St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-09-13
AUSTRALIAN sAVAGEs.
Their Methods of Marriage, Liv-
ing and Burial.
Good Words.

Good Words
The marriage ceremony of the Aus
tralian savages, writes Prof. Felix l..
Oswald, consists often in the simple
process of stunning stray female of a
neighboriug tribe by means of club
and then dragging her away an unre-
sisting captive. just as the males of the
large species of seals are said to attack
and temporarily disable their intended
mates.
Another still uglier analogy of the
brute creation is their Indifference to
the welfare of their own children after
they have once outgrown the age of alb
solute helpleSsness. An Australian
mother will coddle her baby with ape
like fondneSs, and hardly ever let it
stray out of sight for the first four years,
but as soon as the toddlng little imp
seems able to take care of itself its debt
OF gratitude to its progenitors has TO be
paid by the worst kind of slavery.
At the first sign of insubordination a
half-grown boy is apt to be kicked out,
If not killed, by his own father, while
the older squaws maltreat every pretty
girl as a possible riyal-so much so, in
deed, that the appearance even of a
club-armed sutton must often be wei
coined as an agreeable surprise party.
The marriage of near relatives is
discouraged with a strictness not
often found among barbarians,
and polygamy, though sanctioned
by public opinion, is restricted
by the difficulty of providing for the
wants of large family. At distance
from the crab-swarming seacoast fam
ines are rather frequent; but the ma
tives have developed faculty for starv-
ing, or half-starving, for weeks without
permanent injury, and rely on the ex-
perience that sooner or later nature will
renew the supply of spontaneous food.
Within 100 miles of the east coast,
perhaps, no native in an uncrippled con-
dition has ever died from lack of di
gestible fOod-a rather comprehensive
term in country where fern roots are
boiled like potatoes, and snalls and
grasshoppers are considered tidbits.
Strange to say. the martyrs of that nor
rid diet get old, as proof that freedom
from care is, after all, the main condi-
ton of longevity. A similar phenome-
non may be observed in the villages of
Central Russia, where mental stagna-
ton prevails in its ugliest forms, but
where charity and parish poor laws pro-
tect every native from the risk of actual
starvation.
Of all the modes of burial ever prac-
tlced by creatures III the shape OF hu-
man beings the method of the Queens
land nomads is certainly the most UNI
couth. After drying the corpse in the
sun and knocking out its teeth for keep
Sakes, they deposit in on framework
of rough poles and bury it under an
armful of ruShes and old kangaroo skins,
leaving the bush wolves to sing its re-
QUEEN.
No member of the dead mans tribe
will settle within mile of his grave for
fear of being haunted by the spooks
making the burial place their rendez-
vous. The metaphysical opinions of
the Australian aborigines prove, in
deed, that savages can be afflicted with
all abundance of supernaturaliSm with
out betraving trace of anything de-
serving the name of religious sentiment.
They believe in evil spirits whistling in
the blasts of the storm wind, and try to
exercise them by splitting in the drec.
ton of the sky; but tor the conception
OF the Deity, of future existence, of re-
pentance, atonement and conscience
their language has not even definite
word. From somewhere in the land of
their forefathers-Eastern Asia, per-
haps-they have imported notion
family resembling the Buddhist doc
trine of metempSychoSis, and believe
that animals may be reborn as men,and
men as human beings of superior rank.