A TYPICAL POLYNESIAN
(A man of Tongatabu, Tonga Archipelago)
AN AUSTRALOID TYPE FROM NORTHERN QUEENSLAND
(From photographs)
They had no agriculture, and no domestic animals but the Dingo. This dog they kept as much for eating as for hunting. Although each tribe occupied a definite area, they had scarcely any settled homes or permanent villages. They roamed about looking for food, and living for days, weeks, or months alongside their food supply, which consisted of the produce of the chase—kangarus, phalangers, wombats, koalas (tailless phalangers), emus, bustards, swans, parrots, and pigeons; fish, snakes, lizards, turtles (on the coast), and shellfish. They ate a good many insects—fat-bodied moths, beetle grubs, termites (white ants), the pupæ of real ants, and the larvæ of bees. Honey was, of course, much liked and much sought after, and from it they made with water a sweet drink which sometimes became slightly fermented like mead. Their women obtained from the ground wild yams, truffles, and the roots and tubers of various plants or the seeds of others. They cooked their food by broiling, by baking in the ashes, and by the use of hot stones. Although they did not know tobacco till the Europeans introduced it, they already possessed the idea of inhaling the smoke of other dried leaves through a bamboo pipe, and chewed some leaves for their soothing qualities.
When hard up for food, they occasionally became cannibals, and after an inter-tribal fight the slain were generally eaten. They had a vague sense of religion, believed that there was a life after the grave, that men's spirits mostly went to a land beyond the visible sky, and sometimes returned again in the bodies of newborn children. But some of these men—famous chiefs in their day—stopped in the sky and became gods. There was one principal God, who was sometimes identified with the creator of all things, and who might be seen at night time in the form of a very bright star. Much of their religion was associated with the discipline of the community, and was manifested in elaborate dances. Nearly every clan or tribe had "medicine" men—individuals who were learned in the customs and laws of the tribe, and who had some rough knowledge of medicine and surgery. Their tribal organization was based on the association for common purposes of defence of a number of groups, which last were either united by family ties or formed a brotherhood because they all inherited or adopted the same "totem"[22] or crest. It was usually forbidden for a man to marry a woman who belonged to the same clan or totem group as himself; he must secure a wife from another coterie. Marriage was actually or generally pretended to be an affair of capture, though frequently based on a bargain; and the unwilling young woman was sometimes dragged to her new home by the hair of her head, or knocked senseless by a club and then hoisted on to her husband's shoulders. The women, in fact, were very badly treated, and did all the hard work of the community.
The Australoids when first discovered were a degree or two farther advanced than the "Eolithic"[23] Tasmanians. They were, in effect, in a "Palæolithic" stage of culture, similar to that of Europe some fifty thousand years ago. Their weapons and utensils were made of wood, stone, and bone. They did not know the bow and arrow, but used a rather elaborate wooden rest for throwing their spears with greater force than by the unaided arm. The spearhead was either of finely pointed hard wood, carved with notched barbs, or it was a separate piece from the haft and made of stone, bone, or shell, tied strongly on to the haft, and further fastened by resinous gum. This gum from the Eucalyptus trees was very useful for attaching the blades of stone axes and knives to their handles.
But the Australoids were specially celebrated for two things: their "bull-roarers" and their "boomerangs". The bull-roarer was a carved and flattened piece of wood or stone something in the shape of an axe blade. At the narrow end of this implement (which had a sacred character, as it was usually inscribed or painted with the "crest" or device of the clan's totem) were indentations, to which a piece of fibre string or strip of hide could be tied. The "churinga" (as it was called in south-east Australia) was then whirled round and round in the air till it made a loud booming noise. This the women were persuaded was the voice of a spirit, and only youths after their initiation, or full-grown men, were in the secret. [All over the world of savagery in ancient times, and in the few places where savages now remain, women have been very easily "gammoned", and have been made to believe much nonsense which the men invented to scare them and keep them in submission.]
The boomerang was a wooden throwing stick, very thin and flat, and curved or crooked in the middle. Although more or less fiat in surface, it nevertheless had a slight twist, a little like the plane of a bird's wing. Hurled flat-wise through the air it was a very effective weapon; and some kinds, if they did not hit the object aimed at, would return and fall near the place from which they had been thrown. But both boomerang and bull-roarer, though they seemed very novel and unusual to the early pioneers in Australian discovery, were really not peculiar to this savage people. They have existed in many parts of Negro Africa, and even anciently in Europe, India, and in Egypt.
The houses of the Australoids were rough shelters of sticks, fronds, and grass. In warm weather the natives did not bother to put up huts, but slept with their feet towards the fire and their heads against a low wind screen of boughs and grass. The aborigines of Australia had some gift for painting and drawing objects, and had even invented a rough alphabet of symbolic signs or primitive writing, with which they marked their "message sticks" or churingas. These message sticks, in fact, were the germ of letters.