THE AUSTRALIAN RACE.
Physical Conformation of the Australians—Their Low State of Civilisation—Their Superstitions—Their Wars—Singing and Dancing—The Corribory—Division of the Nation into Great Families—Rules regulating the Property of Land and the Distribution of Food—Skill in Hunting the Kangaroo and the Opossum—Feasting on a Whale—Moral Qualities and Intelligence of the Australians.
On turning from the Malayan Archipelago and New Guinea, to the wilds of northern Australia, new aspects of savage life rise before our view. With new plants and new animals, a new variety of the human race makes its appearance, differing in figure, in physiognomy, in language, and in many of its customs and manners both from the Malay and the Papuan: a race which, though occupying one of the lowest grades in the scale of humanity, still offers many points of interest to the observer, and claims our attention both by its qualities and its defects.
The figure of the Australians is remarkable for spareness and lankness about the lower extremities, the hips and thighs as well as the calves of the legs, observable in the females as well as in the men. Their heads are in general large, with very projecting eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the nose broad, the mouth wide; and there is very often a ferocious look which is not in accordance with the character of the individual. The hair is often matted and twisted with filth and grease into different fashions; when clean, however, it is frequently as fine and glossy as that of the European. Its colour is in some of the children of a sunburnt brown, but invariably black among the adults. In their skins they vary from a dark chocolate-brown to an almost perfect black. Their hands and feet are467 usually small and well-shaped; the shoulders and chests of the men broad, and sufficiently muscular. Such is the physical character of the race from one end of the continent to the other, and though there are deviations from the usual slim and under-fed condition of the body, and from the usual straight character of the hair, the face, figure, and expression of an Australian is so peculiar as to distinguish him at once from the inhabitants even of the immediately adjacent islands.
In all the industrial arts these people are extremely deficient. They are utterly destitute of agriculture, and of all manufacture of any kind of material, or tool, or implement, beyond their few weapons and a rude stone hammer, and some simple nets and baskets. Over the largest part of the coast they were utterly ignorant of any kind of canoe until they were visited by Europeans; and where most advanced in navigation, knew no other method of crossing the water than in rude boats formed of a sheet of bark tied at the ends, or on rafts consisting of bundles of rushes or sticks. They have no huts worthy of the name, nor permanent habitations of any kind. Men and women are alike naked, except that in the southern parts of Australia they wear a kind of rug of opossum skins over their shoulders during the cold weather. Many tribes strike out one or two front teeth, and raise great scars and cicatrices on the skin. They also paint themselves with various colours, like most other savages, and sometimes also ornament themselves with beads and shells, but make no use of the beautiful feathers procurable from the birds of the country.
Their languages, although showing evident traces of a common origin, yet vary so much and so frequently that a native of one tribe can rarely understand the tongue of another fifty miles distant. Their religious notions are limited to a feeling of vague superstition. They are in great dread of an evil being whom they describe as going about under the form of a black man, of superhuman stature and strength. He prowls at night through the woods around the encampments of the natives, seeking to entrap some unwary wanderer, whom he will seize upon, and having dragged him to his fire, will there roast and devour him. He may, however, be frightened away, by throwing fire at him, and no native will go out at night without a firebrand to protect him from this demon.
468 They have also a superstitious horror of approaching the graves of the dead, of whom they never like to speak, and when induced to do so, always whisper.
The supposed powers of the Boylyas, or native sorcerers, have a mighty influence upon their minds and actions. It is supposed that these privileged personages can transport themselves through the air at pleasure, and render themselves invisible to all but other Boylyas. If they have a dislike to a native, they can kill him by stealing on him at night and consuming his flesh. Another Boylya has, however, the power of drawing them out, and curing the affected person by certain processes of disenchantment.
The absurd idea that no adult person dies a natural death reigns among the Australians as it does among many of the American, Malayan, and Negro tribes, and leads to the same baneful consequences. If a man perishes of disease his death is generally supposed to have been caused by some sorcerer of another tribe, and must be avenged on his murderer, or on some near relation of his.
This senseless belief, inspired by the demon of discord, is of course the source of frequent wars, and one of the causes which serve to maintain the native Australians in their state of barbarism. The aggrieved party, anxious for revenge, assembles its neighbours, to consult with them concerning the proper course to be pursued. The general opinion having been declared for war, a messenger is sent to announce their intention to the opposite party. These immediately assemble their friends and neighbours, and all prepare for the approaching battle. The two armies (usually from fifty to two hundred each) meet, and after a great deal of mutual vituperation, the combat commences. From their singular dexterity in avoiding or parrying the missiles of their adversaries, the engagement usually continues a long time without any fatal result. When a man is killed (and sometimes before) a cessation takes place; another scene of recrimination, abuse, and explanation ensues, and the affair commonly terminates. All hostility is now at an end, the two parties mix amicably together, bury the dead, and join in a general dance, for, like all other savage races, the Australians are very fond of singing and saltatorial displays. Their songs are short, containing generally only one or two469 ideas repeated over and over again. Is a native in a towering passion, he sings to himself some such words as
‘I’ll spear his liver, I’ll spear his lights, I’ll spear his heart,’ &c., &c.
while he sharpens the weapon intended to execute his menace, and waxing more and more excited as he sings, quivers his spear in the air, and, furiously gesticulating, imitates the various incidents of a fight. His wives chime in from time to time with a line or two expressive of their contempt for the offender:
‘The bone-rumped, Long-shinned, Thin-thighed fellow.’
the bystanders applaud, and the savage, having fairly sung the wrath out of himself, assists in getting up a dance. Is a native afraid, he sings himself full of courage; is he hungry, he sings; if he is full (provided he is not so full as to be in a state of stupor), he sings more lustily than ever; in fact, under all circumstances he finds aid and comfort from singing. The Australian songs are therefore naturally varied in their forms, but their concision conveys in the simplest manner the impulsive idea. By a song or wild chant the women irritate the men to acts of vengeance, and four or five mischievously-inclined old women can soon stir up forty or fifty men to any deed of blood by means of their chants, which are accompanied by tears and groans, until the men are worked into a perfect state of frenzy.
Among the native dances, the Corribory is the most remarkable. It is always performed at night, by the light of blazing boughs, to time beaten on a stretched skin. The dancers are all painted white, and in such remarkably varied ways that not two are alike. Darkness seems essential to the performance of a corribory, and the white figures coming forward in mystic order from an obscure background, while the singers and the beaters of drums are invisible, produce a highly theatrical effect. At first, two persons make their appearance, slowly moving their arms and legs; then others one by one join in, each imperceptibly warming into the truly savage attitude of470 the corribory jump; the legs then stride to the utmost, the head is turned over one shoulder, the eyes glare and are fixed with savage energy all in one direction, the arms also are raised and inclined towards the head, and the hands usually grasp the boomerang or some other warlike weapon. The jump now keeps time with each beat, the dancers at every movement taking six inches to one side, all being in a connected line led by the first. The line is sometimes doubled and trebled, according to the space and to the number of the performers, and this produces a great effect, for when the front line jumps to the left the second jumps to the right, and thus this strange savage dance goes on with increasing intensity, until it suddenly and instantaneously stops, having attained the highest pitch of vivacity.
One of the most remarkable facts connected with the Australians is their division into certain great families, such as the Ballaroke, the Tolondarup, the Ngotock, &c., all the members of which bear the same names. These family names are perpetuated and spread through the country by the operation of two remarkable laws—that a man cannot marry a woman of his own family name, and that children of either sex always take the family name of their mother.
Each family adopts some animal or plant as its Kobong, or badge, and none of its members will kill an animal or pluck any plant of the species to which its Kobong belongs, except under particular circumstances.
The ceremony of marriage, which among most nations is considered so important and interesting, is with this people one of the least regarded. The woman is looked upon as an article of property, and is sold or given away by her relatives without the slightest consideration of her own pleasure. When a native dies, his brother inherits his wives and children, but his brother must be of the same family name as himself.
The old men manage to keep the females a good deal among themselves, giving their daughters to one another; and the more female children they have, the greater is their chance of getting another wife by this sort of exchange.
A most remarkable law is that which obliges families connected by blood upon the female side to join for the purpose of avenging crimes, and as the father marries several wives, and471 very often all of different families, his children are all repeatedly divided among themselves, no common bond of union exists between them, and this custom alone would suffice to perpetuate their savage state.
Though they in no instance cultivate the soil, but subsist entirely by hunting and fishing, and on the wild roots they find in certain localities, with occasionally a little wild honey, every tribe has its own district, beyond whose well-defined limits it seldom passes except for purposes of war or festivity; and within that district all the wild animals are considered the property of the tribe inhabiting or rather ranging on its whole extent. Should any other tribe venture to intrude upon that district this is at once resisted as a violation of the rights of property, and is, indeed, a frequent cause of the wars which decimate the population, for the Australian aboriginal is as jealous of his rights and as pugnacious in their defence as any European can be.
But particular districts are not merely the property of particular tribes, particular sections or portions of these districts are universally recognised by the natives as belonging to individual members of these tribes; and as in England a man disposes of his property by will, thus among these savages a ‘lord of the manor’ divides his land during his lifetime, fairly apportioning it among his several sons, and at as early an age as fourteen or fifteen they can point out the portion which they are eventually to inherit. The punishment of ‘trespass for the purpose of hunting’ is i............