tribes and that of the tribes nearer the sea, especially in Victoria and
New South Wales, is very notable. A custom intermediate between the two
is observed by some tribes of the Darling River, who hang up the
weapons, nets, and other property of the deceased on trees for about two
months, then wash them, and distribute them among the relations.[215]
The reason for hanging the things up and washing them is no doubt to rid
them of the infection of death in order that they may be used with
safety by the survivors. Such a custom points clearly to a growing fear
of the dead; and that fear or reverence comes out still more clearly in
the practice of either burying the property of the dead with them or
destroying it altogether, which is observed by the aborigines of
Victoria and other parts of Australia who live under more favourable
conditions of life than the inhabitants of the Central deserts. This
confirms the conclusion which we have reached on other grounds, that
among the aboriginal population of Australia favourable natural
conditions in respect of climate, food, and water have exercised a most
important influence in stimulating social progress in many directions,
and not least in the direction of religion. At the same time, while we
recognise that the incipient tendency to a worship of the dead which may
be detected in these regions marks a step forward in religious
development, we must acknowledge that the practice of burying or
destroying the property of the dead, which is one of the ways in which
the tendency manifests itself, is, regarded from the side of economic
progress, a decided step backward. It marks, in fact, the beginning of a
melancholy aberration of the human mind, which has led mankind to
sacrifice the real interests of the living to the imaginary interests of
the dead. With the general advance of society and the accompanying
accumulation of property these sacrifices have at certain stages of
evolution become heavier and heavier, as the demands of the ghosts
became more and more exacting. The economic waste which the belief in
the immortality of the soul has entailed on the world is incalculable.
When we contemplate that waste in its small beginnings among the rude
savages of Australia it appears insignificant enough; the world is not
much the poorer for the loss of a parcel of boomerangs, spears, fur
string, and skin rugs. But when we pass from the custom in this its
feeble source and follow it as it swells in volume through the nations
of the world till it attains the dimensions of a mighty river of wasted
labour, squandered treasure, and spilt blood, we cannot but wonder at
the strange mixture of good and evil in the affairs of mankind, seeing
in what we justly call progress so much hardly earned gain side by side
with so much gratuitous loss, such immense additions to the substantial
value of life to be set off against such enormous sacrifices to the
shadow of a shade.
[Footnote 160: W. E. Roth, _North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No.
5, Superstition, Magic, and Medicine_ (Brisbane, 1903), pp. 18, 23, §§
68, 83.]
[Footnote 161: Homer, _Odyssey_, xix. 163.]
[Footnote 162: W. E. Roth, _ll. cc._]
[Footnote 163: W. E. Roth, _North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No.
5_ (Brisbane, 1903), p. 29. § 116.]
[Footnote 164: W. E. Roth. _op. cit._ p. 18, § 68.]
[Footnote 165: W. E. Roth, _op. cit._ pp. 17, 29, §§ 65, 116.]
[Footnote 166: W. E. Roth, _op. cit._ p. 17, § 65.]
[Footnote 167: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_ (Melbourne, Sydney,
and Adelaide, 1881), pp. 110 _sq._; A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of
South-East Australia_ (London, 1904), p. 442.]
[Footnote 168: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 445.]
[Footnote 169: (Sir) George Grey, _Journals of Two Expeditions of
Discovery in North-West and Western Australia_ (London, 1841), i.
301-303.]
[Footnote 170: Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins, _An Account of the
English Colony in New South Wales_, Second Edition (London, 1804), p.
354.]
[Footnote 171: Rev. G. Taplin, "The Narrinyeri," in _Native Tribes of
South Australia_ (Adelaide, 1879), pp. 18 _sq._]
[Footnote 172: Rev. G. Taplin, "The Narrinyeri," _op. cit._ pp. 20
_sq._]
[Footnote 173: Rev. G. Taplin, _op. cit._ p. 20.]
[Footnote 174: Rev. G. Taplin, _op. cit._ pp. 19 _sq._, 21.]
[Footnote 175: Rev. G. Taplin, _op. cit._ p. 21.]
[Footnote 176: See below, pp. 235 _sqq._, 327 _sq._]
[Footnote 177: Rev. G. Taplin, _op. cit._ p. 21.]
[Footnote 178: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 538 _sq._]
[Footnote 179: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, pp. 544 _sq._]
[Footnote 180: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,
pp. 434, 436, 437, 438. Compare E. J. Eyre, _Journals of Expeditions of
Discovery into Central Australia_ (London, 1845), ii. 357.]
[Footnote 181: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 434.]
[Footnote 182: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 438.]
[Footnote 183: Rev. W. Ridley, _Kamilaroi_ (Sydney, 1875), p. 160.]
[Footnote 184: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,
pp. 434, 438, 439; J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 50.]
[Footnote 185: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 435.]
[Footnote 186: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 437.]
[Footnote 187: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 628.]
[Footnote 188: As to the place occupied by the Pleiades in primitive
calendars, see _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, i. 309-319.]
[Footnote 189: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_,
pp. 439 _sq._]
[Footnote 190: See _Totemism and Exogamy_, i. 314 _sqq._]
[Footnote 191: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 51. A man of the
Ta-ta-thi tribe in New South Wales informed Mr. A. L. P. Cameron that
the natives believed in a pit of fire where bad men were roasted after
death. This reported belief, resting apparently on the testimony of a
single informant, may without doubt be ascribed to the influence of
Christian teaching. See A. L. P. Cameron, "Notes on some Tribes of New
South Wales," _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xiv. (1885)
pp. 364 _sq._]
[Footnote 192: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 49.]
[Footnote 193: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p.
448.]
[Footnote 194: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._. p. 449. Compare E. M. Curr,
_The Australian Race_, i. 87: "The object sought in tying up the remains
of the dead is to prevent the deceased from escaping from the tomb and
frightening or injuring the survivors."]
[Footnote 195: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 451.]
[Footnote 196: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 467.]
[Footnote 197: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 50.]
[Footnote 198: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p.
452.]
[Footnote 199: R. Salvado, _Mémoires historiques sur l' Australie_
(Paris, 1854), p. 261; _Missions Catholiques_, x. (1878) p. 247. For
more evidence as to the lighting of fires for this purpose see A. W.
Howitt, _op. cit._ pp. 455, 470.]
[Footnote 200: A. Oldfield, "The Aborigines of Australia," _Transactions
of the Ethnological Society of London_, New Series, iii. (1865) p. 245.]
[Footnote 201: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 455.]
[Footnote 202: J. Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, pp. 50 _sq._]
[Footnote 203: J. Dawson, _op. cit._ p. 63.]
[Footnote 204: A. W. Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-East Australia_, p.
458.]
[Footnote 205: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 470.]
[Footnote 206: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ pp. 461 _sq._]
[Footnote 207: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 464.]
[Footnote 208: A. W. Howitt, _op. cit._ p. 464.]
[Footnote 209: R. Brough Smyth, _The Aborigines of Victoria_, i. 104.]
[Footnote 210: P. Beveridge, "Of the Aborigines Inhabiting the Great
Lacustrine and Riverine Depression of the Lower Murray, Lower
Murrumbidgee, Lower Lachlan, and Lower Darling," _Journal and
Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales_, xvii. (1883) p.
29.]
[Footnote 211: A. Oldfield, "The Aborigines of Australia," _Transactions
of the Ethnological Society of London_, New Series, iii. (1865) p. 245.]
[Footnote 212: W. E. Roth, _Ethnological Studies among the
North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines_ (Brisbane and London, 1897),
p. 164.]
[Footnote 213: Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_,
pp. 466, 497 _sq._, 538 _sq._ See above, p. 138.]
[Footnote 214: Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, p. 524.]
[Footnote 215: F. Bonney, "On some Customs of the Aborigines of the
River Darling, New South Wales," _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, xiii. (1884) p. 135.]
LECTURE VII
THE BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY AMONG THE ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA
(_concluded_)
[Sidenote: Attention to the comfort of the dead. Huts erected on graves
for the use of the ghosts.]
In the last lecture I shewed that in the maritime regions of Australia,
where the conditions of life are more favourable than in the Central
deserts, we may detect the germs of a worship of the dead in certain
attentions which the living pay to the spirits of the departed, for
example by kindling fires on the grave for the ghost to warm himself at,
by leaving food and water for him to eat and drink, and by depositing
his weapons and other property in the tomb for his use in the life after
death. Another mark of respect shewn to the dead is the custom of
erecting a hut on the grave for the accommodation of the ghost. Thus
among the tribes of South Australia we are told that "upon the mounds,
or tumuli, over the graves, huts of bark, or boughs, are generally
erected to shelter the dead from the rain; they are also frequently
wound round with netting."[216] Again, in Western Australia a small hut
of rushes, grass, and so forth is said to have been set up by the
natives over the grave.[217] Among the tribes of the Lower Murray, Lower
Lachlan, and Lower Darling rivers, when a person died who had been
highly esteemed in life, a neat hut was erected over his grave so as to
cover it entirely. The hut was of oval shape, about five feet high, and
roofed with thatch, which was firmly tied to the framework by cord many
hundreds of yards in length. Sometimes the whole hut was enveloped in a
net. At the eastern end of the hut a small opening was left just large
enough to allow a full-grown man to creep in, and the floor was covered
with grass, which was renewed from time to time as it became withered.
Each of these graves was enclosed by a fence of brushwood forming a
diamond-shaped enclosure, within which the tomb stood exactly in the
middle. All the grass within the fence was neatly shaved off and the
ground swept quite clean. Sepulchres of this sort were kept up for two
or three years, after which they were allowed to fall into disrepair,
and when a few more years had gone by the very sites of them were
forgotten.[218] The intention of erecting huts on graves is not
mentioned in these cases, but on analogy we may conjecture that they are
intended for the convenience and comfort of the ghost. This is confirmed
by an account given of a native burial on the Vasse River in Western
Australia. We are told that when the grave had been filled in, the
natives piled logs on it to a considerable height and then constructed a
hut upon the logs, after which one of the male relations went into the
hut and said, "I sit in his house."[219] Thus it would seem that the hut
on the grave is regarded as the house of the dead man. If only these
sepulchral huts were kept up permanently, they might develop into
something like temples, in which the spirits of the departed might be
invoked and propitiated with prayer and sacrifice. It is thus that the
great round huts, in which the remains of dead kings of Uganda are
deposited, have grown into sanctuaries or shrines, where the spirits of
the deceased monarchs are consulted as oracles through the medium of
priests.[220] But in Australia this development is prevented by the
simple forgetfulness of the savages. A few years suffice with them to
wipe out the memory of the deceased and with it his chance of developing
into an ancestral deity. Like most savages, the Australian aborigines
seem to fear only the ghosts of the recently departed; one writer tells
us that they have no fear of the ghost of a man who has been dead say
forty years.[221]
[Sidenote: Fear of the dead and precautions taken by the living against
them.]
The burial customs of the Australian aborigines which I have described
betray not only a belief in the existence of the ghost, but also a
certain regard for his comfort and convenience. However, we may suspect
that in most, if not in all, cases the predominant motive of these
attentions is fear rather than affection. The survivors imagine that any
want of respect for the dead, any neglect of his personal comforts in
the grave, would excite his resentment and draw down on them his
vengeance. That these savages are really actuated by fear of the dead is
expressly affirmed of some tribes. Thus we are told that the Yuin "were
always afraid that the dead man might come out of the grave and follow
them."[222] After burying a body the Ngarigo were wont to cross a river
in order to prevent the ghost from pursuing them;[223] obviously they
shared the common opinion that ghosts for some reason are unable to
cross water. The Wakelbura took other measures to throw the poor ghost
off the scent. They marked all the trees in a circle round the place
where the dead man was buried; so that when he emerged from the grave
and set off in pursuit of his retiring relations, he would follow the
marks on the trees in a circle and always come back to the point from
which he had started. And to make assurance doubly sure they put coals
in the dead man's ears, which, by bunging up these apertures, were
supposed to keep his ghost in the body till his friends had got a good
start away from him. As a further precaution they lit fires and put
bushes in the forks of trees, with the idea that the ghost would roost
in the bushes and warm himself at the fires, while they were hastening
away.[224] Here, therefore, we see that the real motive for kindling
fires for the use of the dead is fear, not affection. In this respect
the burial customs of the tribes at the Herbert River are still more
significant. These savages buried with the dead man his weapons, his
ornaments, and indeed everything he had used in life; moreover, they
built a hut on the grave, put a drinking-vessel in the hut, and cleared
a path from it down to the water for the use of the ghost; and often
they placed food and water on the grave. So far, these measures might be
interpreted as marks of pure and disinterested affection for the soul of
the departed. But such an interpretation is totally excluded by the
ferocious treatment which these savages meted out to the corpse. To
frighten the spirit, lest he should haunt the camp, the father or
brother of the deceased, or the husband, if it was a woman, took a club
and mauled the body with such violence that he often smashed the bones;
further, he generally broke both its legs in order to prevent it from
wandering of nights; and as if that were not enough, he bored holes in
the stomach, the shoulders, and the lungs, and filled the holes with
stones, so that even if the poor ghost should succeed by a desperate
effort in dragging his mangled body out of the grave, he would be so
weighed down by this ballast of stones that he could not get very far.
However, after roaming up and down in this pitiable condition for a time
in their old haunts, the spirits were supposed at last to go up aloft to
the Milky Way.[225] The Kwearriburra tribe, on the Lynd River, in
Queensland, also took forcible measures to prevent the resurrection of
the dead. Whenever a person died, they cut off his or her head, roasted
it in a fire on the grave, and when it was thoroughly charred they
smashed it in bits and left the fragments among the hot coals. They
calculated that when the ghost rose from the grave with the view of
following the tribe, he would miss his head and go groping blindly about
for it till he scorched himself in the embers of the fire and was glad
to shrink back into his narrow bed.[226]
Thus even among those Australian tribes which have progressed furthest
in the direction of religion, such approaches as they have made towards
a worship of the dead appear to be determined far more by fear than by
affection and reverence. And we are told that it is the nearest
relations and the most influential men whose ghosts are most
dreaded.[227]
[Sidenote: Cuttings and brandings of the flesh of the living in honour
of the dead.]
There is another custom observed by the Australian aborigines in
mourning which deserves to be mentioned. We all know that the Israelites
were forbidden to make cuttings in their flesh for the dead.[228] The
custom was probably practised by the heathen Canaanites, as it has been
by savages in various parts of the world. Nowhere, perhaps, has the
practice prevailed more generally or been carried out with greater
severity than in aboriginal Australia. For example, with regard to the
tribes in the central part of Victoria we are told that "the parents of
the deceased lacerate themselves fearfully, especially if it be an only
son whose loss they deplore. The father beats and cuts his head with a
tomahawk until he utters bitter groans. The mother sits by the fire and
burns her breasts and abdomen with a small fire-stick till she wails
with pain; then she replaces the stick in the fire, to use again when
the pain is less severe. This continues for hours daily, until the time
of lamentation is completed; sometimes the burns thus inflicted are so
severe as to cause death."[229] It is especially the women, and above
all the widows, who torture themselves in this way. Speaking of the
tribes of Victoria, a writer tells us that on the death of her husband a
widow, "becoming frantic, seizes fire-sticks and burns her breasts,
arms, legs, and thighs. Rushing from one place to another, and intent
only on injuring herself, and seeming to delight in the self-inflicted
torture, it would be rash and vain to interrupt her. She would fiercely
turn on her nearest relative or friend and burn him with her brands.
When exhausted, and when she can scarcely walk, she yet endeavours to
kick the embers of the fire, and to throw them about. Sitting down, she
takes the ashes in her hands, rubs them into her wounds, and then
scratches her face (the only part not touched by the fire-sticks) until
the blood mingles with the ashes which partly hide her cruel
wounds."[230] Among the Kurnai of South-eastern Victoria the relations
of the dead would cut and gash themselves with sharp stones and
tomahawks until their heads and bodies streamed with blood.[231] In the
Mukjarawaint tribe, when a man died, his kinsfolk wept over him and
slashed themselves with tomahawks and other sharp instruments for about
a week.[232] In the tribes of the Lower Murray and Lower Darling rivers
mourners scored their backs and arms, sometimes even their faces, with
red-hot brands, which raised hideous ulcers; afterwards they flung
themselves prone on the grave, tore out their hair by handfuls, rubbed
earth over their heads and bodies in great profusion, and ripped up
their green ulcers till the mingled blood and grime presented a ghastly
spectacle. These self-inflicted sores remained long unhealed.[233] Among
the Kamilaroi, a large tribe of eastern New South Wales, the mourners,
and especially the women, used to cut their heads with tomahawks and
allow the blood to dry on them.[234] Speaking of a native burial on the
Murray River, a writer says that "around the bier were many women,
relations of the deceased, wailing and lamenting bitterly, and
lacerating their thighs, backs, and breasts, with shells or flint, until
the blood flowed copiously from the gashes."[235] In the Boulia district
of Queensland women in mourning score their thighs, both inside and
outside, with sharp stones or bits of glass, so as to make a series of
parallel cuts; in neighbouring districts of Queensland the men make much
deeper cross-shaped cuts on their thighs.[236] In the Arunta tribe of
Central Australia a man is bound to cut himself on the shoulder in
mourning for his father-in-law; if he does not do so, his wife may be
given away to another man in order to appease the wrath of the ghost at
his undutiful son-in-law. Arunta men regularly bear on their shoulders
the raised scars which shew that they have done their duty by their dead
fathers-in-law.[237] The female relations of a dead man in the Arunta
tribe also cut and hack themselves in token of sorrow, working
themselves up into a sort of frenzy as they do so; yet in all their
apparent excitement they take care never to wound a vital part, but vent
their fury on their scalps, their shoulders, and their legs.[238]
[Sidenote: Cuttings for the dead among the Warramunga.]
In the Warramunga tribe of Central Australia Messrs. Spencer and Gillen
witnessed the mourning for a dead man. Even before the sufferer had
breathed his last the lamentations and self-inflicted wounds began. When
it was known that the end was near, all the native men ran at full speed
to the spot, and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen followed them to see what
was to be seen. What they saw, or part of what they saw, was this. Some
of the women, who had gathered from all directions, were lying prostrate
on the body of the dying man, while others were standing or kneeling
around, digging the sharp ends of yam-sticks into the crown of their
heads, from which the blood streamed down over their faces, while all
the time they kept up a loud continuous wail. Many of the men, rushing
up to the scene of action, flung themselves also higgledy-piggledy on
the sufferer, the women rising and making way for them, till nothing was
to be seen but a struggling mass of naked bodies all mixed up together.
Presently up came a man yelling and brandishing a stone knife. On
reaching the spot he suddenly gashed both his thighs with the knife,
cutting right across the muscles, so that, unable to stand, he dropped
down on the top of the struggling bodies, till his mother, wife, and
sisters dragged him out of the scrimmage, and immediately applied their
mouths to his gaping wounds, while he lay exhausted and helpless on the
ground. Gradually the struggling mass of dusky bodies untwined itself,
disclosing the unfortunate sick man, who was the object, or rather the
victim, of this well-meant demonstration of affection and sorrow. If he
had been ill before, he was much worse when his friends left him: indeed
it was plain that he had not long to live. Still the weeping and wailing
went on; the sun set, darkness fell on the camp, and later in the
evening the man died. Then the wailing rose louder than before, and men
and women, apparently frantic with grief, rushed about cutting
themselves with knives and sharp-pointed sticks, while the women
battered each other's heads with clubs, no one attempting to ward off
either cuts or blows. An hour later a funeral procession set out by
torchlight through the darkness, carrying the body to a wood about a
mile off, where it was laid on a platform of boughs in a low gum-tree.
When day broke next morning, not a sign of human habitation was to be
seen in the camp where the man had died. All the people had removed
their rude huts to some distance, leaving the place of death solitary;
for nobody wished to meet the ghost of the deceased, who would certainly
be hovering about, along with the spirit of the living man who had
caused his death by evil magic, and who might be expected to come to the
spot in the outward form of an animal to gloat over the scene of his
crime. But in the new camp the ground was strewed with men lying
prostrate, their thighs gashed with the wounds which they had inflicted
on themselves with their own hands. They had done their duty by the dead
and would bear to the end of their life the deep scars on their thighs
as badges of honour. On one man Messrs. Spencer and Gillen counted the
dints of no less than twenty-three wounds which he had inflicted on
himself at various times. Meantime the women had resumed the duty of
lamentation. Forty or fifty of them sat down in groups of five or six,
weeping and wailing frantically with their arms round each other, while
the actual and tribal wives, mothers, wives' mothers, daughters,
sisters, mothers' mothers, sisters' husbands' mothers, and
grand-daughters, according to custom, once more cut their scalps open
with yam-sticks, and the widows afterwards in addition seared the scalp
wounds with red-hot fire-sticks.
[Sidenote: Cuttings for the dead strictly regulated by custom.]