There are not any ceremonies attending the burial of young children; and the male relatives often neglect to attend at all, leaving it altogether to the women.
The natives have not much dread of going near to graves, and care little for keeping them in order, or preventing the bones of their friends from being scattered on the surface of the earth.
I have frequently seen them handling them, or kicking them with the foot with great indifference. On one occasion when out with an old native looking for horses before it was daylight, I came to a grave of no very old date, and where the boughs and bushes built over in the form of a hut were still remaining undisturbed; the weather was extremely cold, and the old man did not hesitate to ask me to pull down the boughs to make a fire, but would not do it himself.
On another occasion when a poor old woman had been deserted by the natives of Moorunde, and died a few days after being brought up to the station, I had great difficulty in getting the other natives to bury her, they would on no account touch the body; but after digging a hole, they got a long wiry branch of a tree, and one man taking hold of each end they bent the middle round the old woman's neck, and thus dragged her along the ground and threw her into the pit like a dog, all the time violently and continually spitting out in every direction to ward off, as they said, the infection.
[Note 83: "He tied a thong to her leg, avoiding the touch of that form which gave him birth, dragged the corpse to some bushes, and left the thong because it had been in contact with the body of his mother." —Moffat's South Africa, p. 306.]
Sometimes it happens that when a death occurs, the nearest grown up male relative, whose duty it would be to take the principal part in the ceremonies, or inflict punishment if evil agency is suspected to have caused the death, may be absent. In this case he would have to discharge these duties upon the first occasion of his meeting with the supposed aggressors. The following is an instance which I witnessed.
A relative of Tenberry, one of the principal natives of the Murray, had died when he was absent, and the son of the deceased was too young to revenge the sorcery which it was imagined had caused his father's death, it therefore became Tenberry's duty to do this upon the first occasion that offered. I was with him when the parties first came into the neighbourhood, and I witnessed the proceedings. Notice having been sent by Tenberry the evening before, to warn them to be ready, I accompanied him early in the morning towards the encampment of the natives, situated in a hollow near the water; when within about a hundred yards we saw from the rise all the natives seated below us in the valley. Tenberry now halted, and having taken a hasty survey of the group hung down his head upon his breast and raised a low mournful lamentation; after a time it ceased, and the wail was at once replied to and continued by women's voices in the camp: he now hastily went down to the camp still uttering his lamentations, and the whole body rose at his approach, and formed a large open circle around him. The natives who were supposed to have caused the death of his friend, formed a part of the circle and were armed with spears; behind them stood the orphan son of the deceased, probably in the light of an accuser; and behind the son were the widows, wailing and lamenting bitterly.
After taking the centre of the circle, Tenberry called for a spear, but no one offered one, he therefore took a long one from a native in the ring, who had evidently brought it for that purpose and yielded it unresistingly. Pacing with this weapon furiously up and down the circle, he advanced and retreated before the accused, brandishing the spear at them, and alternately threatening and wailing. No one replied, but the melancholy dirge was still kept up by the widows in the rear.
After sufficiently exciting himself in this manner for some time, he advanced with uplifted spear, and successively repeating his blows speared four or five persons among the accused natives in the left arm, each of them pushing forward his arm unflinchingly for the blow as he advanced upon them. Tenberry now again hung down his head and took up his lamentation for a short time, after which he paced about rapidly, vehemently haranguing, and violently gesticulating, and concluded by ordering all the natives present to separate their camps, and each tribe to make their own apart.
Mourning is performed by the men by cutting their beards [Note 84 at end of para.] and hair, and daubing the head and breast with a white pigment; among the women, by cutting and burning the hair close off [Note 85 at end of para.] to the head and plastering themselves with pipe-clay. In some cases, hot ashes are put upon the head to singe the hair to its very roots, and they then literally weep "in dust and ashes." Among some of the Murray tribes, a mourning cap is worn by the women, made two or three inches thick of carbonate of lime. It is moulded to the head when moist around a piece of net work; the weight is eight pounds and a half. (Pl. 1, fig. 17.)