Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

1. The Australian Group

Occupies the whole semi-continent of Australia and the island of Tasmania south of it. The last of the Tasmanians perished some years ago, and Carl Lumholtz, one of the most recent of Australian explorers, calculates the survivors of the native inhabitants of that continent at not over 30,000 individuals of pure blood.

Their appearance differs considerably, although it is generally conceded that they speak related idioms, and originally came from one lineage and language. The Tasmanians had quite frizzly or woolly hair, and according to reliable observers correspond closely in habits and appearance to the Papuas.[174] Among the Australians of the north and northeast coast this resemblance is still accentuated, and no wonder, when the islands in Torres straits, one in sight of the other, form natural stepping stones from New Guinea to Australia. On the west coast the hair is straighter, and the signs of Malay blood are obvious. The color varies from dark to light brown, and the beard is generally full, the body being also well supplied with hair.[175]

The culture status of the Australians is generally put at the very lowest. Their roving tribes are without government, they do not till the ground, they go naked, and do not know the bow and arrow. Their weapons are the spear and the boomerang, a crooked club which they throw at the object. The story that it returns to the thrower is only true of some used in sport (Lumholtz). Marriage among them is by robbery or purchase, and the women are treated with deliberate cruelly. Cannibalism in its most revolting form is usual, and the sick are deserted. Their religion is a low fetichism, and they have no idols nor forms of worship. Certain rites, as fasting, sacrificing, and solemn dancing, clearly have reference to the supposed supernatural powers. In some parts, however, they draw figures of animals with charcoal on the sides of caves, and manufacture rude stone carvings.[176] They chip flakes into spear-points, and are skilful in making fire from friction, in catching animals and other simple arts. Their songs are numerous, and are chanted in correct time.

The corroborees, or dances, constitute their principal religious and social festivals. These are usually celebrated at night, by the light of great fires, and accompanied by a horrible clangor, which passes for music, produced from drums, flutes, and a sort of tambourine. The chants relate to adventures in war and love, in boasting recitals, and in descriptions of ancestral power. The initiation of the young of both sexes into the duties of adult life is always accompanied with some solemnities, such as fasting, incising the flesh in lines so as to leave prominent scars, cutting the hair, breaking one or more teeth, and with local mutilations of a painful and shocking character.

As usual among the primitive peoples, sickness and death are regarded, not as natural events, but as the maleficent action of evil spirits or living enemies. When ill, therefore, the services of the priest or magician is called in to counteract the sorcery and to name the adversary who sets it on foot. These adepts employ the same Shamanistic practices, rubbing, blowing, sucking, howling, which are popular with them everywhere, and if these fail, at least at death they can suggest who the hidden enemy has been, and thus furnish a pretext for the avenger of blood to start forth on his murderous mission.

In some parts the dead are burned; in others, the flesh is scraped from the bones, or the body is exposed until they are cleaned by the ants and other animals, and then they are carefully collected and placed in an ossuary; or again, the body is buried in the hut where the death took place, this is torn down and thrown on the grave, and the place is deserted. The spirits of the dead are supposed to haunt the place where the body is left, and as a rule to exercise an evil influence on the living. Food is occasionally placed on the grave, and some ceremonies of mourning are repeated for eleven months; usually, the survivors refrain from repeating the name of the deceased, even if it is a word of common use.[177]

Rudimentary as was their culture, it is interesting to notice that they had developed the conception of writing. They were accustomed to send information, and even describe events, by incising peculiarly formed notches, lines and figures on pieces of wood, called “message sticks.” These would be sent by runners for hundreds of miles, and could be read by the recipient through the conventional meanings assigned to the characters.[178]

2. The Dravidian Group.

I have already given you a description of the general appearance of the Dravidas or Dravidians. There is some physical resemblance among them all, but here the similarity ceases, as they vary greatly in culture and language. They are held to have been the pre-Aryac population of India, and one of their tribes, the Brahui, is found north of the mountains, in Beloochistan. When the Aryans entered India, about two thousand years before our era, they either subjugated, destroyed or drove to the south these earlier possessors of the soil. They either became the lowest caste in the Aryac states, the “sudras,” or they fled to the swamps and hills. Their total number at present is about 50,000,000.