The position of woman among the blacks—The husband the hunter, and the
woman the provider of the family—Black female slaves—“Marking” the
wives—A twelve-year-old wife—Considerate husbands—Wives an
inheritance—Deserted by my followers—Reasoning power of the
blacks—Darkness and rain.
The wives of Willy and Chinaman had kept far in the rear of the
expedition all the time, as they, in company with other women of the
tribe, were in search of fruits and larvæ. Among the blacks it is the
women who daily provide food, and they frequently make long excursions
to collect things to eat. The position of woman here, as elsewhere among
savages, is a very subordinate one.
She must do all the hard work, go out with her basket and her stick to
gather fruits, dig roots, or chop larvæ out of the tree-stems. She finds
the fruits partly within her reach, partly in the trees, which she
climbs, though less skilfully than the men. The stick in question, the
woman’s only implement, is indispensable to her on her expeditions after
food. It is made of hard tough wood four or five feet long, and has a
sharp point at one end made by alternately burning it in the fire and
rubbing it with a stone. Even at dances and festivals the married women
carry this stick as an emblem of dignity, as the provider of the family.
The woman is often obliged to carry her little child on her shoulders
during the whole day, only setting it down when she has to dig in the
ground or climb trees.
When she comes home again, she usually has to make great preparations
for beating, roasting, and soaking the fruits, which are very often
poisonous. It is also the woman’s duty to make a hut and gather the
materials for the purpose. Her husband assists her in cutting down the
four or five slender trees for the frame, but the woman herself has to
carry the large armfuls of palm leaves or grass to the camp, and level
the ground for the hut, removing with her stick and her fingers all
inequalities. She also provides water and fuel.
When they travel from place to place the woman has to carry all the
baggage. The husband is therefore always seen in advance with no burden
save a few light weapons, such as spears, clubs, or boomerangs, while
his wives follow laden like pack-horses with even as many as five
baskets containing provisions. There is frequently a little child in one
of the baskets, and a larger child may also be carried on the shoulders.
The husband’s contribution to the household is chiefly honey, but
occasionally he provides eggs, game, lizards, and the like. He very
often, however, keeps the animal food for himself, while the woman has
to depend principally upon vegetables for herself and her child. The
husband hunts more for sport than to supply the family with necessaries,
a matter that does not really concern him. Upon the whole he feels no
responsibility as the father of a family, but lives a thoroughly selfish
life, waiting in the morning until the grass is dry before he goes out,
and often returning to the camp with empty hands, having consumed his
game where he caught it.
He treats his wife with but little consideration, and is often very
cruel; he may take her life if he desires. In cold rainy nights she is
obliged to go out to fetch water and fuel. If in the evening I requested
one of my blacks to do this, he usually transferred the order to one of
his wives, who went at once; as a rule he had no regard for her age.
During one night which I passed on a farm not far from Mackay, I heard a
terrible cry in a camp of civilised blacks near by. On going down there
the next morning we found one of the young women in a pitiful condition,
bathed in blood and weeping; two of her fingers were broken. She said
that her husband had flogged her during the night. I asked him why he
had done so, and he answered that it had been very cold in the night,
and that this wretch of a woman had not been willing to go at once and
fetch fuel for the camp fire. He was an unusually capable black, who, on
one occasion, had accompanied a Catholic missionary across the continent
to the Gulf of Carpentaria. But with all his good qualities he had not
yet learned to treat his wife otherwise than his black brethren, who do
not regard her as a human being like themselves.
The worst crime a woman can commit is, of course, to run away from her
husband, whose slave she in reality is. She is oppressed, but is as a
rule contented with slavery, having no knowledge of a freer condition.
She has no will of her own, and she knows that her husband will not
brook opposition. But, however subject to the will of her husband she
may appear to be, and however oppressed she has been for generations,
many instances are still to be found where she has refused to submit to
her fate and has taken flight. She may also have some one whom she
adores, and a woman frequently runs away to a person she loves, although
she risks punishment; she may even be maimed by her husband if he ever
gets hold of her again. In such cases he usually gives her one or two
blows on the back with his tomahawk, which the blacks call “marking” the
woman. Frequently the woman is killed, particularly if she tries to run
away a second time.
When a wife is punished for other errors, the husband usually gives her
a rap on the head with the first object he can lay his hands on. As a
result of this treatment the women are often marked or scarred from
blows received from their cruel husbands. The punishments are quite
informal, and are inflicted in the excitement of the moment, no matter
whether others are present or not.
As the women perform all the labour, they are the most important part of
the property of an Australian native, who is rich in proportion to the
number of wives he possesses.
[Illustration:
NATIVES FROM HERBERT RIVER.
]
They usually have two, frequently three, sometimes four wives, and I saw
one man who had six. All the wives live in the same hut with their
husband. He who has many is envied by the others. “No one should have
more than two wives,” said my men to me, who had only one wife apiece,
and whose highest ambition it was to double the number. The black man
usually has a favourite wife, whom he prefers to the others and treats
better. Still, polygamy does not give rise to as many family troubles as
one would think, though there may be discord enough among the men on
account of the women. As a rule, man and wife apparently get on very
well, and the women are not constantly being flogged. I have even seen
instances where the husband was governed by his wife, and was scolded
and corrected by her, and I have also seen husbands ask their wives for
advice; but such cases as these are, of course, very rare.
It must be admitted that sometimes the Australian treats his wives well,
even in cases where the husband is the _boss_, and two of the men who
were with me on this expedition were exceptions of this kind.
It was an unusually fine trait in the characters of Willy and Chinaman
that they saved part of the provisions which they received from me for
their wives. One afternoon, when they wanted to go and see their wives,
they asked me to lend them a bag, and soon afterwards I saw them
starting off with a large amount of provisions which they had saved.
This consideration did not imply any self-denial on their part, for I
had given them more than they could eat, but I have since learned that
they sometimes did make sacrifices for their wives, and in this instance
it may be said to their credit that they gave them what they themselves
might have consumed at a later time.
Willy and Chinaman’s wives were very young, one of them being a little
girl of about twelve years. As long as the wives are so young I think
they receive better treatment than they do later on.
Thus even Australian women may have their honeymoon. These two men were
proud of their young wives, because it is, as a rule, difficult for
young men to marry before they are thirty years old. The old men have
the youngest and best looking wives, while a young man must consider
himself fortunate if he can get an old woman.
A woman is delivered over to her husband when she is about nine or ten
years old. It is simply ridiculous to see a man with a wife whom one
would take to be his young daughter. She lives with her husband, who may
be said to rear her, the two being at the same time really married. In
this respect the custom existing among the more southern tribes, as, for
instance, near Rockhampton, where the woman is not married before she
has reached maturity, differs from that on Herbert river; even here,
however, some respect is paid to her age, for a twelve-year-old wife is
not expected to provide as much as a grown woman. “She runs about too
much when she is so little,” said Willy and Chinaman, meaning that she
was not as capable as the older ones of finding food. I invariably
observed that the grown woman performed her work in an earnest and
careful manner, and did not permit herself to be disturbed. It is not
uncommon for an Australian to inherit a wife; the custom being that a
widow falls to the lot of the brother of the deceased husband. But the
commonest way of getting a wife is by giving a sister or a daughter in
exchange. Marriage may be either exogamous or endogamous. I have
previously stated that it is usual to steal one another’s wives; but it
should be added that this, as a rule, occurs among the smaller families
or sub-tribes, and but rarely among the larger tribes. A beautiful girl
from another tribe was maltreated and killed not far from my
headquarters. When I asked why they did not keep her rather than take
her life in this manner, they said that they feared the strange tribe,
to whose attacks they would continually be exposed if they kept the
woman alive. Killing her would give less cause for resentment.
Willy and Chinaman always took into consideration the youth of their
wives, and did not make them carry the large burdens usually laid upon
women. Of course they had to fetch leaves and grass for the hut, run
after water, and find larvæ and fruits, and go on errands in general,
but upon the whole they had an easy time of it, and their husbands gave
them a considerable amount of food. Surely when they received the bag of
food I mentioned before, their husbands must have been prompted by
higher motives than simply the idea that the food would make them
stronger, and therefore capable of doing more work.
In the evening, when Willy and Chinaman came back from their wives, they
brought a basket of fruit from the poisonous palm _Cycas media_, which
is called by the natives _kadjĕra_. When the nut is cracked, the kernel
is subjected to an elaborate process of pounding, roasting, and soaking,
until all is changed into a white porridge. Although my men were very
fond of my fare, which I shared with them plentifully, still they felt a
need of their own food. _Kadjera_ constitutes during this season of the
year, from October to December, the principal food of the blacks,
_tobŏla_ and _koraddan_, other fruits, being what they live chiefly upon
from January to March. When the time comes for harvesting these fruits,
the women set out together to gather and prepare them, and they are
frequently absent from the camp for several days.
We had now exerted ourselves a long time, and suffered much fatigue from
trying to secure a specimen of boongary, when all the men one day
suddenly declared that nothing would induce them to hunt the boongary
without a dog, and that there was no use in continuing the expedition.
Though this was a great disappointment to me, there was nothing else to
do but to return to my headquarters to get a dingo and more provisions.
On my arrival at Herbert Vale I also secured some new men. Among them
Jimmy was especially noteworthy. He was a square-built, athletic fellow
with a short neck and broad shoulders. There was a sinister expression
in his face, and he was a man of few words. I also enlisted in my
service another native, Mangola-Maggi, a smooth-haired young man who, in
spite of his youth, was highly respected among the blacks on account of
his ability to procure _talgoro_—that is, human flesh. This was
certainly not the particular qualification that I sought. What I wanted
was good hunters, and in choosing my men I had to pay special attention
to this point without regard to other less desirable qualities.
I suggested that they should take their wives with them, and they were
the more easily persuaded to do so as the women were going in the same
direction to gather fruits, and the latter received orders to keep a
sharp look-out for boongary, which during the day sleep in the high
trees.
On our journey across the open country Willy and I led the way. In the
afternoon some of my people remained behind to dig out a bandicoot,
among them Lucy, Willy’s wife. She had stayed without her husband’s
consent, and for this she must be punished. When, after about an hour,
she overtook us, Willy, greatly enraged, asked her why she had remained
behind, and at the same time picked up a large piece of wood and hurled
it past her face. She did not dare to stir or hardly to blink with her
eyes, and made no effort to ward off the projectile, knowing that her
husband would become only more angry and try the more to hit her. As it
was, he only threw the piece of wood several times to frighten her.
The bandicoot, which had given rise to this domestic scene between Willy
and Lucy, I wanted for my collection; but Chinaman would not give it up.
He was, on the whole, very selfish, passionate, and greedy. He twice
told me that he liked the flesh of little children better than that of
grownup people, because the former were “so fat.” When we had slain an
animal the thought of eating was uppermost in his mind, and I often
failed to secure rare specimens which he and his comrades had killed and
eaten before I could claim them. It was therefore necessary not only to
find and kill the animals, but also to save them from disappearing into
the hungry stomachs of the blacks. Even though they knew that they would
get tobacco for the animal, momentary enjoyment so predominated in their
minds that they had no time to think of the tobacco.
We rose at sunrise the next morning, and continued the ascent. I had so
distributed my baggage among the natives that the women carried the
provisions and the men the gun and ammunition and the thighs of a
wallaby, which I had taken as a lure for yarri. Saturated with
strychnine, the flesh of the wallaby was exposed in various places along
the river, particularly where brooks emptied into the latter, for here,
according to the statements of the natives, the yarri were apt to be
found during the night.
We worked our way up over large stones and among creeping vines, and
toward noon approached the goal of our day’s march, about 600 ft. below
the level of the mountain summit. Before us we still had a very steep
and difficult country to traverse, and we now halted near the confluence
of two mountain brooks to get something to eat.
I had so planned that the women were to go for several days by
themselves in another direction in order to search the scrubs, and at
the same time gather fruits, while we were to follow the brook and make
our camp on the summit of the mountain. The woods are so dense that a
man cannot make a long journey in a day, and as it was of importance to
investigate as large a region as possible, I hoped that the women would
in this way be of great use to us. The men were, however, unwilling to
agree to this plan, and they suggested instead not to send the women out
until the next day, but to send them on now with the provisions and
baggage to the proposed camping-place, while they and I were to make a
digression to the south in order to look for boongary. We were to meet
again on the top of the mountain. Their proposition seemed to me
excellent, for in this way we might make a better use of our time, and
so we set out, without any suspicion on my part of their treacherous
intentions. As usual, it was not long before I was some distance behind
my people, who during such ascents were wont to proceed much more
rapidly than I did; my boots making it difficult for me to keep pace
with them. Certainly I thought they were in a greater hurry than usual,
but I paid no particular attention to this fact. Finally, I had only
Chinaman and his dog before me. Our course along a little brook was very
steep, and so narrow that we frequently had to creep on our hands and
knees under the enormous fern-trees, in order to get through.
Presently Chinaman also disappeared in the scrub, and I suddenly found
myself all alone with my dog “Donna.” I shouted, but heard no answer,
and it now dawned upon my mind that I was the victim of a plot. In order
to get possession of my provisions, they had, of course, agreed on a
place where they were to join the women, or perhaps they intended to
meet at the place fixed upon for a camp, in order to feast on my food. I
knew that they would not rob and eat everything, for like children who
help themselves to sweets, they imagine that nothing will be discovered
if only something is left, be it ever so little. There was danger,
however, that my provisions would be consumed to such a degree as to
make it impossible to continue the expedition. I had been careless
enough to leave the food in two open bags, but had looked better after
the tobacco, the latter being well packed in the centre of my baggage.
After a short time I heard them in the distance giving signals to the
women. The only thing for me to do was to make an effort to proceed
alone. I knew pretty nearly where we were to encamp, but it was not so
easy to find the way through the scrub, where nothing is to be seen to
guide the traveller.
I was several hours in reaching the summit. Meanwhile it had begun to
rain, sunset was drawing on, and it was high time that I found the camp.
At length I heard the blacks talking on the top of a little hill near
by, and I soon found the place, a little opening in the dense scrub
scarcely eight yards square, where they had already built their huts. It
was a very convenient place for a camp, and I could see that it had
frequently been used for this purpose, for on all sides there were large
heaps of fruit husks.
I at once commanded them to produce the provision bags, and discovered
to my satisfaction that they had consumed less of the contents than I
feared. When I asked them why they had abandoned me in order to steal
the provisions, they answered that they had been very much afraid that
the white man would get lost, but added, in an ingratiating manner, that
they were now going to make him a good hut. The only way to punish them
which was left me was to shoot one of them, and I therefore let the
matter drop, but gave them to understand that if the offence was
repeated I should use the revolver. I then ordered them to build a hut,
as it was already night and the rain was increasing. From this incident
it is clear that it is not true, as many maintain, that the Australian
native is guided wholly by his instincts. I am willing to admit that his
reasoning powers are but slightly developed, as he is unable to
concentrate his thoughts for any length of time on one subject, but he
can come to a logical conclusion, a fact which has been denied.[10]
Footnote 10:
See, for example, _Transactions of Royal Society of New South Wales_
for January 1883.
In a few minutes my hut was ready. It made me feel depressed to be alone
with the savages in such a stormy night. The fog was dense, and it was
so dark that we could not see our hands before our eyes. As my hut stood
in the centre of those of the natives, I had built a fire on either
side, and in order to keep close watch of them I made two entrances. I
was tired, and soon fell asleep.
Later in the night a most violent shower of rain suddenly fell upon us;
the water poured through the roofs of our huts and put out the fires. I
awoke in inky darkness and heard the natives groaning in their disgust
at this unexpected shower-bath on their naked bodies. I got up and drew
my woollen blanket close around me and waited for the dawn of day.
Long before daybreak the natives began making fresh fires, and with
their remarkable skill in this respect they soon had a fire kindled in
front of each hut. By constructing a sort of shed of palm leaves they
succeeded in keeping them alive through the night. Every now and then
they had to go out into the scrubs and gather pieces of bark or dry
rubbish from hollow trees. Our huts became united, as it were, by these
little sheds under one roof, and the result was that we were
considerably troubled by smoke.
It is most delightful to be able to stretch one’s wet and tired limbs by
the fire even in the hut of a savage, and to be warm and cosy while the
rain pours down outside. To the Australian the fire is, of course, of
great importance, for with him it takes the place of clothes in cold
weather. On Herbert river the natives, as before stated, go naked all
the year round. The women, and particularly the older ones, may
occasionally be seen covered with a mat made from the inner bark of the
tea-tree, and this mat was also sometimes used on the floor of the hut.
They wear it over their shoulders, but it scarcely does more than cover
their shoulderblades, like a lady’s cape. The skins of animals are never
used as mats or clothes.
During the two or three days that we stayed here the blacks spent most
of the time in sleeping and eating. The women mended the fires and
repaired the roofs where they leaked. I was busy much of the time drying
my clothes. I hung them in front of the fire, and in the course of a day
they were sufficiently dry to put on. As exercise in the open air was
out of the question, I had to spend these days in my hut either in a
reclining or a sitting position, and, like the blacks, tried to pass the
time by sleeping. The unceasing rain soon destroyed the roofs of our
huts, so that both the men and the women had to repair to the scrub and
get more palm leaves. They also made a little trench round each hut to
carry the water away, but they were usually idle. When they did not
sleep they continually demanded food and tobacco; the men had some right
to do so, but the women had no claim on me, for it was originally agreed
that they were to accompany me at their own expense. They had also
brought with them their own food, consisting of the usual unpalatable
plants and fruits.
My people had noticed that I took my meals—breakfast, dinner, and
supper—regularly, and this had given rise to their habit of asking for
food at the same time and of applying civilised names to the meals.
Savages live irregularly, and eat when they are hungry. It was curious
to hear them demand “breakfast,” “dinner,” and “supper,” even if they
had just been gorging themselves with their own food. During these days
I scarcely heard any other words from their lips.
I was astonished to see the men on this occasion give the women a part
of their rations, and what particularly surprised me was that they gave
them more than they kept themselves. The native likes to assume a
liberal air, sometimes even towards his wife; for a person bestowing
gifts right and left is looked upon as a great man. Thus it is the
custom for a man who has slain a wild animal to eat but little of it
himself, and to distribute it freely among his comrades, whom he watches
with satisfaction while they prepare and consume his game. This chivalry
towards the fair sex was an annoyance to me, for my provisions were not
over abundant.
As the rain continued some days longer, I was obliged to call the
attention of the blacks to the fact that my provisions were nearly
consumed, so that they must look for their own food. Two of them did go
out, and soon returned with a few larvæ and some young shoots of the
palm-tree. This was all the effort considered necessary to supply
themselves with food for a whole day. These shoots consisted of the
fresh buddings of the _Ptychosperma cunninghamii_. It was roasted in the
ashes, but is usually eaten raw. I could not eat it, for it has an
insipid and revolting taste even when boiled in water.
[Illustration:
RIFLE-BIRD (_Ptiloris victoriæ_).
]
One day, as I went outside the hut to stretch my cramped legs, I
discovered in the fog a bird which acted in a singular manner. While
sitting on a branch it raised its wings, twisting its body to either
side, in which position it looked like a cormorant drying its wings. I
shot it, and the blacks fetched it to me out of the scrub. It was an
Australian bird of paradise, the celebrated Rifle-bird (_Ptiloris
victoriæ_), which, according to Gould, has the most brilliant plumage of
all Australian birds. It is difficult to determine its colour, as its
velvet-like plumage assumes the most varied tints according as the light
falls upon it.