be used as narcotics are pitcherie, small dry twigs, which the natives chew; and the leaves of a species of Eugenia, which the people of the north-east smoke when they cannot get tobacco.
Excepting the abstinence from food, which perhaps was common during the period of initiating youths to the privileges of manhood, it is almost certain that voluntary fasting was unknown to the natives of Australia. The priests and sorcerers appear to have been able to exercise their arts without having recourse to any such painful ordeals. On the contrary, they reserved for themselves the best of the food, the wild-fowl, and the sweetest and most tender parts of the larger animals; and, on account of the influence they possessed, they were ​able to prevent the young and strong men from enjoying the fruits of their own exertions. Unlike the Cherokees, the Flatheads of Oregon, and the medicine-men of the Rio de la Plata, they dreamed their dreams after fully satisfying their appetites, and no doubt would have regarded a suggestion to refrain for even a short time from eating and drinking as an impertinence to be resented by the use of the strongest "charms" in their possession.
As much information as could be obtained is given relative to forbidden food. The laws administered by the old men were numerous. Women might not eat of the flesh of certain animals, and certain kinds of food were prohibited to young men. These customs—the origin of which is unknown, and the reasons for following them not to be discovered—are, however, not confined to the savages of Australia. They are known in Africa; but the old men of the tribes in Australia seem to have enlarged, for their own advantage, a system that probably originally grew out of the superstitition that evil would befall him who should eat the flesh of the animal that is the totem of his tribe. The most obvious effect of the operation of these curious laws was certainly not injurious to the interests of the people. It enabled the old men who were not equal to the fatigues incident to the hunting of the larger game to remain in comfort in their camps, where they employed their time in all those arts which they had perfected by experience. They made nets, spears, shields, and boomerangs; and taught the boys the use of weapons and implements. They maintained order when the warriors were absent, and they took care to require that all the observances proper to the occasion of the arrival of a messenger or a visitor were duly maintained.
If, on the other hand, the old men had had to depend on their own unassisted exertions for a supply of animal food, they would have had no leisure for such pursuits; the character of the weapons and tools would have deteriorated, and the knowledge of some arts would have been lost.
The custom of youths arranging, and maintaining through life, a kind of joint ownership in certain sorts of food, so that, for instance, when a kangaroo was killed, each, according to right, would receive a particular portion, is, it is believed, peculiar to the Australian people. How it originated, or for what purpose it was continued, will probably never be known. Indeed the natives can give no information respecting their customs and laws.
Their aversion to the fat of swine is well known, and it can scarcely have arisen from the circumstance that swiue are unclean feeders, and liable to certain disorders. It rests probably on the influence exercised over their minds by the strange superstitions that seem inseparable from the savage state. Their refusal to eat pork is perhaps due to the fear that they might in doing so violate a law. It is not lawful for a young man to eat the fat of the emu until a certain ceremony has been performed; and when they see the fat of an animal strange to them, it may be supposed that they view it with doubt and fear.
The laws relating to food made by the natives stand in curious contrast to those mentioned in Deuteronomy (chap. xiv.). The blacks interdict to women and young men such of the food as they consider good; and there are no prohibitions against eating creatures that are generally regarded by civilized races ​as unfit for food. And yet the fact that there are such laws amongst the Australian people and other savage peoples gives a glimpse into the history of the past which is of singular interest.
The natives inhabiting the sea-coast and the banks of the larger rivers had often to depend for subsistence on shell-fish, and consequently both on the coast and inland there are large heaps of shells, mixed in some places with the bones of animals, and concealing stone tomahawks and bone-awls. The large heaps on the banks of the Murray and the Darling are composed of the shells of the freshwater unio. In lat. 29° 43' 3" S., Sir Thomas Mitchell found on the banks of the Gwydir numerous fires of the natives and heaps of mussel-shells, mixed with the bones of the pelican and the kangaroo; and the like occur in various other parts of the area drained by the Murray and its affluents.
On the coast of Victoria there appear in various parts, what at first sight one would suppose to be raised beaches, and if only a slight examination be made of these, their true character is not discovered. But instead of lying in regular and connected layers, they occur in heaps, beyond high-water mark, and they are always opposite to rocks laid bare at low water. Moreover, they are found to consist mainly of one kind of shell—namely, the mussel (Mytilus Dunkeri), with a small proportion of the mutton-fish (Haliotis nivosa), the limpet (Pattella tramoserica), the periwinkle (Lunella undulata), and the cockle (Cardium tenuicostatum). These accumulations resemble in many respects the "kjök-ken-möddings" of Denmark. With the shells are stones bearing distinctly the appearance of having been subjected to the action of fire, and there are also numerous pieces of charcoal imbedded in the mounds. They are visible all along the coast where it is low, but never in any other position than that described; and when opened up are seen to be formed of heaps not regularly superimposed one on the other. Those that have been frequented most recently exhibit clearly the mode of accumulation, and one can trace the old heaps upwards to the last, which is generally found on the highest part of the mound. The area covered by some of the largest of the mounds exceeds an acre in extent; and the shape of the heaps of shells composing them, which are separated by layers of sand, indicates their origin. The enormous period of time during which the natives have assembled on the shores to gather and cook the shell-fish accounts for the great number and extent of the mounds.
The mirrn-yong heaps in the inland parts of Victoria, composed of earth, charcoal ashes, and the bones of animals—the cooking places of the tribes—are also large and numerous.
On the wide open plains, where there is little or no timber, the natives set up stones, principally it is believed for shelter; but they would be used too, in all probability, when it became necessary to conceal from the women their manner of performing certain ceremonies. In what light we are to regard the regularly-built stone monuments which Sir George Grey discovered in North-West Australia is a matter for speculation. His descriptions and drawings would lead one to suppose that, if they were the work of the natives, they had borrowed something from the Malays, who it is known have long had intercourse with the Aborigines of that part of Australia.
​The methods of cooking the animals they caught do not tend to raise the character of the natives. Neither as regards fish, flesh, or fowl were they as careful as they might have been, nor as clean. They were indeed, to speak the truth, dirty in their habits. They ate portions of animals that well-bred people universally reject; and they cooked some that Europeans would eat raw, and ate raw very many that would be palatable only when well cooked. Like the Romans, they were fond of moths (zeuzera); but they consumed also earth-worms and other small creatures whose names are not usually mentioned. Their ovens for cooking large animals, or a number of small animals, were formed of stones. The stones were heated and placed in a hole in the ground, grass was thrown on them, and the animal to be cooked was laid on the grass, and covered with grass, and other stones heated in the fire were piled on the top. The whole was covered with earth and left until the process was complete. Sometimes they made holes in the oven with sticks and poured in water so as to steam or parboil the animal, but in general it was left to the operation of the heated stones. A bird was sometimes covered with clay and broiled in the embers of the fire, and this method, if certain precautions be taken, is excellent, and the gourmet would delight in the result.
Sir George Grey describes also a manner of cooking fish and the flesh of the kangaroo which he thinks is worthy of being adopted by the most civilized nations. It is called Yudarn dukoon, and the fish and other meats so cooked are said to be, and indeed must be, delicious.
Other writers have a high opinion of some of the native methods of cooking. The natives of the Macleay River, it is said, always clean and gut their fish, and cook them carefully on hot embers.
They are not able to boil anything. They have no pottery, and they have not even attempted to form any vessels that could be placed on the fire, which they might have done by covering their closely-woven baskets with clay.
Mr. Tylor states, on the authority of Mr. T. Baines, that in North Australia the natives immerse heated stones in water, poured into holes in the ground, and boil fish, the tortoise, and the smaller alligators; and that they may, therefore, in these times at least, be counted as "stone-boilers." With this practice the natives of the south were not acquainted, if recorded observations are to be trusted.
In broiling or roasting or in stewing in ovens the native was not, according to our notions, a good cook, and not being a good cook, any advance in civilization was nearly impossible. The proper nourishment of the body is of more importance than many other things recommended as indispensable to the improvement of savage and other peoples.
It cannot be denied that cannibalism prevailed at one time throughout the whole of Australia. The natives killed and ate little children, and the bodies of warriors slain in battle were eaten. They did not feast upon human flesh, however, like the natives of Fiji. They appear to have eaten portions of the bodies of the slain in obedience to customs arising out of their superstitions, and very rarely to have sacrificed a human life merely that they might cook and eat the ​flesh. This, however, was done under some circumstances. When tribes assembled to eat the fruit of the Bunya-bunya, they were not permitted to take any game, and at length the craving for flesh was so intense that they were impelled to kill one of their number in order that their appetites might be satisfied.
It is creditable to them that they are ashamed of the practice. They usually deny that they ever ate human flesh, but as constantly allege that "wild blacks" are guilty of the crime. It is sad to relate that there are only too many well-authenticated instances of cannibalism; and the fact is apparent, too, that not seldom the natives destroyed the victim under circumstances of peculiar atrocity. It was not always done that they might comply with a custom, or that by eating portions of a body they might thereby acquire the courage and strength of the deceased. They undoubtedly on some occasions indulged in the horrible practice because they rejoiced in the savage banquet.
Unlike many other offences with which they are justly charged, but which because of their ignorance or because of the pressure of their necessities cannot be called crimes, this one in general they knew to be wrong. Their behaviour, when questioned on the subject, shows that they erred knowingly and wilfully. That they were not so bad as the men of Fiji and New Zealand is undoubtedly true, and so much perhaps may be said in their favor.
The Rev. John Bulmer, the Rev. A. Hartmann, the Rev. F. A. Hagenauer, and Mr. John Green, furnished, at my request, some years ago, statements as made by the blacks relative to the habits of some of the native animals, and their accounts are on the whole accurate. The blacks do not like to be questioned respecting matters in which they take no interest; they are also suspicious, and it is often impossible to obtain from them such information as they undoubtedly possess. The statements are, however, not without interest, though they are less valuable than might have been anticipated.
The diseases to which the natives were subject prior to the arrival of the whites were ophthalmia, caused by the heat and the flies—and Dampier rightly called them "the poor winking people of New Holland," when he saw them in the height of summer, on the north-west coast, maintaining an unequal fight with these pests; colds, owing to their careless mode of living and their habit of sleeping near a fire without a covering; hydatids in the liver and lungs, due probably to the imperfect cooking of their food; and eczematous diseases, caused by their living, in some places, principally on fish, and generally by their want of cleanliness. The latter diseases are in some cases of a very severe character, and the depilous people of parts of the interior have probably suffered from them. The late Mr. Thomas says that dogs, cats, and opossums that were kept as pets by any people having the more severe forms of skin disease were also affected and lost their hair.
The small-pox, supposed to have been introduced by the whites in 1788, was the cause of numerous deaths amongst the natives, and the pictures I have given in illustration of the ravages committed by this scourge are painful to contemplate. The blacks could not bury their dead, the father was separated from his family, and children fled from their parents. Tribes, it is believed, ​were so reduced in numbers that they sought companionship with others with whom they had formerly been at enmity, and dread and suffering were amongst them everywhere.
There is a kind of sickness that affects the natives who live amongst the whites, or on the stations where they are required to labor, which appears to be peculiar to them. They mope, they sit stupidly over a fire, and at length the lungs or some other parts of the body are attacked, and they die. The Right Reverend Dr. Rosendo Salvado and others have noticed this melancholy and the sickness that follows. It does not usually yield to treatment by European doctors. But medical officers find much difficulty in managing the blacks when they are sick. They are impatient of control; they follow the habits they have acquired amongst their own people, and even with the utmost care many die that, if they had followed advice and taken the medicines prescribed for them, would have lived.
The native doctors are, I think, everywhere much trusted by the blacks. They like their modes of cure, and they believe in them. A man with failing sight will gladly subject himself to treatment by a native doctor, who, after some incantations and mummeries, will pretend to extract straws or pieces of wood from the eyes; and after these things are done the patient is supposed to recover, unless some stronger magician in another tribe has interfered injuriously with the doctor's operations. Their vapour baths and their decoctions are more in accordance with our notions of treating diseases; and these, we may suppose, did not arise out of their superstitions, but were the results of experience.
It will be observed that in some cases females are employed as doctors, and that their power to heal is believed in.
The natives rapidly recover from wounds. Such injuries as would be fatal in the case of Europeans are accounted as nothing amongst the blacks. A spear through the body, a broken skull, or ghastly wounds inflicted by the boomerang, are quickly cured. And they are very patient. A man pierced by a barbed spear will carry the barbs in his body until suppuration ensues and such a destruction of the tissues as to admit of the wood being pulled out.
This is scarcely consistent with the theory of a low vitality. In his native state the black is probably as healthy and has a body in all its parts as capable of repairing injuries unassisted as the animals that live with him in the forests. Under circumstances different from those natural to him—in the artificial life which the whites have forced upon him—he is not always very strong nor very healthy. The process of selection which nature has employed in fitting him for the hanuts he loves is one which renders him a ready victim to the diseases that are the results of the kind of civilization now existing; diseases which would be unknown were civilization based on natural laws, and not crippled by old superstitions nor held in bondage by vicious inventions.
The dresses and personal ornaments of the natives of Australia, as may be supposed, are simple. The climate does not require any thick close clothing; and the habits of the people forbid the use of many personal decorations within their reach. The opossum cloak, the strips of skin worn around the loins, and ​the apron of emu feathers, are their clothing. All else that they use is put on rather for ornament than because it is necessary. Their cloaks, their aprons, their necklaces, their nose-bones, the hunger-belt they tie round their bodies, the extraordinary head-dress of feathers worn by the natives of the north—resembling the masks of the Ahts of Vancouver's Island, the Momo of New Caledonia, and the circlets of feathers with which the men of Guiana deck their heads—and the manner in which they paint themselves, are shown in the descriptions and figures in this work.
The cloaks are made of the skins of the opossum. These skins they neatly sew together, using for thread the sinews of the tail of the kangaroo. The rug is ornamented with various devices, and whether the outside or the inside is presented, it is a work that every one likes to look at, because it is strong and durable and honestly made, and never in the lines drawn on it exhibiting the unpleasing forms that are invariably chosen by our own people when they attempt decoration.
The apron of feathers used by maidens, and the skirt, kilt, or fillibeg, made of strips of skin, with which the men clothe themselves, resemble in form the African apron of thongs, the grass dresses of Fiji and New Caledonia, and the feather aprons of tropical America.
The fillet worn round the head reminds one of a similar ornament used by the people who dwelt on the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris, of that of the Persians, of the band tied over the hair that the Greeks and Romans affected, and the modern fashion of tying the hair with a ribbon.
They bored the septum of the nose, in this repeating the custom of the Sachet Indians of De Fuca's Straits and the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North America.
Their necklaces, simple as they are, have their representations now in the rich and costly adornments which the females of Europe delight in placing on their necks.
The hunger-belt of the Australians is like that of the Moors of Africa and the Red Indians of America. The specimens in my collection are beautifully wrought.
Their practice of distinguishing by an article of dress, such as the apron of emu feathers, the females who were not yet matrons, finds even now its equivalents in many modes of attire amongst civilized peoples; and indeed it is difficult to name any of their customs that are not apparently the germs of varying phases of fashion that exist at the present day, the origin of which, unless we seek it in the habits of savages, is hidden from us. The wearing of armlets and anklets, the ear-rings which no woman dislikes and many men are glad to exhibit, the tattooing that the sailor more especially rejoices in, and even the crown that sovereigns are compelled to assume, are all ​derived from the simple decorations of savage peoples. This reflection may appear to some humiliating, but in truth it is ennobling. It shows that man advances, improves, and invents; and such steps, though the dates of them cannot be recorded, as surely mark the stages of his progress as the discovery of the art of printing, the use of steam in locomotion, the application of electricity to the working of telegraphs, and the contrivances by which secrets are won from nature in analyses, in light-painting, and in the wonderful apparatus which enable us to pierce the further heavens and tell of their mysteries.
Nearly all their work is good and strong and lasting, and often much ingenuity is shown in arranging the knitted work of their head-bands and sashes.
It is not a custom of the natives to use flowers for the purpose of personal decoration, though it is said that girls when dancing have been seen so adorned. Neither do they make necklaces of shells like those of the natives of Tasmania; but fragments of shells are sometimes fastened to the pendant of the necklace of reeds. They do not pierce the ears. They tie bunches of leaves round the ankles or round the legs above the knee when performing in the corrobboree, and these make a strange noise as they move rapidly to and fro. It is believed that the people of New Guinea adopt the same method when they dress themselves for their dances.
The colors used by the natives for painting themselves are red, yellow, white, and black, Blue is not used for painting the body, and indeed it is questionable whether that color was known to them prior to the advent of Europeans. The so-called blue that is seen in the cave paintings is probably a mixture of black and white. White paint is nearly always adopted for the corrobboree dance, and is also generally the color of mourning. The brighter colors have quite a metallic lustre when carefully applied; and on important occasions the men take great pains in painting their bodies. They apply white in streaks and daubs in such a manner as to appear at night by the light of the corrobboree fire like a crowd of skeletons. The natives travelled long distances to procure red-ochre and other paints; and some tribes could get their favorite color only by barter. Whether because it was difficult to obtain, or because it was not generally approved of, it is certain that yellow-ochre was not as much used in the south as in the north. A great many weapons from the north are daubed with a yellow pigment; and I have not seen one so colored amongst those made by the natives of Victoria.
The men and women did not always paint themselves in such manner as whim or fancy dictated. It appears that on occasions of mourning they adopted certain styles of coloring, according as they were near or distant relatives of the deceased; and perhaps, even when they appeared in their most grotesque adornments, they acted as directed by custom or superstition, and presented to their tribe pictures which were understood by them. It is altogether a mistake to suppose that savages act as a rule on impulse, without guide, and without control.
In ornamenting the skin they had to conform to rules. They raised cicatrices after a pattern common to the tribe. One form, at any rate, had to ​appear, whatever latitude might be permitted in regard to others. None of the people of Australia practise the art of tattooing as it is known in the Tonga Islands, in Samoa, or in New Zealand. Their elevated scars are like the large punctures or ridges, some in straight and others in curved lines, which Capt. Cook observed on the bodies of the natives of Tasmania, and which are seen also among the men of New Guinea, where are used red-ochre to paint the body, and a piece of bone in the septum of the nose. This method of ornamentation has no doubt been gradually improved by the brown race until it reached its highest development in the Marquesas. The women of Brumer Island ornament the skin with zigzag markings, but they are also frequently elaborately tattooed, and there, perhaps, may be found the art in a transition state. The figure of a native of Queensland, in this work, shows a very curious set of scars, and it is wonderful how he could have endured the pain of the operations necessary to this kind of embellishment.
The natives of Australia embellish their weapons with incised lines, using the band, the herring-bone, the chevron, St. Andrew's cross, and detached circles. Many of these are so combined as to form geometrical patterns that have an excellent effect. They do not use coils or scrolls; and there are rarely seen, except in their pictures, figures of animals or vegetables. It is true that they represent in rude lines forms of animals, such as the iguana, on their shields; but these, like the lines on the same weapons showing rivers and lakes—the boundaries of their lands—are intended to convey to others the name or place of their tribe.
They roughly carve their weapons with the stone tomahawk and stone chisel, but the ornamentation is effected by a very neat tool, formed of one side of the under-jaw and tooth of the opossum. This, when fixed to a wooden handle, is a most useful cutting instrument.
The patterns carved on the shields and clubs figured in this work have been faithfully copied. All the lines are repeated, and thus there are preserved lasting records of the native art of this people. I cannot discover, except as regards the devices on the shields, that there is any difference in the modes of ornamentation amongst the natives of Victoria. They used the same figures, but it is almost certain that particular forms were preferred to others in some localities.
Their shields, their clubs, their throwing-sticks, and their cloaks, are often profusely ornamented. In the south their spears are not ornamented, while in the north they are marked much after the pattern used by the natives of the South Sea Islands in embellishing their arrows. The natives of West Australia appear to have but one rather remarkable pattern for their shields, and they do not in any way ornament the throwing-stick. Some of their spears, however, are ornamented, the colors used being black and white.
Implements made of bone are not, as far as I know, decorated in any way. Neither the ancient nor modern bone tools or ornaments in my possession are marked at all.
The boomerang is not ornamented anywhere, I believe, except on the north-east coast and in the east. ​A remarkable form of shield is in use on the north-east coast. The style of ornamentation differs from all others on the continent, and there is a boss in the centre. The people who carve this weapon use colors, also, in combinations that are not generally seen elsewhere.
The geometrical figures carved by the natives of Australia much resemble those of the Fijians. I have given some examples, and others might be given, showing almost line for line (though the patterns are complicated) an exact resemblance between the modes of ornamentation adopted on the north-east coast and by the natives of Levuka. But the Fijians use also forms that are unknown to the Australians.
On the other hand, the natives of New Zealand in all their forms of decoration greatly contrast those of Australia. There the broken loop-coil and peculiar shell-like patterns prevail, and the lines are not tangential, as those carved by the Australians almost invariably are.
The reader need not be reminded of the similarity that exists in all the forms adopted by the savages of Australia and those that are seen on the ancient urns dug out of the earth in Britain, and how often they are repeated in the architecture of the races from which we have derived civilization. Nearly as much will be taught by a careful study of all the forms of art-decoration used by the peoples of the past and those now in use by savages as perhaps by investigating the structure of the languages of those now living. It is a work that will undoubtedly be undertaken at some future time, and the results will be of the highest value to mankind. All the short steps which were taken in the march towards a higher state of existence cannot be measured, but some can be scanned by the light which existing practices throw on those of the past; and there is neither reason for doubt nor hesitation as regards the exceeding value of rigid research in a field that is almost untrodden. Savages, when they attempt ornamentation, appear to have the greatest difficulty in emancipating themselves from the control which geometrical figures exercise on the mind. They cannot, without an effort, make a large circle or a large curve. A snake drawn by an Australian is angular; and the neck of the emu is angular. Perhaps it is correct to say that wherever curved lines prevail in the decorations of a race there is an approach to a state, as regards art, somewhat higher than that of the savage. It may be that of barbarism; but still the use of the curve indicates a higher culture than that known to races who have exclusively geometrical patterns. It was only in the so-called bronze age in Scandinavia that the continuous loop-coil was so prominent in the decorations of the people of that part of Europe, and though such forms are used also by tribes that are unacqainted with the use of metals, such exceptions would perhaps be as instructive in unfolding the history of the past as the occurrence in Australia of animals and plants whose congeners are found in Europe in Secondary and Tertiary formations.
Without culture, without refinement, the Australian is an artist. He paints in caves, in places where he has access to caves; and, where there are none, he bends a sheet of bark, smokes the inner surface until it is blackened, and then ​depicts with the nail of his thumb or a bone-awl, pictures of birds, and beasts, men, and scenes in his life.
He decorates the smooth rocks that front the sea, and finds in the representations that have been made by others and in his own efforts the same kind of delight that fills the mind of the civilized man when he sits before his easel.
Throughout Australia the practice of painting pictures in caves and on rocks, of inscribing strange devices on the barked trunks of trees, and of cutting away the grass so as to make figures on the ground, is common; and it is but just to repeat the observation of one well acquainted with their works, and say that nowhere is any trace of indecency to be seen.
The figures that are given in this work sufficiently answer the oft-repeated statement that the blacks of Australia are unable to understand a picture when they see it. They are fond of pictures; and one thing that has astonished Europeans is the care they take, when partially civilised, to decorate their huts with wood engravings and colored pictures. There is probably not a little child at any of the Aboriginal settlements that would not at once recognise a photographic portrait of any well-known person who regularly visited the station.
It is of great importance to ascertain with certainty the steps that have led to improvements in their arms and arts, and it is to be deplored that little information is available on a subject so interesting. There is some reason to believe that inventions have crept down gradually from the north. The longitudinal lines on some of the weapons of the West Australians are similar to a style of ornamentation common on the north and north-east coast. The Port Lincoln blacks are not equal to the natives of the Murray in fashioning their weapons, and there is little doubt that the natives living on the shores of Lake Eyre are far behind the men of the Murray and the Darling in many devices. They wind long strings round the body instead of the woven sash; and it is said the boomerang is in some parts of that district unknown. The bone fish-hook it is believed was used by only a few of the tribes of Victoria; and it is by no means certain that message-sticks were in common use amongst the people of the southern parts of Australia. Their shields, their spears, their nets, their hooks, indeed all they possess, appear to have been derived from the north; and some things—as, for instance, the closely wrought wicker bottle or basket made by the natives of Rockingham Bay—have not yet come very far southward. That they were gradually, very slowly—before the coming of the whites—adopting new contrivances leading to some improvement in their condition is I think certain, but their wandering habits as hunters and fishers, and the bonds formed of their superstitions, forbade the possibility of any rapid changes in their mode of life. It is only amongst the foremost nations of the earth that inventions and improvements advance by leaps and bounds.
The offensive weapons of the natives are neither few nor simple. Some of them are but little known; and probably but for the descriptions given in this volume all knowledge of such of those as are very uncommon would have been lost. A mere catalogue of the weapons I have collected would occupy much space. ​Probably the first weapon used by the blacks was the Worra-worra or Nulla-nulla. A young tree was pulled up and rudely fashioned into a club, the root forming the knob. The end was sharpened, and it could be used as well for striking an enemy as for digging up roots, and for making holes so as to enable the native to catch animals that burrow. It would be used also as a missile, and the kangaroo, the opossum, and the native dog and birds would be killed with the instrument. By-and-by other forms grew out of this very simple weapon. With the axe and the cutting tools made of teeth or chips of basalt they carved clubs out of solid wood, nearly always selecting, however, a tree or a branch that was somewhat like in form to the weapon that was desired.
The Kud-jee-run, the ordinary club or waddy of the natives of the Yarra, the Koom-bah-mallee and Moonoe of the Murray tribes, and the Mattina and the Meero of the north-east coast, are all weapons of the same kind; they are clubs, however much they differ in form and in the way in which they are ornamented. They are sharpened at the lower end, and each can be used as a missile. The double pointed Nulla-nulla of the north-east coast is employed, however, most commonly in the same way as the Kon-nung of the Victorian natives. It is either thrown at the enemy or used to pierce him in close combat. The Kon-nung is not a club, but a fighting-stick. It is sharpened at both ends, and, whether used as a missile or a dagger, is a dangerous weapon.
The Kul-luk of the Gippsland natives, the Bittergan of the north-east coast, and the large sword made by the people of Rockingham Bay, were no doubt in their earlier forms like clubs, but they are to be classed rather with the Li-lil and the Quirriang-an-wun than with the Kud-jee-run. The Li-lil is not so often used as a missile as to strike at and cut the enemy, and may indeed be properly called a wooden sword. It is made of very hard wood, and it has a fine sharp edge. It is a better instrument than any of the wooden swords made by the natives of the north. This, like all the rest, was sometimes used as a missile, and also in defence to guard blows aimed by the enemy.
Many of the clubs of the Australian natives are neatly made, and curiously ornamented, and as specimens of art are scarcely inferior to those of the Fijians. The Fijians usually ornament that part which is grasped by the hand. The heads generally are smooth—though some, those belonging to the chiefs, are elaborately carved. The head of one in my collection, of a globular form, is spiked, and the spikes curiously arranged in lines, reminding one of the flower of the dahlia.
Though the woods used by the natives for their clubs are heavy and hard, their weapons are smaller and lighter than those of the Fijians. The larger Fijian clubs in my collection vary in length from thirty-six to forty inches, and they weigh from eighty-four to one hundred and eighty ounces. The larger Australian clubs weigh no more than forty ounces, and some less than twelve. But the large wooden club or sword used at Port Darwin weighs seventy-two ounces.
The natives of the south and west of Australia use generally lighter weapons than the men of the north.
​Many of the spears made by the natives of Victoria are ruder in form, though perhaps not less effective in war or in the chase than those seen in the northern and north-western parts of the continent.
The double-barbed spear (Mongile) made by inserting pieces of quartz, quartzite, or black basalt in grooves cut in the wood; the double-barbed spear, formed by cutting barbs out of the solid wood; the Nandum, having barbs (also cut out of the solid wood) on one side only; the reed spear (Tir-rer), with a piece of hard heavy wood for a point; the barbed spear (Ko-anie); the bident (Gow-dalie); the trident (Wormegoram); the simple wooden spear (Ujie-ko-anie), having both ends sharpened, and one brought to a fine point; the eel-spear; and the Koy-yun (one of the favorite spears of the southern blacks)—are all occasionally used—and some exclusively—as weapons of war. Some are described as spears for fishing, but not one of them would not be used if a fight occurred; and it is as difficult to distinguish their weapons from their implements as to determine sometimes whether a club can be more properly called an offensive or a defensive weapon. A man will throw his spears and use his club as a defence, or throw his club, and use some other weapon to ward off boomerangs or other missiles.
The stone-headed spears of the north will, perhaps, be more interesting to scientific men than the wooden spears. The heads are as a rule not ground, but made by striking off flakes, and some in my collection are marvellous results of this art. Perfect in form, and thoroughly adapted to the purpose for which they are designed, they shame the more elaborate efforts of civilized men, who with all their appliances could not excel, and probably could not equal, the works of the untutored savages of the north. It is believed that stone-headed spears are common only in the north, but the system of exchange so general amongst the tribes may have brought these stone-headed weapons to the knowledge of the southern black. Mr. Officer says that the natives of the Murray claim to be acquainted with this kind of spear; but I have not found it anywhere in Victoria—nor have any of my correspondents, as far as I am informed—nor has Mr. Officer, as he tells me, seen a stone in his district which in any respect resembles the stone spear-heads of the north. As soon as one is acquainted with these stone-heads, as soon as the sight is accustomed to them, it is easy enough to distinguish them, and to decide whether or not they are the work of the natives. Their character is distinctly marked.
The rocks used for making spear-heads are black basalt and fine granular quartzite. I have not seen any made of quartz, which may be easily accounted for. The quartzite of which the spear-heads are made is almost like jasper; it is tough, and when properly fractured gives a fine even edge, which quartz does not, and it is not brittle. The natives had their choice of rocks in the north, and invariably they chose the best for their purposes. If they had not had quartzite, they would, like many of the tribes of West Australia, have used quartz.
The lever used to propel the spear—the Kur-ruk, Gur-reek, Murri-wun, Meera, or Womerah, of the east, west, and south, the Rogorouk or Wondouk of the north—is the same in principle in all parts of Australia. In its rudest ​form it is a stick with a tooth or a piece of hard wood fastened with gum at one end. In its best form the projection for the reception of the hollow at the ends of the spear is carved out of the solid wood. In the southern parts of Australia the woomerah used by the natives is about twenty-seven inches in length, but in the north they employ for propelling the long stone-headed spears an instrument about forty-four inches in length.
This, like the boomerang, is peculiar to Australia, and yet, the Ounep (a cord with a loop) of New Caledonia, used for propelling the spear, is almost identical in principle. The Ounep answers precisely to the amentum of the ancients.
The Kur-ruk enables the black to throw a spear to a great distance and with precision. He can kill a kangaroo at a distance of eighty yards.
The throwing-sticks of the northern, eastern, and southern natives are long and narrow, and are often much ornamented. Those of the western tribes are broad canoe-shaped weapons, not marked in any way, but highly polished.
The Aboriginal is careful of his spears and equally regardful of the Kur-ruk. His spears are to him what the fowling-piece or the rifle is to the sportsman or the soldier amongst our own people. He procures game with his spear, and it is the weapon on which he relies when overtaken by an enemy. He polishes and sharpens his spears from time to time, and if the wooden "tooth" of the Kur-ruk be broken, he mends it by inserting perhaps the tooth of an enemy slain in battle in the place where the wooden "tooth" was. This is easily done when he has ready at hand the strong sinews, got from the tail of the kangaroo, and such an adhesive gum as that yielded by the grass-tree. When hunting he will carry several spears, and also when hiding in rushes or scrub in the hope of intercepting some enemy.
He carries his spears, when in ambush, not in his hands but between his toes. He carries or drags them after him, and with lightning speed he throws them either by hand alone or with his Kur-ruk. When an enemy is struck with the jagged spear in the chest or abdomen, he is disabled, but his life is not despaired of by his friends. They drag the spear forwards through his body, the sufferer or his friends plug the holes with grass, and very often in an incredibly short space of time the warrior again appears, ready to battle with his foes.
The spears used for taking fish remind one, as already stated, of those in use now and in ancient times. The bideut is the same as that employed by the Egyptians; and the account given by Dr. Gummow of the manner of fishing in the extensive flooded grounds that border the Murray is exactly like that of Wilkinson, and brings one again to the consideration of the similarities that exist between the customs of the savages of the South and those of races now scarcely otherwise known but by their monuments and their traditions.
The play boomerang (Wonguim); the war boomerang (Barngeet); and the wooden swords (Li-lil and Quirriang-an-wun) of the natives of the northern parts of Victoria are of uncommon interest; and it is believed that the facts now given will do away with much misapprehension that exists in the minds of many scientific men in Europe respecting the form and character of this class ​of missiles. A number of weapons have been sent to Europe from time to time, and experiments have been made with them, and quite erroneous conclusions have been formed respecting them. Because a war boomerang will not return to the feet of the thrower, and because the play boomerang has been thrown both by blacks and whites with indifferent success, it has been assumed that this missile is uncertain in its flight, and its return to the feet of the thrower an accident.
Those who have seen a wonguim thrown by a native accustomed to its use need not be told that the statements published from time to time in the scientific journals in Europe are founded on imperfect information, or dictated in an unphilosophical spirit by a too great desire to prove that the Dravidian races of the Indian Peniusula and the ancient Egyptians belong to the Australoid stock, and that the boomerang was known to the Egyptians. All the facts that have been gathered up to the present time support Professor Huxley's theory of the origination of the Australian race, or at any rate tend to support it, and it is a pity that any mischievous error should be allowed to obscure what little has been revealed by the researches of Professor Huxley, the late Dr. Bleek, the Rev. William Ridley, the Rev. Lorimer Fison, and others.
There is nothing to show that anything like the wonguim was known to any other people anywhere at any time, and it is at least doubtful whether any weapon resembling the barngeet was known to the Egyptians.
The Wonguim and Barngeet are altogether different from the Saparu, or sickle-shaped sword, which is represented on Babylonian and Assyrian cylinders as the weapon of Merodach or Bel.
All the mistaken notions respecting the Australian wonguim could have been at once disposed of if those who have been experimenting had referred to the statements made, nearly a quarter of a century ago, by one of the ablest and most conscientious observers of his time—the late Sir Thomas Mitchell. Speaking of the weapons of Australia, he says "The boomerang is one of the most remarkable of these missiles. Its flight through the air from the hand of an Australian native seems in strict obedience to his will. In its return after a very varied course to the foot of the thrower, this weapon seems so extraordinary, that a vice-president of the Royal Society, about twelve years ago, observed to me 'that its path through the air was enough to puzzle a mathematician.'"
Sir Thomas's remarks are strictly accurate; and any one may satisfy himself of the capabilities of the instrument who will take the trouble to make and experiment with the toy which is described in that part of this work which treats of the boomerang. It is almost useless for an adult European to seek to acquire the art of throwing the wonguim of the natives. Some of the wonguims one may throw very well, but others—and such are often the best—it is impossible to throw with success. The want of success, however, does not justify any one in stating therefore that the flight is uncertain. It would be just as reasonable for one who knows nothing of music to find fault with a flute or a violin.
Nothing is known of the origin of the wonguim. The Barngeet was probably in use for a long period prior to the discovery of the weapon which returns to ​the thrower, and it is reasonable to believe that in making the Barngeet the right curves had accidentally been given to one of them. But even with a model in his hands it is almost impossible to guess how the Australian black was able to detect the slight peculiarities of form on which its flight depends, and to imitate them. There must have been many failures. It is not easy to throw a good weapon; and the first imperfect boomerangs must have caused as much trouble to the natives and raised in their minds the same doubts as the wonguims and the barngeets that have been the subjects of experiment by some of the savans in England.
The boomerang is not known in all parts of Australia. It is so stated by more than one. Mr. John Jardine, the police magistrate at Somerset, says that the boomerang is not known at Cape York. A correspondent at Cooktown (lat. 15° S.) makes the same statement; and another correspondent says, "I have doubts as to the boomerang being known, except by report, to the Narrinyeri (tribes of the lakes at the mouth of the Murray) as early as 1847. They certainly did not use it commonly at that time." And the wonguim, I believe, is not known by some tribes of the north who use the ornamented barngeet.
The facts indeed, as far as they are known, lead to the inference that the wonguim was first made by the people of the eastern coast; but the thinnest and finest of these leaf-like missiles are found in Western Australia. How did they get there? And why are they not used in York Peninsula? Is the boomerang of the West Australians, unlike in form that of the eastern and southern parts of the continent, an invention of that people? It is almost certain that the wonguim was not brought with them by the natives that first crossed the straits; and it had not become known to all the tribes when the first white settlers came to occupy the country. It is not a weapon that, its uses once discovered, would be discarded by any natives. This is a subject of the highest interest; and though perhaps it is now too late for any investigations to lead to such results as would have accrued if the matter had been taken in hand when the country was first colonized, it is possible yet to procure information from the natives of the north and the interior, and to ascertain, perhaps, how the knowledge of the wonguim was spread, and whether or not it had its origin amongst the tribes of the east coast. The wonguim has not been found in New Guinea, and the Tasmanians knew nothing of it.
Though the native would use anything that he might hold in his hand or that was within his grasp to ward off blows, or to protect himself against the boomerang or the spear, he had also very excellent defensive weapons. The shields of the natives of the east, south-east, and south are of two kinds. The Mulga—the wooden shield—is a defence when attack is made by the Kud-jee-run or Leon-ile, and though the general character of the weapon in all parts of Victoria is maintained, there are differences of form which show that the shield was being very gradually improved. The rather rude shields with a flat surface commonly in use, and designed only for warding off blows aimed by an enemy who was armed with the club, began to give place to shields with an angular face, which could be employed as well against the club as the spear. Numerous figures are given showing the forms of these weapons and the manner in which ​they are ornamented. Many are heavy, weighing as much as fifty-six ounces; and the wives of the natives must have been sorely burdened in travelling from camp to camp when their warriors owned several of these weapons.
The aperture for the hand in all the specimens in my collection varies in length from three to three and a half inches, and when covered with the skin of the opossum the space is not more than sufficient to allow of a lady grasping the handle of the shield. The natives have long narrow hands, and all who examine their weapons and implements are astonished when they see the small spaces that are cut out for the hand. Some of the club-shields are very elegant in form, and are superior, I think, to the African shields, which in many respects they resemble.
The Gee-am, or Ker-reem, a thin, light, and broad canoe-shaped shield, is used as a defence against spears, and would be nearly useless in protecting a man against an enemy armed with a club. The specimens figured in this work fairly represent the character of these weapons. Care has been taken to give drawings of old weapons only—weapons made before the natives had become accustomed to use the knives and tools introduced by the whites.
The Ker-reem reminds one of the wicker shield (Gerrhum) of the Persians, the Gerrha of the Assyrians, and the γέρρον of the ancient Greeks—the square shield made of osier and covered with the hide of an ox. The weight of the Ker-reem is usually not more than twenty-seven ounces. These shields are hard and strong and durable.
In some the place for the hand is cut out of the solid wood; but generally two holes are made, and a piece of the bough of a tree is bent, and the ends are inserted in the holes. Those with solid handles are old weapons, and are now very rare.
The Goolmarry of the natives of Mackay in Queensland, and the very remarkable shield with a boss, and ornamented with zigzag lines, from Rockingham Bay, are different altogether in form, and in some respects in ornamentation, from the shields used by the natives of the Namoi and the Peel, where weapons like those of the Murray and the Glenelg are common. I have in my collection a beautiful spear-shield from the Namoi, having a handle cut out of the solid wood, which in form and in ornamentation is exactly like the shields used by the natives of the Yarra.
The woods available for making shields are in the south very different from those of the north. A species of ficus which grows in the north yields a soft and light wood, which is admirably suited to the requirements of the native; and with this he has constructed a weapon which differs essentially from the heavy wooden club-shield and the lighter spear-shield of the men of the Murray and the Yarra.
The weapons and implements of the West Australian natives differ in some respects from those of the natives of the eastern and southern parts of the continent.
​The Kylie or boomerang is a thin and paper-like missile, with very sharp edges, and capable of inflicting deadly wounds. Its form, too, is peculiar, presenting, as it does in looking at it as it lies flat, two angles. Whereas the boomerangs of the natives of Victoria weigh in some cases as much as ten ounces, the West Australian kylies are seldom more than four ounces in weight. Light as they are, it is very difficult for a European to throw them with precision. It is easier to manage one of the heavy weapons of the Victorian natives than this slight instrument; and yet in the hands of an expert its flight is extraordinary, and when properly thrown it returns invariably to the feet of the thrower, or very near to his feet. They are made of the wood of a species of acacia; and the colors of those in my collection are singularly beautiful—the rich reddish-brown streaked with dark-brown being usually bordered by a light-cream color.
There are at least five kinds of spears in use in West Australia, the most common being the Gid-jee, a wooden spear having a row of sharp chips on one side, which is thrown with the Meero; the light spear of very hard wood, sharpened at both ends; the double-barbed spear (Pillara), thrown with the Meero; the single-barbed spear, and the barbed four-pronged spear. The spears are very light; some weigh no more than six ounces and a half. They are generally coated with a gum or resin, and the gum of the grass-tree is used for fastening the stone chips to the wood. One kind of spear is ornamented.
The Meeros or Womerahs are of two kinds: one is a shield-shaped weapon, thin and light but very strong, and the other is a long narrow throwing-stick. One of the latter in my collection is about forty-two inches in length, and is used for propelling the long stone-headed spears that are in use on the north-west coast.
It is commonly stated that the long spears are always thrown by hand; but this is a mistake. All the very long spears from the north-west coast that I have seen are hollowed at the end for the reception of the "tooth" of the throwing-stick.
The shield of the West Australians—and it appears they have only one—is curiously marked, and differs from the shields of the natives of the east. It is usually colored red and white. It closely resembles the shields brought from Central Africa.
The stone hammer or stone axe (Kad-jo) is also different from those common in the south and east. It is said that they are often formed of two pieces of stone. The wooden handle is sharpened at the end, and is used to assist in climbing trees. The specimens sent to me are very rough. The stones are not ground or polished, but formed by striking off chips. They are composed of fine-grained granite, which, unlike greenstones, diorites, and metamorphic rocks, cannot easily be shaped by grinding.
The stone chisel (Dhabba) is like that made by the natives of the Grey Ranges; but the wooden handle is marked by incised lines, whether for ornament or to afford a better grip of the tool is not known. It is used in fighting, and also for cutting and shaping boomerangs, shields, clubs, and other weapons. The stone is quartz, obtained probably from veins in granite.
​The meat-cutter or native knife is usually figured and described as a saw; and it much resembles a saw. Fragments of quartz are fastened to a piece of hard wood with the gum of the xanthorrhœa, very much in the same way as in making a spear, and a rough sort of knife is the result. It is used for cutting flesh.
These weapons and tools, and the native scoop or spade (Waal-bee), the waddy, the large war-club, and such implements as bone-needles or awls, complete the list of the instruments commonly in use on the west coast.
Nearly all the information respecting the West Australian weapons and implements has been communicated by the Honorable F. Barlee, M.P., the Colonial Secretary of West Australia, and by Mr. H. Y. L. Brown, who made a geological survey of a portion of the territory. Mr. Brown increased my collection by a valuable donation of spears, throwing-sticks, tomahawks, &c., and but for his assistance I should have been unable to give a description of many very interesting weapons.
Much ingenuity is displayed by the natives in plaiting and weaving grasses, flags, and sedges, and various vegetable fibres, into twine, bags, and nets. The leaves of the reed (Phragmites communis), a sedge-like plant (Xerotes longifolia), different species of Carex, and the common grass (Poa Australis), are plaited by the women. The leaves are usually split with the nail, a number of the strips are put together, without being twisted, and another strip is wrapped round the bundle thus formed. The strips are neatly interlaced; and sometimes a pattern is formed by varying the size of the strips or by using leaves of different colors.
Many of the bags are made of a fibre obtained from the bark of the stringy-bark tree (Eucalyptus obliqua). The fibre is twisted, and the twine is very strong and durable. The fur of the opossum or the native cat is sometimes used for making twine. None of the baskets made in Victoria are so closely woven as to hold water, and it is doubtful whether there are any such in Australia. The wicker bottle or basket from Rockingham Bay, figured and described by Mr. John McDonnell, may perhaps hold water. Indeed it is more like a water vessel than anything else.
It is a very amusing sight to see a group of native women employed in basket-making. Each has a heavy stone to keep the work in its place, and the plaiting is done by the hands, the band being looped over the large toe of the right foot. They chatter and sing continually as the business goes on, and they seem to enjoy the labor, and to pursue it as mechanically as an old woman knitting a stocking.
When the whites came the native women made variously-colored twine from the old shawls and other garments that were given to them, and with this they netted bags, both for their own use and for sale. Some of these are very pretty.
The vessels used for holding water are usually of wood. A gnarl of a gum-tree is cut off, and hollowed by fire and with the chisel or tomahawk. Some are large and heavy, and must have remained at the camp where they were made. Others are small, and could be carried with ease.
​The water vessels in some districts are made of bark, in other parts they use the skin of an animal; and it is asserted that the natives of Encounter Bay fashion water vessels out of the heads of their deceased relatives. I have never seen any of these hideous drinking cups, and I cannot learn that they were ever in use amongst the tribes of Victoria.
Shells, as might be supposed, are occasionally made to serve for holding water.
Amongst the cutting instruments are the mussel-shell (U-born), wherewith they scraped and prepared skins for rugs, bags, and water vessels; and the Leange-walert, formed of the lower-jaw of the opossum, an excellent tool for carving designs on wood and for cutting and shaping the boomerang and other weapons.
The bone and wooden awls and nails (Min-der-min), still in use where European nails and needles are not to be had, are very ancient implements. The bone-awls are found in the long disused mirrn-yongs and shell-mounds with stone tomahawks and chips of basalt. They are not ornamented in any way.
The long stick (Kon-nung) carried by the women is a strong and rather heavy implement, having its point hardened by fire. It is employed in digging roots, in propelling the bark canoe, and for fighting.
The Nerum ought properly to be classed with the offensive weapons of the natives. The fibula of the kangaroo is sharpened at one end, and to the other is attached an elastic rope of some vegetable fibre. There is a loop at the end, through which the bone can be thrust. This instrument was in former times used ordinarily for strangling an enemy, but it was perhaps, when the owner was not looking for some victim, employed as a rope for keeping together spears and the like. I have seen only one specimen of the Nerum. Something very like it is described by Mr. J. Moore Davis.
The Weet-weet is a toy. It is formed of a piece of hard wood, the head being a double cone, and is generally used in sport, but a skilful native can throw it in such a manner as to seriously injure or kill an opponent—time and place being suitable. This small instrument can be thrown by the hand alone to an incredible distance. It is a wonderful projectile. Its weight is less than two ounces, but when the proper impulse is given by the hand of the native, it has great velocity, and force enough to wound at a distance of two hundred and twenty yards.
The corrobboree-stick (Koorn-goon) is merely a piece of wood, sharpened at each end. Woods that, when dry, are sonorous, are selected for this implement. They are beaten together, in time, during the corrobboree dance.
The message-sticks of the Australians are highly interesting. Two are figured—one from the east coast and one from the west. The natives appear to have had for a long period a method of communicating intelligence by a kind of picture-writing. Their sticks are certainly a better means of transmitting news than the quipu of the Peruvians, which was only a cord on which variously-colored threads were attached as a fringe. The Australians, according to the statements made by my correspondents and confirmed by the evidence I have produced, could really send messages, describe the events of a journey, and ​furnish details of a kind likely to be useful to their friends. It is not without interest and importance that one of their message-sticks should have been produced in a court of justice in Queensland, and interpreted by a native trooper.
All the wonderful stories told of the Australians in the various works on ethnology, now becoming popular, are finally disposed of by the evidence of competent observers. The natives not only understand a drawing or a picture when they see it, but they themselves are tolerably good artists (probably much better artists than those who have represented them as little superior to monkeys or dogs), and they have invented, and probably have had in use for ages, picture-writing not inferior—indeed, as approaching a symbolical character, superior—to that of the birch-bark letter-writing of the Indians of America. There are, amongst some tribes, conventionalized forms, evidently; and it is of the utmost importance to ascertain to what extent these are used, and by what tribes they are understood. This subject and many others equally interesting were being investigated at the time when the results of my investigations had to be given prematurely to the public.
The information supplied by the Honorable F. Barlee, M.P., the Colonial Secretary in West Australia; Mr. Bartley, of Brisbane in Queensland; the Rev. Mr. Bulmer, of Lake Tyers in Gippsland; and Mr. J. Moore Davis—is conclusive as to the practice of sending messages by the means above described; and this alone must serve to raise the blacks of Australia to a much higher position amongst the races of the world than that hitherto ascribed to them.
The boomerang, the womerah, the weet-weet, and message-sticks like theirs are not found amongst savages in other parts of the world; and they indicate a gradual advancement in knowledge and invention, which, in the long course of ages, if their country had not been invaded by the whites, might perhaps have resulted in civilization. Their supply of food, however, was always uncertain, and mainly dependent on their exertions as hunters and fishers; and only in those districts where the cultivation of indigenous or accidentally-imported roots and plants was practicable could they have emerged from their condition as savages.
The stone implements of the natives of Australia—the tomahawks, knives, adzes, the chips for cutting and scraping, the sharpening-stones, the stones for pounding roots and grinding seeds, those used in fishing and in making baskets, and the sacred stones carried by the old men, are all described with as much care as it was possible for me to employ.
The ordinary tomahawk of the natives of Victoria consists of a stone, in shape resembling many of the axe-heads found in Europe, Asia, and America, and a wooden handle bent over the stone and firmly tied with twine. Gum is used to keep the wood in its place and to perfect the union. When complete, it is a strong and useful implement; and a native with one of these can very quickly cut off a large limb from a tree, or make holes for his feet when he is climbing. There are found also in the mirrn-yong heaps and in the soil very large tomahawks of different forms which, it is said by the natives, were employed in splitting trees. One in the possession of Mr. Stanbridge is nearly ​fourteen inches in length and five inches in breadth. It was found in a field near Daylesford, and may have been used, Mr. Stanbridge thinks, as a mattock for digging.
I have never seen any of these large implements in the hands of the natives of Victoria, but the blacks of the Munara district and those of some parts of the interior use very heavy tomahawks.
The natives of the northern tributaries of the River Darling do not in all cases attach handles to the stone-heads. Many use them in the same manner as the Tasmanians used their rough stone tools. The stone is held in the palm of the hand, and the top is grasped with the fingers and thumb.
The people of West Australia, as already stated, make their tomahawks of a fine-grained granite, and the cutting edge is formed by striking off flakes. They are not ground, and some it is said are formed of two pieces of stone. The mode in which they are fashioned is clearly shown in the figures.
The natives of the east used also for chisels and knives pieces of quartzite fashioned in the same manner; and the spear-heads of the north are made by striking off flakes.
If therefore all the stone implements and weapons of the Australians be examined, one set might be put apart and classed as the equivalents of those of the Palæolithic period of Europe, and another set as the equivalents of those of the Neolithic period. A man of one tribe will have in his belt a tomahawk ground and highly polished over the whole of its surface, and not far distant from his country the people will use for tomahawks stones made by striking off flakes. The figures given in this work sufficiently establish this fact, and would seem to press strongly against the theories of Sir John Lubbock, and to favor the views expressed by the Duke of Argyll.
But it would be unphilosophical not to use great care in applying such facts as those I have mentioned to the consideration of a question of so much moment. The classification made by Sir John Lubbock is confined by him to Europe, and it is based not alone in all cases on the forms of the stone implements, but also on the character of other remains that are found with them. It is beyond question that the Tasmanians used very rough stone implements, which were made by chipping, that their weapons and tools were few in number, and inferior to those of the natives of Australia, and that their condition altogether was lower than that of the Australians, amongst whom as a rule ground and polished stone axes are the implements commonly employed for cutting wood. It rests with Sir John Lubbock to consider these facts in connection with the classification he has employed. It is obvious that if all the natives of Australia and Tasmania had perished before the whites had had an opportunity of observing their customs, and if the only knowledge obtainable respecting them was that to be got from their implements of stone, some very curious results would have followed on applying Sir J. Lubbock's classification to them. The Tasmanian stone implements would have been regarded as of Palæolithic age, and some of the Australian specimens as of Neolithic age—that is to say if the evidence derivable from these was alone admissible; but as regards the stone implements of Europe, Sir John Lubbock adduces much more, and not ​the least important is that which relates to the conditions under which the European stone implements are found. In the Palæolithic period, "man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, the cave-bear, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and other extinct animals;" and with the remains of these are found chipped axes and other implements that appear to be characteristic of that period. The geologist does not necessarily suggest contemporaneity when he describes in different parts of the globe the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene deposits; and it is in a similar manner and with the like results that the archæologist should work. To bring into complete harmony the several stages of growth, whether ancient or modern, which have their records in the rocks or in the works of man, one must forget Time, and, in the first attempts at classification, viewing the whole earth, look for resemblances and differences in the things themselves, rather than seek to ascertain which of them were formed contemporaneously.
A careful consideration of the condition of savages in all parts of the globe tends rather to support the conclusions of Sir J. Lubbock, and to suggest their extension beyond the limits he has marked out than to invalidate them. He made undoubtedly a step of the highest importance in the advancement of a science that but yesterday—as it were—had no existence when he suggested the division above referred to; and a patient study of the evidence he has collected shows unmistakably that his method is but the beginning of a classification that will have results of the highest importance to mankind.
It is proper to call attention to the fact that no works of art have been found in the recent drifts of Victoria, and these drifts have been largely and widely explored by gold-miners. Was Australia unpeopled during the ages that preceded the formation of the gravels that form low terraces in every valley, and the beds of soft volcanic ash that yet cover grass-grown surfaces? If peopled, why do we not find some evidence—a broken stone tomahawk or a stone spear-head—in some of the most recent accumulations? Their stone implements are not found in caves or in the mud of lagoons with the bones of the gigantic marsupials, or any of the now extinct predaceans that have their living representatives in the island of Tasmania. The bones of the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus ursinus), the great kangaroo (Macropus Titan), the Thylacoleo, the Nototherium, and the Diprotodon, and those of a reptile (Megalania prisca) allied to the lace lizards of Australia, are found abundantly in mud flats in various parts of Australia; but nothing has been discovered to show that the continent was inhabited by man when these now well-preserved relics were clothed with flesh, and the animals were feeding on the plains and in the streams which were as well fitted then as now, as shown by the fruits and seeds that have been discovered, to afford the means of support to a savage people.
What was the condition of Australia when the flint implement makers of the drift period were living? Probably an unpeopled tract, where the then nearly extinct volcanoes shed at times over the landscape a feeble light, and the lion gnawing the bones of a kangaroo was watched with jackall-like eyes by the native dog, ready to eat up such scraps as his powerful enemy might leave ​when his hunger was appeased. It is almost certain that during the period of the large carnivorous marsupials man was not there to contest with the lion the right to the proceeds of the chase.
Chips for cutting and scraping, fragments of tomahawks, and pieces of black basalt, are found on the low Silurian ranges near the rivers and creeks in all parts of Victoria; and wherever the soil is dug or ploughed over any considerable area, old tomahawks are turned up, thus showing the immense period of time that the land has been occupied by the native race.
The same fact is also strongly impressed on the mind when their quarries are examined. One quarry of diorite, near Mount William, in the parish of Lancefield, is of great extent, and the quantities of stone taken away by the natives must have been very great. Another near Kilmore occupies a large area; and there are besides numerous spots where black basalt was quarried.
The nets made by the natives of Australia are similar to those used in Europe. The twine is made strong or slight in accordance with their needs. Sometimes they use kangaroo-grass, and sometimes a fibre obtained from the bark of a tree. In the southern parts of Australia the fibre of the stringybark is usually employed.
The large net made of kangaroo-grass is provided with stone sinkers and bark floats. The hand net is stretched on a bow.
Some of the nets are very well made; and strangers are incredulous when told that they are the work of the natives.
Their fish-hooks, of shell or bone or wood, are all skilfully contrived.
It has been stated that the natives were unacquainted with fish-hooks prior to the arrival of the whites; but this is in all probability a mistake. Cook says "their fish-hooks are very neatly made, and some are exceedingly small," and Péron figures two shell fish-hooks exactly like the shell fish-hook from Rockingham Bay and the ancient bone fish-hook from Gippsland.
The very simple contrivance of wood or bone, described by Mr. J. A. Panton as having been used by the natives of Geelong to take fish, is, it is believed, unknown elsewhere. Something, however, somewhat similar, but barbed, is found in Queensland.
The barbed fish-hooks, made of shell and wood, employed by the natives of New Zealand and the South Seas, are of complex structure, but it is doubtful whether they are better adapted for the intended purpose than the simple shell-hooks of Australia.
The ordinary method of producing fire in Australia is by twirling with the palms of the hands an upright stick. One end is inserted in a hole in a flat piece of soft wood; and, if the operator is skilful, he quickly raises a smoke, and in a few moments a fire. Another, and perhaps a better method—but one practised in Australia, as far as I know, by the natives of the Murray only—is to cut a groove in a log, if there is not a crack that answers the purpose, to fill this with well-powdered dry leaves or dry grass, and rub a wooden knife across the groove. Fire is got very rapidly by this method.
The natives did not necessarily use the fire-sticks very frequently. The women carry fire when the tribe is travelling — a piece of decayed wood, a cone ​of the Banksia, or a stick, is nearly always kept burning, and a fire for cooking is made quickly when needed.
The Australian method of producing fire, by twirling the upright stick, is perhaps the most ancient known amongst all the races of men. The Brahmins use it in their religious ceremonies, and it is certainly older than their religion; the Greeks had the pyreia and the trupanon; the Aztecs and Peruvians their fire-sticks; and the superstitious people of the north of Europe go back to the practices of their forefathers, and use will-fire when they believe that their cattle have been injured by witchcraft. And it is as widely known as it is ancient. It is practised in Africa, in America, in Tahiti, in Borneo, in New Zealand, in Java, and in Japan. Amongst savages the fire so obtained is not generally looked upon as in any way peculiar, but in the oldest forms of religion it is regarded as sacred; and the Brahmin using the Arani in a Hindu temple to-day is acting in obedience to a belief as to the manner in which fire was first procured from heaven that is not very different from that entertained by the natives of Victoria. We may well wonder how instruments so simple as those described came to be used for the purpose of procuring fire.
Perhaps the rubbing together of the branches of trees in a gale, which the Rev. Richard Taylor states has caused trees to take fire in New Zealand, may have suggested the use of wood; but it is more probable, I think, that in rubbing sticks together the black discovered that they rapidly heated, and, persevering, at last made them smoke, and finally adding dry grass or bark, produced a flame.
The natives of those parts of Australia which are not visited by the Malays or Papuans have so simple a method of constructing a canoe that the invention cannot have been derived from foreigners. It is, I think, undoubtedly their own; and though I have said that it is simple, a European, without instruction from a native, would probably fail in an attempt to make a bark canoe. Mr. Hamilton Hume attempted it on one occasion and failed.
When the natives have to cross a river, they strip a sheet of bark from a tree; if necessary, it is heated in the ashes of a fire, and moulded to a proper form. The ends are stopped with walls of clay, and it is then ready for use. This, however, is a temporary expedient. A better canoe is made by selecting bark which is thin enough and flexible enough to admit of the ends being tied with a rope of vegetable fibre, stretchers are placed in it and sometimes wooden ribs, and ties are used to keep it in shape.
When the women are fishing they place stones in the canoe, and keep a fire burning, so that they can cook the fish as soon as caught. They propel the canoe either by the long stick (Kownung or Jen-dook), or by a scoop-shaped paddle of bark.
The smallest bark canoes used in Victoria are not more than seven feet six inches in length, and the largest about eighteen feet. The former will carry two persons, and the latter six or more.
The barks of the mountain ash, the stringybark, the red-gum, the blue-gum, the white-gum of the valleys, the Snowy River mahogany, and that of other varieties of eucalypts, are used for making canoes.
​The natives as a rule did not venture far from the sea-coast, even when provided with the better kinds of canoes.
At Twofold Bay and Jervis Bay, in New South Wales, they were, however, adventurous, and caught and brought to land very large fish. The men of that part of the coast seem to have taken readily to seafearing. Mr. Boyd, a settler at Twofold Bay, employed the natives many years ago as part of the crew of his yacht; and at one time they were constantly engaged in the boats of the whaling station, where their excellent sight rendered them extremely useful in seeing and harpooning the fish.
The natives used the bark of trees for canoes because of the labor and difficulty of carving good canoes out of solid wood. If they had been mariners, they would have used the splendid trees that grow in many places very close to the water's edge in fashioning durable vessels. There are perhaps no trees in the world better suited for canoes than some of those growing in the Australian forests, but the woods generally are hard and difficult to work, and it is absolutely necessary, in order to get good sound wood, that they be felled at the right season. It is the belief of many that the Australian woods will not float in water, and that is the reason that the natives use bark. But iron ships float, and a canoe made of ironbark wood not only floats, but is buoyant. Even the large thick heavy wooden tarnuk, made of the gnarl of a gum-tree, is buoyant. The story generally believed, that Australian woods are unfit for canoes because they are not buoyant is like that told of the Fellows of the Royal Society of England. One at least did not believe that a vessel of water was not made heavier when a fish was put into it. He made an experiment, and convinced his colleagues that his heterodoxy was orthodoxy. And so, when the native woods are tested, they are found to be admirably adapted to single-trunk canoe building.
The means of transport by water on the north-east coast, and at Cape York, have been improved by the natives so far as to permit of their being properly called navigators. Some of their canoes formed of the trunk of the cotton-tree (Cochlospermum) are hollowed out. They are more than fifty feet in length, and each is capable of conveying twelve or fifteen natives. They are provided with outrigger poles, and are propelled by short paddles or sails of palm-leaf matting.
The canoes of the north-eastern natives differ altogether from the rafts or canoes seen by Dampier on the north-west coast, and the bark canoes found in the lakes of the interior by Oxley some sixty years ago, and by Mitchell nearly forty years ago. The bark canoe, it may safely be assumed, is Australian—as much as the boomerang or the weet-weet; but the hollowed log canoes of the north-east are imitations of the proas of the Malays and the Papuaus.
A very interesting controversy arose about fourteen years ago respecting the canoes in use in Australia; and the letters of the late Mr. Beete Jukes, Mr. Brierly, and Sir D. Cooper, addressed to the editor of the Athenæum, contain so much that is interesting, both in consequence of the errors made originally and the rectification of the errors, that I have quoted ​the letters. They are very valuable; and the editor, it may be supposed, will not object to a piece of history so important to Australians being transferred to these pages.
The superstitions and tales and legends of the Australian natives, the folk-lore of this people, have never until within the last few years engaged attention. A long time ago—long before it was anticipated that any such researches would have valuable results—I sought to gather together all the tales and legends of the natives of Victoria, and not without a certain measure of success; but it is believed the old people could have related many that are not recorded or mentioned in this volume. The Rev. Mr. Bulmer, the late Mr. Thomas, the Rev. Mr. Hagenauer, Mr. John Green, and Mr. Alfred W. Howitt, have furnished those which now appear; and scientific men who study comparative mythology will regard their contributions with the greatest interest. To the Rev. Mr. Hartmann I am indebted for a portion of an old native story, that of Duan (the squirrel) and Weenbulain (the spider). It is very valuable. It is a tale widely known and therefore ancient. A new story in these times is not often carried far, and is likely to be soon forgotten, and this it may be supposed had its origin with others, certainly ancient, which give an account of the performances of various beasts and birds when they were in the estimation of the savages the equals or the superiors of men.
Birds and beasts are the gods of the Australians.
The eagle, the crow, the mopoke, and the crane figure prominently in all their tales. The native cat is now the moon; and the kangaroo, the opossum, the emu, the crow, and many others who distinguished themselves on earth, are set in the sky and appear as bright stars.
Fire was stolen. And this and all the legends of the natives remind one of the folk-lore of the Aryan or Indo-European race. The fables of the Australians and their references to the contests between the eagle and other birds are exactly like those known to the Saxons in every part of Europe. The eagle, the owl, the wren, the robin redbreast, the woodpecker, and the stork play nearly the same parts in European tales as the eagle, the crow, the mopoke, and the little bird with a red mark over his tail in Australian legends.
​There is much playfulness and sagacity apparent in the stories of the Aborigines. The injuries done to the bear are repaired after a curious fashion; and the wombat revenges the blow given him by the kangaroo in a manner that accounts sufficiently for the appearance he now presents.
Many of their tales recall to recollection the fables of Ovid, and others are, in character, not unlike some of those in the Pansiya panas jataka of the Buddhists.
The account that is given of the manner in which Pund-jel made the first men somewhat resembles the work attributed to Tiki in the mythology of the New Zealanders.
The myths and tales now presented do no more than serve to show how much is yet to be done in Australia in this most interesting field of enquiry. There is not a tribe of natives anywhere that does not include in it old men and old women who are the depositaries of its superstitions; and from them could be obtained stories as valuable probably as any that are given in this volume.
The late Dr. Bleek labored in South Africa with marked success in gathering portions of the great store of Bushman traditionary lore, which but for him would in all probability have remained unknown; and here in Australia there is a larger field, and the results it is certain would amply repay the labors of any who could devote time to setting down, if possible in the native tongue, with an exact translation between the lines, all that the natives have to tell respecting the beings that, in their belief, formerly peopled the earth.
Unthinking persons treat all their tales with contempt; but it is to their myths one has to look in any attempt to discover to what stock the Australian belongs. To study the mind of the savage is not a worthless employment either; and his legends and tales and superstitions reveal the workings of his undisciplined intellect, show his perception, and enable one to observe to what extent his power of reasoning is developed.
The information I have collected illustrative of the languages of the colony of Victoria will no doubt be welcomed by philologists. Many of the papers have been written by gentlemen who were well aware of the importance of the work they were engaged upon, and they have carefully and conscientiously dealt with the several questions which I put to them.
There are in all twenty-three papers, and the names of the contributors comprise many of those in the colony who are most competent to deal with so difficult a subject as the native language. The vocabularies compiled by Mr. Bunce, Mr. Parker, the Rev. Mr. Hagenauer, and Mr. Green; the examples of the conjugation of verbs, the declension of nouns and pronouns, the explanations of the grammatical structure of the tongues spoken in Victoria, and the stories and sentences in the native language, written down exactly as spoken, and with interlinear translations, by Mr. Bulmer, Mr. Hagenauer, Mr. Hartmann, Mr. Spieseke, and Mr. Howitt; the native names of trees, shrubs, and plants; and the native names of the hills, rivers, creeks, and other natural features—will, it is hoped, be accepted as important and valuable contributions, ​and such as are likely to assist towards a better comprehension of the peculiarities of the Australian languages.
The difficulties that beset the enquirer in attempting to unravel the intricacies of the dialects are great and very numerous. Changes have been effected in consequence of words being, for various reasons, from time to time tabooed, and thereafter falling into disuse. Ellipses are numerous, and are so used as to disguise the dialects; the sounds of words are altered for euphony as they take new terminations; many of the consonants are interchangeable, and the substitution of b and d for their cognates p and t alone is often embarrassing. These difficulties and the general absence of relative pronouns, the absence of gender (with certain remarkable and unexplained exceptions), and the use of the dual, render the study of the native tongues impossible to any but those who live with the blacks, hear their speech day after day, and keep continually on the alert to detect the meaning of obscure sentences.
Many of the words are onomatopœic in their origin, and a few examples are given in the text. They are made from sound; and if all the words thus formed could be collected, we should have a large number of root-words that would assist not only in elucidating the languages of Australia, but would be of essential service in the study of all the languages of the world. Still greater would be the profit if words formed from the sensations produced by taste, sight, smell, and touch could be eliminated. That words bearing relation to the senses, and naturally giving expression to them, have been made in the same manner (though necessarily not so easily discoverable) as those that are imitative of sounds, is, I think, beyond doubt. The words used by savages must, except in comparatively rare instances, have arisen out of their necessities; they are not the result of art or of accident; nor can they have been chosen arbitrarily.
One of the most thoughtful of modern writers has said that "the commonest words we use to indicate ideas are essentially metaphorical, bringing home into the world of mind images derived from material force, and carrying forth again into the outward world conceptions born of that mental power which alone is capable of conceiving;" and this being true of the languages of races of the highest culture, it is easy to understand how other, not always unlike, directing and impulsive powers may have given a distinctive character to the dialects of the Australian natives, without, however, introducing material changes of structure.
The reduplications in the dialects of Victoria are very numerous. Such words as Boorp-boorp, Bullen-bullen, Dong-dong, Bulk-bulk, Kalk-kalk, Mung-mung, Ghur-ghur, Woller-woller, Boolng-boolng, and Knen-knen, occur frequently in all the vocabularies, the number per cent. being probably not less than four. If words that are not literally reduplications, the sounds being changed for euphony, are included, the percentage would be much higher, probably six; and the language is, so to speak, double in another way. The Rev. Mr. Bulmer has shown that the natives have two words for the same thing, and if one be like in sound to the name of any one who dies, it is dropped. It becomes thambora, ​as the blacks of the Murray say; it recalls the memory of the dead, and must be no more used. The illusion of those who believe that the languages of savages is simple would be rudely dispelled if they addressed themselves to an examination of the dialects of any part of Australia. They are highly inflected, complex, and many of the sentences are so constructed as to make a translation impossible. It is as difficult to give the meaning in English of some of their phrases as it would be to translate into Greek or Latin the pigeon patois of Hong Kong.
Examples are given of the gesture-language in use amongst the natives of Cooper's Creek. It appears to be well understood, and of great use to them. It is referred to by Mr. Samuel Gason, who had on some occasions to have recourse to it.
It was believed for a length of time that there were several distinct languages in Australia—languages, that is to say, not belonging even to the same class. The works of Threlkeld, Grey, Teichelmann, Schürmann, Moore, and Moorhouse, and the investigations made by Bulmer, Hartmann, and Hagenauer, establish the fact of the unity of the tongues throughout the continent. The Australian languages, like those of the Indo-European race, are derived from a common source. The comparative tables in this work—imperfect as they are—confirm the conclusions of the more advanced among philologists; and it may be safely assumed that further researches will more distinctly prove the truth of the theory propounded by the gentlemen whose published works I have referred to.
Large tracts, with well-marked natural boundaries, are peopled by "nations," each composed of many separate tribes, differing amongst themselves but little in speech, in laws, and in modes of warfare; and it is believed that the languages or dialects of the "nations" stand in a much closer relationship to the mother tongue than the Italian, French, and Spanish stand to the Latin. Messengers (Gualla wattow) find no difficulty in acquiring a complete knowledge of the languages and dialects of the neighbouring tribes; and men belonging to tribes far remote from each other are able to make themselves mutually understood after they have been together for a few hours.
The reasons for the belief in the unity of the Australian languages are as follows:—
* Numerous words are nearly the same in sound, and have the same meaning in various localities throughout the entire continent. Amongst these are the words for eye, tongue, hand, teeth, blood, sun, and moon.
* The words in use throughout the continent are of the same character and have a similar sound.
* The similarity in the personal pronouns.
* The absence (generally) of gender.
* The low level of the numerals, and the recurrence at many points far remote from one another of the same or nearly the same word for "two."
* The use of the dual.
* The use of suffixes.
* The languages or dialects of a district as small as Victoria present, in some cases and in some respects, differences as great as those observed when the languages spoken at the extreme points of the continent are compared.
To these might be added the fact that reduplication is universal throughout the continent; but as this is a characteristic of the languages of savages generally, it has not much value. That they have usually two words for the same thing is, however, of a higher value; but it is not known whether this system is maintained in all parts of Australia.
If these facts stood alone, uncorroborated by other circumstances, there might still be room for doubt, as, for instance, if the physical aspect and constitution of the natives presented remarkable differences, and if their arms and modes of life were diverse; but they are not. They are one people—oneness having more force in regard to them and their language than it has when applied to the Aryan family of nations, whose languages are traceable to that of the tribes who dwelt on the table-land lying between the mountains of Armenia and Hindoo-Kush.
The vocabularies for Victoria seem to establish the fact that in this area at any rate there is one language with many dialects, or several languages so similar in words and grammatical structure as to satisfy the enquirer that they have had a common origin. Is it possible to gather from the character of the dialects any hint as to the manner in which the most southern part of the continent was peopled? After a careful study of the tables, I am inclined to believe that the tribes followed the course of the great rivers and the margin of the coast from the north towards the south. The language of the people of Yelta, on the Lower Murray, is that of the Cornu tribe, who inhabit the tract north of the River Darling, and differs in some respects from the language spoken by the people of the Upper Murray and those living on the banks of the streams which have their sources in the western slopes of the Cordillera. The tribes who first touched the north banks of the Murray and crossed the stream appear to have followed the rivers (its affluents), such as the Wimmera, the Avoca, the Loddon, the Campaspe, the Goulburn, and the Ovens, to their sources; and it is probable that these tribes came, not across the Cordillera, but ​southwards, all the way from the western shores of York Peninsula. The tribes of the Murray have several different dialects; the people of the Wimmera district speak a language that is almost the same in all parts; the dialects of the tribes of the western plains and the coast seem to change much as they are followed eastwards; the Yarra tribes and the Western Port tribes are allied to the tribes of the great western plains; and Gippsland appears to have been peopled either from a stream coming southwards along the coast, or from the head waters of the Murray. Their affinities are rather with the tribe of the Kiewa than with the tribes of the western plains.
It is indeed but reasonable to suppose that the lakes of Gippsland were peopled by a tribe that travelled southward by way of Twofold Bay; but some families may have entered it by crossing the Alps, so as to reach the head waters of the Tambo; or the men of the Goulburn may have penetrated the country near the point where the Thomson has its sources. The natives of Gippsland are different from the people of the west, both in dialect and in physical character; but both the dialect and the physical character have undergone alterations, undoubtedly, in consequence of the isolation of the tribes of this tract and the conformation of the country.
Here in Victoria, as in Europe and Asia, we see the effects produced by the aspects of nature, by climate, and by the infrequency of intercourse with larger populations. The people inhabiting Gippsland, cut off in the winter season certainly from intercourse with neighbouring tribes, and dwelling in the summer mouths on the lofty heights that overlook the lakes, were stout and brave fighting-men, exhibiting certain slight differences in physiognomy and structure that set them apart from the tribes of the west, and caused them to be regarded as enemies more than ordinarily dangerous.
The origin of the Australian race is still hidden from us. We cannot yet penetrate the thick darkness of pre-historic times. It may be that the continent was peopled from Timor. The physical geography of the area, it might be said, suggests this; and some strength is lent to the supposition from the occurrence of Australian words in the languages of Ombay, Timbora, and Mangarei. But there was one stream from the north-east.
The Rev. Mr. Ridley seems to think that Australia was peopled by a race that came by way of Torres Straits, and that the native names for New Guinea and Australia favor this supposition. Kai Dowdai, the name applied to Australia, he believes means "Little Country;" and Muggi Dowdai, or New Guinea, means "Great Country." "To those," he says, "who live near Cape York, and pass to and fro across the strait, without any means of knowing the real extent of Australia or New Guinea, the low narrow point of land which terminates in Cape York must appear very small compared with the great mountain ranges of New Guinea. Regarding dowdai as a variation of towrai, a country, I think it probable that 'Little Country' was the name given by the Aborigines to Australia. It may be that those of the race of Murri who first came into this land, passing from island to island, until they reached the low narrow point which forms the north-eastern extremity of this island-continent, gave the name Kai Towrai (Little Country) to the newly-discovered land; and ​as they passed onward to the south and west, and found out somewhat of the vast extent of the country, the necessities and jealousies of the numerous families that followed them forbade their return. The current of migration was ever onward towards the south and west; and therefore the north-eastern corner of Australia was always the dwelling-place of a people ignorant of the vast expanse beyond them, and willing to call it still Kai Dowdai, the little country."
This suggestion, though perhaps based on a misconception of the use or meaning of the words Kai Dowdai and Muggi Dowdai, is well worthy of careful consideration. By what route soever the first men came to the continent, it is almost certain that the settlement was at first partial and gradual. There could have been no great wave of migration; and it is perhaps doubtful whether, if a canoe full of natives from some distant island had been stranded anywhere on the shores of Australia, they would have found subsistence. Yet savages have so much skill in hunting and fishing that they would easily support themselves where men accustomed only to the usages of civilized life would perish.
With the scanty vocabularies at present available, and lacking many important facts connected with the habits of the people of the north, their weapons, and their various modes of ornamenting these and the implements they use, it is not practicable to do more than offer mere conjectures as to the course taken by the natives who first set foot on the soil of Australia. It is probable that there were two streams from the Peninsula—one following the eastern coast southwards, and one taking a course along the western coast. The first, pressed onwards by tribes still migrating southward, may have advanced as far as Gippsland; and the second probably divided near the south-eastern shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria—one section taking a course along the coast westward and southward to West Australia, and thence towards King George's Sound; and the other following the course of the rivers that flow southward to Cooper's Creek and the Darling. If there is any truth in these conjectures, many facts that are at present inexplicable have some light thrown upon them.
Eyre states that in his opinion it is not improbable that Australia was first peopled on its north-western coast, between the parallels of 12° and 16° south latitude; and that it may be surmised that three grand divisions had branched out from the parent tribe, and that from the offsets of these the whole continent had been overspread. The first division, he suggests, may have proceeded round the north-western, western, and south-western coast, as far as the commencement of the Great Australian Bight. The second or central one appears to have crossed the continent inland, to the southern coast, striking it about the parallel of 134° east longitude. The third division seems to have followed along the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria to its most south-easterly bight, and then to have turned off by the first practicable line in a direction towards Fort Bourke, upon the Darling. From these three divisions, Mr. Eyre supposes, various ​offsets and ramifications would have been made from time to time as they advanced, so as to overspread and people by degrees the whole country round their respective lines of march; each offset appearing to retain fewer or more of the original habits, customs, &c., of the parent tribe in proportion to the distance traversed, or its isolated position, with regard to communication with the tribes occupying the main line of route of its original division; modified also, perhaps, in some degree by the local circumstances of the country through which it may have spread.
I have already mentioned that the natives north of the Darling speak a dialect like that of the people of the Lower Murray (in Victoria); the weapons of the natives of West Australia resemble those of the north-west. They have, as far as I can learn, but one shield, altogether unlike the shields of the south, and resembling somewhat that in use in Queensland; and their spears are like those of the people of the north coast. The natives of Perth ornament the wooden part of their adzes exactly in the same manner—with the like remarkable longitudinal grooves—as the people of Queensland.
The area within which the custom of circumcision prevails, and perhaps also the area within which the boomerang is not used, point also to such divisions of the streams of immigration as are suggested.
There is an impression in the minds of many, to which color is given by curious coincidences, that the languages of Australia—or rather the mother of the languages of Australia—may be supposed to have affinity with the languages of the Aryan family. Without raising in this place the more important question as to whether the Australians are the representatives, in the savage state, of a section of the ancient stock which gave civilization to Europe, one may glance at some of the facts which have been adduced. That these facts have any philological or ethnological value is questionable, but they are, to say the least, interesting. The words Nau-wai, a canoe; Marai, spirit; Joen, a man; Cobra, the head; Tiora, land; Moray, great; Gnara, a knot; Kiradjee, a doctor; Ury, ear; Yain, chin; Oura, our; Yai, yes; Yair, air; Keh-le-de, brightness; Kerreem, a shield; Urdin, straight; Manya, the hand; Yarra, flowing; Mah, to strike; Pilar, a spear; Kalama, a reed; Pidna, the foot; Yun, soon; Kurrin, enquiring; Poke, a small hole; Wirangi, bad; Multuwarrin, many or much; Trippin, drenching; Throkkun, putting; El, will; Trentin, tearing; Grawun, burying in the earth; and Kinka, laugh—are similar to words with similar meanings in the languages of the Aryan family. It would be as wrong to dismiss these without remark as to lay stress upon them. A greater number of words showing the like resemblances might easily be given; and it is for the more learned amongst philologists to separate those exhibiting perhaps mere accidental coincidences of sound from those that may have been introduced by traders from the Malay Peninsula and the islands of the Pacific.
There has been compiled for this work, from information supplied by the Local Guardians of Aborigines, the Surveyor-General of the colony, and others, a list of the native names of the hills, streams, and other natural features of the colony. It is not only interesting to preserve the local names as used by the blacks, but information is often conveyed by them which hereafter may be ​useful. There are necessarily repetitions in the lists, which in the whole comprise more than two thousand words, but these could not well be avoided without doing injustice to the contributors, and without undertaking the responsibility of deciding, perhaps erroneously, in cases where there are discrepancies.
Any one who will take the trouble to examine a map of Australia will see that the greater number of the natural features, as well as the counties, towns, and settlements, have received names that sufficiently indicate the class of persons who gave them; and it is really not easy to say whether those who sought to gain the favor of persons in power, or the bushmen who used such appellations as best conveyed their meaning to the minds of their associates, have made the worst choice. There is time yet to remedy the injustice that has been done to the interests of the colonists, and that can be effected by erasing from the map at least all those names which are similar in sound to those associated in the mind with the natural scenery and the cities and towns of Europe. Several names—supposed to be native names—have been mutilated or so altered as to be no longer of any significance; and if the information I have gathered helps in any way towards an amendment in these and a change in others, it will be a source of satisfaction to many.
The records which I have preserved of the native names of a number of the trees and shrubs of the colony furnish a large number of euphonious words, from which it would be easy to select those most appropriate to any given locality. From the manner in which the lists have been prepared, it is practicable to identity nearly all the plants. The naturalist will recognise the utility of a work of this kind; and any one who lives in the country and takes any interest in the indigenous vegetation will not be slow to avail himself of the help which he will derive from the pages that refer to this subject.
The names were written down exactly as the blacks pronounced them; and the botanical names were added by the Government Botanist. The portfolios in which the plants were placed when they were collected, the labels pasted on each cover, and the specimens, are all in excellent order and well preserved.
Hereafter this collection will be highly valued. All those who are living in parts of the country that are frequented by the natives could with ease make similar collections; and it is certain that the Government Botanist would gladly examine the plants and furnish information respecting them.
Much light might be thrown on the principles which guided the natives in naming localities if the native words for the trees, shrubs, &c., and for the natural features of the country, were written down; and it is in the power of every educated person who comes into contact with the blacks to aid in this work. In a very short time the older blacks who possess the requisite knowledge will have died, and it will be impossible to obtain any such records for other parts of Australia as those I have preserved for some portions of Victoria.
All the vocabularies and all the lists under the head of Language, except one, relate to Victoria. One is a short vocabulary, compiled by Mr. Henry Withers, of Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales, and it is inserted both ​because it serves for comparison and because the information Mr. Withers collected and forwarded to me in manuscript should not be lost.
Wagga Wagga is situate on the river Murrumbidgee, and lies about eighty miles north of Barnawartha. Many of the words collected by Mr. Withers coincide with words of similar meaning in use on the Upper Murray, but are unlike those of the Lower Murray. Man at Wagga Wagga is Gooen; at Tangambalanga, Gerree. Hand at Wagga Wagga is Murra; at Tangambalanga and Barnawartha, Murrah. Foot, Wagga Wagga, Geenong (Jeenong?); Barnawartha, Jennong. Ear, Wagga Wagga, Woother; Barnawartha, Mutha. Eye, Wagga Wagga, Mill; Barnawartha, Mill. Teeth, Wagga Wagga, Erong; Barnawartha (mouth), Erang. Hair, Wagga Wagga, Ourang; Barnawartha, Huran. Blood, Wagga Wagga, Goohun; Tangambalanga, Koroo. Bone, Wagga Wagga, Thubbul; Barnawartha, Thubal. Night, Wagga Wagga, Booroonthun; Barnawartha, Burandong. Sun, Wagga Wagga, Eri; Barnawartha (day) Erah. Fire, Wagga Wagga, Wing; Barnawartha, Wanga. The native word set down in many vocabularies for "day" is really the word for "sun," and the word for "sun," in like manner, is often that which means "day" or "light" or "heat." There is seldom any mistake made in obtaining the right word for "night," that is to say for "darkness." I believe the natives have really no words exactly equivalent to "day" and "night."
The natives of Tasmania were darker, shorter, more stoutly built, and generally less pleasing in aspect than the people of the continent. Their hair was woolly and crisp, and some bore a likeness to the African negro. Their aspect was different from that of the Australians. In their form, their color, and their hair they were rather Papuan than Australian. Many words in their language, however, coincide with words in the dialects of King George's Sound, the Gulf of St. Vincent, and the south-eastern parts of the continent; and it might be assumed, therefore, that the connection between the inhabitants of the island and the continent was clearly established. But we must not overlook the Papuan affinities of the Tasmanian dialects. Many words are the same as those in the languages spoken in New Caledonia, in Mallicollo, and in other islands of the Melanesian division.
In all respects their condition was lower than that of the Australians, yet they were not altogether unlike in their habits to some tribes of the interior. They knew nothing of the boomerang, the throwing-stick, the shield, or the Weet-weet. Their weapons were rude wooden spears, and sticks used as clubs or as missiles. Their stone implements were chipped fragments of cherty rock, which were not ground or polished, nor were they fitted with wooden handles.
Like the natives of Cooper's Creek, they threw stones at their enemies.
In all their customs there was much to remind one of the practices of the Australians. There were some ceremonies attendant on the initiation of young males into the rights and privileges of manhood; there were some restrictions on marriage; they mourned their dead, and disposed of the bodies by interring them, placing them in trees, or burning them; and they had dances like the corrobborees of the natives of the continent. Their superstitions too, and one ​or two of their myths, bear a resemblance to those of the Australians. Some kinds of food were prohibited; they had a strong objection to eating fat; they carried about with them the bones of deceased relatives; and they believed in and practised sorcery.
Their ornaments and their utensils, though few in number, were not inferior to those of the people of the mainland.
They were not altogether destitute of the power of invention. They produced fire by twirling the upright stick; and they constructed rude vessels, in which they could cross rivers and arms of the sea.
Whether Australia was once peopled by a race of which the Tasmanians were a remnant will probably never be known. Their stone implements, the only material evidences we could have of their presence, are of such a character as to be easily overlooked if found. They would be regarded, probably by even the skilful, as mere accidental fragments of rock. They differ but slightly from the implements of the West Australians; and these no one would recognise as the work of men's hands.
Mr. R. H. Davies thinks that there can be no doubt as to the origin of the Tasmanians. He believes that they were scions of the continental tribes; and he points to their habits and their weapons as proofs. He considers that the chain of islands extending across the extremity of Bass's Straits forms a comparatively easy means of communication. From the circumstance, however, of the name for water amongst the western tribes being similar to that used by the natives near Cape Leeuwin, it is, in his opinion, extremely probable that the latter furnished the first inhabitants for the western portion of Van Diemen's Land. And this, he adds, is rendered the more likely from the peculiar form of the south-western coast of New Holland, as a canoe driven to sea from the vicinity of King George's Sound would, from the prevailing winds and currents, be apt to reach the western part of Van Diemen's Land.
There is another theory propounded by one of the most distinguished of living philologists:—
Speaking of the vocabulary of the Louisiade, as compiled by Macgillivray, and its collation with lists of words from the Solomon Isles, Mallicollo, Tanna, Erromanga, and Annatom, and Cook and La Billardière's vocabularies of New Caledonia, Dr. Latham says that the latter, as far as the very scanty data go, supply the closest resemblance to the Louisiade dialects from the two New Caledonian vocabularies; and he adds, "New Caledonia was noticed in the Appendix to the Voyage of the Fly as apparently having closer philological affinities with Van Diemen's Land than that country had with Australia; an apparent fact which induced me to write as follows:—'A proposition concerning the Tasmanian language exhibits an impression rather than a deliberate opinion. Should it, however, be confirmed by future researches, it will at once explain the points of physical contrast between the Tasmanian tribes and those of Australia that have so often been insisted on. It is this—that the affinities of language between the Tasmanian and the New Caledonian are stronger than those between the Australian and Tasmanian. This indicates that the stream of population for Van Diemen's Land ran round Australia ​rather than across it.' Be this as it may, the remark, with our present scanty materials, is at best but a suggestion—a suggestion, however, which would account for the physical appearance of the Tasmanian being more New Caledonian than Australian."
That the island was first peopled by some members of the dark-skinned populations of the north is beyond doubt; but what was the line of migration can, perhaps, be gathered only from the character of the language, and we may be misled by the only vocabularies now extant. They were written down long subsequent to the colonization of the land by the whites, and it may be supposed after the blacks had had communication with natives of other parts of Australasia and the South Seas.
We cannot say how it was peopled nor when it was peopled.
If Dr. Latham's theory be accepted, it may have maintained a population long anterior to the peopling of the continent.
There was probably several times, but certainly once in the later Tertiary period, a land connection with Australia.
The formations on the chain of islands, and the fossil and living fauna and flora of the island and the continent, furnish evidences of the changes which have occurred.
The Thylacynus and Sarcophilus ursinus both live abundantly in Tasmania, but neither of them has been discovered on the continent; where, however, their remains have been identified by Professor McCoy with certainty in the cavern deposits and Pleistocene clays mingled with those of the extinct Diprotodon, Thylacoleo, &c.
In the Pleistocene period, animals abounding in Tasmania with very restricted powers of locomotion or swimming were as common in Victoria as in Tasmania; but at the present day neither the Sarcophilus nor Thylacynus is found on the continent in the living state. The wombat of Tasmania is totally different from the living wombat of Victoria, and the Pleistocene wombats are different from both. The commonest Pleistocene kangaroos are entirely extinct species. It would seem that the smaller carnivorous mammals referred to became extinct on the continent long before the modern period;—the Dasyurus maculatus (a third abundant large marsupial carnivore) occurring very rarely on the continent, but abounding in Tasmania in the living condition with the other two at the present time. At the same (Pleistocene) period the great plant-eating Diprotodon and Nototherium lived in numbers on the continent, but apparently never reached Tasmania.
Some parrots, honey-eaters, owls, and several other birds with considerable powers of flight are restricted to Tasmania, and a large number of the insects found in the island are different from those of Victoria, while perhaps three-fourths of the living fauna seem to be identical.
Dr. Hooker tells us that the primary feature of the Tasmanian flora is its identity in all its main characters with the Victorian; and that in one part of Victoria—Wilson's Promontory—the vegetation is peculiarly Tasmanian. He refers also to the fact, clearly established on geological data, of Tasmania having once formed a continuous southward extension of Victoria, and that ​as Britain was peopled with continental plants before the formation of the channel, so Tasmania and Victoria possessed their present flora before they were separated by Bass's Straits.
Was Tasmania peopled when there was a land connection between the island-continent and Tasmania? Not probably prior to that period. During the Pleistocene period, when the land connection existed, the forests and plains of the continent supported huge mammals, which seem to have disappeared some time anterior to the peopling of the southern parts of it. As already stated, no remains of native art have been found associated with the almost unaltered bones of these now extinct creatures; but if the continent had been inhabited by a race in a condition as low as that of the Tasmanians, they could have left no such traces of their wanderings as would be easily discoverable.
It is difficult to believe that the Tasmanians were scions of the continental tribes. Their physical character stands out prominently as an objection to the theory. If Tasmania was peopled from Australia, it was at a time when Australia supported a race that in feature, character, and language was Tasmanian; and we must, therefore, regard the race that now inhabits the continent as intrusive. "What may be urged against this suggestion I know not. There is one error, however, to guard against—that is, to suppose that any land has necessarily been peopled by the route which appears to be the most obvious, the least difficult, and the shortest. And this brings us to the consideration of Dr. Latham's speculations, which have a greater value than perhaps he himself attaches to them.
The length of time during which the Tasmanians were entirely cut off from anything like communication with the people of the mainland is marked amongst them by no such improvements in arts and arms as have distinguished the Aborigines of Australia and New Caledonia. The former were apparently stationary, the latter to some extent progressive.
* ↑ Australian Discovery and Colonization, p. 336.
* ↑ King, vol. I., p. 320.
* ↑ Discoveries in Australia, vol. II., p. 180.
* ↑ See Vocabulary compiled by C. J. Tyers, Esq., in 1842.
* ↑ The English Colony in New South Wales, by Lieut.-Col. Collins, 1804.
* ↑ Rambles on the Border, 1835.
* ↑ The head-dress of feathers (Oogee), obtained by Mr. J. A. Panton from North-Eastern Australia, is somewhat like that described by Jukes in the narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Fly. When visiting Darnley Island or Erroob, Duppa, a native, appeared with a fillet crossing over his head from which proceeded a semicircle of large white feathers, vandyked at the edges, and radiating round his head like a glory.
* ↑ A wicker shield, usually covered with tappa, is found in use among some of the natives of the islands of the Solomou Group.
* ↑ Stokes, vol. II., p. 417.
* ↑ "Let us not think too meanly of the intelligence of our simple ancestors because they could regard brutes as gods. It was an error not peculiar to them, but common to all infant races of men. The early traditions of every people point back to a period when man had not yet risen to a clear conception of his own pre-eminence in the scale of created life. The power of discerning differences comes later into play than that of perceiving resemblances, and the primeval man, living in the closest communion with nature, must have begun with a strong feeling of his likeness to the brutes who shared with him so many wants, passions, pleasures, and pains. Hence the attribution of human voice and reason to birds and beasts in fable and story, and the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. To this feeliog of fellowship there would afterwards be superadded a sense of a mysterious something inherent in the nature of brutes, which was lacking in that of man. He found himself so vastly surpassed by them in strength, agility, and keenness of sense; they evinced such a marvellous foreknowledge of coming atmospheric changes which he could not surmise; they went so straight to their mark, guided by an instinct to him incomprehensible, that he might well come to look upon them with awe as beings superior to himself, and surmise in their wondrous manifestations the workings of something divine."—Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-Lore, by Walter K. Kelly, 1863.
* ↑ Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society—1847.
* ↑ The Reign of Law, by the Duke of Argyll (sixth edition, 1871), p. 41.
* ↑ "I have no hesitation in affirming that as far as any tribes have been met and conversed with by the colonists, namely, from one hundred miles east of King George's Sound up to two hundred miles north of Fremautle, comprising a space of above six hundred miles of coast, the language is radically and essentially the same. And there is much reason to suppose that this remark would not be confined to these limits only, but might be applied, in a great degree, to the pure and uncorrupted language of the whole island."—Descriptive Vocabulary of the Language in common use amongst the Aborigines of Western Australia, by George Fletcher Moore, Advocate-General of Western Australia, 1842."It may indeed be asserted that the dialects of all New Holland, so far at least as they have been collected, from New South Wales to Swan River, constitute only one language."—Vocabulary of the Parnkalla Language spoken by the Natives inhabiting the Western Shores of Spencer's Gulf, by C. W. Schürmann, 1844.
* ↑ Kamilaroi, Dippil, and Turrubul, by the Rev. William Ridley, M.A., 1866.