The burial of the blacks—Black mummies—Sorcerers or wizards—Myths and
legends—The doctrine of the Trinity in New South Wales—The belief
in a future life among the blacks.
[Illustration:
BURIAL IN NORTHERN QUEENSLAND.
]
On our way home from an expedition we discovered a grave in a “white
ants’” hill. The entrance was about a yard high. It was built on the
side of the ant-hill, extending about half way up, and had a sloping
front. In front of the opening large pieces of the bark of the tea-tree
were placed, on which heavy stones were rolled in order to keep wild
dogs from getting to the corpse. In a tree near the grave hung a
capacious basket. This led me to think that the Australian natives
probably believe in a future life, and I examined this basket to see
whether provisions had been left in it, but I found it empty. I asked
the natives whether there had been food in the basket, so that the
deceased might have something to eat, but this was an idea which they
could not comprehend. They informed me that a child was buried here. The
parents were so much grieved at the loss of their child that they did
not care to keep the basket in which they had carried it, and had
accordingly left it beside the grave.
[Illustration:
A LARGE BASKET FROM NORTHERN QUEENSLAND FOR CARRYING CHILDREN (¼
size).
]
The Australian natives usually bury their dead, but they invariably
strive to avoid letting the corpse come into direct contact with the
earth, and the dead body is therefore wrapped in bark or other
materials. The graves are not very deep, and sometimes have a direction
from east to west, and the foot of the grave is toward the rising sun.
In some parts of Queensland two sticks, painted red and about a yard
high, are erected near the grave, and on the tops of the sticks feathers
of the white cockatoo are fastened. If the deceased was a prominent man,
a hut is sometimes built over his grave. The entrance, which faces the
east, has an opening through which a grown person may creep. In some
parts of Australia the dead body is placed in a sitting posture, and a
mound is built over it. There are also tribes which bury their dead in a
standing position. Near Rockhampton I saw several graves not more than a
foot deep, in which the feet were directed toward the rising sun. Hills
are usually selected as burial-places. At Coomooboolaroo the dead bodies
both of women and men are laid into graves as long as the corpses, about
a yard under the sod, and wrapped in pieces of cloth or bark. The graves
are filled with small tree-trunks up to the level of the ground, and
then a thin layer of soil is laid on the top.
East of Fitzroy river women are laid in an open trench, the earth having
been dug out with a “yam-stick” and neatly piled up all round; the body
is in this way left quite exposed, and the legs are bent upwards. The
grass all round for a couple of yards or more is removed, leaving the
ground quite bare; this is probably done to protect the grave in case of
bush-fire. After a time their relations come and gather the bones, cut a
hole in a hollow tree, and put the bones into it. The hole is then
filled up with grass, and twigs or sticks are laid on the top to keep
the grass in. The tree-trunk above and below the hole (around which the
bark is cut away) they paint with red or red and white colours.
An old warrior who has been a strong man and therefore much respected by
his tribe, is after his death put on a platform made with forked sticks,
cross-pieces, and a sheet or two of bark; he is hoisted up amidst a
pandemonium of noise, howling, and wailing, besides much cutting with
tomahawks and banging of heads with nolla-nollas. He is laid on his back
with his knees up, like the females, and the grass is cleared away from
under and all round. The place is now for a long time carefully avoided,
till he is quite shrivelled, whereupon his bones are taken away and put
in a tree. The common man is buried like a woman, only that logs are put
over him and his bones are not removed. Young children are put bodily
into the trees.
The fact that the natives bestow any care on the bodies of the dead is
doubtless owing to their fear of the spirits of the departed. In some
places I have seen the legs drawn up and tied fast to the bodies, in
order to hinder the spirits of the dead, as it were, from getting out to
frighten the living. Women and children, whose spirits are not feared,
receive less attention and care after death.
In several tribes it is customary to bury the body where the person was
born. I know of a case where a dying man was transported fifty miles in
order to be buried in the place of his nativity. It has even happened
that the natives have begun digging outside a white man’s kitchen door,
because they wanted to bury an old man born there. In Central Queensland
I saw many burial-places on hills. Such are also said to be found in New
South Wales and in Victoria. These burial-grounds have been in use for
centuries, and are considered sacred.
In South Australia and in Victoria the head is not buried with the body,
for the skull is preserved and used as a drinking-cup. It is a common
custom to place the dead between pieces of bark and grass on a scaffold,
where they remain until they are decayed, and then the bones are buried
in the ground. In the northern part of Queensland I have heard people
say that the natives have a custom of placing themselves under these
scaffolds to let the fat drop on them, and that they believe that this
puts them in possession of the strength of the dead man.
A kind of mummy, dried by the aid of fire and smoke, is also found in
Australia. Male children are most frequently prepared in this manner.
The corpse is then packed into a bundle, which is carried for some time
by the mother. She has it with her constantly, and at night sleeps with
it at her side. After about six months, when nothing but the bones
remain, she buries it in the earth. Full-grown men are also sometimes
carried in this manner, particularly the bodies of great warriors. This
is done, for instance, in the southern part of Queensland, and a mummy
of this kind may be seen in the Brisbane Museum. Mr. Finch-Hatton
relates in _Advance Australia_ that when an old warrior dies he is
skinned with the greatest care, and after the survivors have eaten as
much of him as they like, the bones are cleaned and packed into the
skin, and thus the remains are carried for years.
The natives in the neighbourhood of Portland Bay, in the south-western
part of South Australia, cremate their dead by placing the corpse in a
hollow tree and setting fire to it. This is also done by the tribes west
of Townsville.
In connection with this, I am reminded of Lucian’s words: “Various
people have various modes of burial. The Greeks cremated their dead; the
Persians buried them; the Hindoos anoint them with a kind of gum; the
Scythians eat them; and the Egyptians embalm them.” Here we are given
nearly all the modes of burial which have existed both among civilised
people and among barbarians, and strange to say, we find all these modes
represented among the savages of Australia.
The natives of Australia have this peculiarity, in common with the
savages of other countries, that they never utter the names of the dead,
lest their spirits should hear the voices of the living and thus
discover their whereabouts.
There seems to be a widespread belief in the soul’s existence
independently of matter. On this point Fraser relates that the Kūlin
tribe (Victoria) believes that every man and animal has a _mūrŭp_ (ghost
or spirit), which can pass into other bodies. A person’s mūrŭp may in
his lifetime leave his body and visit other people in their dreams.
After death the mūrŭp is supposed to appear again, to visit the grave of
its former possessor, to communicate with living persons in their
dreams, to eat remnants of food lying near the camp, and to warm itself
by their night fires.[15] A similar belief has been observed among the
blacks of Lower Guinea. On my travels I, too, found a widespread fear of
the spirits of the dead, to which the imagination of the natives
attributed all sorts of remarkable qualities. The greater the man was on
earth the more his departed spirit is feared. Of the spirits of those
long since departed there is no dread. Upon the whole, it may be said
that these children of nature are unable to conceive a human soul
independent of the body, and the future life of the individual lasts no
longer than his physical remains.
Footnote 15:
_Transactions of Royal Society of New South Wales_, 1882.
In the various tribes are so-called wizards, who pretend to communicate
with the spirits of the dead and get information from them. They are
able to produce sickness or death whenever they please, and they can
produce or stop rain and many other things. Hence these wizards are
greatly feared. Mr. Curr has very properly called attention to the
influence of this fear of witchcraft upon the character and customs of
the natives. It makes them bloodthirsty, and at the same time darkens
and embitters their existence. An Australian native is unable to
conceive death as natural, except as the result of an accident or of old
age, while diseases and plagues are always ascribed to witchcraft and to
hostile blacks.
This superstitious fear causes and maintains hatred between the tribes,
and is the chief reason why the Australian blacks continue to live in
small communities and are unable to rise to a higher plane of social
development.
In order to be able to practise his arts against any black man, the
wizard must be in possession of some article that has belonged to
him—say, some of his hair or of the food left in his camp, or some
similar thing. On Herbert river the natives need only to know the name
of the person in question, and for this reason they rarely use their
proper names in addressing or speaking of each other, but simply their
class-names. The wizard is, as a rule, a man far advanced in years, but
I knew a youth of only twenty who enjoyed a great reputation for his
sorcery. The wizard is also the physician of the tribe, and imagines
that he can cure all diseases and that he has great power over the
“devil-devil.”
I once met a black man who told me that he personally had been the
victim of strange wizards, and that ever since that time he had been a
sufferer from headache. One afternoon, many years ago, two wizards had
captured him and bound him; they had taken out his entrails and put in
grass instead, and had let him lie in this condition until sunrise. Then
he suddenly recovered his senses and became tolerably well, a result for
which he was indebted to a wizard of his own tribe, who thus proved
himself more powerful than the two strangers. The blacks call an
operation of this kind _kóbi_, and a man who is able to perform it, and
who, as a matter of course, is very much respected and feared, is said
to be “much kóbi,” a fact of which I, too, used to boast, for the
purpose of maintaining my importance in the eyes of the blacks, and in
this I was successful, at least in the beginning. “Kóbi” was the most
dreadful thing imaginable. It usually ended in death, and although the
life of the victim might be saved, he would for ever after have a
reminder in the form of constant headache.
An old warrior in a tribe not far from Rockhampton was taken very ill.
The tribe being at the time near a station, asked the manager, who was a
friend of mine, to give the sick man some medicine. “Holloway’s pills,”
the usual medicine in the bush, was accordingly supplied to him, but
without making him any better. The doctor of the tribe had then to bring
his powers into action. All the blacks attributed his illness to some
strange black-fellows who had put some pieces of broken glass into him,
and these the doctor was now willing to take out, in order to effect a
cure. The old man was laid in front of a big fire; all the members of
the tribe had placed themselves solemnly round him, some of his five
“gins” crying. Suddenly out of the darkness appeared a huge black-fellow
dressed up to his eyes in paint and feathers and carrying a long spear
in his one hand, while in the other he held a small pouch made out of a
kangaroo’s scrotum. Then began the most awful row one can
imagine—crocodile tears flowing in streams. The doctor placed himself
within reach of the patient, stretched out his spear and touched him
with the point, and all the noise at once ceased; the eager look on all
the dark faces round was something to see. Every time the doctor raised
his spear he produced a piece of broken glass from his hair and put it
into the bag, this performance being followed by a great yell from all
those assembled. He produced altogether seven pieces of glass, and the
crowd uttered a yell for each piece. When all was over, the doctor
disappeared into the darkness, and the sick man recovered. All the
blacks believed that he had drawn these pieces up the spear into his
hair, and to try to convince them of the absurdity of such an opinion
only made them sulkily say, “White-fellow stupid fellow.”
Strange to say, many of the civilised blacks believe that they will be
changed hereafter into white men—that they will “jump up white-fellow,”
and it is also an interesting fact that many tribes use the same word
for “spirit” and for “white man.” It has frequently happened that the
savages have taken white men to be their own deceased fellows, which
confirms the theory prevalent in many parts of Australia that the
natives believe in a future life. Near a station in Central Queensland
the white population observed that a black woman repeatedly brought food
to the grave of her deceased husband.
The Australian blacks do not, like many other savage tribes, attach any
ideas of divinity to the sun or moon. On one of our expeditions the full
moon rose large and red over the palm forest. Struck by the splendour of
the scene, I pointed at the moon and asked my companions: “Who made it?”
They answered: “Other blacks.” Thereupon I asked: “Who made the sun?”
and I got the same answer. The natives also believe that they themselves
can produce rain, particularly with the help of their wizards. To
produce rain they call _milka_. When on our expeditions we were
overtaken by violent tropical storms my blacks always became enraged at
the strangers who had caused the rain. Even my naïve friend Yokkai once
boasted that he and the young Mangola-Maggi, who was a wizard, had
produced rain to worry other blacks.
I never succeeded in discovering myths and legends among the blacks of
Herbert river; but they are close observers of the starry heavens, and I
was surprised to find that they had different names for the planets,
distinguishing them by their size. In other parts of Australia the fancy
of the natives makes the stars inhabited, and in this way several
beautiful myths have been developed.
The southern tribes of Australia not only occupy their minds with myths
and legends, but they also have definite religious notions. Some very
interesting information in regard to the idea of a God cherished by
these southern natives has been furnished by Mr. Manning, who in 1845
discovered among some tribes of New South Wales a doctrine of the
Trinity, which bears so striking a resemblance to that of the Christian
religion that we are tempted to take it to be the result of the
influence of missionaries.[16] But according to the author, the
missionaries did not visit these tribes until many years later. They
recognise a supreme, benevolent, omnipotent Being, _Boyma_, seated far
away in the north-east on an immense throne made of transparent crystal
and standing in a great lake. He has an omniscient son, _Grogoragally_,
who brings men to his father’s throne, to be judged by the latter, and
the son is the mediator. There is also a third person, half human, half
divine, _Moogeegally_, who is the great lawgiver to men, and who makes
Boyma’s will known to them. They also believe in a hell with everlasting
fire, and a heaven, where the blessed dance and amuse themselves.
Several other authors agree that the southern tribes of Australia
believe in a supreme good Being, though they have nowhere found a
religious system so perfectly developed as the one above described. Mr.
Ridley’s statements concerning the Kamilaroy tribe are particularly
remarkable. These natives believe in a creator, _Bhaiamé_, who is to
judge mankind. The word is derived from _baio_, to cut or make—thus
creator,—and is distinctly identical with Manning’s _Boyma_.
Footnote 16:
_Transactions of Royal Society of New South Wales_, 1882.
Others again, as for instance Mr. Mann (in New South Wales), who has
made a thirty years’ study of the blacks, deny that the natives have any
religion whatever except fear of the “devil-devil.”
It is not easy to understand this want of agreement among the
authorities. If, however, the above-mentioned theory, that the south
part of Australia is inhabited by a higher and more developed race than
that in the north, is correct, then this supplies the solution of the
problem.
As to the natives on Herbert river, it is my opinion that they do not
believe in any supreme good Being, but only in a demon, and it was even
difficult for them to give any definite account of this devil. On the
other hand, it must be admitted that the natives are very reluctant to
give any information in regard to their religious beliefs. They look
upon them as secrets not to be divulged to persons not of their own
race. Hence there is a possibility that they believed in a God and had
more developed notions than I suspected, but I do not regard this as
probable. Besides, I have evidence from various sources that the same is
the case with other tribes.
Mr. George Angas[17] says of the tribes on Murray river in South
Australia: “They appear to have no religious observances whatever. They
acknowledge no Supreme Being, worship no idols, and believe only in the
existence of a spirit, whom they consider as the author of ill, and
regard with superstitious dread. They are in perpetual fear of malignant
spirits, or bad men, who, they say, go abroad at night; and they seldom
venture from the encampment after dusk, even to fetch water, without
carrying a fire-stick in their hands, which they consider has the
property of repelling these evil spirits.”
Footnote 17:
_Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand._ London, 1850,
vol. i. p. 88.
In _The Fifth Continent_, p. 69, Mr. Charles Eden appears to me to use
rather strong language when he says: “I verily believe that we have
arrived at the sum total of their religion, if a superstitious dread of
the unknown can be so designated. Their mental capacity does not admit
of their grasping the higher truths of pure religion.”
Mr. Curr is of the opinion that the religious ideas which people claim
to have found among the Australian natives are simply the result of the
influence of the white man, the ideas being modified to suit the fancy
of the natives.
At all events, it is certain that neither idolatry nor sacrifices are to
be found in Australia. Nor have the natives, so far as I know, ever been
seen to pray.
In conclusion, I will give a brief account of a conversation which I had
one evening with the Kanaka at Herbert Vale, for in my estimation it
throws some light on this question. In his native home, in the far-off
South Sea Islands, he had received instruction from missionaries, but
had not been converted to Christianity. He said he did not like the
missionaries. On this occasion—it was a mild, starlit night, such a one
as can be seen only in the tropics—he asked me if it was true that we
would some day go to the stars up there. I explained to him what
Christianity teaches in regard to a life hereafter. “There is a much
better place up there after death,” he remarked. Some of the natives
were standing round us with their mouths wide open. Suddenly he burst
into laughter, and pointing with one hand to the glittering stars, said:
“The blacks do not believe that there is anybody above us up there.”
The objection might be made to this statement, that the natives,
particularly the older ones, had secrets which they were unwilling to
divulge to the younger members of the tribe, with whom the Kanaka mostly
associated, and that he consequently was not acquainted with the
religious ideas of the tribe, but it appears to me that so important a
matter as the belief in a God could scarcely have escaped his
observation, for he was constantly with them both by day and by night.
He spoke their language fluently, was married to a woman of their tribe,
and had become wholly identified with them in customs and habits of
thought.