THE INTELLECTUAL STATUS OF 'ILLE ABORIGINES OF VICTORIA.
THERE is one unpleasantness, to us at least, in reading about Australian savages. They have been very carefully ob- served by very intelligent men, almost as carefully observed as the children of a household, and those men always seem to us to come to two conclusions :—First, that the savages are men ; and secondly, that the power of accumulation, the power which more than any other differentiates men from animals, is in them exceeding low, or rather, positively limited. The power exists, that is demonstrable, but its exercise involves, with some tribes, such fatigue that they will not employ it unless driven by sharp and continuous necessity, and not always even then. They consequently remain, and will remain always, not animals, but little children, never advancing, and never capable of cumulative advance, but living on unchanged till the conditions around them become too much for their limited powers, and then dying sadly out. It is not a pleasant thought, by any means,— though no more inconsistent with the Providential scheme than the existence of congenital idiotcy- or hereditary insanity,—because it suggests that in each race there may be an inherent line beyond which it will not pass, and that no race, therefore, is certainly capable of indefinite advance, but it will obtrude itself some- times. We have a huge book before us, for example, a pre- sent from the Government of Victoria, in which Mr. Brough Smyth, a gentleman employed for sixteen years in the Depart- ment for the protection of the Aborigines, gives to the world much of what he has collected about the aborigines of Victoria. He had intended to give all he had accumulated, but was pre- vented by "circumstances," for which, unless they were very unpleasant to him, we are heartily grateful. God knows what his book would have grown to, if his design had been perfected. It is extremely valuable, however, and interesting, in spite of its gigantic scale ; and it is impossible to read the chapters we have read—those bearing on the mental status of the aborigines— without the thought we have described. The aborigines of Victoria, who, it seems certain, were all originally alike, and who all speak dialects of one tongue, seem stricken with per- petual childhood. They have all the capacities of other races, physical and mental, except the capacity of advance ; they produce as many children to the family,—a statement often denied ; Count Stzrelecki's often-quoted account of the ste- rility of their women, after bearing children to white men, is a fable ; and the popular notion of their low vitality is a delusion, they recovering from severe wounds with singular ease and rapidity. Their young shift for themselves very early, as "early as the kangaroo," showing great quickness and readiness in hunting up food for themselves ; and they are quite as active as Europeans, though not so enduring or so strong. They have good memories, but it is in the way children have,— memories, for instance, for words, and for stories, and for the customs of the house, but not for anything requiring separate and original mental exertion, nor, it may be suspected, for things
that are long past. They learn English, for example, very readily, and sometimes very perfectly, just as children in India will learn two or three languages apparently without any mental effort, and certainly without any draft upon the intelligence, which remains as undeveloped in the trilingual child—such, for example, as the well-to-do child in Pondicherry often is, and the English children in Calcutta always axe—as in the monolingual one. They know great numbers of myths, wild and rather grotesque stories about the origin of things, and the Flood, and the feats of the Bunyips, or evil spirits, just as children know fairy-stories, but are without any system of theology. And they remember and obey customs which they cannot explain, which impose on them disagreeable restrictions, and which sometimes require great efforts of memory, just as children will act upon mamma's rules, and recollect long strings of things forbidden, apparently without using their minds at all. Mr. Brough Smyth gives one example of this, which is to us new and strangely suggestive, a custom that seems to have tumbled out of another world, or to have descended from another civilisation. The aborigines of Victoria will eat the most loathsome things—tree-worms, slugs, snakes, and so on—and it was at first believed that they would eat any- thing. It was, however, discovered that not only were certain articles of food forbidden to the young, the object being to reserve them to the old, who govern the tribes, and who cannot hunt vigorously, but that they had a classification in their minds binding animate and inanimate things together, in some inexplicable tribal connection. They hold, as it were, that hares and Campbells have a relation, and Frasers and wom- bats, so that any Fraser may eat any hare, but no Campbell may ; while a Campbell may dine off a wombat, while a Fraser may not. The statement is so strange, that we give it in the original :—
"The statements made in his letter to me by Mr. Bridgman, of Queensland, and the peculiar arrangement under one and the same division, as ascertained by Mr. Stewart, of Mount Gambier, of things animate and inanimate, show that much is yet to be learnt respecting the principles which guide the natives in placing in classes all that comes within their knowledge. The two classes of the tribes near Mackay in Queensland are Youngaroo and lirootoroo, and these are again subdivided, and marriages are regulated in accordance there- with. But the blacks say alligators are Youngaroo and kangaroos are Wootaroo, and that the sun is Youngaroo and the moon is Wootaroo. Strange to say, this, or something us nearly like this as possible, is found at Mount Gambier. There the pelican, the dog, the blackwood- tree, and fire and frost are Boort-parangal, and belong to the division Kumite-gor (gor = female); and tea-tree sernb, the duck, the wal- laby, the owl, and the cray-fish are Boort-werio, and belong to the division Krokee. A Kumite may marry any Krokee-gor, and a Krokee may marry a Kumite-gor. And Mr. Stewart says a man will not, unless under severe pressure, kill or use as food any of the animals of the division in which he is placed. A Kumite is deeply grieved when hunger compels him to eat anything that bears his name, but he may satisfy his hunger with anything that is Krokee. These divisions and subdivisions have an important influence in all arrangements between natives, not only as regards marriage, but also in revenging injuries, in imputing witchcraft, and in the fights that so constantly occur."
We presume, without dogmatising, that the aborigine, in his anxiety to avoid family intermarriage, an anxiety found in many savage races, and in him most intense, was slowly building up a caste system, and made it easier to recollect the rules, and more difficult to practise deceit by enforcing food regulations ; but the extension of the system to all nature is, so far as we know, unique. Is it undeveloped tribal worship, or what, which makes a clan claim the sun, while discarding the moon ? Yet the same people who recollect all these things recollect no traditions, and betray a sense of physical oppression under education which occasionally kills them. They die or run back to the woods, obviously to get rid of the burden. They have an art like that of children, making pictures of natural
objects in the caves and on rocks, pictures of the rudest kind, but always recognisable, and they ornament both weapons and canoes, but have arrived at no idea of writing, though—and this is, we think-, the only =childlike thing we have found about them, the only practice suggesting indefinite possibilities of advance—they have arrived at a means of sending messages in- telligible to others than those for whom the message was in- tended. Tribes are often summoned by message. These messages were sent by notches on sticks, and are assumed by many who have seen them to be of the rudest kind, but it is possible, though not proved, that this is an assumption, and that some natives, probably very few, can carve something like a letter. At least, if it is not so, Mr. John Moore Davis, whom
the author quotes as trustworthy, has drawn very largely on his imagination :—
" The late Mr. John Moore Davis stated in a letter to me, in 1871, that when on a visit to Benalla he became acquainted with the fact that the Aborigines have the means of communicating with each other at a distance, and that peculiarly-formed notches on a stick convey their ideas in a manner similar to the knots on a cord used in the days of old by the Mexicans. He adds that a friend of his, having decided on forming a new station, started from the Edward River with a lot of cattle, having with him several blacks. When the settler was about to return home one of the young natives asked him if ha would carry a letter to his—the black's—father, and on expressing his willingness to do so, the young man gave him a piece of stick, about one foot in length, which was covered with notches and lines. On reaching home, the settler went to the black's camp, and delivered the letter to the father, who thereon called together all the blacks who were living with him, and to the settler's great surprise, read off from the stick a diary of the proceedings of the party day by day, from their departure from the Edward River till their arrival at the new station describing accurately the country through which they had travelled and the places where they had camped each night."
Before Europeans landed, the aborigines had discovered fire and the use of cooking, but had never learned how to boil, or constructed the simplest instrument of pottery, or indeed anything to hold water, except hollowed wood. Their contrivance for creating fire—the rapid twirling of a stick in some dry wood—was probably discovered by acci- dent; but fire once made, they guarded it very jealously, the torch, as we may call it, being carried by women in all their marches. Like children, they refer always to the old for guid- ance, yet without creating any form of government ; and like some children, they are a prey to endless unreal terrors and spasms of cruel excitement. They are always dreading some- thing done against them somewhere by sorcerers, and go some- times so nearly mad with grief, that in a sort of hysteria they begin fighting and kill one another. They have arrived, like children, at the notion of property in anything due to an exertion—as, for example, in the game they have struck—and they make partnerships for sharing game ; but though they have tribal districts, they have no notion of property in land. Suicide is as unknown among them as among children. They have not, in fact, discovered the inevitability of death, and do not, Mr. Smyth affirms, believe that death occurs naturally at all. Its sole origin is witchcraft, the aborigines not conceiving of any reason why the machine should stop of itself ; and some of their weird ceremonials suggest a permanent doubt whether, even after witchcraft has done its work, the men really are dead :—
"Sometimes along speech is delivered over the grave by some man of consideration in the tribe. Mr. Bridgman, of Mackay, in Queens- land, states in a letter to me that on one occasion he heard a funeral oration delivered over the grave of a man who had been a great warrior which lasted more than an hour. The corpse was borne on the shoulders of two men, who stood at the edge of the grave. During the discourse he observed that the orator spoke to the deceased as if he were still living and could hear his words. Burial in the district in which Mr. Bridgman lives is only a formal ceremony, and not an absolute disposal of the remains. After lying in the ground for three months or more, the body is disinterred, the bones are cleaned, and packed in a roll of pliable bark, the outside of which is painted and ornamented with strings of beads and the like. This, which is called Ngobera, is kept in the camp with the living. If a strange/- who has known the deceased comes to the camp, the Argobtea is brought out towards evening, and he and some of the near relations of the dead person sit down by it, and wail and cut themselves for half an hour. Then it is handed to the stranger, who takes it with him and sleeps by the side of it, returning it in the morning to its proper custodian. Women and children who die, Mr. Bridgman says, are usually burnt."
It may be, as they believe in ghosts, and in some sort of future life in the stars, that they think the spirit lingers on earth as long as its earthly temple survives, as Egyptians thought ; but they either will not, or cannot, communicate their half-formed ideas on these subjects with sufficient definiteness.
These strange people, who seem to have reached their limit early, just as the Chinese reached it late, are perishing so fast that they will speedily be only a memory. Small-pox and other diseases kill out the wilder tribes, and those "black fellows" who come among the whites seem unable to withstand the in- fluence of their own sense of incompetence, which often produces a deep melancholy unknown among the larger-brained and more cheerful negroes. There are, Mr. Smyth thinks, not above 4,500 left in all Victoria, and they are rapidly dying out, a sad specimen of a people perishing without a use in the world, They have no past and no present, and no future ; have ap- parently done nothing for mankind. They cam e, and they are, and they will go, just as might be said of all humanity, if the materialist's theory were proved beyond all question. How long they have been there is utterly unknown, and cannot even be guessed. It must have been ages upon ages, for,—
" On the coast of Victoria there appear in various parts, what at first sight one would suppose to be raised beaches, and if only a slight examination be made of these, their true character is not discovered. But instead of lying in regular and connected layers, they occur in heaps, beyond high-water mark, and they are always opposite to rocks laid bare at low water. Moreover, they are found to consist mainly of one kind of shell—namely, the muscle (3fytilus Dunkeri), with a small proportion of the mutton-fish (Haliotis nivosa), the limpet (Pa- tella tramoserica), the periwinkle (Lunella undulate), and the cockle (Cardiunt tenuicostatum). These accumulations resemble in many respects the kjiik-ken-moddings ' of Denmark. With the shells are stones bearing distinctly the appearance of having been subjected to the action of fire, and there are also numerous pieces of charcoal ins- bedded in the mounds. They are visible all along the coast where it is low, but never in any other position than that described ; and when opened up, are seen to be formed of heaps not regularly super-imposed one on the other. Those that have been frequented most recently exhibit clearly the mode of accumulation, and one can trace the old heaps upwards to the last, which ia generally found on the highest part of the mound. The area covered by some of the largest of the mounds exceeds an acre in extent ; and the shape of the heaps of shells composing them, which are separated by layers of sand, indi- cates their origin. The enormous period of time during which the natives have assembled on the shores to gather and cook the shell-fish accounts for the great number and extent of the mounds."
And yet it is extremely improbable that they are true abori- • gMes, for all the evidence points to an immigration :—
"it is proper to call attention to the fact that no works of art have been found in the recent drifts of Victoria, and these drifts have been largely and widely explored by gold-miners. Was Australia un- peopled during the ages that preceded the formation of the gravels
that form low terraces in every valley, and the beds of soft volcanic ash that yet cover grass-grown surfaces ? If peopled, why do we not find some evidence—a broken stone tomahawk or a stone spear- head—in some of the most recent accumulations ? Their stone im- plements are not found in caves or in the mud of lagoons with the bones of the gigantic marsupials, or any of the now extinct predaceans that have their living representatives in the island of Tasmania. The bones of the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus ursinus), the great kan- garoo (Maeropus Titan), the Thylacoleo, the Nointherium, and the Diprotodon, and those of a reptile (Aregalania prisca) allied to the lace-lizards of Australia, are found abundantly in mud flats in various parts of Australia ; bat nothing has been discovered to show that the continent was inhabited by man when these now well-preserved relics were clothed with flesh, and the animals were feeding on the plains and in the streams, which were as well fitted then as now, as shown by the fruits and seeds that have been discovered, to afford the means of support to a savage people. What was the condition of Australia when the ffint implement-makers of the drift period were living ? Probably an unpeopled tract, where the then nearly extinct volcanoes shed at times over the landscape a feeble light, and the lion gnawing the bones of a kangaroo was watched with jackal-like eyes by the native dog, ready to eat up such scraps as his powerful enemy might leave when his hunger was appeased. It is almost certain that during the period of the large carnivorous marsupials, man was not there to contest with the lion the right to the proceeds of the chase."
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