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[Frontispiece. 



THE 

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

AND 

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



BY 

HERBERT PITTS, 

Assistant Curate of St. Matthew's, Douglas, sometime S.P.G. 
Missionary in North West Australia. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



LONDON: 

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE 

NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA ST., E.C, 

BRIGHTON : 129, NORTH STREET 

NEW YORK : E. S. GORHAM 

1914 



138441 
JUN 1 5 1992 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface - ix 

PART I. ABORIGINAL CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS. 

CHAPTER I 

Introductory How and when the " Blacks " first 
came to Australia, and drove out an earlier 
People How the White Men came and the 
Blacks were "dispersed" and driven back 
The Remnant To-day - - n 

CHAPTER II 

The Tribe and its Divisions A Camp Tribal 

Messengers Languages Position of Women - 21 

CHAPTER III 

Birth and Infancy " Churinga " Infanticide 

Treatment of Children Games 26 



iv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER IV 

Savage Education How the faculty of Observa 
tion is Trained Some Illustrations Weapons 
which a Child learns to make and use - 32 

CHAPTER V 

Adolescence Food Prohibitions "Bora" Cere 
monies Cicatrization - 40 

CHAPTER VI 
Marriage Customs and Laws - 46 

CHAPTER VII 

Daily Life of the Natives : I. How they Catch and 

Cook their Food - - 49 

CHAPTER VIII 

Daily Life of the Natives : II. Warfare Combats 

Cannibal Feasts - - 55 

CHAPTER IX 
Daily Life of the Natives : III. Corrobborees - 61 



CONTENTS v 

PAGE 

CHAPTER X 

Belief in Magic " Intichiuma " Bone-Pointing 
Medicine Men Relation between Magic 
and Religion - 65 

CHAPTER XI 
Ideas and Customs relating to Illness and Death - 73 

CHAPTER XII 
How the Dead are Disposed of - - 79 

CHAPTER XIII 
Belief in Spirits and in the Supernatural - 84 

CHAPTER XIV 
Some Curious Myths and Legends - 91 

PART II. MISSIONS AND MISSIONARY WORK 

CHAPTER XV 

Anglican Missions in the Past Wellington Valley 
Moreton Bay Swan River Albany 
Poonindie Somerset Gascoyne Forrest 
River 08 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER XVI 

Anglican Missions To-day Yarrabah Mitchell 

River Roper River Forrest River - - no 



CHAPTER XVII 

Roman Catholic Missions New Norcia and 

Beagle Bay 120 



CHAPTER XVIII 
A Final Plea 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Broome Natives, with spears and boom 
erangs - - Frontispiece 

Winter Quarters - - To face p. 23 

The Veneer of Civilization 32 

North- West Natives in Mourning - ,,75 

A Burial Cave, Kimberley District - 80 

A Burial Cave, Kimberley District - ,,82 

At the Forrest River 107 

Forrest River Mission Building 117 



Vll 



PREFACE 



THIS little book is written primarily for Christians, not 
merely for ethnologists, and makes no claim to being, in 
any sense of the word, a scientific treatise. It tells the 
story of our treatment of the native in the past, it aims 
at depicting the life he lives on his own ancestral hunting- 
grounds, and it gives some little account of the various 
missions and their influence upon him. 

Attempts are made, in the course of the chapters, to 
get at the inner working of his mind, to try and find out 
what the ideas and motives are which sway him, and 
what the principles of conduct which lie behind his 
outward acts. The reader will judge how far I have 
succeeded and how far failed. 

After all, the Australian aboriginal is much more than 
an interesting savage, whose customs must be put on 
record before he becomes extinct. He is a man with a 
soul a soul with a destiny a soul for which Christ died. 
Is there anything in him which can be called " religion "? 
Are there any ideas already active in his mind which the 
Christian teacher can lay hold upon, and on which he can 
build the superstructure of the Christian faith ? These 
questions I have tried to answer. 

This, surely, is the true spirit in which to set about 
the study of an untutored people. A savage must 
not be judged merely by his outward acts. We must 

ix 



x PREFACE 

take into our consideration the things he dreams of, for 
the outward, after all (which we see and even tabulate), 
is only the expression of the living personality which 
works behind and unseen. 

Our duty as Christians is evangelisation. So there is 
much about missions in this book which almost every 
other work on the Australian aborigines has altogether 
passed by. The native was not forgotten when the 
missionary command was given to the Church by her 
Lord. But this little record of the Church' s attempts, and 
failures, and encouragements, will have been penned in 
vain unless some, at any rate, of its readers are shamed 
into doing something more. 

I desire to express my grateful thanks to all those 
who have helped me in any way, especially to those 
who have sent or lent photographs for reproduction. 
Foremost among these are the Society for the Propaga 
tion of the Gospel, and the Rev. W. I. Carr Smith (who 
has allowed several plates which have appeared in the 
North-West Australian Quarterly to be reproduced here). 

If I have unwittingly taken any liberties in this 
matter of illustrations I tender my sincere apologies. 
In one or two cases I have been unable to trace the 
owners of the copyright. 

I would also cordially thank Monsignor Canon Hewlett, 
of the Westminster Cathedral, and Father H. Norbert 
Birt, O.S.B., for information enabling me to compile the 
chapter on Roman Catholic Missions. 

HERBERT PITTS. 
Douglas, I.O.M. St. Paul's Day, 1914. 



THE 

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY How AND WHEN THE " BLACKS " 

FIRST CAME TO AUSTRALIA, AND DROVE OUT AN 

EARLIER PEOPLE How THE WHITE MEN CAME 
AND THE BLACKS WERE " DISPERSED " AND DRIVEN 
BACK THE REMNANT TO-DAY. 

ONE of the most striking facts about the Australian 
aborigines is their remarkable difference to all the 
neighbouring peoples. Even the Tasmanians, who have 
been extinct since 1876, were quite distinct. They were 
unmistakably a South Pacific people. It was not diffi 
cult to see whence their short woolly hair and pronounced 
Papuan features were derived. Their kinship clearly 
lay with the islanders of the Southern Seas, and not with 
that other race across the Bass Strait. I say " that 
other race " advisedly, for the Australians, though made 
up of numerous tribes, are yet one people. Though 
their languages differ, there is much that is common to 
them all. 

The Australians' occupation of the island continent 
dates back to a time so remote as to admit of no 

ii 



12 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

traditions. They have no legends of their migration. 
There are, in the different tribes, curious legends as to 
their origin, but all imply that the land they now inhabit 
was their original home. Some for instance, men of 
the Kangaroo totem would tell their story thus : 

" Long, long moons ago, in the distant dream-age 
which we call the alcheringa, our tribal ancestor, an 
enormous kangaroo, came up out of the earth at a spot 
which we can show you, and wandered over what is now 
our hunting-ground, and then returned to the earth 
again, leaving behind him a number of spirit-children, 
who eventually turned into men. These were our pro 
genitors. It is no good laughing at the story. The 
place where he came out of the earth is there still. For 
a stick of tobacco we will show it you." 

We may ridicule this as the childish folk-lore of a 
primitive people, but to the aboriginal it is history and 
the only history he knows. 

Thousands of years ago, at a period when their remote 
ancestors had no pottery, built no houses, knew nothing 
of agriculture, had no bows and arrows, and domesticated 
no animals except, perhaps, the dog, a tall, dark-skinned 
people were driven from their primitive home on the hills 
of the Deccan by the southward pressure of a hardier 
race. So southward they, too, made their way and drifted 
in their bark canoes to the western and north-western 
shores of the great island continent. There they found 
an earlier people of Papuan origin, who possessed neither 
boomerang nor woomerah, whom they overwhelmed 
and drove before them into the colder south. Australia 
and Tasmania were probably at that time one, for 
though the natives of the two islands were distinct, the 
fauna and flora are the same. The reader will scarcely 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 13 

need to be reminded that this is very similar to what 
happened when our own English forefathers came to 
Britain and drove the Celts before them into the fast 
nesses of Cumberland, Cornwall and Wales. Later on 
occurred those cosmic disturbances which resulted in 
the separation of Tasmania, and there till 1876 that 
earlier people survived. It may be, however, that some 
of the southern tribes of Australia had in them a con 
siderable admixture of this Papuan blood. There is 
little direct evidence, unless the fact that the word for 
water at Cape Leeuwin is the same as in one of the 
Tasmanian dialects can be regarded as evidence. 

Physically, the aborigines are in their wild state a 
splendid people. Tall in the north, in the south of 
medium height, their proportions are almost perfect. 
We are often told, I know, that they represent the 
lowest type of human being known to man. It is 
simply not true. The Andamanese and the Bushmen 
of Africa, to mention no others, are undoubtedly an 
inferior people. Those who have studied the aborigines 
most closely admit that they are very far removed 
from the lowest, or Simian, type of man. Dr. Charles 
Pickering, for example, after studying them on the spot 
some half-century ago, gave it as his deliberate opinion 
that " the Australian is the finest model of human 
proportions I have ever seen." 

For how many centuries the blacks were left in un 
disturbed possession of their country it is impossible 
to say. Early in the seventeenth century some Spanish 
explorers visited the northern shores, but made no 
attempt at settlement. During the next 150 years 
Dutch sailors landed from time to time in the west, 
but carried back with them such stories of a barren, 



14 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

inhospitable land and of " a naked black people malicious 
and cruel/' that one is not surprised to find they made 
no effort to turn their discoveries to advantage. It 
was not till Captain Phillip and the first party of settlers 
arrived in the Supply on January i8th, 1788, that white 
settlement began. The vessel was compelled to anchor 
some little distance from the land. About forty natives 
were fishing on the south shore. When they saw the 
ship they were greatly frightened, and many of them 
ran off into the bush. A few, less timorous than the 
rest, ventured down to the water's edge, brandishing 
their spears and any other weapons that lay at hand, 
and shouting to those in the Supply, " Warra, Warra" 
(" Begone "). On the north of the bay only a very few 
natives were to be seen, so there Captain Phillip and his 
men determined to attempt to land. The attitude of the 
blacks, however, was most militant, and the attempt of the 
white men to effect a landing was greeted with showers 
of stones. Phillip saw that he must make an effort to 
conciliate them, and handing his gun to the man who 
was nearest walked towards the natives alone and 
unarmed with presents in his hands. His peaceful 
overture was reciprocated by the leader of the blacks 
who, handing his spear to the man nearest him, advanced 
towards the governor alone. The entire episode was a 
remarkable forecast of what the ensuing years would 
bring. A hostile attitude on the part of the white men 
would meet with hostile reprisals in return, whereas 
an attitude of friendliness and good brotherhood would 
seldom fail to call out all that was best in the native 
character. I do not mean to say that in the story of 
the next' fifty years there were no acts of almost unfor- 
giveable treachery on the part of the native tribes, 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 15 

but the humiliating confession must at the same time 
be made that the white man's conduct was often such 
that it is not for us to throw stones. 

As settlement advanced it is not after all to be 
wondered at that the natives should become (to use the 
settlers' language) " troublesome," that they should 
take a lively interest in the sheep and cattle, and perhaps 
as opportunity offered drive them off into the bush. 
One tribe on the Hawkesbury was especially troublesome. 
The settlers' huts were burned to the ground, the sheep 
and cattle stolen and the corn set fire to by the blacks. 
This sort of thing had of course to be stopped, but it 
did not justify the frequent wholesale murders which 
occurred. When spoken to about these things the 
natives would often answer : " The country is ours," 
and would excuse their raids upon the stock with the 
words : " You have driven back our kangaroos. We 
are doing the same with your cattle." Treacherous 
and vindictive as the blacks undoubtedly were, many 
of their depredations were the outcome not of malice, 
but savage ignorance. 

In those early days men were very largely a law unto 
themselves. When they found their cattle speared 
or their crops fired, they took the matter into their 
own hands, and in return speared the blacks. The 
tribe would wait its time, perhaps, but the injury would 
never be forgotten. Months, perhaps even years, 
afterwards some lonely shepherd at some distant out 
post on the run would be found murdered by the blacks. 
Then would frequently follow what were " euphemis 
tically called ' dispersals.' " The white men, and often 
the women, too, would mount their horses and ride red 
ruin through the district, shooting at sight every black 



16 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

man, woman and child they saw. I do not want to 
paint too highly-coloured a picture, but on the other 
hand, for reasons which will appear in a later chapter, 
I want the facts to be grasped by all. 

In some of their depredations, the aboriginals dis 
played remarkable cunning and ingenuity. On one 
occasion a beast was found slaughtered with a hole in 
the skull exactly as if it had been made by a musket 
ball. The natives had very cleverly pierced it with a 
spear, and when arrested pointed to the hole and pleaded 
that the animal must have been killed by a white man, 
as they had no guns. In some cases, too, it must be 
remembered, if we would be fair to all, that undoubtedly 
the natives were the aggressors. White men have 
been overtaken in the bush and attacked by an armed 
tribe ; stations have been surrounded in the night, 
out-buildings demolished and sometimes white men killed 
as they slept. Not infrequently in those early days 
it was necessary to send large parties of soldiers to 
restrain and punish the thieving propensities of the 
blacks. 

But the picture has also its brighter side. Often blacks 
and whites were the best of friends and helpful to one 
another. The men fished and hunted and soon learned 
to work on the stations and assist with the sheep and 
cattle. For some reason or other the pigs were their 
especial delight. The women were taught domestic 
duties by the wives of the settlers. The black children 
were a perfect delight to the whites, whilst the arrival 
of a white baby would cause the blacks to come to the 
station from miles around to gaze upon the unwonted 
sight. The extraordinary genius of the British woman 
for colonization was never better seen than in the way 



- THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 17 

she surmounted the difficulties which came with settle 
ment upon savage hunting grounds, and amid a barbarous 
people. Often alone for hours at a stretch with no other 
white woman within miles her task was no easy one. 

To the credit of the natives let it be said that in no 
book that I have ever read has it ever once been suggested 
that a white woman was ever attacked or molested by a 
black. 

To-day only a very small remnant of the native people 
is left to us and this almost entirely to the north of 
the Tropic of Capricorn. Their almost complete ex 
tinction in the south is not wholly due to events similar 
to those referred to above. To a certain extent it was 
an inevitable result of the white man's coming. The 
introduction of European clothing which the native 
got wet in but still continued to wear, the teaching 
of awful vices, the importation of drink, are among the 
causes of their decimation. Pulmonary and venereal 
diseases were the most frequent causes of death. There 
were no aborigines' protection departments in those 
days. Yet even now, under the most generous of Govern 
ments and severe penal laws, it is very difficult even 
to arrest the process of extinction. 

It is almost impossible to give even an approximate 
estimate of the number of aborigines who remain alive 
to-day. It is probably something between 50,000 and 
70,000. These may be divided into three classes : 

(1) The Myalls, or wild blacks, still comparatively 
untouched by the white man, and still living their 
own natural life on their ancestral hunting-grounds. 

(2) The Blacks on the various mission stations, 
a very tiny people, probably not more than 500 to 
600 in all. 



i8 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

(3) The Blacks in contact with the whites, who 
may be again subdivided into : 

(a) Those employed on the sheep and cattle 
stations, as a rule happy and well-cared 
for. 

(b) Those loafing in the proximity of the 
mining camps and the semi-Asiatic settlements 
in the far north. More degraded specimens of 
the genus homo it would be impossible to meet, 
except perhaps some of the white and yellow 
scoundrels, whose haunts they frequent. For 
tunately for everyone these are very rapidly 
dying out. 

This book will only treat of those aboriginals included 
under classes (i) and (2) above, but a word ought here 
to be said about the natives employed on the sheep and 
cattle stations to-day. Serious allegations have from 
time to time been made in recent years as to the treat 
ment they receive at the squatters' hands. Many of those 
allegations were made by irresponsible people and many 
more on very insufficient evidence. An occasional visit 
to a sheep station or to the north is scarcely a sufficient 
qualification to enable a man to judge of these matters. 
Serious cases of brutality have of course at times occurred, 
but even now many who make these charges, when asked 
for specific cases, have to fall back on what is called 
" The Anderson Case," which occurred more than a 
quarter of a century ago. If these cases were at all 
frequent much more recent evidence would be very 
easily forthcoming. A residence of eight years in the 
country and not infrequent visits to a very large number 
of the stations between the North-West Cape and the 
Fitzroy River, enables me to put on record my firm 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 19 

conviction that the natives as a whole are treated by 
the squatters with remarkable kindness and generosity. 

At the present time in Western Australia no one may 
employ native labour without a permit from the Govern 
ment. These permits are only given for a year, but 
are, of course, renewable. The squatter is bound to 
provide substantial rations, clothing, blankets, medicines 
and medical attendance, but the native is a perfectly 
free agent, and can leave his employment at any time. 
If he feels inclined for a " pink-eye " (holiday), he takes 
it, and not infrequently his employer will provide him 
with a small bag of flour and a quantity of tea and 
sugar as food by the way. Native labour is, of course, 
a convenient labour, but it is very questionable indeed 
whether, viewed from the strictly commercial point of 
view, it " pays." Sentiment has a great deal to do with 
it. There is very often not nearly sufficient work on 
the station, except perhaps at shearing time, to provide 
employment for the large number of aboriginals who 
reside on the run. Yet all, including the infirm and the 
children, will be clothed and fed. I remember one day 
seeing no less than eight strong, able-bodied aboriginals 
at Mundabullangana, spending their morning playing 
euchre in the buggy shed. Yet they received their food 
just the same. Squatters as a rule do not like to turn 
adrift men and women who were born on the country 
which they have taken up. Those who advocate a 
payment, being made either to the native himself (who 
has no use for money), or to the State are advocating a 
system which would be the cause of endless difficulties 
and confusion. 

The West Australian Government is a most generous 
friend to the aboriginals. During the year ending 



20 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

June 3oth, 1911, over 40,000 was expended on their 
welfare. Of this nearly 10,000 went in relief to the 
sick and indigent ; over 8,000 on the maintenance 
of Lock Hospitals and the collection and transport of 
diseased natives thereto, and 20,000 in the purchase 
and upkeep of a native settlement in East Kimberley. 
Grants to missions to assist them in feeding and educating 
those under their control, accounted for more than 2,000 
more. When it is remembered that the entire white 
population of Western Australia is even now only 
300,000 it will be seen that the State has nobly taken 
up " the white man's burden." The Queensland 
Government is, I believe, equally generous. 

The squatters, again, are sometimes condemned be 
cause they have done nothing to evangelize the natives 
on their runs. But this, surely, is scarcely their work. 
They have gone there to make money, not as philan 
thropists or missionaries. On one station on the 
Gascoyne, however, the wife of one of the settlers did 
a good deal in this way, and with considerable success. 
Undoubtedly the general attitude of the squatter is 
rather to resent anything in the way of missionary 
work among this sadly-neglected people. Either they 
have forgotten altogether the great missionary com 
mand, or they have persuaded themselves that the 
aboriginal is incapable of a saving knowledge of the 
Lord. One can scarcely wonder that it should be so, 
when one looks to see what the Church herself has been 
doing. She, too, has been sadly neglectful of her sacred 
trust, and has often stood idly by whilst the black has 
passed unevangelized into the Great Beyond. May her 
zeal and enthusiasm in the future aton ? in some measure 
for the sins and apathy of the years that are past ! 



CHAPTER II 

THE TRIBE AND ITS DIVISIONS A CAMP TRIBAL 
MESSENGERS LANGUAGES POSITION OF WOMEN. 

THE social unit of the aborigines is the tribe, consisting, 
as a rule, of from fifty to three hundred individuals, 
living a common life, occupying a definite tract of coun 
try, recognising a common relationship, and speaking 
a common tongue. 

The tribe usually possesses a distinctive name. All 
outside it are, to those within, " wild blacks " and reputed 
cannibals. There is very little sense of race. There 
are probably from two hundred and fifty to three hun 
dred different tribes surviving to-day. 

It follows that the tribal area is small. It is often 
no more than from twenty to thirty miles in diameter. 
The sole hunting rights, and exclusive property in 
water, are claimed by the tribe, and encroachment of 
any kind is the signal for immediate hostilities. Yet, 
while the tribal area is thus jealously guarded, the 
aborigines never make war for the sake of acquiring 
new territory. They will suffer no diminution in that 
which they possess, but they do not seek to extend 
their borders. Among civilized peoples, if the popu 
lation becomes too large for the land, new lands must 
be acquired to absorb the surplus but among savage 
races the process is reversed. The population must be 
strictly limited, and not allowed to outgrow the tribal 

21 



22 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

area. For this reason infanticide is common, and there 
is but little reverence for human life. 

Among the aborigines there are no recognised chiefs, 
a kind of senate of the older men constituting the gov 
erning body of the tribe. One of them may occasionally, 
however, be recognised as in some sense " king." These 
older men are the depositaries of all the tribal secrets, 
and in their memories are stored the tribal laws. They 
decide all questions of importance, see to the perform 
ance of all the sacred ceremonies, and from their ruling 
there is no appeal. 

The tribes are divided into two almost equal moieties, or 
phratries, and these, again, into classes. In some tribes the 
classes are four in number ; in others eight. A further 
reference to them will be made in the chapter on marriage. 
The phratry names, when translatable, are those of 
animals, usually of birds. The commonest seem to 
be Eagle-Hawk and Crow ; but Cockatoo is also of 
frequent occurrence. 

Perhaps the real social unit is found in the totem 
group. These groups are comparatively small, and form 
sub-divisions of the phratries, and cross-divisions with 
the classes. There seems to be no limit to the number 
of totem groups which may exist in the tribes, but the 
same groups are seldom found in the two phratries. 
The totem is usually some animal or plant which forms 
an article of food, but one meets also with the " rain " 
totem, the " cold" totem, and so on. 

The nature of the connection between the members 
of the group and their totem differs in different tribes, 
but, speaking generally, it is usually regarded as a blood- 
relationship. The members are taught to regard them 
selves as brethren, the totem is sacred to them, and is 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 23 

consequently forbidden as an article of food. On all 
occasions the members of a totem group act together, 
and an injury wrought by any one of them may be 
avenged on any other. 

Scattered over the tribal area will be a number of 
camps. These are of the rudest character possible, 
easily made, and as easily abandoned. Situated close 
to a water-hole, or on the bank of a creek or stream, 
they are often a mere collection of huts, or break-winds, 
any one of which can be constructed by a couple of 
women in half an hour. A number of boughs are 
arched over, covered with skins or sheets of bark, and 
sometimes plastered over with mud. A miscellaneous 
assortment of odds and ends will lie around, a skin or 
two may be thrown down upon the ground, spears and 
other weapons will be stored within them, and some 
eight or nine souls will probably claim the hut as home. 
Except in wet weather, they prefer to sleep outside, 
around the camp fire, and there is much wisdom in 
doing so. The huts are always arranged according to 
a fixed plan, certain traditional rules having to be 
strictly observed. A man's hut, for instance, may never, 
under any circumstances, face in the same direction as 
that of his mother-in-law and certain other of his relatives. 

On the sheep-stations and in the neighbourhood of 
towns, the camps are frequently much more elaborate 
in construction, and corrugated iron is in great demand 
as building material. The influence of civilization can 
also be seen in the greater neatness of the camp and 
its inhabitants, but one is dealing here with what is, 
to all intents and purposes, a settled home. 

Very important functionaries within the tribe are the 
tribal messengers. These are, at the same time, the 



24 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

newspapers and the postmen of the tribe. Their 
persons are sacred, and when carrying their message 
sticks they can pass unmolested across any hunting 
ground. It is their duty to call tribes together for 
war or for initiation ceremonies, to arrange marriages, 
to invite to corrobborees, to initiate peace negotiations, 
to summon tribal councils, and to disseminate all the 
information that they can. Arrived at the camp to 
which he brings his message, the messenger will give 
a particular coo-ee, which all will understand. Those 
within hearing will at once gather around him in 
almost solemn silence. The silence will remain un 
broken till he sees fit to begin. Many minutes may 
elapse before he commences, but once started, the flow 
of his eloquence is often wonderful. Not infrequently 
it happens that he understands scarcely a word of the 
language of the tribe to which he has come. Then 
" gesture language " will be employed. By different 
movements of his body he will express perfectly clearly 
what he wants to say. The waving of a green bough 
will proclaim that he has come to arrange peace ; the 
taking of a portion of his beard into his mouth, and 
then spitting it out again will make it quite evident 
that hostilities are meant. The message stick which 
he carries (usually a round piece of wood about ten 
inches long, with various marks and rude pictures drawn 
upon it) serves sometimes merely as a stimulus to his 
own memory, though on other occasions it may be 
handed to and read by those to whom he has come. 

Broadly speaking, no two tribes speak exactly the 
same tongue, though many words are common to them 
all. As with all unwritten languages, words tend to 
change their meanings very rapidly, and that which 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 25 

means a woman in one tribe, may mean something 
quite different a hundred miles away. The names of 
perfectly familiar objects may be suddenly changed 
because some dead heroes may have borne the same 
names, and it would be dangerous in the extreme to 
mention the departed. 

One peculiarity of all the native languages is that 
there are scarcely any numerals higher than three or 
four. To express a higher number they have to use 
compounds of one and two. Thus, in the Koko Yimidir 
language, of which Captain Cook speaks, five is " burla 
godera, burla godera, nulu nobun," in plain English : 
" both two, both two, odd man one." This is almost 
sufficient to bear out the squatter's story of the black 
fellow who commenced to count a flock of sheep thus : 
" One, two, mob, big mob, very big fellow mob." When 
he came to six he had to begin again 

The position of the women can be little realised 
by those who are only familiar with our Christian way 
of thinking. Their lot is unenviable, indeed. They 
are the drudges and the burden bearers the " hewers 
of wood, and the drawers of water" the mere slaves 
and chattels of the men. A man may kill his wife for 
the most trivial offence and go unpunished. At thirty 
most of them are little better than old hags, so terribly 
have drudgery and child-bearing dragged them down. 
They become repulsive in appearance, though in youth 
many of them were quite pretty, and were it not for 
the absence of a beard, it would be very diificult to 
tell them from the men. One only needs to sit in a 
native camp for half an hour in silent meditation, to 
realise what the vision of the Madonna and her Child 
has done for womanhood. 



CHAPTER III 

BIRTH AND INFANCY " CHURINGA " INFANTICIDE 
TREATMENT OF CHILDREN GAMES. 

CERTAIN spots on the tribal hunting-grounds will fre 
quently be pointed out as the haunts of spirit-children. 
They may be trees or springs or even sacred stones, and 
the natives appear to regard conception as being entirely 
due to the fact that one of these spirit-children has 
entered the body of a woman who has ventured near. 
Among certain tribes, especially in North Queensland 
a belief exists that the spirits have been placed in these 
spots by a supernatural being, called in some tribes 
Anjea. Others apparently regard them as the spirits 
of men and women long since dead, and now about to 
become again incarnate. If a woman wishes to have a 
child all she needs to do is to go and sit down near one 
of these spirit-haunted spots, and one of the spirits is 
almost sure to enter her. If, on the other hand, she is 
anxious to avoid maternity she will carefully keep away 
from such spots altogether, but should she be compelled 
in the course of her journeyings to pass near one of them, 
she will bend herself double, screw up her features, to 
make herself appear as old as possible, and plead plain 
tively with the spirits in the squeakiest tones she is able 
to assume, to leave an old woman alone. 
Sometimes a man will pay a visit to one of these 

26 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 27 

sacred stones, and muttering an incantation, will tie his 
girdle around it and leave it there. He believes that by 
so doing he can cause his wife to bear a child. It is, 
however, a somewhat dangerous thing to do, for occa 
sionally the spirit (whether by mistake or caprice, I 
know not) enters the body of the man instead. In such 
a case he is almost certain to die. 

The newly-born infant is not black, but a beautiful 
golden brown, but " him come along black piccaninny 
all right " in the course of a few days. Under the eyes, 
on the arms, and in other parts of the body, little black 
lines can be distinctly seen, and these gradually widen 
and spread till the skin assumes that deep chocolate hue 
(perhaps, in later life, deepening into almost pure black) 
which is the true colour of the race. 

When a child is born the men will search in the neigh 
bourhood of the spot where the woman thinks the spirit 
entered her for a small instrument of wood or stone, 
which the spirit is supposed to have felt behind. This is 
the child's Churinga, and is an object of great sacred- 
ness, never to be seen by a woman or a child. Should 
the men's search prove unsuccessful, a new one will be 
made. The spirits of the old totemic ancestors are very 
closely associated with these Churinga in the native 
mind. The spot where they are stored becomes a city 
of refuge. Anyone fleeing there would be safe as long 
as he remained. A hunted animal would not be killed 
while in the immediate neighbourhood of the sacred 
spot. Churinga undoubtedly plays a very considerable 
part in the native's life, but what exactly that 
part is it is not possible for an uninitiated man to 
say. 

Children are a much greater burden among people 



28 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

living a wandering life than in a more settled race. 
Infanticide is, therefore, common among the tribes. 
Probably about thirty out of every hundred children 
are killed at birth. If born after the death of its father, 
if the mother has two children already, or if the previous 
one is still so young as to need all her care and attention, 
the newly-born infant is almost certain to be slain. As 
was stated in the last chapter, the root cause of this 
prevalent infanticide is the necessity of strictly limiting 
the number of the tribe, owing to the lack of all cultiva 
tion and the consequent scarcity of food. It is usually 
the province of the father to decide whether the child 
shall live or die. Sometimes the infant will be laid down 
at his feet, and its fate depends upon whether he picks 
it up or turns his back upon it. Girls are more likely 
to be killed than boys. The commonest method is to 
suffocate the child by filling its mouth with sand. Some 
times it will be buried alive ; sometimes struck with a 
heavy waddy. Very occasionally it will be killed for 
food, and even the mother may join in the feast upon its 
flesh. Now and again if healthy and vigorous, an infant 
may be killed, and an older but weaklier child fed with 
tiny morsels of its roasted flesh in the hope that its 
strength and vigour will be communicated to the weaker 
one. 

Should the child be allowed to live, it will, from the 
wise man's point of view, be spoiled abominably. It 
will never be corrected by either parent, or disciplined in 
any way, except perhaps, very occasionally and on the 
sly, by its maternal grandmother, who may take it upon 
herself to administer a spanking in the same way and on 
the same part of the body as is usual in more civilised 
climes 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 29 

There are several ways in which babies are carried 
till they are able to run alone. Sometimes a little pitchi, 
made of bark sewn up at the ends with spinifex fibre 
and covered with green leaves, serves as a baby carriage 
by day and a cradle by night. At another time their 
little heads may be seen just showing above the top of 
of a folded opossum skin or string bag, slung on the 
mother's back, but as soon as the little one is able to 
hold on, it seems to prefer to sit astride its mother's 
shoulder or hip and hang on by her hair. Should it cry 
it will be passed from one person to another, caressed 
and soothed. Even the father will take his turn, per 
haps nursing his fretful infant for hours at a time. On 
one occasion an aboriginal was murdered in his sleep by 
another, but, before spearing him, the murderer carefully 
removed a sleeping infant from his victim's arms and 
laid it down beside him. 

As a rule names are not given to children until some 
time after birth. In most tribes it would be considered 
unlucky to bestow a name before the child could walk. 
The name given is often the outcome of some occurrence 
or accident at birth. One child, in one of the north 
west tribes, was named, " Kangaroo rat," because one 
of those animals ran through the mia (house, or home) at 
the time of its birth. On another occasion the name 
bestowed was the aboriginal equivalent for "when the 
mia caught fire," because soon after its entrance within 
the tribe the hut in which it had been born was acci 
dentally burned to the ground. 

The name first given is, as a rule, not permanent. It 
may be changed on initiation, i.e. on arrival at manhood 
or womanhood, or if a relative bearing the same name 
should die, for aboriginals seldom, if ever, mention the 



30 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

names of their dead. Occasionally, as a mark of very 
special friendship, two natives will exchange names. 

As soon as they can run alone children will be given 
little digging sticks and shewn how to dig for grubs. 
It is a pretty sight to watch their little baby efforts thus 
to find food for themselves or to see a slightly older child 
finding grubs for a younger one, and feeding it as lovingly 
and carefully as a mother bird feeds her young. On 
these grubs, and on certain insects, which they very soon 
learn to eat, the children thrive and fatten wonderfully. 

It is a pretty sight, too, to watch them at their play. 
" Cat's Cradle " is a great favourite, and very complex 
are the figures the older children contrive. Ball games 
of all kinds are very popular, from the simplest tossing 
of a ball of fibre or opossum skin from one to another, to 
a kind of football, which occasions great merriment, and 
in which not only the boys but their elders also will 
engage for hours at a time. Someone of mark chosen to 
begin the game drops the ball, and then with his instep 
kicks it into the air. There is a rush to secure it worthy 
of a Rugby " scrum." The man or boy who gets it 
kicks again, and so the game goes on. Excitement grows 
as the game proceeds, and the fun becomes fast and 
furious. Many attain to very considerable skill, and 
become the objects of hero-worship on the part of the 
less skilled. 

Sometimes a " kangaroo hunt," will engage them, per 
haps, for the greater part of the day. There are two 
ways in which this game may be played. One of them 
will be given a long start, and will make his tracks in the 
sand. The others will then trace him to his hiding-place 
and bring him home in triumph, unless he can manage 
to elude his captors and arrive home first. Should he be 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 31 

stalked he is almost certain sooner or later to be cap 
tured and succumb to their tiny spears. 

" Hide-and-seek " is also a great favourite. One of 
them will go and hide somewhere in the bush, then 
whistle, and the others will try to find him from the 
sound ; or some object may be hidden by some of them, 
and then sought by the rest amid the jeers and clapping 
and loud laughter of those who know where it is. 

Sometimes their game will take the form of imitation 
of their elders. A young " warrior/' aged seven or 
eight, will set up a home with a dusky bride of about the 
same age. They will be perfectly happy till another 
" warrior" steals and runs away with the bride. 

So the merry days hasten by till preparation for real 
life has to begin in earnest, and the education of the 
young aboriginal is taken in hand. 



CHAPTER IV 

SAVAGE EDUCATION How THE FACULTY OF OBSERVA 
TION is TRAINED SOME ILLUSTRATIONS WEAPONS 
WHICH A CHILD LEARNS TO MAKE AND USE. 

To some it may seem out of place to talk of the education 
of the young aboriginal at all, yet if the word means 
preparation for real life the "drawing forth" and 
calling into play of inborn faculties which God has 
given then the expression "savage education" is no 
misnomer. 

Up to about the age of ten boys and girls continue 
to play together, and are not separated in any way ; 
but about that age the boy is withdrawn from the society 
of the women and girls, sleeps in the bachelor's camp, 
and the older men, more especially his father, take his 
education in hand. His lessons are all drawn from 
nature and his schoolroom is the wild. Of systematic 
instruction, in our sense of the word, he receives but 
little. That comes later on after he has learned how 
to use his ears, his hands and his eyes, and is then 
taught by means of the sacred ceremonies of his tribe 
by what he sees rather than by what he hears. The 
teaching power of careful ceremonial is grasped to an 
amazing extent by the Australian aboriginals. 

First the child is taught to use his eyes, to distinguish 
the footprints of various animals, and eventually to 

32 




THE VENEER OF CIVILIZATION. 



\Toface p. 32. 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 33 

track them to their lairs. He soon notices the peculi 
arities of every bush and tree, so that at any moment 
almost he can tell exactly where he is. He studies the 
position of the stars so that he could find his way home 
at night, if need be, by their aid. 

He learns to use his ears, so that he can distinguish 
the different notes of the birds and catch the faintest 
sound of rustling leaves or moving grass which may 
tell of the near approach of food or danger. Little by 
little he picks up the knowledge he will need. 

He becomes an adept with his hands. He can soon 
throw a stone with unerring aim and bring down a 
parrot on the wing. He is given a boomerang of his 
own, and spends hours in learning the art of throwing it. 
He learns how to hold and how to throw a spear. 

The power of observation thus acquired becomes 
his most valuable asset when he grows to manhood. 
To the white man the extent to which this power is 
developed never ceases to be marvellous. A native will 
track men over hard rocks where one would think such 
tracking was absolutely impossible. They will tell at 
a glance often whether the tracks are a black man's 
or a white's although the black has worn boots, will 
even say how long it is since the track was made, and 
in the case of a person known will say whose track it is. 
" A tracker has been known," says Mr. A. N. Thomas,* 
" to say that the man on whose track he was, was 
knock-kneed, and this turned out to be correct. On one 
occasion a white man had been murdered, and it was 
suspected that he had been thrown into a certain water- 
hole ; before it was dragged a native, who could have 
no knowledge of the affair, was called in to pronounce 
* " Natives of Australia," p. 102. (Constable.) 



34 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

on the signs ; decomposition of the body had already set 
in, it appears, and there were slight traces of this on the 
surface of the pool ; the native gave a sniff and pro 
nounced that it was ' white man's fat/ and so it turned 
out to be." 

Even a child from an upturned stone or some marks 
on the bare soil will say how many men have been along 
the track and how long ago. 

In a measure we may speak of the aboriginal child as 
receiving moral and religious teaching of a very excellent 
kind, very dogmatic and very definite. As soon as he 
is old enough to do so the boy accompanies his father, 
and from his lips this early instruction is received. 
Whenever they come to any place to which any tradi 
tion is attached, the legend and as many of its bearings 
as possible will be told to the child. The duty of implicit 
obedience to tribal laws and customs, and of reverence 
to the older men will be carefully impressed upon him, 
for the aboriginal father is anxious above all else that 
his child should grow up a faithful and obedient member 
of his tribe, that he should be true to the old traditions 
and tread faithfully in the old ways. On these journeys, 
too, with his father all that he needs to know about the 
different plants and animals will be explained to him. 
In other words he learns his botany and zoology and 
topography in the open air. 

The women give similar practical instruction to the 
girls. In this connection Mr. Smythe, in his book on 
the "Aborigines of Victoria," narrates so typical a 
scene that I venture to quote it in full : 

" A correspondent, who some twenty years ago had a 
station near Yering, on the river Yarra . . . had once, 
he informs me, in the early days of the settlement of 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 35 

the colony, some opportunities of observing the methods 
of tuition pursued by the natives. On one occasion he 
saw an old woman attended by a great number of girls, 
who appeared to be under her care, and engaged in useful 
employments. The old woman gathered materials with 
her own hands and built for herself a miam, and then 
with great care, and with many words of instruction, 
caused each girl to build a small miam after the pattern 
of the large one. She showed the girls where and how 
to collect gum and where to put it ; she caused them 
to gather rushes, and, with the proper form of rounded 
stone in their hands, instructed them in the art of weav 
ing the rushes into baskets ; she made them pull the 
right kind of grasses for making other kinds of baskets and 
rough nets, and she showed them how the fibres were 
prepared and how nets and twine were made ; she 
took from her bag the woolly hair of an opossum, and 
taught them how, by twisting it under the hand over the 
inner smooth part of the thigh, it could be made into a 
kind of yarn or thread ; and in many ways and on many 
subjects she imparted instruction. She was undoubtedly 
a schoolmistress a governess ; but how long she kept 
her pupils at work, or under what conditions they were 
entrusted to her care, were subjects on which my cor 
respondent could obtain no information." 

Since it is during this period of education that the 
aboriginal is taught to make and use the weapons and 
implements of his race a brief account of them may 
be most fittingly undertaken here. 

The most peculiar and striking of all these native 
weapons is the boomerang. Of this there are two kinds 
in use : (i) the war boomerang, which is used principally 
in warfare and has no return flight, and (2) the 



36 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

boomerang proper, or toy boomerang, which on com 
pleting its outward flight returns to the feet of the 
thrower. Australia is the only country in which the 
boomerang proper exists. The Egyptian and Cali 
fornia " boomerangs" as they are sometimes called were 
simply bent sticks which were thrown at animals and 
most certainly did not possess the characteristic power 
of the Australian instrument. The toy boomerang 
is a thin curved piece of wood about 24 inches long, 
and varying in weight from 4 to xoj ounces. The war 
boomerang is somewhat larger (about 30 inches) and 
usually less curved, but there are rarely two of exactly 
the same pattern, and they vary much in length as well 
as weight. Specimens 6 feet long have been found. 
An interesting suggestion has been made as to its origin. 
Some children were playing one day with a leaf of a 
white gum tree. As the leaves of this tree fall to the 
ground they gyrate in very much the same manner as 
a boomerang. If one of the leaves is thrown straight 
forward it makes a curve and comes back. An old 
man watched these children at their play and to please 
them made them a large model of the leaf in wood. 
This led to fresh experiments and eventually the return 
boomerang as it exists to-day was evolved. 

A man about to throw one of these instruments first 
examines it very carefully and then takes careful note 
of all the objects in the distance and of the direction 
of the wind. Taking It in his right hand and holding 
it by the end he launches it forth with a quick swing 
imparting as much rotation to it as he can. Proceeding 
at first in an upright position it will make from ten to 
fifteen turns a second. After going about fifty yards 
it will turn over on the flat side and curve away 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 37 

usually to the left, and at the same time begin to rise 
in the air. Sometimes it will rise to a height of from 
one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty feet, 
and in its outward journey will cover a distance of 
one hundred and fifty yards. The skilful thrower can 
make the weapon do almost anything he likes, and five 
times out of ten it will come back within a couple of 
yards of his feet. It may fail to return should it hit 
a bird or other object in the course of its flight. I have 
seen a boomerang made to strike the ground fifteen or 
twenty yards ahead of the thrower and then fly nearly a 
hundred yards further about five feet above the ground, 
but in this case there was no return. It is an extremely 
dangerous weapon in the hands of a skilful aboriginal 
and for an unwary spectator. A man or an animal 
standing behind a tree where he would be quite safe 
from spear or bullet might very easily be taken in the 
rear by a returning boomerang. The emu or kangaroo 
are unable to avoid it so eccentric is its flight. Among 
a flight of cockatoos just rising from the water, or a flock 
of parrots, it works tremendous havoc. 

The natives of north-west Australia use as a rule 
a somewhat smaller and much more leaf-like instrument 
than those of the central and eastern parts of the 
continent. It is called a kylie, and flies further than the 
heavier boomerang. 

The war boomerang, as already stated, has no return 
flight. It is thrown straight forward and is an extremely 
deadly weapon with its sharp cutting edge. It can be 
thrown one hundred and fifty yards, and even at that 
distance will inflict a very severe blow. One has been 
known to pass almost through the softer parts of a 
man's body at a distance of eighty yards. 



38 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

Next to the boomerang, the weapon in most frequent 
use is the spear. Of this there are numerous varieties. 
The simplest is merely a pointed stick, eight to ten feet 
long, but many are barbed either on one side or both. 
Sometimes instead of carved barbs, a groove is cut on 
each side of the spear, and pieces of flint or metal are 
inserted in the grooves and securely fastened with gum. 
Another variety will have a head of flint or diorite, 
beautifully made. These must take days to make 
sometimes, since the only cutting instrument will be a 
piece of quartz or stone, and chipping, or percussion, the 
only means of getting the weapon to assume the desired 
shape. In almost any camp nowadays glass spear heads 
can be seen. These have been made, in all probability, 
from pieces of broken bottles left about by the whites. 
When the telegraph line was first opened in the north, 
constant trouble was caused by the aborigines knocking 
off the insulators to provide themselves with new and 
fascinating material for making spear heads. Spears 
are sometimes from ten to fifteen feet in length, and will 
inflict terrible wounds. They have often to be cut out 
of the body of the man who has been wounded by them, 
but sometimes if they are not in the neighbourhood of a 
vital part, the easiest and most humane way of removing 
them is to push them right through. They can be 
thrown about a hundred and fifty yards, but from sixty 
to seventy is the usual range. Some writers have 
declared that an aboriginal could hit a sixpence at thirty 
yards, others that he would miss a haystack at fifty. 
The truth really lies between the two with a leaning 
towards the sixpence, and I, for one, would prefer to be 
out of range, or behind the haystack, when the weapon 
was discharged. 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 39 

The spear is sometimes thrown by the hand, some 
times, perhaps more frequently, with the aid of a wom 
merah or meero. This is a flat piece of wood, sometimes 
broad and shield-like, sometimes almost as narrow as 
the spear. At the end is a peg of very hard white wood 
fastened to the head of the wommerah with gum. This 
peg fits into a small hole at the end of the spear. It is 
needless to say that only those spears which have this 
hole at the end can be thrown with the wommerah. 

In order to protect themselves against spear and 
boomerang, the aboriginals use a shield, sometimes 
called a woonda. These are of wood and are usually cut 
out of one solid block. They are about two feet nine 
inches long and six inches wide, and are nearly always 
deeply grooved. In the north-west they are usually 
made of a reddish kind of wood, and the hollow parts 
between the ridges are painted white with a kind of pipe 
clay which is very common in those parts. Sometimes 
the ridges are coloured with a kind of red ochre called 
wilgi, so that the shields present alternate lines of white 
and red. Why these ridges are made and why they are 
painted in this way no one seems to know. The 
aboriginals are extremely dexterous in the use of these 
shields which they of course carry on their left hand, 
and will ward off a veritable rain of spears and boomer 
angs with remarkable skill. The quickness of the trained 
eye is a tremendous help to them. Frequent practice 
with these shields may account for the fact that many 
of the natives have proved themselves very efficient 
defensive batsmen on almost the first occasion they 
have tried to play cricket. 



CHAPTER V 

ADOLESCENCE FOOD PROHIBITIONS " BORA " 
CEREMONIES CICATRIZATION. 

OF all the customs of the aborigines the most elaborate 
are those connected with the age of adolescence. The 
tremendous importance of that period of life which lies 
between childhood and manhood or womanhood has 
been realized to the full by this barbarous people. Here 
in England we often deplore the falling away from all 
religious influences of lads and girls just at this most 
impressionable period of their lives. Among the 
aborigines it is seized upon. Experience has taught 
them that impressions then made will be fraught with 
tremendous consequence, and so it has come about that 
the most elaborate, and to the young aboriginal the most 
impressive, ceremonies are connected with this period 
of life. They are longer and more elaborate in the case 
of boys than of girls, but in neither case are the impres 
sions made likely to be forgotten. 

At about the age of twelve the young lad is taken aside 
by his elders and first given a certain number of rules 
about food. Numerous articles of diet are for a time 
denied to him, and somewhat to his chagrin, he realizes 
that all the tastiest and most delicate are rigidly tabooed 
and only the coarser viands left to him. As he reaches 
manhood, some of the prohibitions begin to be removed. 

4 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 41 

The method of removal differs in different tribes, but in 
most cases it is brought about in some such way as this. 
When the old men have decided that it is time a certain 
youth was allowed to eat (say) wild turkey, a turkey 
will be caught and cooked, and some of the fat rubbed 
over the lad's mouth by two of the men who will then 
give him a piece to eat. After that, turkey is no longer 
taboo to him, but he may eat it as often as he likes. The 
accumulated wisdom of the old men certainly serves 
them well. In most tribes it is a very long while before 
all the food prohibitions are removed, and often a man's 
hair has grown grey before he is free to eat what he likes. 
So the greatest delicacies are eaten by the old men alone. 
The ceremonies by which young lads are admitted to 
the privileges of manhood vary of course in different 
parts of the continent, and are known by various names. 
For convenience, however, we generally speak of them 
as " Bora " ceremonies. Several lads will very likely 
undergo their first Bora at the same time, and it will be 
far from a pleasant period of their lives for them. A 
place for the ceremony will be selected at some consider 
able distance from the camp, most probably at a spot 
reserved for this special purpose. The old men from 
other groups will have been summoned to the ceremony 
by the tribal messengers, and they perhaps will have 
brought with them other lads whom they consider old 
enough to be initiated and made men. The ceremonial 
ground is carefully prepared, and none but initiated men 
and the lads to be initiated are allowed to come into the 
sacred circle. Women and uninitiated men will, in some 
tribes, be allowed to be present at and perhaps take a 
definite part in the preliminary rites, but from the rest 
of the Bora they are rigidly excluded, and a " bull- 



42 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

roarer " (an oval piece of wood with a string fastened to 
one end) is kept booming to warn them away from the 
sacred ground. Certain drawings which have been 
made on the ground and on the trees are first shown and 
explained to the lads, and certain dances then performed 
by some of the men. These also are carefully explained. 
The dancers daub their bodies with mud or clay and 
adorn themselves with feathers and birds' down. One 
or two of the lad's front teeth will be knocked out, and 
in most northern tribes the rite of circumcision will also 
be performed. Frequently the lads are covered with 
blood, the men freely bleeding themselves for the pur 
pose. The probable significance of this ceremony is 
explained below. In some tribes it is also necessary 
to submit to a series of ordeals by fire. Messrs. Spencer 
and Gillen's books contain a very full account of these fire 
ceremonies, or Engwura, as performed in the Arunta 
tribe, but only the briefest possible account of them can 
be given here. They last for several days and are pre 
ceded by a number of very elaborate dances which serve 
to instruct the lads in the most important legends and 
traditions of their tribe. 

The actual fire ceremonies last about eight days, and 
" each day during this period the young men, whose 
initiation is being completed, are sent away every morn 
ing to hunt, but they are not allowed to keep the game 
they obtain for themselves. This must be brought 
back and given to the older men. In the evening the 
women provide themselves with fire and secure a supply 
of dry grass and sticks. When the young men return 
from their hunting in the bush they provide themselves 
with a number of leafy boughs, and, forming into a dense 
square, they run up to where the women are standing, 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 43 

whereupon the latter set fire to the grass and sticks 
which they have provided and throw them over the 
men, who shield themselves as well as they can with 
the boughs. When this has lasted for a short time the 
men return to the ceremonial ground, where they deposit 
their boughs and then lie down. They must lie thus for 
hours without speaking."* But an even more trying 
ordeal has yet to be undergone. During the final cere 
monies the young men who are being initiated have to 
lie down on a fire covered with green boughs. Although 
the heat is considerable and the smoke stifling, no word 
of pain is expected to pass their lips, and they are not 
allowed to get up or even move until leave is given by 
one of the older men. Of course, the green boughs 
prevent their being actually burned, but the pain must 
be very considerable and the ordeal is a very thorough 
test of their capacity to endure. 

The origin and significance of these ceremonies is not 
now known even to the aborigines, but there is little 
doubt that they have been handed down from very 
remote days and were at one time very full of meaning. 

Other ceremonies connected with this period of life, 
practised in some parts of the continent, are depilation, 
or the pulling out of the hairs of the sprouting beard one 
by one (this is sometimes done three times) , and cicatriza 
tion. Of this custom something more must be said. 
Any photograph of aborigines will show their bodies to 
be very freely marked with scars. These scars are 
regarded by some as special marks of beauty. They are 
made with flint or glass, and ashes or the down of an 
eagle-hawk are rubbed in to make the wounds heal. 
The actual effect is to cause the raised scar. Some 

* " Customs of the World," p. 154. (Hutchinson & Co.). 



44 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

writers think that these cicatrices are connected with 
the removal of the food prohibitions referred to 
above. The natives themselves are immensely proud 
of them, but one can seldom get from them any very 
lucid or intelligible account of their meaning. They 
merely say that they improve their personal appearance. 
For some time after their initiation, the initiates 
remain apart from the camp and live with their guardians 
in the bush. During this time they are not permitted 
either to see or be seen by the women, and, in some cases, 
the youths are forbidden to speak to the men who took 
the leading part in the initiation ceremonies. The bar 
of silence is eventually removed by the youths touching 
the head of one of these men with a twig. Again, the 
significance of the action must remain unexplained. 
Originally, one may conjecture, these different rites 
were made part of the laws of the Australian people in 
order to make a clear line of demarcation between those 
who might claim the rights of manhood, and were, in 
consequence, allowed to take wives and fight in battle, 
and those who were not allowed to do these things. In 
the case of girls, the ceremonies afford a valuable pro 
tection. They are children until the rites have been 
performed, and offences against their persons are visited 
with the heaviest penalties. No man can possibly 
declare he did not know the girl was not yet marriage 
able. In their case the ceremonies are, of course, con 
ducted by the older women, but in some tribes the 
young men are allowed to approach within a certain 
distance, when they throw twigs at them, the girls 
meanwhile holding a green bough. After sundown a 
corrobboree will be held, and the young men who took 
part in the day's ceremonies will be called upon to 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 45 

perform. Girls also frequently have one of their front 
teeth knocked out ; in fact, this is among the commonest 
of all aboriginal observances, and is, I believe, also 
freely practised among other savage peoples. 

The probable design of these initiation ceremonies, 
at any rate in the case of the young men, is "to com 
municate to them the blood of the clan, and thus to 
unite them a second time and more closely to the com 
munity in its religious aspect." 

Cicatrization, too, may have some relation to this 
idea of a " blood-covenant." The scars are the per 
petual reminder of the covenant ; the marks of the 
blood, 



CHAPTER VI. 

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS AND LAWS 

ABORIGINAL girls are usually betrothed in childhood, 
often in infancy, and are given in marriage at about 
the age of twelve. 

The marriage laws are, as a rule, very complicated, 
but in some of the West Australian tribes they are 
comparatively simple. In the north-west there are 
usually four " classes/' two in each phratry of the tribe, 
viz., Banaka, Boorungnoo, Kimera, and Paljarie. A 
Banaka man may only marry a Kimera woman. Their 
children will be Paljarie. A Boorungnoo man may 
only many a Paljarie woman. The children are Kimera. 
A Kimera man must seek his bride among the Banaka 
women. The children are Boorungnoo. A Paljarie 
man may only marry a Boorungnoo woman, and their 
children are Banaka. It will be observed that man and 
wife must belong to opposite phratries, and that " descent 
follows the distaff " ; the children belong to the same 
phratry, though not the same class, as their mother. 

There are no marriage ceremonies, in our sense of the 
words, but when a girl has arrived at marriageable age 
she may suddenly be told that her husband has come to 
claim her and that her wedding morn has come. It is 
quite possible that she has not the slightest idea who he 
is, and has never met him before, but by the rules of the 

46 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 47 

tribe she is bound to go with him. There may be " a 
scene," but her father, probably anticipating it, will be 
standing by with a spear and a heavy waddy in his 
hand. If she gives any sign of resistance, a stroke from 
the spear is almost certain to ensue. Some resistance, 
however, she is almost sure to show. It would be 
unmaidenly to go too willingly. As she is being led 
away she will perhaps make her last protest against 
her capture by suddenly stooping down and making 
her teeth meet in the calf of her husband's leg. Yet 
marriages thus begun very frequently turn out quite 
happily. The couple become much attached to each 
other, and the blows of the waddy are succeeded by a 
honeymoon. 

The wedding breakfast follows the arrival at the 
bridegroom's home. The bride cooks a meal and brings 
it to her husband, sitting quietly beside him while he 
eats. When he has finished he gets up from his place, 
and she is allowed to regale herself upon what her lord 
has left, though he may have been throwing pieces to 
the dogs all the time. 

Occasionally it happens that even stronger measures 
than those described above are necessary before a girl 
can be induced to go to her husband's mia. There was 
one case in the Kimberley district where a father literally 
dragged his child there by her hair, and then speared 
her through both feet to prevent her running away. 

A man who has no female relatives whom he can give 
in exchange for a bride has to minister to his own needs, 
unless, as sometimes happens, he is able to induce some 
old widowed woman to wait upon him. The married 
men watch him suspiciously, for there is always the 
danger that he may cause trouble by running away 



48 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

with one of their wives, or by stealing a woman from 
some neighbouring tribe cause an outbreak of hostilities. 

One very curious custom existing among this people 
is that which forbids a man to communicate in any 
way with, or even to see, his mother-in-law, and vice 
versa. The rule applies from the moment of his be 
trothal. It may be that the custom carries us back to 
very much earlier days, when the only way in which 
young men could obtain wives was by capture. The 
mother of the stolen bride naturally resented the out 
rage on her daughter, and expressed her resentment by 
a refusal of all intercourse with her son-in-law. In this 
way the custom arose, and the natural conservatism of 
a savage people has caused it to continue to the present 
day. To-day, if an aboriginal is asked the reason for it, 
he will reply that it is one of the traditions of his tribe, 
and that should he by any chance happen to see the 
mother of his betrothed the spirits would be very much 
offended, and some disaster would be certain to ensue ; 
the woman, among other things, becoming prematurely 
old. 

The efforts of a woman to avoid the son-in-law, into 
whose neighbourhood she has accidentally come, are 
amusing in the extreme. She will immediately try to 
hide, and should any of her friends be with her, they will 
help her by getting in front of her ; but they must not 
give any word of warning, because it is not permissible 
for her even to hear the sound of his name. The man, on 
his part, will put his hand, or his shield if he has it with 
him, in front of his eyes and do his utmost not to see 
her. 



CHAPTER VII 

DAILY LIFE OF THE NATIVES. I. How THEY CATCH 
AND COOK THEIR FOOD. 

WHAT a life it was the black men lived in the days before 
the white man's coming ! 

They would wander through the giant forests or across 
the bare burning plains, wherever their fancy led them, 
and feel that the land was their own. They would hunt 
their prey with net and spear and boomerang, and eat 
while there was anything left to eat, and then lie down 
at the river's bend to sleep off their repletion. Then 
it was that they would dream of fierce fights with some 
neighbouring tribe and awaken to fight in deadly earnest. 
They would dance their elaborate corrobborees in the 
light of the friendly moon, or gather round their camp 
fires and make every rock and boulder echo and re-echo 
the music of their mirth. Yet all the time there was 
a brooding melancholy underneath it all (one can see 
it in their face to-day) , because there was always some 
thing lacking that the wilderness could not give, and 
some heart-longing always struggling into utterance 
that no one was able to satisfy. 

Such, in the main, is the life of the Myalls, or wild 
blacks, to-day. Much of it is spent in hunting, much 
in warfare, and almost as much in the performance 
of their corrobborees and magical rites. 

49 P 



50 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

Yet, though so much of their time is spent in hunting, 
there are few parts of wild Australia where the abori 
ginals can count on a regular supply of food. Their 
own ideas as to how this food supply is obtained will 
be narrated in a later chapter. 

The chief articles of diet which require to be caught 
are kangaroo, emu, and birds of various kinds, but 
especially the duck, pigeon, parrot, cockatoo and bustard 
or wild turkey. A certain species of moth is deemed 
a great luxury, whilst grubs and caterpillars are by no 
means despised. Even vermin are sometimes eaten, and 
clay occasionally as dessert. Various kinds of vegetable 
food and nuts also form frequent articles of diet. Though 
cannibalism is practised by the northern tribes; human 
flesh is nowhere regularly eaten. 

In some parts the natives fish in mid-stream from 
somewhat elaborately-made canoes, but the north-west 
natives seldom trouble to make canoes. Their usual 
method of crossing a stream which is too deep to wade 
is either to swim it (and the aboriginals are nearly all 
expert swimmers) or to sit astride a log with their legs 
in the water and propel themselves with their hands 
and feet. 

They are extraordinarily expert with their spears. 
A native may often be seen in the centre of a stream 
with his spear ready to strike, and it is seldom that 
the practised fisherman fails to land his prey. 

In some parts they use hook and line. The hooks 
are sometimes made of wood, sometimes of bone, and 
sometimes even of shell. They are usually much larger 
than those we employ. I have seen hooks five or six 
inches long with an arm at a very sharp angle. Occasion 
ally worms are used as bait. 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 51 

Not infrequently in shallow pools they wade or dive 
into the water and catch their fish by hand. 

Crayfish are sometimes caught by walking about in 
the water and allowing them to fasten on their toes. 
It is not a method of fishing that a white man would 
care to employ, but the natives are so extraordinarily 
quick that they experience little or no discomfort. The 
moment the " fish " has fastened upon them they stoop 
down and crush the claws, before they have had time to 
nip. 

Nets are also used, much in the same way as we 
ourselves use them. They are usually made of spinifex 
fibre. 

The manner in which the fish is cooked depends very 
much on how hungry they are. Occasionally, if they 
have been long without food, they will eat it rawj but 
this is exceptional. Should they be very ravenous, 
they will content themselves with flinging the fish, just as 
it is, on the fire; and eating it almost as soon as it is 
warmed through. As a rule, however, it is carefully 
cleaned, and cooked on hot ashes ; but an even more 
delicate method is not infrequently employed, for; 
savages though the aborigines are, they are decided 
epicures if they don't happen to be too hungry. The 
fish, having been very carefully cleaned, is wrapped 
in a covering of paper-bark and tightly tied with grass 
or strings of bark fibre. It is then cooked in hot sand 
covered with hot ashes, and is a juicy and most appe 
tising dish. No French chef could do better. 

The aboriginals have almost reduced to a fine art the 
process of capturing birds by putting salt on their tails ! 
A black fellow may sometimes be seen stretched on a 
rock in the sun holding out a piece of fish in his hand, 



52 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

When the bird comes to sample the fish he catches it 
by the leg. To catch water-fowl he will swim under 
water and pull the fowl down, but the methods em 
ployed to catch pigeons and cockatoos are even more 
ingenious. Occasionally, of course, these birds are 
killed with a stone or boomerang, but more often in the 
following ways. The native will get into a tree, prefer 
ably at night, and tie himself to it. He will then with 
a long stick lash out at the pigeons as they fly past him, 
and the mortality he occasions among them is con 
siderable. In the case of cockatoos he avails himself 
of the extraordinary attachment these birds have for 
one another. Taking a wounded one, he will fasten it 
to the branches of a tree. Attracted by its cries, others 
will quickly come to its aid. The aboriginal is lying in 
wait for them, and when they have gathered he works 
havoc among them with his boomerang. 

The extraordinary patience the natives display in 
their hunting deserves to be put on record. Two 
cases I remember well. In the first hours were spent in 
catching a bustard or wild turkey. In the other a 
kangaroo was literally stalked to a standstill. It took 
about three days, I think, to capture it. When the 
kangaroo ran the aboriginal ran, when it stopped he 
stopped, and so on, till at last the man proved mightier 
than the beast. This method of catching kangaroos is, 
I should imagine, very seldom employed. The more 
usual way is to watch where they go to water, and then 
to lie in ambush and wait for them there. Sometimes, 
however, they are hunted with dogs, and occasionally 
taken with nets. 

Turkeys, like kangaroos, frequent the open plain, and 
the figure of a man approaching them would very soon 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 53 

put them on the alert and on the wing. The native 
knows he must conceal himself, but this is no easy task 
on an open plain, so he completely covers himself with 
boughs, makes a noose with a cord at the end of his 
spear, and goes forth in search of his prey. Whilst the 
turkey's head is raised and he is looking about him the 
hunter stands perfectly still. The bird sees a bush and 
nothing more, so he puts his head down to feed. The 
native takes the opportunity to creep up a little nearer 
to his quarry ; and so the hunt goes on, until he has 
crept up sufficiently closely to enable him to place the 
noose over the bird's neck and take it home for his 
dinner. 

Emus, being very powerful birds and very fast runners, 
are not easily captured. One of these birds will easily 
out-distance a horse. The natives will, as in the case 
of the kangaroos, watch the tracks by which they come 
to the waterhole at early dawn. When the birds have 
come down the hunters will almost noiselessly (for 
emus are easily startled) set up an immense net some 
forty or more yards behind them. When the emus 
return they walk straight into the net and are easily 
captured. Occasionally the nets will be set up on three 
sides of a square. 

Opossum hunting is a most fascinating sport (but 
of course it is only possible in the south), and opossum 
flesh, when one has got used to the slight eucalyptus 
flavour, certainly makes a most delicious meal. The 
hunter wanders through the forest; carefully examining 
the trunks of the trees to see whether there are any 
recent marks of opossum's .claws upon them. He can 
pick out the latest scratches with almost a single glance, 
and can tell whether the last movement of the opossum 



54 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

was up the tree or down. If up, he knows it must be 
hidden somewhere in the trunk still. Two methods 
are open to him. Either he climbs the tree, and cuts 
a hole where he believes the opossum to be (seldom 
making a mistake); and drags him out, or he makes a 
fire in the bottom of the hollow trunk and smokes the 
creature out. 

It is sometimes said that were his fire allowed to go 
out the aboriginal would be unable to kindle another, 
but this is not true. In many parts " fire-sticks " are 
still in use. These consist of two pieces of dry, soft 
wood, one a round stick eight or nine inches long, the 
other usually, but not always, flat. The stick is pointed 
at the end, and being pressed upon the other is turned 
round and round with both hands. The tinder has been 
placed ready, and as soon as the dust begins to smoulder 
it is gently blown upon; with the result that it bursts 
into flame. By this method an aboriginal will fre 
quently kindle fire in one minute. If a white man tries, 
about all he ever gets is blisters. 

Sometimes, instead of these two sticks, a kind of saw 
is employed. The principle is the same, but it is dif 
ferently applied. A shield is held firmly on the ground 
by the feet, and a wommera drawn vigorously across 
it by two men. A groove is very soon formed, and the 
fine dust which gathers in it quickly ignites. 

As a rule, once a fire is lighted it is carefully preserved. 
The women when travelling carry firebrands smoulder 
ing pieces of decayed wood in their hands. As soon as 
the new camping-place is reached these are placed on 
the ground and covered with a few dry leaves, A few 
gentle puffs are given or a large leaf used as a fan, and 
a cheerful blaze quickly rewards them. 



CHAPTER VIII 

DAILY LIFE OF THE NATIVES II. WARFARE, 
COMBATS, CANNIBAL FEASTS. 

IT is quite a mistake to suppose that the aborigines 
spend a large proportion of their time in warfare. Fights, 
of course, are frequent, but they are soon over, and the 
animosity dies away with the throwing of the last spear. 
Wars of aggression, we have already said, are unknown. 
As a rule, the members of a tribe confine themselves to 
their own country. When visits are paid it is only to 
friendly tribes. I am afraid it must be admitted, even 
at the risk of appearing unchivalrous, that the women 
are the chief cause of quarrels, and not infrequently 
begin the actual battle by " nagging" at the enemy and 
hitting one of them on the head with a club. Some 
times, of course, the fight is undertaken for the purpose 
of avenging a death or some fancied slight or indignity. 
In all their battles the women invariably suffer the 
most, and frequently several of them are killed. The 
men are seldom mortally wounded, but wounds which 
would probably prove fatal to a European have very 
little effect upon them, and, except where they have been 
in close contact with white men, are quickly healed. 
The aborigines also, having a much less highly-developed 
nervous system, feel pain to a much less extent than 
we do. 

55 



56 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

As illustrating their comparative disregard of wounds, 
Sir George Grey tells an amusing story. A fight had 
taken place in what was then " the village of Perth," 
and " a native man had received a wound in that portion 
of his frame which is only presented to enemies when in 
the act of flight, and the spear, which was barbed, re 
mained sticking in the wound. A gentleman who was 
standing by watching the fray regarded the man with 
looks of pity and commiseration, which the native per 
ceiving, he came up to him, holding the spear (still in the 
wound) in one hand, and turning round so as to expose 
the injury he had received, said, in the most moving 
terms ; ' Poor fellow ; sixpence give it 'um ! ' "* So even 
in savage climes will men make capital out of their 
misfortunes ! No beggar in England could have beaten 
this. 

Once the fight has started the aborigines appear to 
enjoy it thoroughly, after the manner of the proverbial 
Irishman. The desire for revenge is often a far less 
powerful incentive to deeds of daring than the desire 
to reveal their own prowess and to surpass in bravery 
the other warriors on their own side. The decorations 
of the warriors, often almost covered with paint and 
feathers, the rattle of the spears, the beating of toma 
hawk against boomerang, the loud menacing cries of the 
men, the shrill shrieks of the women, all lend to the 
preparations an aspect alarming indeed, but very often 
the actual fight is far less severe than might be imagined 
from what has gone before. 

Probably no white man living has ever seen a real 
battle, but in the works of early Australian writers 
several are very interestingly described. When the 
* " North- West and Western Australia," Vol. II., pp. 204, 205. 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 57 

fight is over the animosity is at an end, the wounded 
will be well cared for, and the conquered probably enter 
tained with a dance. The din of battle gives place to 
the music of the corrobboree. Hence, however, some 
times arises a fresh cause of quarrel. The bright glances 
of the younger women prove, perhaps, too attractive to 
the men, and an insult has been given which can only be 
expiated by combat. 

Such duels are much more frequent than the more 
ambitious battles. Some have already been referred to 
in the chapter on Marriage Customs. (It is strange that 
marriage and quarrelling should be linked so closely.) 
A further account of them may here prove of interest. 

A very frequent cause of duels is the desire to avenge 
a death. As we shall see in a later chapter, the aborigines 
generally regard death as being due to sorcery. Some 
one has caused it, and it is the duty of the relatives to 
avenge their dead. Sometimes the nearest relative will 
go alone and seek out the murderer ; more frequently, 
perhaps, an avenging expedition will be organised. 
They may enter the camp secretly where they expect to 
find the man they are seeking, and, rushing in unex 
pectedly, slay him. Or they may come openly and 
explain to the old men in the camp to which they have 
come the exact purpose of their coming and the name 
of the man they seek. Parleyings will ensue. The old 
men will endeavour to dissuade the visitors from their 
contemplated revenge. Occasionally their pleadings 
are listened to, and the visitors return, but far more 
frequently it is otherwise. Then either the supposed 
murderer himself or some near relative will be handed 
over to the avengers. Sometimes these latter may be 
prevailed upon to accept someone else altogether, and 



58 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

work their vengeance upon him. " He belongs to the 
same tribe" they will argue, "he participates in the 
blood of the clan and is in fellowship with the man we 
sought/' So he will be accepted instead of the actual 
murderer, and thus the avengers are satisfied, and the 
tribe against whom they came will hand over to them 
one of their number who has broken the tribal laws and 
rebelled, perhaps more than once, against the tribal 
discipline. So they will rid themselves of an unruly 
member, and everybody will be satisfied. 

Duels are often fought with boomerangs, more often 
with spears, and occasionally at close quarters with 
heavy clubs. The combatants will then rain blows 
upon one another's heads till one of them has had enough 
or blood flows, but, heavy as the blows are, they seldom 
succeed in fracturing the skull, which in the case of the 
aboriginal seems to be specially adapted by Nature for 
this particular form of combat. 

Women, too, settle their differences in the same way. 
Their usual weapon is not the club, but the much lighter 
pointed digging stick, which they use for procuring 
vegetable food. With these they are very capable 
fighters, and it takes a good deal to make either of them 
give in. Not infrequently they have to be separated 
by the onlookers. In some parts of Queensland only 
one stick is used, and the two women take it in turns to 
hit one another over the head till one has had enough 
and owns herself conquered. As a rule, in all these duels 
care is taken that no one is slain, because in that case the 
death would require to be avenged. More likely than 
not when the fight is over the defeated party will be 
entertained by the victor, just as where the whole tribe 
has been engaged a corrobboree follows the battle. 



TH AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 59 

It cannot, however, be denied that the aboriginals in 
their battles have often displayed some of the very 
worst and most revolting features of savage character. 
The conquered are sometimes treacherously murdered, 
occasionally eaten. Where a man has been killed for 
causing, as they think, the death of another, the avengers 
will often take out his kidney-fat and anoint themselves 
with it. They probably believe that by so doing they 
will themselves gain something of his strength. Un 
fortunately, they do not always wait for a man's death 
before resorting to this revolting practice. Beyond 
describing it as a traditional custom which has been 
practised almost since the days of man's first appearing, 
they have now no explanation to give of this practice. 
Tradition counts for much among this people, and many 
a practice is continued long after it has ceased to have 
any meaning or serve any useful purpose solely because 
it has been handed down. An aboriginal who on one 
occasion was asked why he had eaten the kidney-fat of 
a man whom he had slain in combat, gave his reason in 
these words : "Me fight that feller a long time. Me 
berry hungry afterwards." From one point of view a 
most excellent explanation ! 

This seems a suitable place to say a little on the 
subject of cannibalism ; but first let it be clearly laid 
down that the aboriginals are not man-eaters, as were 
many of the natives of the neighbouring islands of 
the southern seas. Cannibalism, of course, was more 
common in the north, where food in bad seasons was 
often very scarce, than in the south, where it was com 
paratively plentiful, but, as a rule, it was not resorted 
to till necessity compelled. There is, however, little 
doubt that it was occasionally resorted to because they 



60 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

enjoyed human flesh. More frequently than otherwise 
the cannibal practices of the aborigines are the outcome 
of a desire to adhere to an ancient tradition or to acquire 
the envied properties of the dead man. Where their 
own dead are eaten, the act may perhaps be dictated by 
a feeling of reverence or a wish to dispose most effectu 
ally of the corpse, but some writers think it is due 
to a desire to keep the life of the tribe within the 
tribe, and to ensure the continuance among them of 
the attributes of the dead man. 



CHAPTER IX 
DAILY LIFE OF THE NATIVES III. CORROBBOREES. 

FOREMOST among the amusements of the aboriginals 
must be placed the corrobboree. No festive occasion is 
allowed to pass without one or more of these ceremonial 
dances being performed. In them we see, perhaps, the 
rude beginning of modern opera. The orchestra, the 
vocal music, the painted and gaily-attired performers, 
the rhythmic swaying of the body all are there. It is 
quite easy for a fairly intelligent imagination to picture 
the successive evolutionary stages through which the 
Australian corrobboree became the grand opera of 
Covent Garden, and the festivity with which the anti 
podean savage honours a visiting tribe a performance 
worthy of the gala night of European kings. 

Only once did the author witness a corrobboree, and 
even then (since he was unaware how far his presence 
might meet with the approval of a strange tribe) it was 
from a discreet distance. Perhaps, however, that very 
distance " lent enchantment to the view." It was cer 
tainly a weird and unforgettable scene. In front of the 
corrobboree ground a number of huge fires had been 
lighted, although the performance took place in the 
height of a northern Australian summer. These fires 
served only to deepen the heavy shadows cast by the 
huge baobab and other trees, and to throw all the 



62 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

surroundings into intense gloom, and it was out of this 
deep artificial darkness that the performers stepped on 
to " the stage." To the right, in heavy shadow, was 
seated " the orchestra" a number of women and girls 
having skins of some sort stretched tightly over their 
knees, on which they beat with small sticks or their 
hands (here surely is the origin of the kettledrum !) , and 
a few men beating sticks together. Nearer the fires, at 
right angles to the orchestra, were the spectators. The 
moon was almost at the full, and the light it shed, suffi 
cient for a European to read by, gave an added weirdness 
to the scene. In front of the fires stood a man with a 
couple of sticks, who from his subsequent behaviour 
was evidently a sort of master of ceremonies and a 
person of considerable importance. 

After a great number of preliminary antics, which 
evidently meant much to the performers, but to one 
of the spectators, at least, were quite meaningless, 
the performance proper began. The dancers had 
"decorated" (?) their bodies with a species of pipe 
clay so as to resemble nothing so much as human 
skeletons. Around their ankles were anklets of fresh 
leaves, and the rustling of these was a most pleasing 
accompaniment to their dancing. On their heads they 
all wore quite indescribable head-dresses, made appa 
rently of grass and feathers and white down, and in 
their hands they held gaily-painted kylies and spears. 
Their appearance after they had been dancing for some 
time, when their rapid movements had disarranged 
their head-dresses, and heavy perspiration had caused 
their paint to " run," was such as to make it extremely 
difficult to restrain one's self from loud laughter. 

Each dance lasted some eight or nine minutes, and 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 63 

was accompanied by the instrumental " music " de 
scribed above. At the same time the women and a 
few of the men maintained a weird chant in a minor 
key, which after a while became so monotonous as to 
be almost harrowing. It began on a high note, and 
fairly loud, and gradually became lower and softer, 
till it almost gave one the impression that it was being 
rendered by a chorus in retreat. The effect was really 
extraordinary. The time kept, both by dancers and 
singers, was wonderful. 

It is difficult to describe the dancing with which the 
performance began, but after a time it was quite evi 
dent that the habits of kangaroos were being imitated. 
Some of the men jumped about exactly as kangaroos 
do, whilst others stalked them, and went through all 
the motions of spearing them. Either an ordinary 
kangaroo hunt was being represented or else the actions 
of some mythical totemic ancestor were being shown. 

Corrobborees vary very much in character and in 
the degree of their elaboration. Sometimes they con 
sist merely of a comparatively simple dance, at other 
times they are a representation of some incident in 
the daily life of the aboriginal, or a pictorial present 
ment of some of the sacred legendary history of the 
totemic groups or tribe. The essential features of them 
all are the dance, of a somewhat pantomimic character, 
and the song. These songs usually consist of the 
decidedly monotonous repetition of one or two syllables, 
which have, perhaps, quite lost all meaning, whilst 
the music to which they are set seldom commends 
itself to our untutored European ears. Many of the 
songs, and some of the corrobborees, are specially 
composed, and the makers of songs are held in high 



64 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

repute among their fellows. A really popular song 
will often travel completely across the continent. 
Some of those which have been translated would do 
credit to a much more advanced people. The belief 
seems very general that the composers have had their 
songs revealed to them during sleep by the spirits of 
the departed ; yet some have composed songs based on 
some incident of the day, seemingly on the spur of the 
moment. 

One of the most amusing things the writer ever 
witnessed was a mimic boxing bout with an imaginary 
foe. A burly native stepped out in front of the camp 
and proceeded to thoroughly punish his opponent. 
Occasionally he would reel and stagger under an im 
aginary blow, but in the end, of course, proved victor, 
amid the loud plaudits of his supporters. His foe also 
had friends among the onlookers, and was frequently 
encouraged to " give it him." The whole performance 
was exceedingly clever, and it was as impossible to 
restrain one's laughter as it was one's admiration of 
the mimicry. 

"Sing-songs" are a frequent occurrence in an 
aboriginal camp, especially among station natives. 
To hear them singing snatches from popular music- 
hall novelties, which they have picked up from the 
station hands, while one of their number perhaps puts 
in an accompaniment on a tin whistle, is to gain a very 
high sense of their musical abilities. As an illustration 
of those abilities it may be mentioned that at the 
Roman Catholic Mission at New Norcia, and also at 
our own mission at Yarrabah, there is a native brass 
band, and its performances are of a very high or4er ? 



CHAPTER X 

BELIEF IN MAGIC " INTICHIUMA" BONE-POINTING 
MEDICINE MEN RELATION BETWEEN MAGIC AND 
RELIGION. 

THE aborigines are great believers in magic 'the science 
of the savage. Some of these beliefs we can afford 
to smile at, they merely serve to keep the men amused. 
Others, however, are an awful curse, and make them 
the constant prey of haunting anxiety, for the aboriginal 
is frequently beset by the terrible fear that an enemy 
somewhere, by practising magic, is ruining his schemes, 
undermining his health, or destroying his life. All 
disease, and most deaths, he attributes to sorcery. 

First of all, magic plays a great part in the measures 
taken to control the weather. The elaborate cere 
monies performed on these occasions are known among 
the Arunta as " Intichiuma," and that name is now 
usually employed by all writers, although the ceremonies 
they are describing may, perhaps, be under performance 
by some other tribe. Though always associated with 
the totem, and performed only by members of that 
totem group, the details of the ceremonies vary from 
tribe to tribe, and are very closely connected with the 
ancient tribal legends. The whole purpose of them 
in every case is to secure the re-embodiment of dis 
embodied spirits, and by so doing, to ensure a more 

65 E 



66 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

plentiful supply of the material object from which 
the totemic group takes its name. The bodies of 
the performers are always elaborately decorated, the 
decorations often being an attempt to represent the 
particular animal or plant. Intichiuma ceremonies 
are much less frequent among the northern coastal 
tribes than among those making their homes in the 
interior of the continent. 

The simplest, and probably the most universal of 
these ceremonies, is that of " making rain." A supply 
of water is essential to life, and consequently the rain 
maker is a personage of very considerable importance 
in every tribe, and he seldom hesitates to take full 
advantage of his position. Many tasks that an ordinary 
member of the tribe would have to perform are, in his 
case, escaped as beneath his dignity. When performing 
his special ceremony he usually, at any rate in the 
north-west, wears a head-dress of white down, with a 
tuft of cockatoo feathers in its crown. Holding a 
wommera in his right hand, he sallies forth, squats on 
the ground, and sings a weird monotonous chant with 
wearisome iteration. The words have been handed 
down to him from a remote past, and have long since 
lost their meaning. He speaks in a tongue which he 
cannot interpret. This " singing " a charm is an 
essential part of all magical ceremonies. After a time 
he rises from his stooping posture, moves the wommera 
rapidly backwards and forwards through the air for 
some seconds, at the same time making his whole body 
quiver violently, and turning his head from side to side. 
He is imitating the actions of the totemic ancestor 
who, in the alcheringa, first caused it to rain. After 
this he probably goes to some special pool, takes a few 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 67 

drops of water into his mouth, being careful not to 
swallow any, and then spits it out into the air in all 
directions. If it should come on to rain afterwards 
his exertions have caused it ; should it fail to do so, 
another black-fellow has been using hostile magic 
elsewhere, and his magic has, for the time being, proved 
the more powerful of the two. Yet quite a different 
ceremonial may prevail not very far away. Bishop 
Salvado, for instance, has recorded that the natives of 
New Norcia when they wanted to " make rain " used to 
pluck the hair from their armpits and thighs, and blow 
it into the air in the direction from which they desired 
the rain to come. If, on the other hand, they wished 
to prevent rain, they would light a stick of sandal-wood, 
very plentiful in these parts, and beat the ground for 
some minutes with the burning brand. It is easy to 
see the idea underlying this latter custom. Like pro 
duces like, and the burning of the ground with the 
brand will cause it to be burned hard and dry by the 
sun. The connection, however, between rain and 
human hair I have not been able to trace. 

Among some of the West Australian tribes, cere 
monies are occasionally performed to bring about a 
change of temperature. Cooler weather, perhaps, is 
desired. All that is necessary is that men of the " cold 
weather" totem should pretend to be very cold. They 
will light huge fires, and though withdrawing into the 
warmth of a mia, will sit shivering before the fire. 
Colder weather is bound to follow before very long. 
This ceremony is, I believe, peculiar to the Western 
State. 

Next to the magical control of weather, may be 
grouped those ceremonies which have for their object 



68 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

a more plentiful supply of food. These are almost, if 
not quite, universally practised. A very full descrip 
tion of them may be read in Messrs. Spencer and 
Gillen's books, and especially in their " Northern Tribes 
of Central Australia." Only a very brief account of 
some of them can be given here. The great thing to 
remember about them all is, that every animal and 
plant, as well as every human being is believed to be 
the embodiment of a spirit. At the moment of death, 
or at some period soon afterwards, the spirit goes forth, 
and awaits reincarnation, or re-embodiment. During 
the interval between two incarnations the spirit in 
habits the local totem centres. There are several of 
these spots in every tribal area, each being the special 
habitat of a particular kind of spirit, and sacred, of 
course, to that particular totem group. It is in these 
sacred spots that this special class of Intichiuma cere 
monies is usually performed. The spots are, as a rule, 
observed to be the special haunt of the totemic animal 
or plant. The native would probably explain that the 
objects are most numerous there because it is only 
natural that they should be drawn towards their an 
cestral home. If a man's heart is constantly going 
back to the old home, and lingering affectionately over 
the old scenes, why not also the heart of an emu or 
kangaroo ? And why should not the flowers bloom 
more beautifully in the spot sacred to their ancestor 
than elsewhere ? '*T- 

In order to multiply emus the emu men of the Arunta 
clear a small space of level ground, and, opening the 
veins in their arms, allow the blood to flow from them 
until the surface of the ground is well soaked with it. 
In this way living emu blood is believed to be poured 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 69 

out upon the ground. When the blood has dried they 
have a smooth, hard surface, on which they will paint 
a rude picture of an emu, and especially of those parts 
the fat and the eggs which are esteemed the most 
delicate. Round this picture they will sit and sing 
their incantation. Then the chief performers, wearing 
special dead-dresses to represent the long neck of the 
emu, will perform a dance, in which they mimic the 
bird as it stands aimlessly peering about in all directions. 
Other habits of the emu will also be represented. After 
wards some men, who belong to a different totem group, 
will kill an emu, and bring it to some of the chief per 
formers. The headman among these will, perhaps, 
taste a tiny portion of its flesh, anoint himself with a 
little of the fat, and then hand the rest of the bird over 
to the other men, for them to feast upon. 

Kangaroo ceremonies are very similar, and are usually 
performed at some rock which is believed to be full of 
kangaroo spirits, ready to go forth and become again 
incarnate. A libation of blood freely poured out will, 
they think, drive these spirits from the rock, and enable 
them to enter the bodies of kangaroos, and so be born. 
Of course, there will be "singing" and the inevitable 
dance, imitating the actions of the kangaroo. Many 
of the paintings which have been discovered on the 
rocks in all parts of Australia were doubtless associated 
with these ceremonies. 

Cockatoo ceremonies seem to be somewhat less 
elaborate in character. A case has been put on record 
where a man made a rough image of a white cockatoo, 
and imitated the bird's harsh cry all night. When his 
voice failed, his son relieved him, and continued the cry 
till his father was able to take it up again. What an 



70 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

unmitigated nuisance this delightful pair must have 
proved to every one else. 

The third class of magical ceremonies are those by 
which disease and death are believed to be brought 
about. Foremost among them are the horrible super 
stitions associated with " pointing sticks" and " magic 
bones." The bone used is, as a rule, the small bone 
of the human leg, but, instead of this, a magical stick 
may be used. A man who is known to be the possessor 
of one of these bones or sticks is an object of consider 
able awe, and no one would knowingly pick a quarrel 
with him. 

When he wishes to harm his victim he will go off 
by himself into some lonely part of the bush, place his 
bone or stick in the ground, and " sing " into it a curse. 
Every imprecation that an evil genius could suggest 
will be muttered over it. He will pray that his in 
tended victim's heart may be torn from his breast, 
that his food may poison him, that if he eats fish a bone 
may stick in his throat and choke him, and so on. When 
he has "sung" curses enough, he will return quietly 
to the camp, leaving the bone covered up in the ground. 
Later, but, perhaps, not for some days afterwards, he 
will return and fetch it. 

One evening, after it has grown dark, he will creep 
up close to the person whom he desires to injure and 
secretly point the bone at him. The magic goes, he 
believes, straight from the bone into the man's body. 
Very soon, without any apparent reason, his victim will 
sicken and die. Absurd it all seems to us doubtless, but 
the fact remains that these pointing bones are a veritable 
curse to the aboriginals. If a man believes himself to 
have been " sung " he almost invariably dies unless it 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ft 

should happen that some bullya, or medicine man, comes 
along in time and succeeds in persuading the miserable 
fellow that he has removed the magic. Men in the full 
vigour of their prime have over and over again been 
known to waste away simply because they were con 
vinced that this horrible magic had entered them. 
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen give one specially remarkable 
illustration of the awful power of this belief. 

" A man coming down to the Alice Springs from the 
Tennant Creek contracted a slight cold, but the local 
men told him that the members of a group about twelve 
miles away to the east had taken his heart out, and, 
believing this to be so, he simply laid himself down and 
wasted away."* 

The relatives of that man probably made things 
extremely unpleasant for that " group twelve miles 
away to the east " as soon as their relation died. 

It can readily be imagined that the medicine men, 
possessing as they do this power of withdrawing evil 
magic, are persons of very considerable importance in 
the tribe. They are supposed to have had certain stones 
placed in their bodies by certain spirits. It is in the 
possession of these stones that their power lies, as it is 
only by their means that they are able to counteract 
evil magic. They have to diet themselves very strictly, 
and above all, must carefully avoid drinking anything 
hot. Should they do this, even inadvertently, the stones 
would almost certainly be dissolved, their powers would 
be lost, and they would be in evil case indeed. 

When speaking or writing about savage magic, people 
often make the mistake of identifying magic with religion. 
Many writers have actually seen in magic the beginnings 
* " Native Tribes of Central Australia," p. 537. 



?2 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

of religion, but magic is not religion but science. To 
describe magical ceremonies as " sacred" is not strictly 
correct, yet most writers on the aborigines make this 
mistake. The savage has not the slightest idea when 
he performs his magical rites that he is doing anything 
supernatural. He believes himself to be turning per 
fectly natural forces to his own advantage, and to the 
advantage of his tribe. The relation between magic 
and religion is always one of hostility. The priest has 
from the earliest times looked upon the magician as a 
foe. The Christian priest does not regard a scientist 
as necessarily hostile, but a priest among savage peoples 
invariably does. 



CHAPTER XI 

IDEAS AND CUSTOMS RELATING TO ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

IT has already been said that the aboriginals believe 
all sickness and death to be due to evil magic. Even 
if a man is killed in battle it is because a sorcerer has by 
some means rendered him less skilful in the use of his 
shield. That disease could possibly be due to anything 
else than magic is a thing quite incredible. Their 
remarkable want of ability to resist disease only serves 
to confirm them in this belief. 

One of the strangest of their ideas is the belief that 
certain sicknesses are due to the presence in their body 
of stones or other alien substances placed there either 
by hostile magic, or some evil spirit. The bullya, or 
medicine man, is of course the only person who can 
possibly relieve them. The bullya arrives resplendent 
in paint and feathers for nothing can ever be done with 
out these adornments. The other members of the local 
group are probably gathered around the sick man who 
is lying on his back near a huge fire. The " gins," or 
women, have meanwhile commenced a piteous wailing. 
The doctor draws near, feels the patient all over, sings 
an incantation to drive out any magic that may be in 
him, makes a few passes, then suddenly puts his hand 
to the sick man's stomach, and holds it up showing a 
stone. I once saw a medicine man " remove" in this 

73 



74 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

way six stones from a sick man. What the bully a 
really did was to perform some extremely clever con 
juring tricks, but the sick man and his friends believed 
in him implicitly, and the complete recovery of the 
invalid only served to confirm their faith. 

This belief is universal in the continent. No one 
doubts the power of the medicine men. Least of all 
do they doubt it themselves. They are quite as con 
vinced of the reality of their power to heal disease as 
any doctor in London is to-day. And they do not readily 
give a patient up. On one occasion when a man was 
certainly very seriously ill, the native doctor said that 
his spirit had already left him, but that it hadn't gone 
very far and he thought he could catch it and bring it 
back. He therefore ran after it some little distance 
and brought it back in a blanket. Then throwing 
himself across the sick man he pressed the blanket over 
his stomach and so restored his spirit. He then assured 
the patient that he would soon be all right, and his words 
proved true. 

These, of course, are pure cases of faith healing. In 
neither case was there any doubt either of the sick 
man's sickness, or of his recovery. The intervention of 
the "doctor" was quite essential. But for him both 
men would probably have died. 

Minor sicknesses do not of course demand the calling 
in of a bullya, but the magic can be driven out by 
other means. A primitive remedy for headache is a 
blow or two on the head with a heavy waddy. Only a 
few blows are as a rule required. The patient usually 
declares his headache gone by the time the third has 
been administered. Less severe is the custom of wearing 
a woman's belt tightly round the forehead. Again, 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 75 

a man suffering from rheumatism in his feet or legs will 
attribute it to the fact that some one has seen his foot 
marks and driven a pebble or piece of broken glass into 
one of them. If he can find the pebble and pull it out 
his rheumatism will be cured. 

When death is evidently near, weird scenes may 
often be witnessed. In some parts the dying man will 
be brought out of his mia, and laid on the ground near 
a fire. The mia itself will at once be pulled down and 
utterly destroyed. This is done to prevent the spirit 
on its departure taking refuge in the mia, and so remain 
ing about the camp to be a constant source of annoyance, 
and perhaps evil, to the surviving relatives. The nearest 
of kin seat themselves close to the dying man, and keep 
up a loud wailing, rocking their bodies to and fro. The 
men cut and gash themselves with sharp stones, and the 
women, with their digging sticks, cut their heads till 
the blood flows. The more remote relatives, on whom 
in some tribes the duty of burial will devolve, seat them 
selves a little further away and do the same things. 

When death has actually occurred these performances 
are all repeated, and some of the mourners will throw 
themselves across the body and mutilate themselves 
afresh. The men and women paint themselves all over 
with white clay, and the women rub large quantities 
of clay and mud into their hair. In the north-west 
they do not always wait for death to occur before doing 
these things, but come and seat themselves near the 
dying man with all their mourning on. Occasionally 
the men will cut off their hair and burn it. The camp, 
in which the death took place, will be at once pulled 
down and deserted. On the West Australian Fitzroy, 
I have been told, the natives frequently cross the river 



76 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

after a death has occurred. There is a superstition 
among many of them that ghosts have very great 
difficulty in crossing water. The following incident 
will give some little idea of the aboriginal's horror of 
a corpse. A squatter who found their camp rather 
too near his homestead, tried to get them to move it. 
All kinds of inducements were held out to them, but in 
vain. After a time the station cook, a Chinaman, died, 
and the squatter buried the body in the middle of 
their camp. They all moved at once. 

For months after a death a ban of silence is placed 
on certain of the female relatives of the dead man. 
Sometimes, in some tribes, it may actually occur that 
a large majority of the women are precluded from 
speaking at all owing to a recent death. In some parts 
of the north-west all the relatives abstain from flesh 
meat for a considerable time after the death. 

Again, the aborigines will never mention the names 
of their dead. This is due partly, perhaps, to an un 
willingness to revive past sorrows, but far more to a fear 
of the dead man's spirit. If a ghost hears his name 
mentioned he will conclude that his relatives are not 
sufficiently sorry, and he will come and trouble them 
in their dreams. In the north-west there is little fear 
of ghosts during the day-time. It is at night that they 
are feared most, and this probably explains why the 
natives there will camp under trees for a mid-day meal 
without any hesitation, but will seldom, if ever, sleep 
beneath their shade at night. In the same way 
anyone bearing the name of the deceased will at once 
drop it, and assume another in its stead. In some 
parts of the continent where the name happens to be also 
that of an animal or plant a new name altogether will 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 77 

be given to this latter instead. In some tribes, however, 
the name may be used again after the corpse has com 
pletely decayed, in others as soon as the recognised period 
of mourning has expired. 

The first thing to do after a man's decease is to ascer 
tain, if possible, the name of the person responsible for 
his death. Sometimes the dying man will himself reveal 
it, but he often passes away with the mystery unsolved. 
There are then various ways of solving it. They may 
watch the flight of the first bird to cross the corpse. The 
direction in which it goes determines the direction in 
which the dead man's murderer will be found. Or the 
nearest relative, or a medicine man, will sleep with his 
head upon that of the corpse, and it is fairly certain that 
he will then dream of the man whom he seeks. It 
then becomes the duty of the tribe to avenge the death 
of their tribesman. Occasionally it may be thought 
inadvisable to avenge it openly, and recourse will then 
be had to magic. The man will be " sung," and sooner 
or later he is sure to die. In some cases an avenging 
expedition is organised and a visit paid to the tribe 
where they expect to find the man whom they are seeking. 
The old men of the tribe they have visited, perhaps, 
come out to meet them, and endeavour, by parleying, 
to turn them from their purpose. Occasionally they 
succeed, but more frequently arrange to hand over 
either the man himself or a near relative. Some 
times a single combat between him and the nearest of 
kin of the deceased, in which neither is seriously hurt, 
but the man against whom the vengeance is directed 
suffers himself to be wounded, proves sufficient to 
satisfy their longing for revenge, but cases have occurred 
where a fierce mele between the two tribes, in which 



78 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

practically every member on both sides was engaged, 
has been the outcome of one of these avenging expedi 
tions. In such a case, of course, the blood-feud goes 
on, and it is a very long time before all are satisfied. 



CHAPTER XII 

How THE DEAD ARE DISPOSED OF. 

SOMEWHERE in the writings of Lucian there is an interest 
ing passage, in which he refers to the different ways of 
disposing of the bodies of the dead. 

" Various people have various modes of burial. The 
Greeks buried their dead ; the Persians cremated them ; 
the Hindoos anoint them witt a kind of gum ; the 
Scythians eat them ; and the Egyptians embalm them." 

All of these methods are to be found among the 
Australians, though not all, of course, in the same 
district or tribe. 

The bodies of very young children are in some parts 
carried about by their mothers, either on their backs 
or in a pitchi, for months after death, and then buried. 
It is difficult to account for this custom, but it may be 
due to a kind of lingering belief that the spirit, seeing 
so young a body and the mother's grief, will be full of 
compassion and induced to return. It is not until an 
advanced stage of decomposition has been reached 
that hope of that return is abandoned and the body laid 
aside. 

The commonest method is burial. Except in the case 
of old women (no one pretends to be sorry about them !) 
the ceremony is long and elaborate and attended by 
many signs of grief. 

79 



8o THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

The grave, as a rule, is somewhat shallow, and a piece 
of bark, covered with a few green leaves, is usually 
placed at the bottom to prevent the dead body coming 
in actual contact with the earth. Another piece of 
bark is sometimes placed above it before the grave is 
filled in. In some tribes, some of the men will freely 
bleed themselves and allow the blood to flow over the 
corpse. By doing this they think they are providing 
the enfeebled ghost with strength for its re-birth. The 
life of the clan is being imparted to it, for " the blood is 
the life." In the north-west this custom does not, I 
think, prevail, but the rites of burial are always ac 
companied with loud wailings, and seem to extend over 
many days. The lamentations are especially the work 
of the women, and are most wild and weird. The men, 
if they are not actually taking part in the burial, prefer 
to look on in stolid indifference. A rude hut is some 
times built over the grave, as a resting-place for the 
spirit, to keep it within bounds, and to prevent it from 
annoying the living. Occasionally, a man's spear, kylie 
and tomahawk will be buried with him, and on one 
occasion a native, who had in life been an inveterate 
smoker, had a pipe laid by his side. The Arunta, and 
a few other tribes " leave a low depression on one side 
of the mound, in order that the spirit may pass out and 
in, and this depression always faces towards the dead 
man's or woman's camping-ground in the alcheringa." 
The ground around the grave is usually swept clean 
and made as bare as possible. In this way it is thought 
it will be much easier to trace the movements of the 
ghost. His footmarks would easily be seen on the 
smooth surface. 

In many tribes the dead are buried, not in a recumbent, 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 81 

but in a sitting or standing posture, and always 
with their faces toward the hunting-ground whence 
their totemic ancestor came. Their notion of immor 
tality is a vague and hazy one, and probably takes the 
form of a simple belief that the dead man is moving 
about elsewhere. They have, however, no idea that he 
can do much without his body. At any rate, the muti 
lation of the body will weaken his power to harm. So 
not infrequently a dead man's knee-caps will be removed 
to prevent his walking, or the right thumb will be cut 
off, so that he will be unable to throw a spear. In West 
Australia the hands are often tied together. 

The most curious of all methods of disposing of the 
dead is that of tree-burial, with subsequent interment 
of the bones. It is probably closely associated with 
a hope of speedy reincarnation. A platform of boughs 
is first prepared in a tree, and on this the body is care 
fully placed by certain men, who endeavour to avoid 
touching it with their hands. They, therefore, first lay 
the body on a piece of bark, which becomes at once 
both a coffin and a bier. Some days after the body has 
been placed in the tree, some of the men will come at 
sunrise and examine it for some traces of the murderer. 
He is sure, they think, to come and visit the corpse, 
and cannot do so without leaving behind him something 
by which he may be recognised. When the body has 
entirely decayed, the bones are raked down with a stick, 
placed on a piece of bark, and buried. In the north 
west, especially in the Kimberley district, there are 
numerous caves in which the bones are placed. On 
the sides of the caves are rude^drawings of supernatural 
beings or totemic ancestors. Marks are made which 
probably represent the decorations with which these 



82 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

ancestors adorned themselves. None of the figures 
ever has a mouth. In some tribes the ant-hill is a 
frequent place of burial. The arm-bone, however, is 
not buried with the rest. As soon as it is raked down 
from the tree it will be placed by itself on a piece of 
paper bark and then carefully wrapped up in it, tied 
with a piece of fur string, decorated with feathers, 
and eventually brought into the camp with somewhat 
elaborate ceremonial. It is first placed in a hollow 
tree, while some of the men go off in search of game, 
which they will, on their return, solemnly present to 
the nearest relatives of the dead man. 

When the bone is to be brought in, every one in the 
camp waits to do it honour. Sometimes it is to one 
of the older women that the duty of bringing it in is 
deputed. As soon as it arrives, the present of food 
above referred to is made to certain of the men. All 
the men then bend reverently towards the bone, the 
women meanwhile making a loud wailing. It is then 
placed aside in a woman's hut for some days. At length 
it is broken and the severed parts buried. The breaking 
of the bone is a sign that all the mourning ceremonies 
for the deceased are at an end. 

In connection with tree-burial, there is one custom 
which, disgusting though it is even to the aborigines 
themselves, ought to be recorded, because it throws light 
upon the working of their mind. Some of the men will 
stand from time to time beneath the branches of a tree 
in which a corpse has been laid, and allow putrid matter 
from it to fall upon them. This they will rub well into 
their bodies. It is the strength of the dead man, and 
in this way some of it will be sure to be imparted to 
them, 









r 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 83 

Occasionally the bodies, even of full-grown men, are 
smoke-dried, and carried about by the tribe for many 
months after death. 

Cremation is not, I think, very common among them. 
When practised, a small platform of boughs is first 
erected, and on this the body is placed and covered 
with dry boughs. Other boughs are heaped up around 
and above the body. The torch is applied by one of 
the female relatives. 

The custom of eating the dead has already been 
referred to, but, in order that this chapter may be 
complete in itself, some of what has been said will be 
repeated here. Sometimes the feast will be upon the 
body of a young child, and the mother herself will 
share in the repast. Sometimes it is the body of some 
illustrious warrior, ancl which the nearer relatives and 
members of the same totem group will eat. The pur 
pose is twofold : first, to do honour to the illustrious 
dead, and, secondly, to keep his life within their own 
tribe, and to insure the continuance among themselves 
of those virtues for which he was justly famed. Some 
times the body eaten is that of an enemy killed in battle. 
Here it is not the man's relatives, but those who killed 
him, who feast upon his corpse. In this case, perhaps, 
pure cannibalism comes in, but it may be that the 
desire is simply to dispose so effectively of the corpse 
as to prevent the man's ghost from coming and harm 
ing them. There appears to be a belief that as soon as 
the body is completely destroyed, the ghost is powerless 
to inflict further harm. How far this theory is in 
accordance with scientific facts ascertained by other 
travellers I am not able to say. 



CHAPTER XIII 

BELIEF IN SPIRITS AND IN THE SUPERNATURAL. 

MUCH has been said in the foregoing chapters to illustrate 
the aboriginal belief in spirits. Every clump of trees, 
almost every water-hole and spring, is the abode of spirits. 
The spirit world is very very real to the Australian, 
more real, perhaps, than to any other people known to 
us to-day. The things seen are bringing him into con 
stant touch with things unseen. Whatever the white 
Australian may be, the black man at any rate is no 
materialist. 

But spiritism, like mythology, is not religion. Reli 
gion may be denned as the reverent acknowledgment 
of a superior Power and the recognition of His claims 
upon our life. Spiritism is the mere belief that spirits 
exist and play their part in human enterprise. Mytho 
logy is the attempt of human minds to account for things 
unaccountable except in terms of the supernatural. It 
is possible to be a spiritist, and possess a very full 
mythology, and yet at the same time have no religion. 
This is the case with the Australian blacks. 

This chapter will deal with their belief in spirits and 
in certain supernatural beings. In the next, some of 
their more curious myths will be narrated. 

It might be of interest to suggest the way in which 
the aboriginal in the remote past probably arrived at 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 85 

his belief in spirits. He did so in his dreams. Every 
apparition then seen was taken for reality. In them he 
saw men whom he knew to be dead, and so learned to 
believe them living. Sometimes he himself went away 
in his dream and fought, it may be, some battle or visited 
some friend on a far-off hunting ground. Yet his body, 
he knew, had not moved from its place. There was only 
one possible explanation of these phenomena. Every 
man had a spirit or soul (mump some of the natives call 
it) of his own. This could assume bodily form and pass 
during sleep from his body to visit other people in their 
dreams. After death, it would often appear again, 
visiting the grave of its former possessor, communing 
with living persons, and taking vengeance upon them 
if they outraged the dead man's memory. 

Little by little this mump became, as Fraser puts it, 
in "The Golden Bough,"* a " mannikin," to a savage 
the only possible conception of a soul. So Bishop 
Salvado, addressing one day some New Norcia blacks, 
and endeavouring to explain to them that man was a 
living soul, expressed himself thus : "I am not one, as 
you think, but two." Thereupon, they all laughed. 
" You may laugh as you like," he retorted, " but I tell 
you that I am two in one ; this great body that you see 
is one ; within that there is another little one which you 
cannot see. This big body will die and be buried, but 
the little one will fly away when the big one dies." To 
this some of the blacks after a time answered : " Yes, 
but we also are two. We have a little body inside the 
breast." The missionary then asked them where the 
little body went after death. Some said it went into the 

* Third Edition, Part II., p. 27. The following incident is 
also derived indirectly from this same chapter. 



86 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

bush, others into the sea ; others, again, answered that 
they did not know. 

This belief in the existence of the soul leaving the 
body at death, and surviving after death as a ghost, is 
universal among all the tribes. Some, as we have seen, 
think that this soul, haunting awhile the rocks and 
springs where its totemic ancestor made his home, will, 
after the complete destruction of its former body, again 
become incarnate. But there are tribes which seem to 
go much further than this, and have evolved quite an 
elaborate mythology. On the other side of the sky is 
another country, something like their own, but far 
better watered, far more beautiful, and always well- 
stocked with game. The road to this beautiful " sky- 
country" is the milky way along which the souls of the 
departed are travelling to their better home. There 
they live with the Supreme Being. 

This Supreme Being, in whom all the aborigines appear 
to believe, is variously named in the different tribes. In 
some he is Baiame, or Byamee, in others, Pundjel, and 
so on ; but in every case he seems to be conceived of as a 
being wholly beneficent, not requiring to be propitiated, 
and as one who may consequently be to all intents and 
purposes wholly left alone. The Australians have never 
erected an altar and have no conception of priesthood 
or sacrifice. "Baiame" may mean the Creator, but 
the etymology which thus derives it, is somewhat doubt 
ful. "Byamee" appears to mean "big man" and 
this is, I think, a more likely interpretation of the word 
the Great One, the Supreme. 

The Rev. J. Giinther, many years a missionary to the 
aborigines of New South Wales, says that the blacks 
there attributed to Byamee the three great attributes of 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 87 

immortality, power and goodness, and regarded him as 
the maker of the earth, the water, the sky, animals and 
men, everything, in fact, except women. Their origin 
is unaccounted for. He says also that they sometimes 
spoke of him as the Great Father. It is, of course, just 
possible that this belief may actually have been derived 
from the missionary's own teaching, but in view of the 
fact that it is also found, though sometimes in a cruder 
form, among tribes to whom a missionary has never 
gone, it is far more probable that the remote ancestors of 
the Australians brought the belief with them from their 
primitive home in the hills of India. 

Byamee is the special deity of the Bora ceremonies. 
If they are improperly performed, the initiate lads are 
told, Byamee will be angry ; if all is conducted in accord 
ance with tradition, and the lads quit themselves like 
men, then he will be pleased. The moral precepts, which 
are then imparted, are based on his will, and so cer 
tainly have a quasi-religious sanction. It is easy enough 
for us, as we stand aloof and detached, to sneer at the 
black man's " mummeries," but in them high ethical 
truths are taught, and declared to be the demand of the 
Supreme Being. The great lesson impressed upon the 
lads and girls at Bora time is unselfishness. Byamee 
demands no sacrifice, but he cares very much about 
obedience. 

Whether there is any marked recognition of the 
Supreme Being at any other time than at the Bora, 
or whether he is believed to intervene in any way in 
human affairs, it is very difficult to say. Mr. J. G. With- 
nell, of Karratha Station, near Roebourne, once told me 
that he had found in them not only the recognition of 
a great All-Father who made them and watched over 



88 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

them, but that there was a belief current among several 
tribes in the north-west that^this Great Father had a 
son and once sent that son into the world, but that the 
men seized and slew him. Mr. Withnell has lived all his 
life among the blacks, knows them well and speaks their 
language, but I question very much whether there is 
any such native belief at all. If they hold it, they have 
almost certainly derived it from the whites. If he got 
it from them by questioning, they probably gave him 
the answers which they thought he wanted them to give. 
An aboriginal will always do this. Ask him any question 
you like. If he thinks you want him to say " Yes/' he 
will say it. Change the tone of your voice and repeat 
the question. This time he will answer " No." It is 
for this reason that native evidence in a court of law, 
especially when given through an interpreter, is so 
utterly unreliable. 

The fact remains, and anyone who has been in any 
thing like close touch with the aboriginals will bear me 
out, that it is impossible to find among them in their 
wild state anything approaching any of the characteristic 
acts of religion. They have, for instance, no idea at all 
of prayer. The notion of propitiation, one of the most 
elementary of religious acts, is altogether foreign to 
them. Nothing of the nature of sacrifice has ever been 
seen among them. Apart from the " Bora " ceremonies 
the Supreme Being never seems to touch their lives. 
The only supernatural idea that sways them is fear of 
spirits, and this forms one of the most powerful motives 
of their life. Surely to say all this is to say that in the 
true sense of the word they are destitute of religion. I 
know there are some to whom this statement will appear 
rank heresy. I do not say they are destitute of the 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 89 

religious faculty. That undoubtedly exists to a very 
remarkable degree, and it only needs the gentle care of 
earnest Christian teachers to awaken it into vigorous 
activity. 

In Tennyson's " Locksley Hall," there is a well- 
known line in which, speaking of immortality, the poet 
states : 

" E'en the black Australian dying hopes he may return, a 
white." 

Personally, I never came across this belief, but I have 
heard, on good authority, that it does exist in several 
tribes, and Mr. R. B. Smythe says that it is quite a 
general belief among the Murray River blacks. There 
is also a confused sort of idea among some of the natives 
of the north-west that white men were once black. 
Two things may account for this. First, there is the 
belief that the spirits of the dead go across the sea, and, 
secondly, there is the custom in some parts of burning 
the bodies of the dead. These bodies are, after burning, 
very nearly white, especially when, as frequently happens, 
they are also skinned. When, therefore, the aborigines 
first saw white men and knew that they had come from 
across the sea, they may very well have said among 
themselves, " Here are some of our departed comrades 
back again," and in this way the hope of which Tennyson 
speaks could easily have arisen. 

Let a concrete case be given. In David Blair's 
" History of Australia," there is this incident : 

" At Perth one of the colonists was twice visited by a 
strange native, who had heard that there had come to 
his land a lost brother. The .savage travelled through a 
long extent of hostile country to behold again a cherished 
friend blessed with the glory of a second life, who had 



90 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

left his paradise beyond the sea to revisit the scene of 
his earthly career." 

It is greatly to be feared that the evil lives of many 
of the whites must have since rudely shattered this 
beautiful poetic idea. Yet it still seems extraordinarily 
silly to the aborigines for the white man to deny that 
they were once blacks. After all how could they possibly 
have found their way to Australia unless they had lived 
there before ? 



CHAPTER XIV 

SOME CURIOUS MYTHS AND LEGENDS. 

IN this chapter a selection from the numerous curious 
myths and legends current among the aborigines is 
given. It has been compiled from various sources and 
will serve to throw some light upon the working of the 
native mind. 

How Punjil Made Man. 

This myth was current among the Victorian blacks. 

One day Punjil with a large knife cut himself two 
pieces of bark. Then he mixed some clay and with the 
bark formed the clay into two black men, one being very 
much blacker than the other. He took all day over them 
as he wanted to make them very carefully. When they 
were finished he found that one had curly hair, whilst 
the other's hair was smooth and long. The curly-haired 
one he called Kookinberrook, the other Berrookboru. 
After this he blew into their nostrils, and they began 
to move about. 

Now Punjil had a brother named Pallian, and one day 
soon after this Pallian was paddling about in a creek 
in his canoe. Presently the water became very thick 
and he couldn't understand why. Then he looked and 
saw two heads come out of the water quite close to his 
canoe. 

91 



92 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

" Hallo," he said, " What name you ? " But there 
was no answer, and presently two breasts appeared 
and then he saw that they were two women. 

Pallian took them to Punjil who was very pleased 
when he saw them, and breathed into their nostrils just 
as he had done in the case of the two men a few days 
before. Then he gave them names ; one he called 
Kunewarra and the other Kinerook. After this he put 
a spear in each man's hands and a digging stick in each 
woman's, and he gave the women to the men as their 
wives. Then he and his brother went out with them 
into the bush and showed the men how to hunt emus 
and kangaroos, and the women how to get roots and 
other edible things. 

All this happened many many moons ago, and in the 
north-west. 

Why there are Two Phratries in the Tribe. 

A legend of the Murray River blacks. 

All things that are were created either by the Eagle- 
Hawk or the Crow. There was, however, constant war 
fare between them, and they could never agree. At 
last they made peace, and it was arranged between them 
that there should always be two phratries in a tribe, 
and that one should be called Eagle-Hawk and the other 
Crow. 

How a Frog Caused a Flood. 

This myth was current among the natives of Lake 
Tyers, in Victoria. Almost everywhere in Australia there 
are legends of a flood. 

Once upon a time, many, many moons ago, there 
was no water to be found anywhere, and all the animals 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 93 

met together in solemn conclave to try and find out the 
reason of this extraordinary drought. After a long 
time they discovered the secret. An enormous frog 
had swallowed all the water, and the only way in which 
he could be made to disgorge it was by being made to 
laugh. 

So all the animals one after another came and tried 
to amuse him, but none of them were able to make him 
even smile. At length an eel came and began to wriggle. 
This was more than his gravity could stand. He opened 
his mouth wide and laughed. 

But so much water poured from his jaws that there 
was a great flood which covered the whole earth, and 
many perished in the waters. 

At last a pelican set himself to save the people. He 
made a canoe and paddled from point to point where 
islands had been left in the waters. Wherever he found 
any blacks he took them into his canoe. Before very 
long there was a quarrel between him and the blacks 
about a woman, and the end of it all was that the pelican 
was turned into stone. 

The Story of Daramulun. 

This method is current among the Yuin, one of the 
northern tribes. 

Long ago Daramulun lived on the earth with his 
mother. The earth in those days was hard and bare, 
and there were no men and women, only animals, reptiles 
and birds. So Daramulun made some trees and planted 
them, and afterwards he made men and women. 

Then one day a thrush caused a great flood, and all 
the people were drowned, except a few who crawled 
put and took refuge on the top of Mount Dromedary. 



94 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

After this Daramulun went away beyond the sky, but 
before he did so, he gave the Yuin their laws, and told 
them what customs they must always keep, and he gave 
the medicine men power to use magic. 

When a man dies Daramulun meets his spirit and 
takes care of it. 

The Origin of the Sun. 

I am unable to say to which part of Australia this 
myth specially belongs. 

In the olden days, long, long ago, before there was any 
sun, the birds and beasts were always quarrelling ; and 
the courtenie, or native companion, was at the bottom 
of nearly all the mischief. 

In those days an emu had her home in the clouds and 
was possessed of very long wings. She often looked 
down and saw the earth, and was much amused at the 
things she saw. Perhaps the dancing of the courtenies 
amused her most of all. One day she came down and 
asked them to show her how to dance. An old courtenie 
answered that she could never dance while she had such 
long wings. So at a given signal all the courtenies 
folded their wings, and appeared to be wingless. At 
this the foolish emu allowed her wings to be cut quite 
short. Then the courtenies unfolded their wings and 
flew away, and the laughing- jackass, which until then 
had been silent, laughed and laughed again to think that 
anyone could be so foolish. 

Later on the emu had a big brood and was walking 
out with them. The courtenie saw her coming and at 
once hid all her own chicks save one. She then pitied 
the poor emu and advised her to kill her large family 
before it wore her out with over work. So the emu 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 95 

destroyed her brood. Then the courtenie called, and 
out came all her chicks. She was punished this time, 
however, by getting her neck twisted so that she could 
only utter two harsh notes. 

Next season the emu was sitting on her eggs and the 
courtenie came along pretending to be very friendly. 
This was more than the poor tormented emu could 
stand, and she made a wild rush at her. But the court 
enie hopped over the emu's back and broke all her eggs 
except one. Then the emu made for her again mad with 
rage. 

But she was no more successful than before. The 
courtenie seized the one remaining egg and hurled it 
into the sky. There it hit a great pile of wood which 
a sky-being, named Ngoudenout, had been collecting 
for a long time. At once the wood burst into flame 
and the whole earth was flooded with the most beautiful 
and wonderful light. The birds were very much fright 
ened and at once made peace, promising never to annoy 
one another any more. The courtenie, however, has never 
lost her twisted neck or regained her beautiful voice and the 
emu has ever since had very short wings and only one egg. 

Ngoudenout saw at once what a splendid thing it 
was for the earth to have the sun, and ever since then 
he has lighted the fire every day. When it is first 
lighted in the morning it doesn't give very much light, 
and the earth isn't very warm. When it is nearly 
burnt out in the evening the earth begins to feel cold 
again. Ngoudenout spends the night collecting more 
wood. 

Other Sun Myths. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that there are numerous 
other sun myths current among the various tribes. 



96 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

Since it is a woman's province to carry fire-sticks and 
make the camp fire most of them regard the sun as a 
woman. During the day her fire-stick blazes up. At 
night the woman disappears under the arm of another 
woman, and it consequently becomes dark. 

Some of the north-west natives will show you the 
hole into which the sun falls at night. It goes right 
under the earth and comes up again out of another 
hole in the morning. 

The natives in the Kimberley district account for 
the setting and rising again of the sun by saying that 
he goes into a big forest under the earth at night in 
order to procure a fresh supply of fuel. Having obtained 
it he comes up again and re-kindles his fire. 

The Dispersion of Mankind. 

The Murray River blacks had a very curious myth 
relating to the dispersion of mankind. Very similar 
stories are to be found to-day in other parts of the 
Commonwealth. 

Once upon a time, men and women were very 
numerous on the earth, but they were very wicked. 
Punjil became very angry and sulky when he saw them 
so wicked. He caused storms to arise and strong winds 
to blow so as to punish them, but they remained wicked. 
Then Punjil came down to see the men and women. He 
spoke to no one, but he carried with him his big knife, 
with which he had hollowed out the valleys and the 
creeks. With this knife he went into the camp and 
he cut men, women, and children into very small pieces. 
But the people did not die. Each piece moved as the 
worm moves when it is cut in pieces. Great storms and 
whirlwinds came and carried away the pieces, and they 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 97 

became like flakes of snow. They were carried into the 
clouds, and the clouds carried them all over the earth. 
Then Punjil caused them to drop wherever he pieased. 
Thus men and women were scattered over the earth. 

The good men and good women Punjil made into stars. 
The old men as they look up into the sky can tell which 
of the stars were once good men and women. 

The Origin of Death. 

Some of the tribes on the Murray used to give the 
following explanation of the origin of death. 

The first created man and woman were told not to 
go near a certain tree, in which lived a bat which must 
not be disturbed. But one day the woman was gathering 
firewood and went near the tree. The bat at once 
flew out, and after that death came and has been in 
the world ever since 



CHAPTER XV 

ANGLICAN MISSIONS IN THE PAST WELLINGTON VALLEY 
MORETON BAY SWAN RIVER ALBANY POON- 
INDIE SOMERSET GASCOYNE FORREST RIVER. 

AN attempt must now be made to give some account of 
the missionary work which has been undertaken among 
this comparatively neglected people by our own branch 
of the Catholic Church. 

The honour of being the first to begin that work must 
be given to the Church Missionary Society, but their 
mission, unfortunately, was very soon abandoned. In 
1823 the Rev. George Clark, who was sent out by the 
Society to join the New Zealand Mission, was detained 
at Sydney and placed in charge of an institution, projected 
by the New South Wales Government for the instruc 
tion of aborigines, near Parramatta. Mr. Clark, how 
ever, did not remain very long, and no accounts of his 
work have come down to us. Two years later, an 
Australian Auxiliary of the C.M.S. was founded with the 
primary object of undertaking work among the native 
people. A very urgent appeal for men and money was 
sent home to the parent Society, and the then Governor 
of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, promised 
to set apart ten thousand acres as a native settlement 
or farm. A clergyman and a schoolmaster were sent out, 
but, for reasons which need not here be entered into, 

98 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 99 

neither of them ever got to the work. In fact it was not 
till 1831 that the first missionaries actually arrived. 
They were the Revs. J. C. Handt and W. Watson, who 
were very soon afterwards joined by the Rev. J. Giinther 
and a farmer named W. Porter. A reserve was set 
apart in the Wellington Valley, a beautiful and fertile 
spot about two hundred miles westward from Sydney. 
The Government made generous grants and did, perhaps, 
more than anyone could have expected to assist and 
forward the work. This close connection with the 
Government, however^ proved anything but an unmixed 
blessing, and eventually the relations between the 
Society and the Government became so strained as 
to result in the complete abandonment of its missionary 
work. Still, during the eleven years in which the work 
went on, much good was accomplished, but whether 
any permanent results remained it is very difficult to 
say. Both in the Wellington Valley and the Moreton 
Bay in Queensland, whither Mr. Handt had proceeded 
in 1836, great difficulties were experienced, due in the 
main to "the shocking wickedness " of the whites and 
the nomadic habits of the aboriginals. Some of the 
children were taught to read and write, hundreds of 
adults were gathered together for Christian teaching, 
and seem to have given evidence of some response, but 
none of them were baptized, and all, on the Mission's 
abandonment in 1842, went back to their old untutored 
life. 

Just in this very year, however, another hand took 
up the burden of missionary work. In 1840 the Rev. 
George King arrived at Fremantle in Western Australia, 
and though he had been sent out by the Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel primarily to minister to our 



ioo THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

own people, he very soon commenced a splendid work 
among the aboriginals. Two years after his arrival 
he opened a school, with Government aid, for native 
children collected from the bush. All the girls had 
already been betrothed, but Mr. King somewhat easily 
succeeded in purchasing their freedom. The progress 
made by the children, both intellectually and morally, 
was all that could be desired, and Mr. King was able 
to report to the Society that " they were not one degree 
inferior to the common average of European children/' 
This is an estimate which every worker among aboriginals 
from that day to this has been enabled emphatically 
to endorse. In December, 1842, ten of the children 
were baptized in Fremantle Church in the presence 
of a crowded congregation. These children formed 
the first fruits of the Australian native Church. In this 
connection it is interesting to note that while mission 
aries sent out by the C.M.S. were the first to begin work 
among the aborigines, it was reserved to a priest sent by 
the other great Anglican Missionary Society to receive 
the first of their children into the Church by baptism, 
and therefore, to be the real founder of the native Church. 
Strenuous efforts were made by this devoted priest 
to extend the work, and an endeavour to establish 
a native institution at Pinjarrah among an especially 
fierce and warlike tribe was not the least of his many 
self-sacrificing labours. Under them his health at length 
broke down, and he was compelled in 1849 to leave 
the colony. He had gallantly attempted the impossible 
and the inevitable result ensued. To minister to a 
scattered settlement of white people, and at the same 
time undertake the evangelization of a native race, is a 
task altogether beyond the powers of any one man. 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 101 

The aborigines, as the subsequent history of missionary 
work amongst them will show, can only be successfully 
evangelized by a community devoting themselves to this 
work alone. The preaching of the Gospel to them, and 
the training of them in the Christian life cannot be 
sandwiched in between pastoral visits to the white 
settlers in the neighbourhood. 

But although God called away His worker, He carried 
on His work. In the very year that Mr. King returned 
to England a Training Institution for Aborigines was 
opened at Albany. Three years later (1852) a very 
remarkable woman took charge of it and devoted herself 
to the work entirely without remuneration. In 1859 
this Institution was removed to Perth, and seventeen 
years later to the Middle Swan where, under the name 
of the Swan Native and Half Caste Mission, it still sur 
vives. This mission collects children from all parts 
of the State and gives them a thorough intellectual 
and industrial training. Its greatest weakness lies in 
the fact that it is somewhat of a " blind alley." Just 
at the age when the young aboriginal most of all needs 
a strong controlling hand, it turns him out into the 
world comparatively unshepherded. Intimacies which 
have been formed wholly for good are suddenly and 
rudely broken, and just when they are likely to marry 
the sexes are torn apart with often disastrous conse 
quences to the weaker sex. 

Some illustrations of Mrs. Camfield's devoted work 
at Albany ought here to be given. 

Among her girls (for girls only were received) was 
one named Bessie. Her one aim was to excel, and she 
would try to surpass much older girls than herself. In the 
" three R's," which, apart from music and the Christian 



102 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

religion, were the only subjects taught, she gained very 
considerable proficiency and would repeat the Collect 
and Gospel from memory every Sunday in a way which 
would have done credit to any English girl. Her one 
weakness was a comparative distaste for domestic duties. 
Yet her great joy was to sit by Mrs. Camfield's side and do 
needlework, every now and again stopping and stroking 
her teacher's hand or placing her own hand in hers. 
This remarkable affection between teacher and taught 
lasted all through her life, and became one of the strongest 
moral and spiritual forces that went to the making 
of her character. The aboriginal, just as truly as the 
white, can only be really and permanently ruled by Love. 

Another girl, named Rachel, was married to a half- 
caste Christian named Donald Cameron, living on an 
aboriginal mission station in Gippsland. In order to 
secure Christian wives for his " boys," the head of that 
mission had conceived the idea of exchanging portraits 
with Mrs. Camfield's girls at King George's Sound. It 
was in this way that Rachel obtained her husband. 
Perhaps she hardly fulfilled the high hopes that were 
entertained of her, as she also did not take kindly to 
household work. Her musical abilities were, however, 
truly remarkable and she regularly played the harmonium 
in the Mission Church, as she had sometimes done in 
the Parish Church at Albany. 

A third girl was married to a European. She was 
quite able to hold her own in every way with the white 
women. Her home and her children were always 
beautifully neat and clean, and she is credited with 
having taught her husband to read. Her text-book 
was the New Testament. 

But of all these early Anglican Missions, the most 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 103 

noteworthy and most remarkable was undoubtedly that 
at Poonindie, which owes its origin to Archdeacon, 
afterwards the " good Bishop " Hale. The Archdeacon, 
on his arrival in Adelaide in 1847, found in existence 
there some very excellent Government schools where 
native children of both sexes were given a good education 
and taught the elements of the Christian Faith. But 
" there was" (to use the Archdeacon's own words) " no 
arrangement in existence by which these young people, 
so long and often successfully cared for, could be guided 
and protected after they had outgrown the school. 
Just at the ages when they most needed care and guidance 
they were thrown upon their own resources, and lost 
to civilization." To supply this deficiency the Arch 
deacon secured a grant of land near Fort Lincoln, and 
opened a native institution. Five young married 
couples, former pupils at Adelaide, formed the first 
residents at the settlement, which two years later was 
removed to Poonindie on the shore of Louth Bay in 
Spencer's Gulf. 

A few temporary huts were erected on the reserve 
until permanent buildings could be put up. A number 
of sheep were purchased, and the services of a European 
overseer secured. The little native community had 
by this time increased to thirteen married couples. 
Many difficulties had, of course, to be surmounted, not 
the least of these being the continual showers of " cold 
water" that were thrown upon the undertaking by 
those who professed and called themselves Christians, 
and the evil influence of many of the low-minded white 
men who lived in the neighbourhood. In one case at 
least, one of these men deliberately set himself to lead 
astray one of the native girls, and having succeeded in 



104 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

his evil purpose, actually joined in the chorus of dis 
approval at the efforts to civilize and Christianize this 
outcast people. It is the same story that has to be 
repeated over and over again in Australian missionary 
history. When a native girl " goes wrong," it is in 
variably a white man who leads her away, and the very 
people who are responsible for their downfall are nearly 
always the first to decry Christian effort. 

In 1853 the first natives ten men and one woman 
were baptised. The settlement then consisted of 
several cottages and huts. In the larger cottages were 
housed the Archdeacon, the schoolmaster, the overseers 
and the working foreman ; in the smaller ones, eleven 
native married couples and their children had their 
homes. Meals were taken in common in the general 
kitchen. At half-past six every morning, and again 
soon after sundown, a short devotional service was held 
in the Archdeacon's cottage. There would be the read 
ing of a portion of Holy Scripture, followed by a simple 
exposition, then prayer, followed by the singing of a 
hymn, in which the soft voices of the natives made 
pleasing melody. Six hours was the limit of a work 
ing day, for the aborigines are not capable of great 
physical exertion. All the workers received a money 
wage in addition to food and clothing, and would go 
and buy things for themselves at the Port Lincoln 
store. 

" It was very pleasing," wrote Bishop Short, on the 
occasion of his first visit to the settlement, " to see ten 
of the elder boys and young men, on Sunday morning 
before Church, sitting together reading in their Testa 
ments or hymn-books, which they "had brought with 
them, and afterwards filling, at both services, two 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 105 

benches in the pretty little church." So the work went 
on and prospered. 

Of course, there were lapses into sin, grievous lapses, 
sometimes. What community, alas, however small, 
does not know them ? But if the blacks fell, the whites 
sometimes fell even more deeply, and for the natives 
this, at least, can be said, when they fell it was with 
little experience of the Christian life. They had had 
but little time to realise the weakness of our nature and 
our utter helplessness apart from Divine grace. And 
when they fell, their mind was troubled and they 
became penitents and earnestly sought restoration In 
only two or three cases was there permanent apostasy. 

By 1863 two of the natives were able to take the morn 
ing service, and when, ten years later, Bishop Hale 
revisited the mission, he found there a Christian village 
of men and woman reclaimed from savagery, living 
earnest Christian lives, doing their daily work as in 
the sight of God, putting all their trust and confidence 
in a Saviour's love, and dwelling together in peace and 
harmony and in favour with God and man. 

After all, it is not quite fair to expect recent converts, 
newly won from barbarism and licentiousness, to 
become model Christians all at once. With thirteen 
centuries of Christian teaching behind us in the old 
home land, the standard of Christian living still falls 
terribly below what we might well hope to see. Are 
we to wonder, then, and decry all Christian effort, 
because some from among a newly-converted people 
fall from the high ideal that has been placed before 
them ? This fact is clear. The proportion of those 
who have fallen among the aboriginal Christians of 
Australia is much less than the proportion of those who 



lo6 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

have fallen away at home. Very few, indeed, have 
lapsed permanently. Yet it is just these few failures 
who have been seized upon by the opponents of Christian 
Missions and held up as awful examples of the folly of 
attempting the Christianization of the native race. 
One never sees this class of critic pointing to the men 
and women living truly earnest Christian lives (and 
there have been many such), and bidding the Church 
go on with her holy work, that the remaining children 
of the wilderness might become such as they. 

A brief reference to three unsuccessful missions must 
now be made. 

The first of these was the attempt to establish a 
mission at Somerset, in Northern Queensland, in charge 
of the Rev. F. C. Jagg and Mr. Kennett. No less than 
six different native tribes had their home in the near 
neighbourhood, and five different languages were spoken. 
The attitude of these men was extremely friendly, and 
Mr. Kennett was actually made an initiated member 
of one of the tribes, and a grand corrobboree was given 
in his honour. Mr. Jagg, for reasons unknown, very 
soon left the mission, and the Government withdrew its 
protection, but for three years (1867-69) Mr. Kennett 
worked on, winning, as is clear from what has been said 
above, the confidence of the natives to a very remark 
able degree. Could he only have been reinforced, there 
is little doubt that Somerset would not have to be 
placed in our sad catalogue of abandoned or unsuccessful 
missions. 

Some twenty years later, in 1885, ana ttempt was made 
to establish a mission in the Gascoyne district of 
Western Australia. The spot chosen was an ideal one. 
The natives were friendly and highly intelligent. The 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 10? 

man who was chosen to be its head (the Rev. J. B. 
Gribble, who had already done excellent work among 
the aborigines at Warangesda), seemed, from every point 
of view, the ideal choice. Buildings were erected near 
the township of Carnarvon, and high hopes were enter 
tained of successful work. But the opposition of the 
settlers had not been reckoned with. They resented 
what they looked upon as an unwarrantable intrusion 
upon their reserves, and an unwarrantable interference 
between the natives and themselves. Perhaps they 
feared the letting in of light upon some of the dark 
deeds that had been perpetrated there. Incredible in 
dignities were offered the missionary. He was refused 
hospitality and supplies. Anyone supplying him was 
threatened with a boycott by the settlers. The missionary 
was poor, the settlers, as a rule, well-to-do. On one 
occasion, when he was on the steamer between Car 
narvon and Geraldton, Mr. Gribble was the victim of a 
violent outrage, and it was very evident that his life 
was in danger. The mission had perforce to be aban 
doned, and Mr. Gribble returned to the Eastern States, 
and was chosen some few years later as the first head 
of the new mission at Yarrabah (or, as it was then called, 
Bellenden Ker), far and away the most successful of 
all Anglican Missions to the aborigines. 

In 1898 a further effort was made by the West 
Australian Church to establish a mission. This time 
the East Kimberley district was chosen. The natives 
there are very numerous, and have come in contact with 
white men much less than in any other part of the State. 
The Government set apart 100,000 acres on the Forrest 
River especially for Church of England missionary work, 
and promised a grant for food, clothing, etc. Four 



io8 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

young laymen, with a son of the founder of Poonindie 
(Bishop Hale) at their head, were sent up by the 
Bishop of Perth. For two years they remained at 
their post, and were slowly winning the confidence of 
the aboriginals, but the Forrest River was a long way 
from Perth, and news came at very irregular intervals 
from so distant an outpost. Because no sensational 
stories came to hand of natives pouring in, pleading to 
be taught, because the gum-tree refused to grow as 
quickly as the gourd, the impression got abroad, and 
was, perhaps, rather encouraged at headquarters, that 
the mission was a failure. Then came news that Mr. 
Hale had been speared, not, however, fatally, that 
another missionary had been clubbed, that a third 
was down with malaria, and the pessimism which had 
been evident all along demanded the recall of the mission. 
It was, therefore, abandoned in 1900, and for thirteen 
years the reserve has been unused. There was a want 
of faith, of buoyant belief in the living God, all through, 
which was a real disappointment to the friends of 
missionary work. The abandonment was decided on 
just as the missionaries were getting over their initial 
difficulties. The natives were at first frightened and 
wild. They resented, not unnaturally, what they re 
garded as an encroachment on their hunting-grounds, 
and their spear-throwing was only a plea to be left alone. 
They were actually coming in at the very moment when 
the missionaries were withdrawn. Had these latter been 
enabled to remain another year, it is practically certain 
that the Forrest River would not have had to be added to 
the list of Australian missionary failures. 

An effort is now being made to reconstruct the work. 
A new mission has just been started on this same 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 109 

reserve. A brief account of it will be found at the end 
of the next chapter. This new departure has raised 
high hopes and called forth much earnest prayer. It 
behoves every reader of this little book to do what 
he can to roll away the old reproach that the Church 
had neither faith enough nor love enough to restart the 
work. 



CHAPTER XVI 

ANGLICAN MISSIONS TO-DAY YARRABAH MITCHELL 
RIVER ROPER RIVER FORREST RIVER. 

IN 1890, Baron Von Mueller, the eminent botanist, drew 
the attention of the Rev. J. B. Gribble to the suitability 
of the Bellenden Ker district, near Cairns, for a native 
mission reserve. Mr. Gribble at once made a personal 
inspection, and then made a representation to the 
Queensland Government, who eventually set apart a 
reserve of 52,000 acres. The Australian Board of 
Missions in the same year (1892), undertook the respon 
sibility of the mission, Mr. Gribble becoming its first 
head, and being on his death succeeded by his son, the 
Rev. E. R. Gribble. On his resignation, through con 
tinued ill-health, the Rev. G. W. Morrison was for a short 
period superintendent. The Rev. J. S. Needham a 
man of strong character and great spiritual power is 
the present head. 

The early days of the mission will not here be dwelt 
upon, but some incidents of its history and an account 
of its present position will be given. 

At first no native would venture near the settlement. 
Within a few months of its foundation three men of the 
tribe were killed and eaten in the immediate neighbour 
hood, the tribes thereabout being among the fiercest 
in the continent. The chief instigator of this horrible 

no 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL in 

outrage was among the earliest to come into the reserve, 
and ten years afterwards was confirmed. He is now 
an honoured and trusted Christian. 

When Archdeacon Gilbert White, now Bishop of 
Carpentaria, paid his first visit to the mission he was 
more or less tossed ashore in a miserable canoe. When 
he came again in 1902, he landed from a fine whaleboat, 
" manned by a uniformed and well-trained aboriginal 
crew," and was " received on landing by the Rifle Corps, 
officered entirely by aboriginals, which paraded in 
uniform and presented arms with most creditable 
steadiness and discipline." 

For some years the men have been in the habit of 
going in the season to pick coffee in the coffee-plantations, 
near Cairns. Though absolutely without supervision 
their conduct there has invariably been of a most 
exemplary character, and it was their regular rule to 
walk ten miles into Cairns on the Sunday morning for 
the early Eucharist. At the end of the season they 
return to Yarrabah and hand over the whole of their 
earnings, on one occasion nearly 100, to the Mission 
Funds. 

To-day the mission consists of eight or nine settle 
ments, the nearest only two, the furthest twelve miles 
from the head station. At each of these settlements 
is a native teacher, who holds daily service and super 
intends the life and work of the little community. Each 
family has its own little house and plot of ground on 
which are cultivated fruit and vegetables. A fishing 
boat is also provided by the mission, in which some of 
the men hold shares and eventually it will become their 
own. 

At the head station only the children of school age, 



ii2 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

the sick and the indigent reside. Here is the beautiful 
little church of St. Alban, to which all the Christians 
come from all the settlements for the Sunday Eucharist. 
Daily services are, of course, held, and there is a choir 
of native boys whose reverent conduct and beautifully 
sweet singing make a very great impression on all 
visitors to the settlement. There are now about a 
hundred native communicants, and since the founda 
tion of the mission twenty years ago no communicant 
has been lost, although strict discipline is enforced. 

In the school are five aboriginal teachers who have 
qualified for the work to the satisfaction of the Queens 
land Education Authorities. The children are taught 
exactly the same subjects as in the white schools, receive 
visits from H.M. Inspectors, and earn the usual Govern 
ment grants. 

There is a steam saw-mill in charge of three aboriginals 
at which a great deal of work is done. 

In order to get the natives to take an interest in their 
own welfare, and not imagine that everything would be 
done for them by the missionaries, twelve of the senior 
men were formed by Rev. E. R. Gribble into a governing 
body. These, with the missionaries, constitute " the 
government." This body meets on the third Tuesday 
in every month, decides what work shall be undertaken, 
frames new rules for the better government of the com 
munity, and regulates the daily routine. The meeting 
is presided over by "the king," who signs the minutes, 
but its decrees do not take effect till they have been 
formally promulgated in church. Among the acts of 
the government are the decrees prohibiting the intro 
duction of opium or alcohol into the settlement. A 
good deal of smuggling at one time went on, so some 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 113 

of the men were set to watch all the incoming canoes, 
search them, and seize any opium or alcohol that 
happened to be aboard. The traffic has now altogether 
ceased. 

In addition to the government, but in close connection 
with it, is the police court, which also meets monthly. 
This court hears complaints, considers offences and 
imposes light punishments, such as the stoppage of a 
half-holiday and so on. 

That the Christians of Yarrabah have gained some 
thing more than a religious veneer is evident from the 
following incident. When the Roper River Mission 
was first founded the missionaries on their way north 
visited Yarrabah. Mr. Gribble, the superintendent, 
gathered his dusky flock to meet them. He explained 
who the missionaries were and whither they were going 
and then asked if any of them would volunteer to go too. 
All that it meant the abandonment of their comfortable 
home, the life-long isolation among a strange tribe 
was explained to them. There was no immediate answer, 
but a few days afterwards two men and one woman 
undertook to go, thus consecrating to their Master's 
service that remarkable talent for evangelization, which 
is so marked a feature of the native character. No 
aboriginal can ever keep a piece of good news to himself. 
He must tell all he meets. 

At Yarrabah, as on the other mission stations, the 
natives are increasing normally and the mission provides 
a very effective answer to the common assumption that 
the aborigines must inevitably, sooner or later, die out, 
and that all the efforts of the missionaries are, after all, 
merely " smoothing the pillows of a dying race." 

A much more recent mission, but one of great promise. 

H 



H4 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

is that at Trubanaman Creek, commonly known as the 
Mitchell River Mission. The reserve, of about five 
hundred square miles, is situated on the eastern side of 
the Gulf of Carpentaria about three hundred miles from 
Thursday Island. It abounds in game and every variety 
of native food, and no less than five tribes have their 
homes in the immediate vicinity. The great majority 
of the natives are quite wild and have never come in 
contact with whites, but many of them have already 
abandoned their nomadic life, and adopted one of steady 
work consecrated by Christian worship. The mission 
was only founded in 1905, but to-day a considerable area 
of bush country has been cleared and several buildings 
erected. Several acres of land are under cultivation, 
maize, cocoanuts, bananas, mangoes, oranges, pine 
apples and various kinds of vegetables being grown. 
Three white men (one of them a priest), two ladies and 
two Melanesians constitute the staff. 

This mission, like that at Yarrabah, began with a mere 
handful of men and lads and even these were attracted 
far more by the promise of regular rations than by any 
innate longing after Divine truth. Others soon followed, 
and to-day the sick are constantly coming in to the 
hospital for treatment and then remain on the mission. 
The whole soon follow their sick. The little native-built 
church in the centre of the mission compound is the 
centre of all, and the secret of the wondrous change 
that has been effected in the character and even the 
physical appearance of the people. " Six years four 
years ago/' said Mr. Matthews, the lay superintendent, 
in his report to the Australian Board of Missions in 1911, 
" the bush was close around us. Now there is a clearing 
of nearly forty acres, all fenced. Where gum tree and 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 115 

scrub once grew, fruit trees and vegetables grow now. 
The hoot of the kookaburra, the howl of the dingo or 
shout of wild man were once the early morning noises. 
Now one hears the church bell calling the people to 
prayer. The Word of God is read, and the love of God 
is preached by word and example. . . . The change has 
been very great." The change has been greater still 
the hearts and lives of the aboriginals themselves. 
Where fear of spirits and of the sorcerer once ruled the 
love of God now reigns supreme. Where wild restless 
passions surged and stormed the gentle Spirit now 
whispers His words of peace. Where there was once 
stagnation there is now a constant reaching out to a 
higher and nobler life. There are relapses, of course, 
and sometimes grievous falls, yet an enriching Ptfwer 
is at work within and the tendency is upward. And 
the life is " fenced." The once wild, nomad hearts are 
learning the meaning of self -discipline. Beautiful fruits, 
too, are taking the place of the old heathen vices. Lust 
is giving way to love. Women are no longer the chattels 
but the helpmates and companions of the men. Yet 
the natives are not being made like white men. Chris- 
tianization, not Europeanization, is the missionaries' aim. 
They still hunt their food with spear and boomerang, 
still dance their corrobborees and wear native dress, but 
heathen rites have yielded place at the great moments 
of their lives to Christian sacraments. Things morally 
wrong are, of course, forbidden. In the church daily 
prayers are said, whilst at the Sunday and holy-day 
services there is a choir of boys whose white loin cloths 
form a striking contrast to the coloured clothes of the 
general congregation. 

There are to-day about a hundred residents including 



u6 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

fifteen married couples living in houses of their own. 
The men and boys have become intelligent craftsmen, 
and work has already become an instinct with them. 
"It is remarkable/' said the Government Resident at 
Thursday Island a year or two ago, " to see a body of 
people who a few years ago were intractable and lawless 
settling down to a life of usefulness and peace." There 
is a saw-mill and a brickfield, in which from three 
hundred to four hundred bricks are made daily. With 
the exception of the roofing iron the whole of the build 
ing materials have been produced on the reserve. Each 
married man has his own little piece of land, about two 
hundred and forty feet by one hundred and twenty, on 
which sweet potatoes form the staple crop. All these 
holdings the natives have cleared and fenced for them 
selves entirely without supervision. 

Baptized natives are married with the full rites of the 
Church, and in 1911 seven couples were thus married by 
the Bishop of Carpentaria in one day. The unbaptised 
are recognised as married according to their own customs 
on their promise to regard their union as a permanent 
one, and to remain faithful to one another. They are 
entered on the books as married, and in the event of 
subsequent baptism, only the second part of the marriage 
service, or a special one for the purpose, is employed. 

In 1911 the Bishop paid what was practically a sur 
prise visit to the settlement. He went into the school 
and from thence to Mr. Matthews' Catechism class. 
There were twenty boys there, ranging in age from ten 
years to eighteen. He found, to his surprise, that they 
could repeat together the whole of the Catechism to the 
end of the " Duty towards our neighbour," without a 
single mistake, and could also, in nearly every case, 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 117 

answer individually questions taken at random. They 
were able, also, to explain the meaning of the words, and 
to give in their own words its teaching. That this dog 
matic teaching is practised in their lives is clear from 
the following story. 

A squatter, who had been violently against the mission 
when it was first founded, came some time afterwards to 
the Bishop and gave this witness : "I was strongly 
opposed to your coming. I was prejudiced against you. 
I admit I was wrong. There has been no spearing of 
cattle since you came. I must be frank. I think you 
are doing good." 

The Roper River Mission, founded in 1907, on the 
Western shores of the great gulf, is the special care of 
the Victorian Church Missionary Association. It is 
memorable for its employment of full - blooded 
aboriginals on the mission staff, and may be expected 
to develop on the lines of Yarrabah and the Mitchell 
River. 

The most recent of all missions is that at the Forrest 
River, in the Diocese of North-West Australia, which 
was only founded last year (1913). A splendid man has 
been secured as its first head in the person of the Rev. 
W. H. Robins, formerly of U.M.C.A., who has three 
laymen to assist him in the work. Two of these, 
also, have had experience in equatorial Africa and are 
well acquainted with such discomforts as fever, heat, 
mosquitoes and wild men. A building, thirty feet by 
twelve feet, has been erected, and a motor-boat pur 
chased. The mission building is of the plainest possible 
type, unlined and entirely unadorned. The life of the 
missionaries will be the reverse of luxurious, and neither 
they nor the natives are likely to be pampered in their 



118 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

tastes. The mission began with a disaster. A young 
naturalist, Mr. L. M. Burns, who had volunteered to 
help the party for a while as guide, was accidentally 
drowned when shooting wild duck at the lagoon. The 
Bishop, who went up with the advance party, made a 
plucky attempt to save him but in vain. 

The first Eucharist on the mission was celebrated by 
the Bishop on Whit-Sunday (1913), outside the little 
tent which served as the missionaries' home. Mr. 
Robins had not yet arrived. Besides the Bishop there 
were only two laymen there, but what a Eucharist that 
must have been. A plate and a mug served as sacred 
vessels but a glorious vision of the future triumph of 
the Cross rose in splendour before the eyes of those 
three worshippers, as in union with the Great Sacrifice 
they offered themselves, their souls and bodies afresh 
for the work to which God had called them. 

By August eleven aboriginals had come in, and a 
new lay helper, Mr. J. H. Grocott, had joined the staff 
with charge of the kitchen and commissariat. The 
aboriginals are beginning to settle down to work, but the 
usual difficulties incident to a new mission are being 
experienced. The missionaries' cat, some of their 
blankets, pillows and food have already disappeared, 
and some of the earlier residents have tired of the life 
on the mission and returned to the bush. Wonderful 
patience is being displayed and the missionaries are 
satisfied that it will be years before the aboriginals will 
make much response. They have a splendid fund of 
common sense and the saving grace of humour. They 
do not intend to cover the aboriginals from head to foot 
with European garments^ to pamper their taste with 
unnecessary food, or teach unnecessary subjects. They 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

have but one aim, to teach those poor degraded heathen 
the Catholic faith in its fulness and to bring them into 
full spiritual fellowship with God and His Saints. 

Since the above was written, the Rev. W. H. Robins 
has resigned the headship of the Forrest River Mission. 
His successor is the Rev. E. R. Gribble, who was for 
sixteen years the Superintendent of Yarrabah ; and is 
described by the Bishop as " the very best man Australia 
could provide." No one has had such experience of the 
native character, and under his guidance we may con 
fidently look forward to seeing in a few years' time 
" another Yarrabah in the Kimberleys." Two new 
volunteers (laymen) are going with him to the work, and 
Mrs. Gribble will join him later on. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ROMAN CATHOLIC MISSIONS NEW NORCIA 
AND BEAGLE BAY. 

IT is impossible in this chapter to refer to all the mission 
ary work that has been done among the aboriginals by 
the Roman Catholic Church. I propose to confine 
myself to an account of the work done at their two great 
Mission Stations, both in Western Australia, New Norcia 
and Beagle Bay. The story of the former at any rate 
should elevate and inspire all who read it. 

In 1845 two Spanish Benedictine monks, Dom Joseph 
Serra and Dom Rosendo Salvado, who had been driven 
from their monastery in Spain by political disturbances 
came to Rome to offer themselves as missionaries. Dr. 
Brady, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Perth, was 
in Rome at the time, and secured them for his diocese. 
They were sent forth to their work with the Papal 
blessing, and, indeed, it rested on them all their 
days. 

On January 8th, 1846, they landed at Fremantle, 
and during their brief stay in that port " beheld for the 
first time some of the savages among whom their lot 
was to be cast. It was not a pleasant introduction, and 
their hearts sank on beholding the depth of degradation 
to which these wretched aborigines appeared to have 
fallen during the few years of their intercourse with the 

1 20 



fHE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

European population."* They remained for some 
months with the Bishop in Perth, and it was not till 
February i6th, 1847, that they set forth to their work. 
Many watched them with something more than interest 
as they went forth, " their few possessions on their 
backs, a crucifix on their breasts, and a stick in their 
hands," A spot some seventy miles north-east of 
Perth was their destination. Some ten miles from it 
the drivers, whom they had engaged in Perth, refused 
to go any further into the wilds, and they were alone 
in the woods, save for the aboriginals. Next day the 
savages attempted an attack, but the monks made signs 
to them that they intended peace, and offered little 
presents as a token of their good- will. The presents 
were accepted, and the good-will reciprocated. Very 
soon their little stock of food was all consumed, and 
hunger compelled them to go in search of more. They 
had become quite friendly with the aborigines, and 
shared their life and labours. When on their journeys 
the women grew tired the missionaries would take it in 
turns to carry the children for them. They contented 
themselves with native food, but grievous discomforts 
were lying in wait for them. They were all attacked 
with acute ophthalmia, very prevalent in that country, 
and it was at one time feared that all of them except 
Dom Salvado would lose their sight. For three months 
they endured, and then Dom Salvado returned to Perth 
to procure what they required. He arrived at the 
Bishop's house, veritably in rags, and Dr. Brady, learn 
ing of his and his companions' plight, tried to persuade 
him to abandon the mission, but in vain. The Bishop 

* " Benedictine Pioneers in Australia," by Fr. Norbert Birt. 
O.S.B. Vol. II., p. 470. 



22 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

was almost as poor as themselves, and was unable to 
provide them with any money or supplies. Dom Sal- 
vado, however, was a most accomplished violinist , and 
he determined to employ his musical abilities to some 
effect. He gave a recital in Perth in aid of the mission. 
A Jewish citizen took the chair, and the Anglican clergy 
man lent a piano. The description of Dom Salvado's 
appearance as he stepped on the platform must be given 
in his own words. 

" My tunic was in tatters, and only came down to my 
knees ; my stockings, which I had tried to mend with 
any kind of thread, presented the most strange appear 
ance as to colour ; as to my shoes, they were broken in 
various places, and displayed my feet as much as they 
covered them. Add to this a beard which had been 
allowed to grow wild, a face black as that of a collier, 
and hands like those of a blacksmith. I thought I should 
be an object at once of compassion and laughter. Loud 
applause, however, greeted me, and gave me courage." 

For three hours Dom Salvado held his audience en 
tranced, A collection taken at the end added to the 
price of the seats produced a very considerable sum, and 
enabled the gifted missionary to purchase a supply of 
clothes, some provisions, some seeds, and a plough, 
together with a waggon and some oxen. With these he 
set out on his return. When only two days out from 
Perth a very severe storm overtook him. He lost his 
way and got " bushed," but after devout prayer retraced 
his steps, and eventually regained the track. At length 
he reached his fellow-missionaries again, but only to 
find them in great sorrow. One of their number had 
succumbed to his privations a few days before. A place 
for settlement was soon fixed upon, and a rude hut 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 123 

constructed to serve as their home. Then they set about 
cultivating the soil. Dom Serra led the oxen while Dom 
Salvado held the plough. In the course of a few months 
they had several acres of corn growing and several fruit 
trees planted. It is hardly necessary to say that all 
this made a very great impression on the aboriginals. 
They crowded to the settlement and watched the monks 
at their work. Attempts were made to teach them, 
but their nomadic life made anything of the nature of 
sustained work impossible. The thought occurred to 
them, " Why not work on the old lines and found a 
monastery ? " At length they decided to go back to 
Perth and ask permission to do so. After some little 
time the permission they sought was given. They pur 
chased more clothes and seeds and returned to their 
settlement to find it not beautiful with waving corn, as 
they had expected, but a wreck. A mob of wild horses 
had destroyed everything. Another disappointment 
followed closely upon this. Notice came from the 
Colonial authorities that they could not be allowed to 
settle there, but they remained undaunted. Most men 
would have turned back, saying that God's hand was 
clearly against them, and that it was evident they were 
not to be allowed to undertake the work. Not so these 
brave soldiers of the Cross. They obtained forty acres 
from the Government at Victoria Plains, a little further 
north. Many French and Irish colonists came and 
rendered them aid, and in a very few weeks the wilder 
ness, if it did not exactly blossom like a rose, had com 
pletely changed its character. The colonists built the 
walls. The aboriginals, who came to look on, remained 
to cut down the trees. On April 26th, 1847, they to k 
possession of their new settlement, changing its native 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

name of Murrin into New Nursia, after the little Italian 
town where St. Benedict, the saintly founder of their 
great Order, first saw the light.* It was, indeed, a 
beautiful spot nestling among the hills which fringe the 
fertile valley all around. 

The aborigines, as the monks had hoped, came 
in from all parts and built their huts near the new 
monastery. They soon felt they were among friends, 
and little by little the monks gained their confidence. 
In a few months many of them were under instruction in 
the great foundation truths of the Christian Faith. 
The aborigines very soon began to realise the advantages 
of a settled over the nomadic life, and began to help in 
the cultivation of the soil. 

Early in 1848 a school was opened for the children, 
and a little later three youths received Holy Baptism, 
with their parents' consent, and came and lived in the 
monastery and learned to serve at Mass. Meanwhile 
more aborigines were coming and settling in the 
settlement. 

In January of the same year the monks had been 
authorised to buy 2,560 acres of land from the Govern 
ment on fairly easy terms, Dr. Brady guaranteeing the 
payment. Dom Serra was dispatched to Europe to raise 
funds, and took with him one of the young aboriginals 
who had been baptised. His mission was successful ; 
but, whilst in Europe, he was consecrated Bishop of 
the new colony of Port Victoria, which had just been 
founded in Australia. Soon after his return to Australia, 
Dom Salvado also visited Europe, bringing with him 
two aboriginal boys. In the course of his stay, all three 
had an audience of the Pope. Dom Serra meanwhile 

* It is now known as New Norcia. 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 125 

had been made coadjutor-Bishop of Perth, and Dom 
Salvado, much against his will (for he feared it would 
mean the abandonment of the work to which his heart 
was given) was appointed to succeed him as Bishop of 
Port Victoria. Very soon, however, the new colony 
was abandoned, and he found himself a Bishop with a 
title but no See, and free to devote his life to his beloved 
New Nursia, and there for nearly fifty years he laboured. 

But, prior to all this, a new departure had been made 
at the mission. A plot of land was assigned to each 
aboriginal who had aided the work. A little later 
another experiment was tried that of payment for 
work done. The use of money, and what, by saving, 
they would be able to do, was carefully explained, and in 
a short time the natives were owning much more than 
their plot of land. Gradually the savage nature was 
tamed, and one by one they settled down to be tillers 
of the soil. 

Such was the founding of New Norcia. 

To-day the mission comprises a township of very 
considerable pretensions. In the centre is the monastery 
and the church of stone. Around it are grouped the 
other buildings the neat and well-built houses of the 
natives, the workshops, the schools, and the stores. 
The fields have been brought under the finest cultiva 
tion, and the products of these, and the luxuriant 
gardens, orchards and vineyards, render the institution 
self-supporting, except for a small educational grant 
made by the Government. No less than 800 acres are 
under cultivation, and 1,000 have been cleared and 
fenced. Wheat, grapes, olives and figs are all flourishing. 
The entire population is governed by strict rule. All 
rise with the sun, the monks go into the church to recite 



126 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

their office, and soon afterwards the villagers come in 
for Mass and their morning prayers. Then they disperse 
into the fields to work. 

There are separate school buildings for girls and 
boys. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and sacred history 
are the principal subjects taught. The children are 
extraordinarily quick at learning. They will pick up 
almost anything in about half the time the ordinary 
white child would take. One of the earlier Australian 
travellers relates that a West Australian took only five 
minutes to learn the use of a sextant, and Bishop Salvado 
has somewhere left it on record that a boy learned to 
knit in the same time. 

The children, like the rest of the community, rise with 
the sun, dress, and go to church for prayers, whither 
their parents soon follow them. After Mass they have 
breakfast in their respective refectories. Half an hour 
is allowed for recreation, and then manual work begins. 
The boys proceed to the workshops to practise their 
trades, the girls help their mothers with mending, etc., 
and engage in various domestic duties. At eleven the 
school-bell rings and an hour's study is the rule. At 
noon comes dinner, plain, wholesome and plentiful. 
Recreation and a visit to their parents (for nothing is 
done that would tend to the break-up of family life) 
occupy the earlier part of the afternoon. Another two 
hours' study follows, then manual work again till sunset, 
when all go to their parents' homes for supper. Evening 
prayer in the church follows, and then comes bed at 
eight in winter and nine in the summer months. 

The natives, it can be seen, are an integral part of a 
Christian community, and the story of New Norcia 
clearly proves that they are quite capable of receiving 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 127 

truly religious impressions and appreciating the fulness 
and beauty of the Christian life. So far as I know 
though some have left the Mission and settled in Perth 
and other parts of the State there is no instance on 
record all these sixty years of an aboriginal Christianized 
at New Norcia returning to a savage life. Wherever 
they have gone they have remained true to their faith. 

To-day the Right Rev. Dom Fulgentius Torres, O.S.B., 
Titular Bishop of Dorylacum, is Lord Abbot, and there 
are ten religious and seven secular priests, twenty-eight 
brothers, and fifteen nuns. There are nine churches in 
the different stations of the mission, and three primary 
schools, with about two hundred children in attendance. 
The total population of the settlement is about 2,500 
but the great majority of these are whites. 

The story of Beagle Bay is much more briefly told. 
It is quite a modern mission, having been founded as 
recently as June, 1890, but very excellent work, much 
on the lines of New Norcia, has already been done. 

Beagle Bay is about seventy miles north of Broome, 
in the West Kimberley district of Western Australia. 
The climate is intensely tropical, the heat in summer 
being most oppressive. The mission was founded by 
the Most Rev. Dr. Gibney, the then Bishop of Perth, 
who committed it to the charge of a community of 
monks of La Trappe. Very little progress was, however, 
made. The climate was too severe for an Order with 
such a rigorous rule, and a further drawback was experi 
enced in the fact that many of the aboriginals had 
already come into contact with the degraded whites 
and Asiatics who engaged in pearling along those coasts. 
In 1900 the Trappists were recalled and replaced by a 
body of Pallotine monks, who are carrying on the work 



128 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ' 

with most gratifying results. Besides the Superior, 
there are four priests and nine lay brothers. In 1907 
the mission was greatly strengthened by the arrival of 
reinforcements, in the persons of nine sisters of St. John 
of God, who undertook the charge of the women and 
children. The mission buildings consist, besides the 
houses of the community, of a church, a school, industrial 
workshops, and houses for the natives. 

The total number of children under instruction in the 
schools is forty boys and fifty-four girls. A new industry 
has quite recently been started, which will tend to 
absorb native labour, and enable the missionaries to 
keep the same controlling hand over the adults as over 
those who are still of school age. This is the planting 
of fifty acres of sisal hemp. In this great assistance 
has been given by the Chief Protector of Aborigines 
and the Commissioner of Tropical Agriculture. The 
position of Beagle Bay, in the heart of a pastoral country 
and well into the tropics, renders the kind of agriculture 
which has proved so successful at New Norcia quite 
impossible. Efforts to introduce hat-making among 
the mission inmates are also being made. 

The daily life on the mission is very similar to that at 
New Norcia, and in both their school lessons and their 
industrial tasks the children display very considerable 
aptitude and intelligence. How many of them have 
been baptised, and how many are communicants, I am 
not able to say, but here, again, the aboriginals form 
an integral part of a Christian community, and have 
exchanged their wild, nomadic life for a settled state. 
They readily respond to the good teaching and training 
given them, and I know from personal experience that 
many white settlers in the neighbourhood, who when 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 129 

the mission was first founded dismissed it sneeringly 
as a well-meant effort to do the impossible, viz., reclaim 
the native from his savagery, have since publicly ad 
mitted that they were wrong. 

It was much more difficult for the founders of Beagle 
Bay to gain the confidence of the aboriginals than it 
had been fifty years earlier for Dom Serra and Dom 
Salvado to do so. The natives had already had experi 
ence of the white man, and, unfortunately, that ex 
perience served to shatter all confidence in him. They 
found they could rely neither on his honour nor on his 
morality ; that he would use them for his own selfish 
ends, and then fling them aside like a broken toy. So 
when the missionaries came they waited and observed, 
and it was a long time before they gave their confidence. 
But now that they have realised that these men are of 
another spirit they have given freely, not only their 
hands, but their hearts, and the Gospel of Christ is 
working its miracles among them. Many of them have 
come out of deep darkness into His marvellous light. 
They are, indeed, changed men, and the wonderful light 
which has arisen upon them is reflected in their faces. 
" You can always tell the Christians, they look so 
bright," was the testimony a white man, by no means 
a zealous Churchman, once paid, in the author's hear 
ing, to the work of the faithful missionaries of Beagle 
Bay. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A FINAL PLEA, 

THE foregoing chapters have been penned in vain if they 
have proved insufficient to convince the reader that 
Christ's " touch has still its ancient power." This final 
chapter shall urge upon those who still need stirring a 
five-fold plea, for the aboriginal has at least five claims 
upon the English branch of the Christian Church to-day. 

1. There is, first, the call of blood. 

In a deeper and truer sense than many have yet 
realized the aboriginal is " of one blood " with ourselves. 
His ancestors, if the old traditions speak truly, came 
from the same parent home. The very blood that flows 
in their veins calls to us to give them of our best and 
share with them the good treasure we ourselves enjoy. 
It is an elder brother's part we are called upon to play. 
We condemn Dives, and condemn him rightly, for his 
neglect of Lazarus ; but surely if Lazarus had been his 
own younger brother, and he had known it, we should 
condemn him more. 

2. There is the call of Empire. 

Not only are these dusky dwellers in the bush of the 
same blood as we, but they are also subjects of the same 
earthly monarch. On the secular side the Empire is 
doing its duty. The Australian Governments, at any 
rate in these later years, have proved themselves the 

130 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 131 

constant friends and guardians of the native people. 
Thousands of pounds have been gladly expended year 
after year on their temporal welfare. It is the Church 
which has failed. The duty to evangelize is not limited 
by Empire, but surely the heathen races within the 
Empire have the first claim upon the Church of the 
English people. Yet for every pound the Governments 
have expended upon the aborigines the Church has spent 
less than a penny. 

Looked at even from the Imperial point of view alone, 
the work would be worth while. If a sufficient number 
of mission stations could be established a wonderful 
change might be effected in Northern Australia. Instead 
of a mere handful of whites (not more than two thousand 
in all, dwelling in twos and threes in the habitation of 
wild blacks, undertaking no agriculture and swearing 
at the land as " God-forsaken " and " the Devil's own ") 
we might see a Christian and contented black people, 
settled in ordered communities, tilling the soil, develop 
ing the fisheries, and carrying on a very considerable 
trade. White men cannot do much manual work in the 
northern territory, but the Christianized black man can ; 
and if "the miracle of Yarrabah" and Mitchell River 
eould only be multiplied a hundredfold, so that there 
could be no exploiting of the black man's labour, not only 
might the face of nature be completely changed, but the 
aboriginal might prove a very valuable asset both to 
Commonwealth and Empire. 

3. There is the call of the dying. 

In spite of, or rather because of, all we have done the 
aboriginals to-day are a dying people. We are dealing 
with only the remnant of a race. Across the church at 
Yarrabah are carried on a scroll the word?, " Lift up 



132 THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 

thy prayer for the remnant that is left." This is often 
alleged as a reason for leaving them alone, as though all 
these hundred years we had left them alone. " The 
natives are dying out," we are told, " why not let them 
die ? " But is it thus that a mother treats her dying 
child ? No. It is over the dying child that she bends 
down with the fondest love-light gleaming in her eye. 
It is to the ear of the dying child that she inclines 
her own, lest she should lose one single utterance of the 
loved lips that will soon be for ever still. It is to the' 
dying child that she brings the choicest she can give. 
And all just because he is dying. If there is neglect at 
all, it is the strong and vigorous whom she neglects that 
she may the better minister to the dying. She can serve 
him when the other is with God. So it should be with 
the great loving mother-heart of the Church of God. 
The dying races should be her first and tenderest care. 

4. There is the call of Conscience. 

We owe the aboriginals a tremendous act of repara 
tion. Grievous have been the misdoings of our own 
guilty past. We have stolen from them their ancestral 
hunting grounds, and given them nothing in return. 
We have outlawed and disinherited them, and made 
their existence well-nigh impossible except by crime. 
We have exploited their labour for our own ends. The 
numerous half-castes, repudiated alike by the white 
man and the black, bear eloquent but awful witness to 
the treatment their women have received. They have 
succumbed to opium, the vilest liquor, and the most 
loathsome diseases, which we have introduced amongst 
them. It only remains to us to-day to make some 
atonement for the past by giving them, with unstinting 
hand, the richest treasure it is in our power to give, 



THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL 133 

5. There is the call of Christ. 

We know His will. No criticism, however violent, has 
succeeded in getting rid of the great missionary com 
mand or the claim to be the universal Saviour. We 
need to look upon the aboriginal with His eyes, to realize 
that the wondrous Passion avails for them, and that He 
is pleading for them now. Charles Peace, the murderer, 
once told the prison chaplain that if he really believed 
his message it would be worth his while, not only to go 
to the ends of the earth to proclaim it, but to go with 
bare feet over broken bottles. Can we not all of us take 
that saying to ourselves ? If we really believe, no effort 
can be too great, no expenditure too extravagant, no 
labour too severe. If we have heard the utterance of the 
Great Intercessor, if we have listened to the beating of 
His Heart, we shall be unable to rest till every aboriginal 
has been won, because His Heart is restless so long as one 
single soul is in ignorance of Him. 



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