Australia, New Zealand and some islands of the South seas

by Frank G. Carpenter

THE ABORIGINES

THE Australians call the aborigines “blacks,” and “blackfellows,” and they sometimes use the word “nigger,” but the few natives I have seen were chocolate brown rather than black. Their hair is curly, but not woolly, and they have neither the thick lips nor the very flat nose of the African. Some of the aborigines are quite fine looking; they are generally straight and well formed, although often lean. In Townsville, Queensland, I saw a “gin,” as the women of the aborigines are called, who would have passed without notice in any mixed crowd of coloured people of our Southern States. She was about eighteen years old, with the skin of a mulatto, high cheekbones, a slightly receding chin, and a big mouth. Her hair was fine, smooth, and glossy.

This girl had on European clothes, but in the interior of northern Australia both men and women go naked, or at most have only a few ornaments in their noses and ears, with perhaps a string or two about their waist for carrying their crude weapons. In northwestern Queensland the natives put on belts of human hair for certain ceremonies. They wear grass necklaces and often stripe their bodies with paint. Sometimes they have several opossum skins about their shoulders. They make their hair stiff with fat or clay and tie bands about it to keep it from falling into their eyes. Hair grease is profusely used everywhere and the native gives himself a coat of fish oil when he can get it. This envelops him in a rancid smell which is very offensive to Europeans. The methods of dressing the hair vary. Sometimes it is bound up with cloths, and the knuckle bones of the kangaroo are so fastened to it that they hang down over the ears, or kangaroo teeth are tied to the forelocks, so that they dangle between the eyebrows.

About Port Darwin in northern Australia the blacks wear nose pins, some of which are ten inches long. The nose is pierced in the centre, and the pins are thrust through so that they stand out for five inches beyond the nostrils. They are made of the bones of turkeys, kangaroos, or emus. Occasionally parrot quills are used with the bright-coloured feathers sticking out on each side of the nose. Some of the natives pierce their ears and insert kangaroo bones as plugs.

Nearly all the aborigines have scars upon their bodies and the bigger the scars the prouder the owners. To make ornaments the skin is cut with flints or shells, powdered charcoal is dusted in, and the wounds are kept open for months, so that when they heal they leave ridges on the body as thick as your finger. These scars are found on the native’s back and chest, on the biceps muscles, and sometimes on the thighs and stomach. Among certain tribes the men are scarred by having little pieces of skin cut out to the tune of the victim’s yells of pain.

The scars on the women are not always voluntary, but are often the result of the cruel treatment inflicted upon them by their husbands. The men regard their wives as their slaves and when angry, club them and cut them with their stone hatchets or jab them with their hardwood spears. If a woman is killed in this family discipline, it is not considered a matter of consequence. The aboriginal wife has no rights that the men are bound to respect, and if she is caught away from home any one may maltreat her. As a daughter she is sold or given away by her father or brothers, and after marriage she is a drudge and slave. A husband can lend his wife to a friend or give her away. He can forbid her speaking to another man, and in some tribes she is not allowed to exchange a word with her grown-up brothers. She is often a bride at the age of ten, and is usually married before she reaches sixteen. There are many bachelors among the blacks, but no old maids, for even a homely girl can work.

When a man dies his widows become the property of his eldest brother, who can keep or dispose of them, as he pleases. The eldest brother has the right to give away or trade off his sisters, and the father often exchanges the females of the family for wives for his sons.

The native woman of Australia cannot complain that all the professions of her tribe are not open to her. She does all the work, from building the house to getting the food and nursing the baby. Most of the tribes are nomadic. They build little shelters of bark or skins wherever they camp, making a new village at each stopping place.

In travelling, the woman carries all the belongings of the family. She is laden down like a pack horse and walks along bent over behind her husband, who, perhaps, carries nothing but his clubs and boomerangs. If she falls behind the rest of the party she is pretty sure of a whipping from her lord and master. As soon as they come to a new camp the woman cuts the bark and builds the hut. She then goes out and digs roots, picks fruit, and climbs the trees to chop out the larvæ of worms, which she cooks for breakfast. She often carries her child with her, laying it on the ground as she digs. As a result of such treatment she ages rapidly, her hair soon grows gray, her face wrinkles, and she dies at about thirty. Even the men seldom live to be more than fifty.

The lives of the aborigines are shortened by exposure, poor diet, and contact with civilization and its vices. They are said to be the least developed people of the world. I am told that they live more like animals than human beings. Their food is largely vegetable, including all sorts of roots. They collect wild fruits, and for bread they make a sort of paste of grass seeds moistened and ground between stones into a flour. This they make into dough and eat it either cooked or raw. A favourite dish is wild honey, which they find in the hollow trees by following the bee to its hoard.