Transcriber’s Note

The cover image was restored by Thiers Halliwell and is placed in the public domain.

Click any image to see a larger version.

See [end of this document] for details of corrections and other changes.

THE ABORIGINES
OF
AUSTRALIA.

BY
RICHARD SADLEIR, R.N., J.P.

SYDNEY: THOMAS RICHARDS, GOVERNMENT PRINTER.
1883.

CONTENTS.

THE ABORIGINES OF AUSTRALIA.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

Shortly after my arrival in the Colony in 1826, I was appointed to a Commission of Inquiry into the state of the Aborigines. Previous to that, martial law had been proclaimed about Bathurst, where the blacks had been committing serious aggressions under Monday, their chief.

My journey, extending over 1,600 miles, occupied six months. I lived partly with these people, so as to ascertain their number, language, habits, &c., and proposed a scheme of reserves, as in Canada, a border police, and missionary education, but the cost, £6,000 per annum, was considered too much, and my suggestion was therefore not acted on.

I was subsequently examined, together with Mr. Robinson and the Rev. Mr. Threlkeld, before the Committee of the Legislative Council, about 1837, from which much information was acquired.

The present work is part of a large manuscript, and I have thought it a favourable opportunity to publish it, now that fresh interest is awakened about these people, devoting any profits to the Missions lately established within New South Wales.

R. S.

CHAPTER I.

Origin⁠—Language⁠—Marriage formalities⁠—Infanticide⁠—Relationships⁠—Population⁠—Spitting Tribe⁠—Encounter Tribe⁠—Tribal divisions⁠—Intelligence⁠—Laws⁠—Customs⁠—Ceremony of Depilation⁠—Funeral customs.

The origin of this race is difficult to trace; they seem to have no traditions, and, although the country abounds in gold, copper, and iron, they never appear to have reached the metal implement age. Living principally on the chase, agriculture was not carried on by them, and their only domestic animal was the dingo. There are no remains of architecture amongst them; yet the same painted hand as is found in South America affords some faint trace of their connection with that country. The language, however, furnishes some clue; the grammatical structure of all Australian aboriginal dialects is the same. A few words show a connection with the Aryan rather than the Turanian race, and are, in fact, allied, both in sound and meaning, to words used by nations deriving their speech from the Sanscrit.

Many examples may be given of the affinity of the aborigines’ language and those spoken by the various Aryan nations. Possibly this may have been caused by the intercourse with Malays, who from time to time visited the northern coast. The diversity of dialects of the Australian language is deemed to be proof of their high antiquity as a race, as it is thought that a great length of time must have elapsed since they had but one tongue. Their numbers are small in proportion to the extent of the country, but this may have arisen from the want of food, in the absence of any cultivation, although in a fine country with few hardships from climate or other causes.

Some may be descended from the Arabs who spread themselves beyond the Indian Archipelago. From the mixture of Arab words, and the rites of circumcision in some tribes, and from the extensive spread of the Arab, there may be reason to suppose they have a large infusion of that blood.

The people of the adjoining islands resemble closely the aboriginals. They go naked, have no fixed habitation, use bone and stone implements, have no knowledge of metals or pottery, and in stature, colour, and appearance are similar; but they resemble more the Tasmanians, who are of purer blood. The natives lived under fixed laws, so when the whites arrived, and those that occupied the shore could not fall back, as their intrusion would have added to the wants of those behind them, they were therefore obliged to stand their ground and take the consequences of meeting a superior race, so that their skeletons were found in abundance in caves and amidst projecting rocks, having fallen victims to famine, especially about Sydney, and to the small-pox.—Collins.

The Rev. Dr. Lang enters largely into the origin of this people. He conceives they must have been originally a martial people. One thing is remarkable, they have no idol worship.

The aborigines afford us some information upon the original condition of mankind—that they have descended from a higher state of existence, and not risen from a lower state of barbarism. Their language is one proof that it is far above, as some assert to be, the original language of man, that of the imitation merely of the brute creation. It is remarkable for its complexity of structure and the precision with which it can be used. It is evidently derived from one root, although there are different dialects. The term for river is Mawersal; so with eye, Meyl. It is very euphonious and significant, combining great power with simplicity. Thus, the term for a cloud is both elegant and expressive, “Gabley maar,” the well of the sky or the fountain of the firmament. “Moorang toeen” is to weep, the same import as “gabley maar.” The “ong” of the Hebrew is of frequent use among these people. They have the dual number throughout, six cases in each declension of nouns and pronouns, and verbs with regular roots. They have names for relationship far more copious than we have in English. If they were only developed from a lower creation they would never have constructed this language. They must have descended, and their language is a remnant of their higher ancestry. Next their customs: these are of a most laborious and cumbersome character, having many curious rites observed with great exactness; yet they can give no account of their origin or even of their uses, so that we may well conclude that they descended to them, and were not invented by them. Of inventions: the present natives have no power of invention, and have no idea of numerals; yet we find the boomerang, and throwing-stick for the spear (woomera), the former on scientific principles, and other things which must have descended to them and not been invented by them, denoting a higher ancestry, from which they still draw much, handed down by use and tradition.

We have in these particulars strong evidence that the savages are upon the descending scale; while from the remains of animals that once inhabited the country, we have another evidence that in all these kingdoms there is a retrogression rather than a progression, except where man is elevated by copying and improving on the arts of nature to a certain extent in painting, architecture, statuary, &c., or where Christianity has elevated the human race. And so it is with these natives who have embraced Christianity; they build houses and churches, read, write, and learn agriculture, and thereby rise above the common degeneration.

In fact, the very ruins of past nations show that mankind has sprung from an intellectual source and gradually descended, as with all the Eastern nations, and more so in social proportion as they lost the knowledge of the true God. The very licentiousness under heathen dominion, and the very cruelties of heathen rites, the degradation of the female sex, and constant wars, have all a downward tendency. So that however high Greece and Rome rose, they had within them the germs of decay. Hence the value of missions for conveying civilization and moral exaltation, renewing as it were the life of man upon the earth, regenerating humanity.

The Bishop of Perth, in his appeal on behalf of the aborigines, says:⁠—“The darkness of ignorance is dark indeed, but far darker is their state when to the darkness of ignorance has been added the degradation of the chequered vices of civilization, the consciousness of being treated and held as serfs of a race above them, while all illumination of soul or conscience has been denied them. The primitive state of these people was far better than their present debauched, degraded, perishing condition.”

The Bishop says that in the Roebourne District, which has now been for some years occupied with cattle and sheep for some 300 miles along the coast, there is a population of nearly 2,000 aborigines. The majority of them are in the employ of the settlers, either on their stations or the pearl fisheries, of which the port of Cossack is the centre, while, in the Gascoyne and newly discovered Kimberley Districts the natives are very numerous, although mostly in their wild state. They are, through the Northern Districts, a fine, intelligent, able-bodied race, and when, as in the Roebourne District, they have been brought into the employment of the settlers, have proved valuable as shepherds, shearers, and divers. A solitary lady (the only labourer) it appears has gathered a few native children about her for instruction.

The Bishop then enters into the question of missions. Says he has £500 in hand, also £500 promised, hopes to obtain collections, and that the Government has promised every assistance in its power, such as reserves of land and pecuniary aid. There is therefore some promise of commencement here.

While they allow polygamy, they do not permit marriages within a certain descent, and it is a crime worthy of death to marry one of the wrong sort; the distinction of tribes by name is the distinction of marriage. Ippai may marry Kapota or any Ippata but his own sister, Murri may marry Buta only, Kumbo may marry Mata only. An infraction of these laws is death. Marriage is not conducted, as generally represented, as a forcible act, at least not in all the tribes. The female is given in marriage at an early age (ten or twelve years old). It is a kind of exchange; the man who obtains a wife promises to give his sister or other relative in exchange; the parties may never have seen each other.

These marriages are always of different tribes. During the ceremony the relatives camp apart. A man takes a fire-stick and conducts the bride into the midst of the parties and gives her away, walking silently away with downcast looks. As soon as they approach the hut is given up. The bride and bridegroom are placed near each other, and the relatives take their places. The party generally fall asleep; at daybreak the bride leaves the hut for her friends, and in the evening is conducted to her husband by their female friends; the tribes then separate and return to their various districts. The man is bound to provide animal food, the wife vegetables, if she pleases. The husband rubs her over with grease to improve her appearance. If there are several wives they seldom agree, continually quarrelling, and are regarded more as slaves, being employed to the husband’s advantage. The woman who leaves with her own consent to live with a man without the consent of her relations, is regarded as a prostitute and exposed to taunts. The sale of wives is frequent, for either money, clothes, weapons, &c. Woman gives consent by carrying fire to her husband’s wurley and making his fire; an unwilling wife will say, “I never made fire in his wurley.” The eldest wife is always regarded as mistress of the hut. Marriages take place after dark, and are always celebrated with great dancing and singing; sometimes licentiousness takes place, but there are as loving couples as amongst Europeans.

Many old men have three and four wives, while the young continue bachelors; the long suckling of children and infanticide both tend to keep down population.

Women near their confinement retire to be attended by women and to be secluded. After birth, the husband attends on his wife, and often nurses the infant, which, if spared, is most affectionately watched over; but infanticide is very common, so much so that nearly one-half to one-third of the infants are destroyed, and that in a shocking manner. Red hot embers are stuffed into the child’s ears, and the orifice is closed with sand, and then the body is burnt; sometimes a waddy is resorted to. If there be twins, or malformation, or illegitimate children, they are generally destroyed.

When native children are born, they are nearly as white as Europeans. Girls have children at the early age of fourteen. The girls wear an apron of fringe until they bear their first child, and if they have no child, the husband burns the apron, probably as an exposure.

The evil of prostitution is very great. The women are in some districts given up to promiscuous intercourse with the youths at certain seasons.

Relationships are very intricate, and difficult to unravel. They have the Tamilian system, which obtains amongst North-American Indians, and the Telugu and Tamil tribes in the East Indies.

A man looks upon the offspring of his brother as his own sons and daughters, while he only considers those of his sister in the more distant relationship of nephews and nieces. So, also, a woman counts her sister’s children as her own, but those of her brother by a kinship similar to nephews and nieces.

Thus, children look upon their father’s brother in the light of a father, but his sister as their aunt merely; whilst their mother’s sister ranks as a female parent, but her brother as only their uncle.

The scale of relationship is as follows:⁠—Nanghai is my father; Nainkowa is my mother; Ngaiowe is your father; Ninkuwe is your mother; Yikowalle is his father; Narkowalle is his mother.

Widow is Yortangi; widower is Randi; fatherless is Kukathe; motherless is Kulgutye.

One who has lost a child, Mainmaiyari; one bereaved of a brother or sister, Muntyuli.

From this scheme of relationship it seems possible that some came from Southern India—were driven southward by the Malays. Names are changeable, the parents sometimes bearing the name of the child. They are also significant—Putteri is the end; Ngiampinyeri, belonging to the back or loins; Maratinyeri, belonging to emptiness.

Property always descends from father to son.

Mr. Taplin observes that the general idea that there is a law by which the savage must disappear before civilized man is not true, and instances the South American and Dutch colonizations as still preserving the aboriginal races.

English settlers go forth to exercise their freedom, and the Government does not strictly watch their actions, while it makes no particular law for the aboriginal races suitable for their particular situation.

English law is forced upon them; whereas the French and Dutch Governments watchfully manage and regulate everything—the governing power goes with them; the roads, police, everything is kept under the governing power, even the aborigines are under the same.

This, no doubt, in some degree has its influences, while, on the other hand, the native laws to which they were obedient are removed, and the power of the chiefs is destroyed, so that the aboriginal is placed between two influences, the one to which he had always been subject is destroyed, and a new law of which he knows nothing is substituted, and thus he is left in a position of doubt and perplexity, while the food, drink, clothing, and vices of the whites soon gain supremacy.

Nothing can be more disgraceful to a civilized and professing Christian people than this wholesale ruin of their fellow-men, which they attribute to a law, but which is in fact a consequence criminally brought about by our depravity, selfishness, and want of Christian principles. The writer concludes his remarks by saying that they are not an irreligious race; he believes that nothing but the Gospel can save them from extinction.

A few extracts from the lecture of Gideon Lang, delivered in Melbourne, will throw some more light upon the habits of this race.

He says the inhabitants of the whole continent form one people, governed by the same laws and customs, with some allowance for the difference of localities; every tribe, however, has its own district. The government is most arbitrary, composed of old men and powerful men, but degrading to women, the old men often having from five to seven wives, which privilege is denied to young men.

The government is administered by a council of old men, the young not being admitted. There is also a class that go from tribe to tribe, and their medicine men.

The intelligence of the natives is quite underrated. Their skill and activity in war, and their subtlety as diplomatists, Mr. Lang says, are quite equal to the North American Indian. (Having mixed with the North American Indians, I think this is rather exaggerated.)

In the corroborees they have especial performances. 500 sometimes assemble and represent a herd of cattle feeding, the performers being painted accordingly; they lie down and chew the cud, scratch themselves, and lick the calves, &c.; they then proceed to spear the cattle; next are heard a troop of horses galloping; a party with faces painted white, and bodies painted whitey-brown, some blue, others to represent stockmen; then comes a body of natives, and a regular sham-fight takes place, in which the natives are conquerors. But, alas! the murderous hand of the whites has destroyed them by shooting them down, and even resorting to poison, while by our occupation of the country, the destruction of their game, and the introduction of disease, they are fast dying out and disappearing.

Governor Phillip supposed that there were 3,000 aboriginal inhabitants within 200 square miles of Sydney, but now there is scarcely one left.

For the whole of Australia the number is under half a million. Around Melbourne and Sydney the population is extinct. At Port Jackson there were but one male and three females left. And the old Brisbane tribe, which once numbered 1,000, is now nearly extinct. The Tasmanian race is extinct. And so the original inhabitants of this immense country will soon cease to be known. In the north they are a finer race; but they are likewise doomed to perish by European vices and encroachment. Yet these men have made excellent sailors, good policemen, and stockmen, and recently they were conveyed home to England as first-rate cricket-players. Can they want intelligence?

They seem very like the Gipsy race—prone to wander, therefore hard to domesticate. This arises probably from their having to seek their food over a widely scattered area.

Sir G. Grey’s party met with native huts in considerable villages of a more remarkable construction than those of South Australia, being very nicely plastered on the outside with clay and clods of turf; there were also well marked roads, sunken wells, and extensive warren grounds, certainly indicative of some advance in civilization.

The most singular tribe Mitchell met with was what he termed the spitting tribe. These savages waived boughs violently over their heads, spat at the travellers, and threw dust with their toes, and forming into a circle, shouting, jumping, spitting, and throwing up dust, sang war songs with the most hideous gestures; their faces seemed all eyes and teeth.

The Encounter tribe is remarkable for daring. In one case, where the natives were pursued by two police, the blackfellows rushed on the troopers, and knocked one down, and he was only rescued by the arrival of the other trooper, whom the blackfellows also attacked, but were captured.

The sealers on the islands had stolen three women, wives of the blacks. After a short time, two escaped in a miserable canoe; the third attempted with her child to swim, but was drowned.

The natives have suffered much from the whites. There are now three classes of the natives—the old blacks, who hold fast to the customs of the tribes; the natives who are inoculated with the worst vices of the Europeans, being drunkards, gamblers, and utterly lawless; and lastly, the native Christians, yearly increasing in numbers. The tendency of Christian civilization, when adopted, is to make them more vigorous and long-lived.

The country is divided into tribal possessions, which none can intrude upon, so that the tribes are confined within a space of country so small that food often fails.

The tribes are jealous of any invasion of territory. This accounts for divisions of districts, as well as a variety of feature, texture of hair, &c., the latter being sometimes, but rarely, found to be woolly in Tasmania. Long hair is generally met with, but in the interior whole tribes are found entirely destitute of the same, while others are remarkable for being very hairy, except on the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet, and a small space round the eyes; these last are remarkable for strength and stature. Some have frizzled hair like the Papuans, and others have hair over their shoulders like Maccabars, while their beards are as different as the hair of their heads; the colour of the skin varies from black to copper colour, and again to almost white. Their features also differ; the Jewish, Celtic, and Teutonic type are recognizable, from which the stockmen nick-name them Paddy, Sawney, John Bull. They make good seamen, stockmen, and policemen. The aborigines are not Papuans, but are probably cave-dwellers; having no fixed habitation or residence, they depend entirely upon the natural productions of the soil, game, and fish.

The formation of their skulls is sometimes low, but in many instances large and equal to the average of Europeans. The theory of their inferiority is not strictly supported; few persons who have had opportunity of judging will admit this inferiority of intelligence; it needs only cultivation.

They possess all the tender feelings of our common humanity, weeping over each other’s afflictions, as fellow mortals mourning with those who mourn. Exposed to danger and treachery, they are watchful; the rustling of a leaf will make them start to their feet. Acknowledging the law of retaliation, blood for blood, they seldom feel secure.

It would appear that the aborigines of the sea-coast had never ventured far inland, and had never passed the Blue Mountains, as they held to the belief that the interior was inhabited by white people, and that there were large lakes and inland seas.

They are a very law-abiding people; the tribes are under government of the chief elders, who are chosen or elective; they are the leaders in war, and in fact rulers of the tribe.

One of their laws is that none but native weapons shall be used in their battles; another, that an unfair wound shall be punished. Capt. Jack Harvey had bitten a man’s lips; the tribe assembled and sentenced him to four blows of a waddy on his head, the justice of which punishment he acknowledged.

While the great change from their natural habits, diet, and mode of living, when brought under the restriction of civilization, and their natural love of freedom—the influence of the elder people on them when they reach the age of twelve, that they must undergo the ceremonies of piercing the nose and knocking out the tooth, &c., &c.—while these failures (not however destitute of civilizing and Christian evidences) are nevertheless disappointing, yet they have proved that these people are not so degraded as represented, that they are not, as has been openly declared, scarce human, and may therefore be destroyed—indeed, that this is the decree of God. The fact is now incontrovertible that they possess much capacity, considerable intelligence, and are capable of instruction; have the same affections, the same domestic and social relationships as ourselves; are subject to special laws, and defend their country with patriotism. That they have not risen to something higher is well expressed by Mr. Marsden, “They have no wants.” They live in a fine climate, with no ferocious animals to guard against, no mighty lakes and rivers to navigate; they are therefore in a position needing no exertion to quicken their energies, while by their seclusion from mankind for ages, it is only astonishing that they have not descended still lower in the scale of humanity.

They have much natural nobility of character, and much groundwork to work upon. Their case is far from hopeless: Faith removes mountains. Miracles, says Mr. Simeon, have ceased, but wonders have not. Let any man go forth with faith and prayer and perseverance, and he will accomplish wonders. Therefore, in great undertakings, give me the man who loves to trample on apparent impossibilities.

An aboriginal youth is not allowed any of the privileges of manhood, which include not only permission to take a wife (when he can catch one from some neighbouring tribe), but also the right to eat certain kinds of food, before he has undergone certain ceremonies, which, as they are extremely painful and revolting, are supposed to test his courage and power of endurance. These differ in various tribes. Knocking out the front teeth and tattooing the back are amongst the mildest operations. The most painful which is in vogue amongst the South Australian blacks is depilation. The unfortunate victim is laid on his back, his body daubed with clay and ochre, and then the old medicine man of the tribe deliberately plucks every hair from the body of the suffering wretch, accompanying the business with a low monotonous chant. It is a point of honor to endure these brutalities without a murmur, and, after their completion, the young man is hailed as a warrior by his new comrades, and from that time is treated as a man.

The boys are not allowed to either cut or comb their hair until they undergo the ceremony of manhood. They are also prohibited from eating certain game. When I have travelled with the tribes, I have observed when we obtained honey the young men dared not partake. When of age, the tribes assemble at night, the youth or youths are seized; the women trying to protect them, their beards are torn out, and their hair combed by spears; they are then smeared with grease and red ochre. For three days and three nights they are not allowed to sleep or eat, and only to drink water through a reed; for six months they are obliged to walk naked, with a slight covering round their loins; they have to undergo three times the plucking out of the beard, and must refrain from any food eaten by women. Everything is sacred from the touch of women. They are not allowed to marry until the time of trial has expired, but they are allowed promiscuous intercourse with the young girls.

In my travels I was shown places, on the tops of hills in general, where the trees were marked with various devices, and there was a circular path all round. Here the candidates were said to have undergone various initiatory ceremonies to qualify them for manhood, from which the women are strictly prohibited. Here, I believe, the front teeth were knocked out by a stick placed against them, and then a blow from a piece of wood. Thus is accomplished this piece of dentistry. On the sea-coast, the fisherwomen have the point of the finger cut off. Many perish undergoing these ceremonies, which are chiefly intended to make them hardy.

The custom of exchanging names with strangers is a pledge of affection and protection in common use. When meeting the natives in the bush alone or in camp, it is advisable to hold up the hands, displaying a branch of a tree, with the view of declaring peaceable intentions.

The tabooing of several kinds of food to the women and young men may arise from the want which has in some instances pressed so upon them that they have resorted to bleeding themselves to preserve life, and indulged in cannibalism to some extent for the same purpose.

The names of deceased persons are not mentioned during mourning, nor the names of the mother by a man seeking marriage of the daughter, nor can he look at his intended mother-in-law.

Sir Thomas Mitchell seems to think that many of their customs were of Eastern origin. Their manner of fishing is described by him, the young men diving down, and spearing the fish under water. This I have witnessed myself. Sir Thomas also describes their villages. The huts are substantial, holding fifteen persons, and having large tombs for burial-places.

They lived much on fish, and took them and birds, especially ducks and geese, with nets.

The enormous powers of the aboriginals in eating is described by Mr. Eyre, in his exploration towards King’s Island Sound.

His native boy Wylie managed to kill a kangaroo. He commenced his repast by eating a pound and a half of horse-flesh and a little bread, they having had to slaughter a horse; to this repast, he added the entrails, paunch, liver, lights, and two hind legs of the kangaroo; to this he added the hide of the kangaroo, having singed off the hair; and having found a dead penguin on the shore, he wound up by eating it all, including the tough skin of the bird. Admitting that his belly was full, he made a little fire and laid down to sleep, this apparently being the happiest moment of his life. On an average this boy could consume 9 lbs. of meat per day—rather a dangerous companion on short allowance; but these people can fast as long, in proportion, as they can gormandize.

Funeral customs differ in tribes. The Narrinyeri tribes point out several stars, and say they are deceased warriors who have gone up to heaven. These are Wyungare and Nepelle, the Manchingga, and several others; and every native expects to go to Wyirrewarre after death, so that there can be no doubt of their belief in a future state. They also believe the dead descend to and walk the earth, and that wicked men will injure them. They are very much afraid of ghosts, and seldom venture in the scrub in the dark, yet they travel long distances to surprise an enemy. The name of the deceased must not be mentioned until the body has decayed, lest they should be considered wanting in feelings of respect. When a man dies they conclude that sorcery has been exercised, so the nearest relative lies with his head on the corpse so that he may dream of the sorcerer. Next day the body is raised on men’s shoulders on a bier, and several names are called out as suspected persons until the impulse of the dead body, which the bearers pretend they cannot resist, confirms the name of the sorcerer.

In some of the tribes the body is placed over a slow fire until the outer skin is blistered, when it is rubbed over with grease and red ochre and placed within the wurley in an upright position. Then great lamentations are made, while they besmear themselves with charcoal and oil, and the women with disgusting filth, and they all beat and cut themselves. The corpse is then subjected to a further slow fire, to dry the humors, while the relatives eat, drink, and sleep under it; and there is great weeping, especially among the women. But the deceased’s spirit must be appeased by the death of the sorcerer. Messengers pass through the tribes to find the suspected person; this often leads to battles, should the tribes be at variance, but otherwise a few spears are thrown and some abuse passed; the old men then pronounce that satisfaction has been made, and the ceremony ceases. The hair of the dead is spun into a cord and made into a head-band; they say that thus they smell the dead. The whole body is skinned with the nails attached, and with this they cover the sick.

In the Polynesian tribes there is a somewhat similar ceremony. In these islands the body is dried and preserved in a sitting position for months, and an offering of food, fruit, and flowers, is daily placed before the dead body, the priest attending to the ceremonies continually. The skeleton is finally burnt within the temple of the family and the skull carefully kept.

Death is certainly a terrible visitor, and people of all nations seem to desire to retain the identity, as it were, amongst them. They do not like to consider the separation as final, and the being with whom they have been so familiar as removed from all intercourse. On the death of a husband, the widow is not permitted to look at any of the relatives for some time. Should she meet with any of the relatives, she immediately prostrates herself on the ground and conceals herself in her cloak. In some districts they bury the body in a sitting posture.

In some districts they bury the dead with the face towards the east, depositing the arms, &c., of the deceased in the grave, and tying the legs of the corpse to the head, probably to save labour in digging.

Their grave-yards are rather singular. They lay various casts of heads made of gypsum or lime on the graves as marks of friends, and a number of oblong balls connected with each end, and of the same material.

CHAPTER II.

Religion⁠—Massacre of the crew of the “Maria”—Traditions⁠—Cave Figures⁠—Superstitions⁠—Sorcery⁠—Diseases⁠—Poison Revenge⁠—Native Songs⁠—Wit and Humour⁠—Fidelity⁠—Amusements⁠—Corroborees⁠—Weapons⁠—Manufactures⁠—The Bogan Tribes⁠—Native Fruits⁠—Dwellings.

They are a people free from idolatry. One would suppose they would be open to receive the Gospel, but it is not so. They are superstitious, but not over-religious and do not seem to have such a deep sense of sin as idolatrous nations who make expiation, and seek to be reconciled to the Superior Being. This is a singular feature in their character. The North-American Indians are not idolatrous, but have a belief in a Superior Being.

Many writers, amongst these Mr. Bennett, represent them as having no knowledge of a Supreme Being. “They have no knowledge whatever of the existence of a God,” but from my travelling with them I have always considered that they have a belief in a Supreme Being.

I find from the narrative of the Rev. Geo. Taplin, missionary to the aborigines, there is reason to think likewise, although he seems rather doubtful. In religious matters they are superstitious and reserved, therefore it is only by such intercourse with them as Mr. Taplin’s that we are likely to reach correct notions.

He says the Narrinyeri tribes call the Supreme Being by two names, Nurundere and Martummere: “He made all things on earth, and has given to men the weapons of war and hunting. He instituted all rites and ceremonies practised by them connected with life and death. The ceremony of roasting a kangaroo, accompanied by shouting a chorus, and brandishing spears, was instituted by Him.”

Of Nurundere they have many traditions: “He pursued an immense fish in Lake Alexandrina, and having caught it, he tore it into pieces and scattered them; out of these pieces other fish came into being and had their origin. He threw some flat stones into the lake and they became tinuwarre fishes.”

Wyungare, the remarkable hunter, had no father, but only a mother; he was a red man from his infancy. Of Nepelle they have traditions. They were both great hunters. Nepelle sought to revenge himself on Wyungare for having taken his two wives; the latter tried to escape, and fleeing, flung a spear into the heavens with a line attached, and it having stuck there, he hauled himself up; and afterwards, the two women. Three stars are pointed out as Wyungare and his wives.

The natives told the writer that the milky-way was the smoke of a great chief on the Murrumbidgee, who was roasting mussels there. Thus it is evident they have many traditions of unseen Gods and great chieftains, while the belief of some of these natives is that the milky-way is the canoe of Nepelle floating in the heavens.

Of the flood they seem to have some tradition. They believe that Nurundere’s two wives ran away from him; he pursued them, and met them at Encounter Bay, and there called upon the water to arise and drown them. A terrible flood gathered and swept over the hills, overtaking the fugitives, and his wives were drowned, while he was saved by pulling to high land in his canoe.

Nurundere also lost two of his children but recovered them after a conflict with a blackfellow, whom he killed.

The natives always mention his name with reverence.

The reverend writer’s opinion is that Nurundere is some deified chief. The natives regard thunder as his voice in anger, and the rainbow as the production of his power. It is evident that they look to some creative power; although, in this instance, the more intelligent blacks told the missionary that Nurundere was a chieftain who led the tribes down the Darling to the country they now inhabit, where he appears to have met another tribe and had with them a battle, in which he and his tribes were victorious.

A writer in 1842 says that, about 200 miles from Sydney, they assembled for a corroboree for rain, and described God as a great blackfellow, high up in the clouds, having arms nine miles long, eyes the size of a house, ever in motion. He never sleeps, flashes lightning, and dries up the waterholes as punishment. They have their songs and festivals for dry weather when on journeys, thus indicating a higher state of things.

Every tribe has its ngaitye or tutelary genius or tribal symbol, in the shape of a bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or substance.

I hereunto add the names of tribes in Victoria:⁠—

The Narrinyeri have for their neighbours the Wakanuwan and the Merkani tribes; the latter are cannibals, who steal fat people particularly. If a man has a fat wife, he is particular not to leave her exposed, lest she should be seized; the consequence is that the other tribes confederate against cannibal tribes, and battles are frequent; some 500 to 800 men are mustered on each side.

Two stray bullocks having wandered amongst the Lake tribes, they took them for demons, in which they believed, and decamped in great terror; they named them Wundawityeri, as beings with spears upon their heads.

There is a very tragic history of these tribes: that the survivors of the “Maria,” wrecked on the coast, supposed to be twenty-five in number, men, women, and children, were induced to place themselves under their guidance to lead them to a whaling station at Encounter Bay. The native guides took advantage of their being separated in crossing the Coorong, quietly placed a man behind each of the whites, and at a signal clubbed them. The poor wanderers had marched 80 miles from the wreck, when they were thus treacherously murdered. A party of police were despatched; they found the camp, in which were large quantities of clothing and other articles. The officers seized two of the most desperate men, and then hanged them up by the neck to a tree, and shot two others. The natives gazed for a minute at the suspended bodies, and then fled. They never cut down the bodies, which remained hanging until they dropped from the trees.

In some instances, the native secures his ngaitye in the person of a snake, he pulls out its teeth or sews up its mouth, and puts it in a basket. These snakes have suddenly given birth to thirty young ones, when it becomes necessary to destroy them. It seems that their belief in Ngaitye is also peculiar to the natives of the Taowinyeri. One saw his God in the shark, the eel, the owl, the lizard, fish, and creeping things. How deluded and debased is man without Divine revelation, yet we are told by philosophers and their followers that all men have to do is to study nature, and there read the character of the Deity. But have they ever done so through ages? Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, have all changed the glory of God into four-footed beasts and creeping things; even leeks and onions have been worshipped. Why should the aborigines be an exception? Divine revelation alone teaches man the true character of the Divine Being, “for man by wisdom cannot find out God.”

With regard to the advantages of civilization, they do not believe the same to be the result of a superior intellect, or of religion, but of a resurrection from the dead. “Blackfellow by-and-by jump up whitefellow,” is the common mode of expressing their belief.

The Rev. A. Meyer, in his pamphlet, gives some interesting particulars of these people. He says they do not appear to have any story as to the origin of the world, and they believe in the transmigration of souls. Men have been transformed into animals, even into stones; to the latter they give the names of men and women, and point out their head, feet, hands, and their waist and face. In one of their dances, one that had been speared and wounded ran into the sea, and was transformed into a whale, and ever afterwards blew the water out of the wound in his neck. Others became fish, others became opossums; and thus they account for the creation of animals and fish, &c., &c.

Of the diversity of dialects, they have a tradition that when an old woman named Wurruri died, the various nations assembled, and one tribe ate her flesh and others ate her intestines, and they all thus acquired different dialects. Certainly nothing here indicates the dispersion of Babel.

On Nurundere’s removal, he left his son behind. On discovering this, he threw his spear to him with a line attached. The son thus succeeded in reaching his father, and this line is the way the dead reach Nurundere, who provides men with wives, and converts old men into young ones; therefore they have no fear of the future. Some of the legends are very obscene.

They have curious legends about animals. They conceive the turtle and the snake exchanged the venomous fangs. A battle took place between the pelican and the magpie about fish; in the struggle the magpie was rolled in the ashes and the pelican became besmeared with scales of the fish, and so had white breasts. They believe in two Wood Demons; the one assumes any shape, sometimes an old man, then a bird, to lure individuals into his reach that he may destroy them.

The noise on the Lake of Alexandrina is very remarkable, and the cause was long undiscovered. Of course it is attributed by the blacks to a water spirit. It is heard with a booming sound, resembling distant cannon or an explosive blast, at other times like the falling of a heavy body in the water. This now is known to be caused by a bird.

The cave figures are very remarkable, and seem to puzzle every writer on their origin or use. It is very probable they were connected in some way with religious observances, which the natives are very unwilling to divulge.

These figures and others cut in rocks are found in several parts of Australia, thus doing away with the supposition that they may have been the production of strangers who have landed on portions of the shore, as figures have been found on the eastern shores by Sir George Grey, and also near Sydney, not only on rocks but on trees. How many of these have been engraven on hard rocks with the want of suitable implements it is difficult to divine.

Sir George Grey’s description of some of these is remarkable, a rough sketch of one of which I subjoin, being a figure painted on the roof of caves. This figure is painted on a black ground so as to produce a stronger effect, and covered with the most vivid red and white; its head encircled with bright red rays inside a broad stripe of brilliant red, crossed by lines of white, and then crossed again with narrow stripes of deeper red; the face painted white, the eyes black, surmounted by red and yellow lines; the body and hands outlined with red, the body being curiously painted with red stripes and bars. The dimensions were—head and face, 2 feet; width of face, 17 inches; length from bottom of face to navel, 2 feet 6 inches.

There were other paintings in the cave vividly coloured—one with four heads, joined together with a necklace, but having no mouths, and good-looking, executed on a white ground. Length, 3 feet 6 inches; breadth across two upper parts, 2 feet 6 inches; lower heads, 3 feet 1½ inch.

There were several other paintings of singular character—one being a disc representing a kangaroo as an offering to number one; also spears thrown at some unknown object; the impress of a hand; an arm in the black wall, so as to appear extended round some one in the cave, inviting him to some more concealed mysteries.

In another cave, approached by steps, until they reached a central elevated stone slab, supporting a slab to uphold the roof, was a seat at the extremity. The principal figure was that of a man 10 feet 6 inches in length, clothed from the chin downwards in a red garment reaching to the feet, the hands and feet being painted of a deeper red; the face and head were enveloped in a succession of circular bandages or rollers.

These were vividly coloured yellow and white; the eyes were alone represented on the face, no nose nor mouth. On the bandages were a rolled series of lines, painted in red, regularly done, as if to indicate some meaning. Its feet reached just in front of the natural seat, while its head and face stared grimly down on the floor of the cavern. There were numerous figures of kangaroos, emus, turtles, snakes, &c., on the sides of the cave.

From the appearance of grease on the roof just over the seat, Sir Geo. Grey conjectures that at certain times some doctor or chief man sits there, and that the cave is resorted to in cases of disease or witchcraft; footsteps were seen about the place. The figures are remarkable; the rays of the sun, as we may suppose, emanating from the head, would lead to the belief of the worship of Baal, the God of Fire; while some of the names of the tribes partly support this idea, such as Binbal, Pundyil, &c., &c., &c.

The other figures are clothed from head to foot. This is singular, as the natives have no such garments, their opossum cloak having no sleeves, and not reaching to the feet as here described.

That these caves may be places of worship, like the caves in India, is not improbable, especially when we see the offering of the kangaroo, and the seat for some presiding person, priest, or doctor. The whole no doubt is mysterious, but we hardly think that these people could be entirely destitute of some form of religion, when we take these cave figures into consideration, with the ceremony of initiating young men to manhood, the exclusion of women, prohibition of certain food, their belief in spirits and a future condition, the deification of their chiefs into stars, the deification of heroes, and even of the lowest reptiles and animals.

One figure, representing a whale, was carved near Dawes Battery, Sydney, besides many figures carved on rocks and cut on trees—a kind of picture-painting. On another rock there was a figure of a man 10 feet high, wearing a light red robe, close at the neck, reaching to his feet. He had a pair of eyes, and his face was surrounded by a circle of yellow, and an outward circle of white edged with red.

There were many such paintings, and in an isolated rock was the profile of a man cut in solid stone, of a character more European than Native, executed in a style beyond what any savage would be thought capable of.

Both Flinders and King, along the coast, discovered drawings of porpoises, turtles, fish, &c., and a human head, done in charcoal or burnt stick and something like white paint, upon the face of the rock.

These paintings are on the coast or near it, and may be the work probably of some persons who had visited the coast, and not of the aboriginals themselves, as the Malays frequently visited the coast.

The red hand seen in the caves is another singular device, which is also met with amongst the North American Indians. But what are most remarkable are the stone circles at Mount Elephant, Victoria, resembling the stone monuments at Stonehenge in England.

The stones in these structures are of ponderous masses, raised upright, seemingly pointing to a fact that the same people were spread far and wide, of which we know nothing at present.

With regard to superstition, Sir G. Grey’s party had reached a stream of fresh water, where there was abundance of mussels, but Kaiber would not touch any of them, and was in great terror on seeing the whites devour them. A storm of thunder set in, which made the party rather chilly and miserable. He chanted a glowing song by way of reproach.

Oh! wherefore would you eat the mussels?

Now the boyl-yas storm and thunder make;

Oh! wherefore would you eat the mussels?

If boys eat proscribed food they believe they will have sore legs, or turn grey, or suffer under some other infliction.

The Ngia-Ngiampe, a chief, carries on trade between the tribes in the exchange of baskets, rugs, clubs, &c.

The umbilical cord is preserved, and this is supposed to confer some peculiar virtue on the Ngia-Ngiampe. Those possessing these charms never speak to each other, and employ a third person to carry on the traffic, so that there is no danger of collusion in their dealings.

Sorcery is practised extensively, as in the Pacific Islands. Through fear of disease they collect and destroy all the refuse in their vicinity; but should the disease-maker find a bone of some bird or animal he proceeds with this to inflict disease.

So with the Tahitians—the disease-maker picks up the parings of nails, hair, saliva, and other secretions of the body as vehicles which the Demon introduces into his victim, or they often exchange their ngadhungi and each destroys it.

When the ngaitye of a tribe is killed, if a hostile kuldukke of another tribe gets a bone, he ties it in the corner of a wallaby’s skin and flings at the people, and they are made sick. They state that they could or did kill a magpie by sorcery. One day two children were at play—one chopped off the joint of the other child’s finger; the father swallowed it with the view that no sorcery man should get it.

Next is the avenger. The man seeking revenge disguises himself, marking his face over with streaks, and then with a heavy club prowls about the hunting ground. If he sees his victim alone, he rushes on him and kills him, breaking his bones.

The perpetrator is called malpuri (murderer), and is subject to be put to death by the relatives of the victim, as the avenger of blood.

This belief in sorcery makes them careless of illness. From a belief in its curative properties, some of the tribes take the kidney fat from the enemies they slay.

They have no idea of poisonous plants, and consider all deaths as the results of sorcery.

The diseases they suffer from are chiefly of a scrofulous nature, dysentery, and brain fever. They have likewise skin diseases, fistulas, itch, &c. Sulphur is one of their specifics; the wattle-bark and gum are also much used. They likewise suffer from influenza. There is no doubt that they were visited with small-pox before the Europeans arrived, of which numbers died, and many more bore the marks.

Their doctors use incantations and apply pressure to the affected parts. They also employ the vapour bath, obtained by putting wet water-weeds on heated stones and covering the patient with rugs.

The poison revenge is a dreadful visitation. A spear-head is plunged into a putrid corpse, and with feathers so dipped in the fat a wound is inflicted on an enemy, who dies in dreadful agony, similar in effect to blood-poisoning from dead animals amongst ourselves. To possess this poison is the old natives’ object; they therefore often oppose the burial of the dead.

They appear to have a talent for extempore productions. When Sir G. Grey’s party was in a hopeless condition for want of water and food, the native Kaiber sat shouting to himself native songs.

Thither, mother, Oh! I return again,

Thither, Oh! I return again.

Whither does that lone ship wander?

My young son I shall never see again.

Whither does that lone ship wander?

Very pathetic. Their feelings are very strong, as may be seen by Warrup’s account of the discovery of Smith’s remains, one of Sir George Grey’s companions, which were found stretched on a high rock, where he lay down and died.

Away, away, we go—

I, Mr. Roe, and Kinchela—

Along the shore, away! Along the shore, away!

We see a paper, the paper of Morlimer and Spofforth.

Away we go, we see no fresh water,

Along the shore,

Away, away, away, we go along the shore!

Away, away, away, a long distance we go!

I see Mr. Smith’s footsteps ascending a sandhill,

Onward I go, regarding his footsteps.

I see Mr. Smith dead, we commence digging the earth;

Two sleeps had he been dead;

Greatly did I weep, and much I grieved,

In his blanket folding him,

We scrape away the earth.

We scrape the earth into the grave,

We scrape the earth into the grave,

A little wood we place in it, much earth we heap upon it,

Much earth we throw upon it, no dogs can dig there.

The sun had just inclined to the westward,

As we laid him in the ground.—Grey.

The following is a specimen of their extempore composition on sight of a railway train:⁠—

“You see the smoke in Kapunda,

The steam puffs regularly,

Showing quickly it looks like frost,

It runs like running water,

It blows like a spouting whale.”

A settler who frequently employed aboriginal labour, having heard some complaint of their ill-treating a white man, ordered the tribe instantly to decamp. He was somewhat surprised at one of their number appearing before him quite naked, ornamented with pipeclay, and carrying two nullas. The black asked the gentleman to fight, offering one of the nullas. The gentleman, however, determined to choose his own weapon, and produced his gun, which he loaded with ball in presence of the champion, and, pointing to the dial of his watch, said, “If you are not out of this stockyard in ten minutes, I will shoot you.” The black champion watched the hands of the watch, and when the time had nearly expired, he gracefully said, “Good evening, massa,” and disappeared.

As an instance of their fidelity, a squatter in the north, whose house was surrounded by blacks threatening assault, had a domesticated native, who had got mixed up with the savage tribe. He watched his opportunity and seized a horse, and, with a piece of stringy-bark for a bridle, galloped several miles to a police station, giving the alarm. The police immediately mounted horse, galloped furiously to the station, took a circuit round the house, and then followed on the trail of the blacks, whom they overtook encamped; they fired into them, and killed and wounded several. The sergeant, a white, however remained at the station, leaving these desperadoes to do their bloody deeds of carnage; probably he felt he could not restrain them. The fidelity of the black, however, saved the lives of the station-holders.

A black in Port Macquarie stole on Mr. ——, while lying on the grass. He had pipeclayed himself, and then stealing along, made a noise like the burring of a quail. Mr. ——, in fright, leaped on his horse and fled; this amused the black very much.

Mr. James R⁠—⁠— had a lad as coachman, who drove well, was a perfect dandy, kept his horses in fine order, used much oil for his hair, and prided himself on his coach and appearance, but withal went back to the bush. A gentleman at Molesmane had a lad for several years. He could read and write, cast up accounts, and do anything on a farm. At the age for the ceremony of knocking out teeth he went back to the wild state.

An aboriginal and woman had a dairy station at Monaro, were married at church, and conducted their station like any Europeans.

Their power of ridicule is very great. Sir George Grey’s party having reached a friendly tribe, who supplied them with frogs and turtles, one of them, named Imbat, enjoyed himself at the expense of Sir George Grey.

“What for do you, who have plenty to eat and much money, walk so far away in the bush? You are thin, your shanks are long, your belly small, you had plenty to eat at home, why did you not stop there?”

Sir G. Grey replied, being somewhat mortified, “You comprehend nothing; you know nothing.”

“I know nothing? I know how to keep myself fat. The young women look at me and say, ‘Imbat is very handsome, he is fat.’ They look at you, and say, ‘He is not good, long legs:’ What do you know, where is your fat, what for do you know so much, if you can’t keep fat? I know how to keep at home, and not walk too far in the bush; where is your fat?” “You know how to talk;—long tongue,” was my reply, upon which, forgetting his anger, he burst into a roar of laughter, and saying, “I know how to make you fat,” began stuffing me with frogs and by-yu nuts.

There was something more practical here than irony. The value of religion under the trying circumstances of a forlorn hope in this expedition is acknowledged by Sir G. Grey:⁠—“I feel assured that but for the support I derived from prayer and frequent perusals and meditation of the Scriptures, I should never have been able to have borne myself in such a manner as to have maintained discipline and confidence among the rest of the party, nor in my sufferings did I ever lose the consolation derived from the firm reliance upon the goodness of Providence. It is only those who go forth into perils and dangers, where human foresight and strength can little avail, find themselves day after day protected by an unseen influence, and ever and anon snatched from the jaws of destruction by a power which is not of this world, who can at all estimate the knowledge of one’s weakness and littleness, and the firm reliance and trust upon the goodness of the Creator which the human heart is capable of feeling.”

When seeking to determine what they were to do to extricate themselves from their difficulties, he says, “He then strengthened his mind by reading a few chapters in the Bible, and walked on.”

Those who have read of Sir J. Franklin’s early explorations down the Copper-mine River, and his return with his party, will see how this party, in the midst of ice and snow and starvation, were supported by religion, the Bible being the staff of their strength, and that they were the objects of God’s care, buoyed them up under unheard-of difficulties appalling to human nature. “What is man alone in creation without God?”

They are very expert in throwing the spear, at which they constantly practise. They have a game at ball, which gives occasion for much wrestling and activity; besides this, they have wrestling matches for bunches of feathers.

There are many kinds of corroborees. All have the song and the dance; both are at times very libidinous, especially the dance of the women. The war dances are conducted by some hundreds of men in a measured tramp, and in a very excited state of mind. They make up their song out of some incident or circumstance they may have seen. The effect is very imposing: the men in a state of nudity; their bodies striped in white, and their heads fancifully adorned; the fires lighting up the night and casting their glare around the forest; the stately trees spreading their shadows; the women seated and drumming rude music from tight-rolled skins. The activity of the dancers and the strange noises, sounds, and imitating calls altogether present a wild, unearthly, and apparently demoniacal scene. A resident on the Macleay River gives the following sketch of this ceremony:⁠—“From the repugnance which the blacks at the Macleay displayed on my looking at their performance, and their angry refusal to allow me to see the main part of the ceremony, I am unable to give a regular account of it, having only been able to obtain occasional glimpses. After many preliminary grotesque mummeries had been performed, the doctors or priests of the tribe took each a boy, and held him for some time with his head downwards near the fire. Afterwards, with great solemnity, they were invested with the opossum belt; and at considerable intervals, between each presentation, they were given the nulla-nulla, the boomerang, the spear, &c. Whilst these arms were being conferred upon them the other natives performed a sham fight, and pretended to hunt the pademelon, spear fish, and imitate various other occupations, in which the weapons, lately presented to the youth, would be of service. As their ceremonies occupied a fortnight or more before they were concluded, many other ridiculous scenes were undoubtedly enacted, and during all this time the women did not dare to approach the performers. Each man was also provided with a singular instrument, formed with a piece of hollowed wood fastened to a long piece of flax string; by whirling this rapidly round their heads a loud shrill noise was produced, and the blacks seemed to attach a great degree of mystic importance to the sound of this instrument, for they told me that if a woman heard it she would die. The conclusion of this ceremony was a grand dance of a peculiar character, in which the boys join, and which the women are allowed to see. This dance is performed with much more solemnity than the ordinary corroborees. The Yarra-hapinni tribe, which I saw execute this dance near the Clybucca Creek, were so elaborately painted with white for the occasion that even their very toes and fingers were carefully and regularly coloured with concentric rings, whilst their hair was drawn up in a close knot, and stuck all over with the snowy down of the white cockatoo, which gave them the appearance of being decorated with white wings. In this dance the performers arranged themselves in the form of a semicircle, and grasping the ends of their boomerangs, which are also painted with great minuteness and regularity, they swayed their bodies rapidly from right to left, displaying a degree of flexibility in their limbs which might have created the envy of many a pantomimic artist. Each movement of their bodies to and fro was accompanied by a loud hiss, whilst a number of other natives, similarly painted, beat time with sticks, and kept up an incessant and obstreperous song. Every now and then the dancers would stop and rush, crowding together into a circle, raising their weapons with outstretched arms, and joining with frantic energy in the song. They would then be more composed, and walk backwards and forwards in couples, holding each other by the hand, until again roused by an elderly native to resume the dance. It was not until midnight that the noise ceased, which, every evening whilst the ceremonies lasted, might be heard at a distance of two or three miles.”

The spear is the chief weapon, and is thrown by help of a throwing-stick (woomera), by which an increased leverage is obtained. Some of them are barbed, and deadly in their effect. The shafts of some are of heavy wood, others of reed.

The shields with which they defend themselves are of either bark or wood, and the dexterity with which they ward off the spears is astonishing. I have seen in a case of punishment, when the criminal had to stand all alone and to defend himself from the shower of spears cast at him, that he stood perfectly self-possessed. On these occasions perhaps a hundred or more natives are assembled. The criminal stands at a certain distance until a given number of spears have been cast at him.

The boomerang is another weapon of very singular formation. It is a crooked blade, very like the blade of a steamer’s screw, and much on that principle. It is cast by the hand, and gyrates through the air, and can be so thrown as to return to the feet of the thrower; or in a longer flight, dancing along the ground. It is particularly hard to guard against, from the curvature of its motion. It is used for killing birds on the wing, and can be thrown to a distance of 150 yards. The late Sir Thomas Mitchell fashioned a propeller for a steam-boat on this principle.

Their manufactures are few. Their canoes are miserable vessels, made out of a sheet of bark tied up at the ends. But having no great lakes to cross, like in America, nor any very dangerous rivers, they answer the purpose of ferrying two or three persons over at a time, if great care be exercised.

The late Admiral King describes the natives as having canoes 18 feet long, capable of containing eight persons in some instances, made out of trees; while the natives on the coast capture dugong, from which the celebrated oil is procured. Some of these fish weigh from 12 lbs. to 14 lbs.; they live on marine plants.

There is certainly some indication here of a higher order of natives than those generally dispersed to the south. Probably they were at one time higher in civilization than at present.

They make baskets and mats from the bark of the mallee tree, and the latter also from sea-weed, which sometimes serves the purpose of a bed. But their cloaks, made of opossum skins, prepared and sewn together with sinews, form comfortable, and warm garments. They likewise dress other skins—of the kangaroo and native cat, sewing them together with the sinews of the kangaroo’s tail. Their stone axes are merely stones ground down to an edge and fastened to a handle by gum and thread, and require the exercise of much patience in cutting through wood, &c.

The name given to the river Bogan is probably a corruption of Bungan. One of the early explorers maintains that the name of the Bogan was Bungan-Gallo. The course of the river is less circuitous than that of the Macquarie, and the rate of the current averages about 4 miles per hour.

Of the many aboriginal tribes mentioned in the narratives of the old explorers, not one can be said to exist, and the numerous wandering remnants are dying off. The few gins and blackfellows that I saw at the stations are very useful to the settlers, but in most cases the blacks come and go when they please. Sir Thomas Mitchell mentions three great tribes: 1. The Bultje, composed of many intelligent natives. This tribe numbered about 120 in 1835. Their hunting grounds were around the head waters of the Bogan. The local peculiarity of this tribe was that one, or in some cases two, of the front teeth of the males were extracted on their arriving at the age of fourteen. 2. The Myall tribe, who inhabited the central parts about Cudduldry, at the great bend of the Bogan to the northward. These natives had many curious customs. Some of the young men were gaily dressed with feathers, and were apparently formed into some sort of society or association, as they were all called by one name, “Talambe,” and great interest was taken in them by the other members of the tribe. What their chief or leader’s name was, or what were their purposes, were never mentioned, nor by any accident did any solution of the secret transpire. These natives did not extract the front teeth. 3. The Bungan tribe, inhabiting the Bogan between Cambelego and Mount Hopeless. They were less subtle and dissimulating than the Myalls. 4 and 5. Two tribes lower down the Bogan, the haunts of one being eastward of New Year’s Range, and those of the other to the north of the Pink Hills. Both these tribes were described as being inoffensive, and of a friendly disposition. They were terrified at the sight of cattle, and still more afraid of sheep. The principal food of these various tribes consisted of opossum, kangaroo, and emu. Fishing, which was left entirely to the gins, was effectually yet simply performed by a moveable dam of long, twisted dry grass, through which water only could pass. This being pushed from one end of the pond or water-hole to the other, all the fish were necessarily driven before it and captured. The gins further used to gather fresh-water mussels (which abound in the mud of these holes), by lifting the shells out of the mud with their toes. A small plant with a yellow flower, called Tao by the natives, was pointed out to me. It grows in the grassy places near the river, and on its root the young children used chiefly to subsist. About as soon as they could walk, they were taught to pick about the ground for these roots, and to dig out the larvæ of ant-hills. Wild honey would appear to have been also plentiful.

Adding a few notices from Mr. Eyre’s journal, and Captain Sturt’s also, and Sir Thomas Mitchell’s exploration:⁠—Mr. Eyre describes the food of the natives to be often the wild fruits of the forest. Although there is in New Holland very little of what can be called fruit, yet Mr. Eyre speaks of a kind of plum or gooseberry which grows in the sand near Spencer’s Gulf, which is acid and pleasant to eat, and on which the natives live for some time. Also, a description of wild grape has been found by the explorers. Sir Thomas Mitchell used to say all these fruits wanted was to be “fattened.”

Their powers as mimics are described by Sturt—in one instance equal to if not outrivalling Liston in his best days.

I have already shown the superstition of the natives, which is proved by another remarkable case mentioned by Robert Austin:⁠—The party shot a red kangaroo. The native ranger became much excited, and begged he might not be asked to eat of it, “For look,” said he, “its head is truly that of a dog with the ears of a cow. Saw you ever a kangaroo so fat, or meat that smelt so strange. No, sir, this creature is not natural; it must be a magician of evil. Glad I am that one of my tribe has killed one of this odious race. My father and mother never ate one. Let the northern women eat if they like, but I must be a great fool to put a strange devil down my throat, to give me the stomach-ache.”

Sir George Grey describes their huts in the rain, which gave not only some idea of shelter, but even of comfort. They afforded a very favorable specimen of the taste of the gins, whose business it is generally to construct the huts. The village of bowers also occupied more space than the encampments of the natives in general. The choice of a shady spot seemed to have been an object, and to have been selected with care. Here then we have, at considerable distances, natives erecting huts and living in something like communities. Can these be of the same origin as the general population, or has the circumstance that fruits and food may be found sufficient for support in these localities induced the aborigines to lead a more settled life?

Mitchell says they found a tree with a fruit resembling a small russet apple, skin rough, the pulp a rich crimson, and covering a large stone; an agreeable acid. So in Grey’s case, the natives seem to have stored certain nuts. These grow in some part of the northern territory, affording food for the natives for several months. They seem to have some idea of measuring time, for they pointed out to Mitchell’s party that white man (evidently Sturt’s party) had passed there, pointing to the sun, six annual revolutions.

CHAPTER III.

First settlement of the Colony⁠—Claims of the Aborigines⁠—Extracts from Collins’s Works⁠—Bennillong and Cole-be⁠—Dangerous proceedings of the Aborigines⁠—Frightful massacre by the Blacks⁠—Notes by a University man⁠—Mr. Trollope’s remarks⁠—Aboriginal Police⁠—Doom of the Queensland Savage⁠—Massacre on Liverpool Plains⁠—South Australian Aboriginals.

The project of deporting criminals to this distant, almost unknown, portion of the world—a country whose resources were unknown, and distant 16,000 miles—was a bold measure, arising partly from necessity, and much discussed in the public Press, but the expedient has been ultimately crowned with success. Homes have been made for multitudes, British liberty and law established, and, above all, Christianity extended to a portion of the world that for ages had remained in the darkness of heathenism, shut out from commerce and the intercourse of intelligence.

Strange to say, in this expatriation no provision had been made by the Government for that which is the foundation of national success—religion, and it was not until Mr. Wilberforce, with his Christian zeal, pressed the Government, that a single minister of religion, Mr. Johnston, was provided, while a reckless and degraded class of men was about to be cast into the midst of a savage people, not at all calculated to raise or elevate them, but rather to depress and vitiate, and ultimately to destroy them.

Whatever benefit the civilized world has acquired in opening up a new territory for their over-peopled state, the poor unfortunate aborigines have had to suffer increased misery, wretchedness, and gradual extinction.

The Bishop of Perth has well put the question: “The darkness they were in in their original condition was the darkness of ignorance—dark indeed, but far darker is their state when to the darkness of ignorance is added the degradation of the acquired vices of civilization.”

Little or no missionary zeal prevailed in the churches. At this period vital Christianity was lost sight of under mere moral teaching, yet a few names, as in Sardis, were found for the truth, but the heathen world was but little thought of.

The first mission to the Pacific was that of the London Missionary Society to Tahiti, so unscrupulously desecrated by the French.

No doubt the natives were surprised at their visitors, and were too soon convinced of their unscrupulous invasion of the land, but right had to submit to might.

Various conflicts took place between the races; a kind of guerrilla warfare was carried on, and lives were sacrificed, although strict orders were given against violence or the prisoners going without bounds, and the severe punishment of 700 lashes was administered, and even hanging resorted to, for disobedience and robbery, yet temptations were too strong to check these evils.

The Governor exercised the kindest feelings toward the aborigines, so as to win their confidence, as may be seen by the following extracts from our earliest historian, Collins.

Many affrays took place between the natives and the Europeans, in which life was lost on both sides, but at length the natives became more familiar, and often danced and fought in the settlement, to the amusement of the people; when wounded they submitted to the surgeon’s operations.

In these affrays the natives exhibited much bravery and became formidable to the settler, so that frequent conflicts took place, in which much life was lost on both sides. They carried away considerable plunder, and even made piratical attacks on vessels conveying corn, and killed the crews. It is thought that the runaway convicts gave them assistance. They had attacked a farm near Kissing Point, murdered a man and woman, and having been pursued, an encounter took place near Parramatta, headed by their chief, Pemulwy, who threw spears at one of the soldiers. They were fired on, five natives were killed, and their chief, Pemulwy, received five buck-shot wounds in his head and parts of his body; he was captured and taken to the hospital.

The chief cause of warfare was the blacks plundering the maize crops, the whites having thinned out their game, and the blacks, driven by hunger, retaliated.

The animosity increased to such a degree that wanton acts of violence were resorted to. In one instance, the natives murdered two men who had farms. The settlers, in retaliation, seized three boys residing with the settlers, and having obtained through them the muskets of the murdered men, they tied their hands, and beat the boys to death in a barn; the others escaped. The Governor, on hearing of this cruelty, had the perpetrators tried, but from some interposing evidence, although convicted of being guilty of killing, they were not executed, but released on bail; they asserted that several whites had been murdered.

The natives however were not altogether idle; they robbed, burnt down houses, and assembled in large bodies, it is supposed instigated by runaway convicts.

Their government is domestic. They highly respect fathers. When they saw respect paid to the Governor, they entitled him Be-anna, Father. On the death of a father, the nearest of kin assumes the office, under the title of Be-anna.

Each family had a particular residence and name to distinguish it. Those on the south side of Botany Bay were called Gweagal, and those on the north side were Cam-mer-ray-gal. To this tribe belonged the privilege of extracting the tooth for the tribes inhabiting the sea-coast.

As to religion, there appears an idea of a future state. They neither worship sun, moon, nor stars. Bennillong, who had been in England, said after death they went to the clouds; they ascended like little children, first having perched on trees, living on fish.

The young men often attended worship in the settlement, imitating the clergyman with his book, being great mimics.

They knew the distinction between good and bad. The sting-ray was bad; the kangaroo good; cannibalism they condemned as Wee-re (bad); also murder, for which they required satisfaction.

Both sexes wear ornaments, both being adorned with scars over the body, using a profusion of fat on their persons. The women ornament themselves with strings of teeth and bones of some of the fishes. Women have the two first joints of the little finger of the left hand cut off. Some in colour are as black as negroes; others copper-coloured like Malays. Their huts are miserable sheets of bark, under which they sleep, huddled together. Their mode of living is not over cleanly. The food is mostly fish; the men spear and the women catch with hooks made out of the oyster-shell, and the fishing-lines from the bark of a tree.

Marriage is rather rude; the woman is dragged away by force, but there are many particulars about marriage as to relationship, &c., &c.

In child-birth one female is employed in pouring cold water over the abdomen; another ties a piece of line to the sufferer’s neck, and takes the end in her mouth, rubbing her lips until they bleed; no further assistance is given. The mother walks about collecting wood a few hours after delivery. The child at six weeks receives a name from some object, either bird, fish, or animal. From the earliest age the boys practise at throwing the spear and other weapons. At the ages of eight to sixteen the children undergo the operation termed Gnah-noong, that is, of piercing the septum of the nose so as to receive a bone or reed; and the lads, at a later period, of having the tooth knocked out. This is a very imposing ceremony. Numbers collect on these occasions, mostly males; they dance and are armed; the boys are seized and put in a sitting posture all night, and some mystic rites are performed over them; the carrahdis pretend great agony, and roll on the ground, until at length they are delivered of a bone; the people crawl on their hands and knees to where the boys are sitting, when they throw sand and dirt upon them; one man carries a kangaroo skin stuffed with straw, another carries brush-wood, others sing, while others again make artificial tails of grass, and then leap like kangaroos, scratching and jumping emblematic of a future chase; each then casts off the artificial tail, seizes a boy, and places him on his shoulder until they reach where they are to be deposited, while the men lie down upon the ground and the boys walk over them, the former making various gestures and grimaces. The bone is then rubbed down like a chisel, so as to scarify the gums. The small end of a stick is then applied to the tooth and struck with a stone; the tooth being dislodged and the gum closed, the devotee is then encompassed with a girdle, wooden sword, and a ligature bound round the head, in which is stuck slips of grass-tree. The boy is not allowed to speak or eat during the operation; the people make most hideous noises in the ears of the sufferers to drown their cries; the patient sits on the shoulders of the man, who receives the blood which flows down from the mouth.

The youths are now admissible to the classes of men, and are privileged to use the spear and club, &c.

The shedding of blood is always followed by punishment, the offender being obliged to stand the ceremony of spears being thrown at him; a native murdered must be avenged.

They have many superstitions, as may be expected. They believe in spirits. If they sleep at a grave, they believe the deceased visits them, seizes them and disembowels them, but that the bowels are replaced. A shooting star is very important, and of thunder they are very much afraid, but think that, by repeating certain words and breathing hard, they are safe.

Of diseases the itch is common, and there is no doubt but that they have been visited by the small-pox, which they call gal-gal-la, of which numbers died, and their remains were found in the caves of the rocks around Sydney. Some of them were admitted into the Hospital, where some died, and others recovered.

Property consists of shields, spears, clubs, lines, and certain localities. In disposition they are revengeful, jealous, courageous, cunning, capable of strong attachment, susceptible of joy and sorrow. They have some idea of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars.

Funeral ceremonies:⁠—In some instances the body is burnt, but mostly the legs are tied up to the head so as to occupy little room; the Carrahdi distorts his body and applies his mouth to different parts of the deceased. They bury with the men their spears and throwing-sticks; they wear tufts of grass, and as they proceed to bury, they throw their spears and often do injuries. The body is placed so that the sun shall shine on it, and all trees that may intercept the sun’s rays are cut down. They do not mention the name of the deceased.

They have some poetic talent and they compose impromptu, and have some taste for music.

They are quite capable of receiving instruction.

They cannot pronounce the letters S and V.

Amongst the public heroes of those days (about 1790) were Bennillong and Cole-be—the former had visited England. Both were frequent inmates of the Governor’s house, but were fond of roving. On the occasion of a whale being stranded at Broken Bay, Bennillong sent a present of a piece of fish to the Governor. On this His Excellency visited the place, and found there his friends, to whom he gave several articles of clothing. The Governor, perceiving that the natives were surrounding him, was retiring gradually to the boat, but on lifting up his arms on meeting a particular native, as evidence of his recognition, the native took alarm and threw a spear at him, which struck him in the neck, above the collarbone, and being barbed, was difficult of extraction. Several other spears were thrown, but fortunately without effect. The boat’s crew rushed on shore, but their muskets proved useless. The shaft of the spear was broken off, and the remainder was extracted by the surgeon.

A few days after this affray, Bennillong came to a cove on the North Shore, with his wife and companions, and stated that it was a man of the name of Wil-le-me-ring who threw the spear at the Governor, and that Cole-be and he had beaten him severely; and on the visit to the Governor subsequently, Bennillong repeated the statement, observing that it was owing to surprise that the man had committed the act.

A few days afterwards, Bennillong waited on the Governor, with a request that a hut near the cove should be built for him, which was assented to.

Some months afterwards Bennillong took to the bush again, sending a message to the Governor that he had had a dispute with his friend Cole-be and had been wounded, and could not appear at the Governor’s table, requesting at the same time his clothes, together with victuals, of which he was much in want. On his re-appearance at the settlement some time afterwards, he had a wound in the mouth and some teeth broken. The quarrel appears to have been occasioned by his over-attention to his friend’s favourite wife, Boo-ree-a, and this led to a severe castigation. Cole-be, meeting him shortly afterwards, asked him sarcastically “if he meant that kind of conduct to be a specimen of English manners.” As Bennillong had visited England, the sarcasm was the more pungent.

Bennillong, after his return from England, was asked where blackfellow came from—did he come from an island. He said he did not know, but that after death they returned to the clouds, ascending in the shape of little children, first resting on the tops of trees; their favourite food was little fishes.

Speaking of the habit of knocking out the tooth, he said that a man of the name of Cam-mer-ray-gal wore them round his neck, the tribe having performed the ceremony, but as to his own teeth they were buried in the earth.

When Bennillong’s wife died, many spears were thrown and persons wounded. He had a serious contest with Wil-le-me-ring, and wounded him in the thigh. He had sent for him to attend his wife, and he had refused, and at the death of his infant many spears were thrown, and he said he would not be satisfied until he had revenge.

Bennillong burnt the body of his wife Ba-rang-a-roo.

The ashes of the wife were the next day scraped together and covered over with great solemnity. The most affecting part of the ceremony was that Bennillong threw his infant child into the mother’s grave, casting a large stone on it, saying no woman could be found to nurse the child.

On the death of the boy, Ba-loo-der-ry, whom he had watched and sung over with Cole-be, he requested that the body might be interred in the garden. The burial was attended with much ceremony, while the burial of Bennillong’s wife was attended by the Governor, the Judge-Advocate, and the surgeon.

The natives had determined to kill Bennillong, it being supposed he had killed a man, of which he was innocent; he therefore appealed to the Governor to protect him. He had now given way to drink, and became more brutal and insulting, and therefore got into troubles. On the occasion of a fight he threw a spear amongst the soldiers and wounded one, and would have been killed, had it not been for the Provost-Marshal. Walking about armed, he declared he would kill the Governor. Now Bennillong associated with troublesome characters, and was once or twice wounded. In one of these battles, three natives were killed and several wounded. Amongst these Bennillong was dangerously wounded, and probably died. Thus perished Bennillong, as a drunken savage, after all the advantages he had had of visiting England, and living at the Governor’s House. Nor is this a solitary instance of these savages who have enjoyed like advantages.

We have here the failure of mere civilization, which produces only outward effects. Religion alone can reach the heart. The gospel is the power of God to the salvation of all who believe in and know it.

Bennillong has been immortalized in name, a point on the North Shore being called Bennillong Point. His history is a sad one. There is a street in Parramatta called, I suppose, after this chief.

The accompanying rough sketches, copied from Collins’s work, will give some idea of the natives in person, and their numerous ceremonies, &c., &c., &c.

It is only fair to show what dangerous and treacherous neighbours the aborigines are, and how the squatters and inhabitants were often placed at their mercy.

A numerously signed petition was presented to the Governor from the settlers on the road to Port Phillip praying for protection, as they had suffered much from the incursions and assaults of these people, and stating that, if they could not obtain protection, they must take the law into their own hands.

The Governor immediately despatched a police force to be stationed along the road for protection.

As for their raids on stations, they actually drove away the sheep and cattle from two or three stations, and in some instances violated women and committed robberies.

We must however consider that their laws strictly limited the tribes to certain districts, and to intrude upon these was criminal; and this was so strictly carried out that, on my approaching the Shoalhaven River, my guide would on no account cross over with me. But whites, as foreigners, would be regarded with even more hostility.

The following account, from the Rockhampton Bulletin, 26 October, 1861, will show one of these murderous assaults, and at the same time the brutal character of the aboriginal police force, who thought it pleasant work to shoot down their countrymen:⁠—

“A man arrived in Rockhampton last evening (Tuesday) with intelligence of the murder of a number of persons on Mr. Wills’s station, Nogoa, including Mr. Wills himself. The messenger brings a written deposition of the facts, so far as they are known, which was made on Friday last, to Mr. Gregson, Bainworth station, by a shepherd belonging to the late Mr. Wills. The shepherd’s name is Edward Kenny. We are informed that Mr. Wills had only arrived on the station about a fortnight previous to the time when the murders were committed, and Kenny states that during that time the blacks came upon the station in considerable numbers, but they were quiet and appeared friendly, and no notice was taken of them. Mr. Wills used to carry a revolver himself, but although he had plenty of firearms on the station, the men were not supplied with them.

“On the evening of Thursday, the 17th October, Kenny was returning to the station with his sheep, when he met Paddy, who had been shepherding the rams. Paddy said to him, ‘There has been slaughter here to-day.’ Kenny then went up to the station, and saw the corpse of his late master (Mr. Wills), the overseer’s wife (Mrs. Baker), with grown-up daughter and two children, Mrs. Manyon, and three children, and a man named Jemmy Scotty—in all ten bodies—having evidently been killed by the blacks. He then took a horse and rode over to Bainworth (Mr. Gregson’s station), where he arrived about 1 p.m., on Friday last. He does not know what became of Paddy after he left him. There were at the time twenty-two Europeans on the station, and it is feared that others have shared a similar fate to that of the ten above-mentioned. The remaining eleven on the station were, the overseer (Mr. Baker), Patrick Manyon, George Ling, Paddy, George Elliott, Harry, Tom, Davey Baker, Charlie, Ned, and John Moon. Mr. Thomas Wills (son of the deceased) and two men had left the station the previous Sunday morning, with drays, on their way to Albinia Downs, for loading.

“We are informed that the remnant of the Native Police Force, at the camp Rockhampton, consisting of Cadet Johnson, two sergeants, and one trooper only, will start to-morrow for Peak Downs, an officer named Genatas with ten men being stationed there, and from thence they will proceed to Nogoa. There is also a small company of troopers under Lieutenant Patrick stationed at the Comet River.

“Preparations are being made by Mr. P. F. Macdonald, of Yaamby, for the equipment of a private party to accompany him to the scene of the recent massacre, to assist in succouring the men left on the station, and preserve the property from injury. A subscription, headed by Mr. P. F. Macdonald, £100, which already amounts to £236, has been opened to defray its expenses, and will be found at the Banks.

“Later intelligence.—News was received on Thursday evening that Lieutenant Cave, with eleven troopers, arrived at the scene of the late tragedy two days after its occurrence. Lieutenant Cave was on patrol with the troopers at Living’s station, on the Dawson, when he heard of the murders. He hastened off in the middle of the night, taking with him fresh horses. Mr. Living and the settlers in the vicinity formed a separate party, and started at once to render assistance. No further particulars have as yet transpired.”

In a work published in 1871—“Colonial Adventures; by a University man,”—we have a chapter devoted to the Aborigines of Queensland, in which the writer gives the general opinion as to the destruction of the black race, “That God never intended them to live long on the land in which he had placed them, therefore away with them until there be none remaining, and we will go in and possess the land.” The writer draws a distinction not creditable between the tame blacks and wild ones:⁠—“The former picked up all the worst characteristics of the white man, and lost some of their own. They learned to drink, smoke, and become lazy, living on the white man’s scraps. They do not hesitate to commit murders and robberies—doing as they are done by. In short, instead of improving their condition, we have made them more wretched and base than ever, not over complimentary to Christianity or civilization. In new districts taken up by the whites, almost invariably by way of retaliation, either from the whites destroying their camps or possibly firing on them, the black meditates revenge, and spears or kills the first defenceless shepherd or traveller. Then the Europeans turn out to disperse them—to shoot them down—men, women, and children. The native police, being blacks trained to arms, delight in shooting their fellow-men. For every white man murdered, six blacks are made to bite the dust.”

The writer gives a description of a shipwrecked sailor who lived with the blacks twenty years, and experienced continual kindness, and of their kindness to his fellow-seamen who escaped from the wreck, but died of fever. These very men having boarded a cutter near the coast, and one of them having stolen a tomahawk, leaped overboard with his prize, the rest following. The crew fired upon them while swimming, and killed two of them.

The writer, in describing the massacre of the natives by the black police, says:⁠—“I have seen two large pits, covered with branches and brush, secured by a few stones; the pits filled with dead bodies of blacks, of all ages and both sexes.” Again, he says, “Whilst travelling along the road, for more than a quarter of a mile the air was tainted with the putrefaction of corpses, which lay all along the ridges, just as they had fallen. This was in retaliation for the murder of five shepherds. Each detachment of four or five troopers is officered by a European, domiciled in barracks or camps. They sometimes show some compunction in shooting women, but they are usually encouraged in this work, as the women are often the abettors and agents in most of the murders, and as the blacks must be exterminated, the more shot the better.”

The celebrated tourist, Mr. Trollope, in his work on “Queensland; a Flying Visit,” devotes some pages to this people. He describes them as sapient as monkeys and great mimics of white dandies. He then refers to the opposition Cook, Dampier, and Phillip met with on their landing, as if they had no right to defend their country. What is a virtue with all other people is a crime in them. Comfortably accommodated in a squatter’s residence, he says there were more settlers killed by the blacks than blacks killed, and thus balances the account.

Some murders have been brought before the public in Queensland which called for immediate Government interference. Camps of aboriginals have been attacked, the wretched beings fired upon, and on escaping to the water, were then deliberately shot. On one occasion, one of their number eluded the aboriginal police; at length they saw a bundle of grass floating, into which they fired and shot the unfortunate being, who held the grass in his mouth to conceal his head, but the stratagem failed. In another instance, where the aboriginal police attacked the camp, one of the women was seized and violated, and her brains dashed out.

In 1880, the Sydney Mail wrote:⁠—“The doom of the Queensland savage is not merely to perish before the advance, but to actually receive his death-blow at the hands of the British colonist. In another page, we reprint an article from our senior morning contemporary, which puts this fact beyond dispute. A competent and impartial special reporter declares the condition of things as it is, and his melancholy narrative must re-awaken regret for the fate of the race which enjoyed an uninvaded possession of this continent for centuries, and is now rapidly melting away in the presence of civilization. Stripped of all exaggeration, the story of what is happening in the remote districts of the neighbouring Colony has a horrible sound to Southerners who have no environment of savagery, and to whom peace and plenty have become monotonous and undervalued privileges. Yet the far north of Queensland is not being stained more terribly with aboriginal blood than has been our fair New South Wales. The black was improved off the face of the lands we occupy, as pitilessly as he is now being dismissed from his haunts on the banks of the tropical rivers. We cannot thank God that the pioneer settlers here were more merciful than those who are appropriating the cedar forests and auriferous deposits in Northern Queensland. From first to last the line of contact between the two races has been a red one. From first to last the strong Caucasian has trodden the naked nomad like mire into his own sod.

“It is easy to voice regret and condemnation in general terms; but could this extermination have been altogether avoided? We think not. What should have been done with the aboriginal? Did his possession of the territory for centuries give him a right to possess it for ever? Did mere possession confer a title so absolute that British colonization must be ranked as a national crime? Surely no rational man can defend such a view as that. The blackfellow’s title to the country was destroyed by his savagery. Nature gives everybody a chance of some kind, and the blackfellow had his chance. He had given to him a magnificent continent, rich in manifold resources; but he was lord only over snakes and kangaroos—a king of brutes, but little more than a brute among brutes. Back of the brute there was, no doubt, the germ of manhood; but a creature with only an undeveloped germ of manhood cannot live among men. The blackfellow shrank from men, preferring to dwell with marsupials. He did not understand, he did not like man—using the word in its large sense. He fought against him as a wild brute would fight—treacherously, savagely. In the far north, to this day, he is not averse to eating the colonist. He has had two chances: Nature, as before remarked, has given him a splendid country, and he has been brought into contact with a highly civilized race; but he has proved unworthy of both. His blood is therefore upon his own head.

“In saying this we do not, it need hardly be insisted, endorse all that has been meted out to the black by his white conqueror. The Briton was a savage once, and he is not an angel now. Beneath his civilization, there are the passions which may be developed into savagery; and there have been too many white savages in Australia. The line of contact between the two races is the line where Government, representing in this matter the conscience as well as the physical force of the whole community, should be strong, but where it has too frequently been weak. The Queensland Government should be strong in the administration of justice, tempered abundantly with mercy, along the line where white and black are struggling for supremacy, and not merely able to grapple with questions of tariffs and mail contracts in Brisbane. It is a disgrace to a civilized people to be represented by many of the ‘boys’ who are employed to hasten the extinction of their countrymen in the far north. The braining of children, the violation of women, the slaughter of the wounded and the aged, the callous disregard of all tender considerations which, when observed, shed lustre on the strong—these are reproaches which it is humiliating to have recorded in any part of the British Empire. They make an Englishman’s blood boil with shame and indignation. War, whether of the open sort or of that unrecognized kind which ‘disperses’ blackfellows, is apt to demoralize those who are engaged in it, and what has been transpiring for years in the ‘unsettled’ districts of Australia has had that effect in too many cases. The business of ‘dispersing’ blackfellows has had the result of ‘dispersing’ the conscience of whitefellows. Troopers may have received the letter of their orders from Brisbane; but the spirit of their atrocious deeds has been inspired by the passion-blinded pioneers, to whom the taking of an aboriginal life is rather meritorious. But we repeat that where, as in the far north, the conscience of individuals is weak, the conscience of the Colony should be all-potent. Blood-shedding would not cease, for the savagery of the blacks will inevitably bring about their extinction; but the stain would not be the indelible one of guilt.”

The facts of the dreadful massacre on Liverpool Plains may be gathered from the charge delivered by Judge Burton on passing sentence of death upon the criminals, and exhibit barbarity horrible to think of:⁠—

“Prisoners at the bar, you have been found guilty of the murders of the aborigines at Liverpool Plains—men, women, and children. The circumstances of these murders are so atrocious that you must be prepared for what the result must be. This is not a case where death has ensued from drunkenness, nor the murder of one individual, but probably of thirty poor defenceless beings.

“The blacks round their fires at night were suddenly surrounded by an armed body of you prisoners at the bar. The blacks fled to one of your huts for safety. In that hut, amidst the tears, sobs, and groans of these unhappy victims, you bound them—father, mother, and children—together, and then led them to common destruction.

“Nothing else but the grace of God could reach men’s hearts so hardened as to slay father, mother, and children. To conceal the affair you burnt the bodies, swept the place, and removed the remains, but hundreds of birds of prey floating in the air awakened the attention of the neighbourhood, and notwithstanding every precaution a jaw-bone with teeth was found, while, as it rained the day before the deed, the traces of horsemen, of men, &c., with naked feet, being blacks, were left visible to the place, while there was no trace of the blacks returning. This offence was not without premeditation, as it is certain the whites were mustered from down the river to help, and on Sunday you closed that day with the murder of these blacks.

“I cannot but look upon you with commiseration. You were placed in a dangerous situation, entirely removed from religious instruction, 150 miles from any police station, by which you could have been controlled, &c., &c.” The Judge then passed sentence of death in the usual manner.

Certainly the case was one of great criminality and diabolical in the execution; but these unfortunate men were left in the solitude by their employers, without any correcting good, and were taught by influential persons to look upon the blacks as not human beings. Religion after all is the great panacea to heal nations, for it is righteousness that exalteth them.

The influence of crime on the virtuous portions of society, either as to its costliness or insecurity of life and property, is very serious, and demands much statesmanship; the solution of the problem lies in conservatism.

In 1875, the South Australian Register published the following notes on the aborigines met with on the trip of Mr. Lewis’s exploring party to Lake Eyre, by Mr. F. W. Andrews, collecting naturalist to the expedition:⁠—

“The first natives we met with after leaving Mount Margaret were on the Macumba Creek, where a small number visited our camp in a very quiet and friendly manner. They were young men and a boy or two. They could not speak any English, except one or two very commonplace words, as ‘whitefellow,’ &c. Their food appeared to consist of snakes (morelia) of the boa tribe, lizards, rats, &c., but the principal food at this season of the year (December) appears to be the dried fruit of the pigs’-faces (mesembryan-themum), which they gather in large quantities and store by until wanted, or as long as it will keep. The quantity they consume at a time is something enormous, and it appears to be very nutritious and fattening food, no doubt from the large amount of saccharine matter it affords. They wear no covering for the body, except the men, some of whom wear a small fringed curtain in front of their persons. This is sometimes made of the tail of the pouched hare (Peragalia lagotis), the white tips of which are worked into a very neat and ornamental covering. This is called ‘Thippa.’ They also wear a similar fringe, only larger, made of wallaby or rat’s hair, which they call ‘Unpa.’ The ends of the tails of the native rabbit or pouched hare are carefully saved up until about forty or fifty in number are fastened in rows, forming a very attractive adornment; they have, however, often as many as from 150 to 200 in one bunch. The weapons they carry with them when visiting are few and simple, consisting of a yam-stick for digging out rats, &c., and an awkwardly-made boomerang. I found that they had plenty of spears, and large two-handed boomerangs like immense wooden scimitars. These they kept out of sight on most occasions. They had some very neatly-constructed trough-like water-vessels, which they called ‘Pirras.’ The men were finely-formed young fellows, with pleasing and regular features, and one, in particular, had beautifully-formed olive eyes; he was a very handsome young fellow, and we all admired him very much. Through our native interpreter, ‘Coppertop,’ who joined us at Strangways, we were enabled to converse with them. They were very anxious for rain, as they could not travel far away from the waterholes on the creeks. Travelling further on towards Lake Eyre, we met with several wild-looking lots—plenty of men, women, and children—all looking very hearty and contented. The old men were about having a meeting to ‘make rain,’ and as it looked likely for rain, they would no doubt before long be able to again astonish their tribe by their power as ‘rain-makers.’

“We were now keeping a strict night-watch, as (if they meant no mischief ‘leading to human gore’) they were diligently intent on what they called ‘tealing.’ It was evident, by the cut timber about the creeks, that they had axes or tomahawks, and on inquiry ‘where blackfellow got um tomahawk,’ the answer received was, ‘him teal um along a whitefellow.’ There is no doubt they had stolen several during the construction of the overland telegraph. They, however, always kept these tomahawks out of our sight. Knives, tomahawks, &c., are their principal weaknesses; but they will steal anything they can lay their hands (or toes) on. Our interpreter, ‘Coppertop,’ having arrived in his own country, the Macumba, made tracks, leaving his clothes, which were transferred to another young man who joined us. Tommy was his name, and he had a good smattering of English, from having been with the telegraph construction parties for some time, and was very useful as a guide and interpreter. One day, when travelling, we met with natives—‘outsiders,’ whose patois Tommy was unacquainted with, and he cried out in despair, ‘Me cant hear um.’ Tommy was of a very inquiring turn of mind, and thinking sugar was “dug up” at some ‘berry good place,’ he one day asked the question, ‘When we catch um that big one sandhill all same where whitefellow get um sugar?’

“On Willis’s or the Salt Creek we saw, in a large mob of natives, one old man who had evidently been in the wars; his arm had been broken in two places, and had set crooked at each fracture, giving the poor old man a very battered appearance. The old fellow walked up and down the camel train from one person to another, talking and gesticulating, evidently wishing us to go on; and on our starting, he looked very pleased, and pointed in the direction we were going, saying, ‘Appa, appa’ (water, water), as much as to say, ‘Go on; there is plenty of water over there for you.’ At starting, much to our amusement and surprise, the old man said, ‘Good morning, good morning.’ This was towards evening, but although the old man seemed to wish us away from his own camp, he was at our camp the next morning to see us start, and wish us good morning again. Several women at the old man’s camp were smeared all over with burnt gypsum (plaster of Paris), making them quite white, and giving them a horrid-looking appearance. They were in mourning for deceased relatives. All the natives we saw looked very healthy and fat, the children looked as clean in the skin as could be desired, and, altogether, their appearance and physique showed them the pictures of health and contentment. We saw one fine young man who was blind from cataract, and the poor old man with the broken arm was leading him about and attending to his wants. We afterwards saw, at Kopperamana, a young hearty-looking woman, who was suffering from the same affliction.

“They told us that the weather last year in the winter was very cold, but that no rain fell. They make the best wurleys I have seen anywhere, all covered in securely, and having a hole for the exit of the smoke, as well as the entrance hole, which is, however, small. They are covered all over with grass, rushes, roots, earth, &c., and are quite dry. In the summer they have only a shade constructed of boughs. During the hot weather they were catching large quantities of fish with nets, which they constructed very ably from rushes. These nets are mostly fixed stationary across a favourable spot in the creek, and the fish caught by endeavouring to pass through the meshes, when they get fixed in the net by the mesh passing over their gills. When the supply of fish fails, or wanting a change of food, they have roots, seeds, herbs, caterpillars (in bushels), lizards, snakes, and numerous odds and ends, to procure all of which in quantity requires at times much labour, and this food-labour mostly falls to the lot of the lubras, who have generally plenty to do, for after they have got the food to their wurleys, there is much to do grinding or pounding seeds of acacia, nardoo, &c.

“Some of the large waterholes on the Salt Creek have superstitious terrors attached to them. One blackfellow, after killing a pelican with a boomerang, would not attempt to recover his weapon, as he said there was a large snake in the hole always on the lookout for blackfellow.

“At Kopperamana, the Lutheran Mission Station, only a small number, about a dozen or so, were camped. They appeared to easily obtain plenty of fish in the lake, but had not such a fat, hearty-looking appearance as the natives on Salt Creek. Some were employed on the station shepherding goats, others lamb-minding, &c., and all appeared to be well-treated. Of their scholastic attainments I cannot say very much, as I was informed that as they got taught any learning they went away. One young fellow appeared to have a good idea of figures, and counted twenty-five very fairly. Only a few natives were seen at Lake Hope; these talk pidgin-English with fluency, well interlarded with strong adjectives. They have plenty of fish in the lake, and the rats, snakes, roots, &c., according to the season. Perrigundi Lake has long been known as a so-called dangerous place for whites to camp at, unless well armed and in pretty good force. It was at this place where a party of stockmen from Lake Hope were attacked some years ago, while they were asleep, and, only for the bravery and promptitude of one of the party, the whole of them would have been killed. One young man, named Newman, died of the spear wounds he received in this fatal affray. We camped here two nights and one day—Saturday night and Sunday. Seven or eight finely-made, strong young fellows paid us a visit, and were very peaceably disposed, and fetched us some fine fish in exchange for a little tobacco. Some of the weapons they had with them were of the most formidable dimensions, and well adapted for knocking down a bullock. They did not make any offer to molest us; but the sight of our revolvers, rifles, and guns, no doubt everywhere acted as a good warning to them, as to what they might expect if they commenced hostilities.

“They did not appear to pay much respect to old age, after decease, as one of them was noticed by one of our party taking some dead wood from an old grave to make a fire, and on being remonstrated with, he replied, ‘All right; only old woman been tumble down.’ Proceeding on to Lake M’Kinlay, there is a pretty numerous tribe there, but only eight or nine visited our camp, as most of them were away hunting in the sandhills, where they always go after the rains have left water enough in the claypans for their subsistence while hunting. Some of them were much frightened at the camels. They looked in excellent health. We camped here close to the tree which M’Kinlay marked on his journey. The tree had been partly destroyed by the blacks, but some fine young saplings are springing up, straight and tall again, and the old tree promises to be soon as good as ever. I think it is only an act of justice to these poor creatures to record their peaceable and friendly behaviour to us all the way we travelled, and we hope that as soon as the Salt Creek country is occupied, which from its fine grazing capabilities it immediately will be, a thoughtful and liberal Government will send a supply of useful things to them—as blankets, tomahawks, &c.

“The Salt Creek tribe is numerous and powerful, and I feel convinced that kind but firm treatment at the outset will bring about the most desirable results. Police protection ought to be at once given to the first settlers on this and the neighbouring creeks. It would act as a wholesome check on the bad propensities and cupidity of the natives, and at the same time procure their proper treatment.”

CHAPTER IV.

Efforts made to civilize the Aborigines⁠—Rev. L. E. Threlkeld⁠—Results of Missions⁠—Government support of Missions⁠—Society for propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts⁠—Population in the Port Phillip District⁠—Examination before the Legislative Council on the Aboriginal Question⁠—Lieut. Sadleir’s evidence⁠—Rev. L. E. Threlkeld’s evidence⁠—Captain Grey’s opinion.

The following may be considered as a brief summary of the several attempts to christianize and civilize the aborigines. Several portions of the Bible have been translated, but as the natives are fast acquiring English, this need not be continued.

The Rev. Mr. Threlkeld was a translator into the aboriginal language, as appears from the following, but the tribes in question are now extinct:⁠—