One of the chief concerns of an aboriginal father is to make his son fearless and capable of enduring hardship. In all his dealings with his children, he endeavours to avoid favouring and pampering any of them once they have passed out of infancy; but the boys in particular are constantly urged to suppress pain and to make it their special task to under-rate the deprivation of comfort no matter what circumstances might arise. In the same way the boys are trained to be brave; they are told not to be under any apprehension of danger except when it is known to be prompted by the treachery of the evil spirit or by the wrath of the spirit-ancestors of the tribe. With this principle ever before them, most of the initiation ceremonies have been evolved on similar lines. The Kukata even make it compulsory for the novices to walk through a blazing fire, an act they refer to as “merliadda.” Other central tribes make the young men lie temporarily upon branches they place over a smouldering fire.
PLATE XXX
Circumcision of a Wogait boy.
“With his left hand the surgeon seizes the prepuse, whilst a veritable reverberation of short-sounded ‘i, i’s’ meets him from the mouths of all present, and as he draws it well forward a number of hacks severs it.”
It is largely during the term of initiation, from early childhood to adolescence, that every individual, boy or girl, receives a number of cuts in different parts of the body, which, when they heal, leave permanent and elevated scars. After the incision is made, ashes, ochre, and grease are usually rubbed into the wound to make it granulate to excess and so produce an artificial keloid. The reasons for making these scars are threefold: spartan, cosmetic, and tribal. The operation is performed with a stone-knife or flint-chip. In addition, a punctate scar is produced by twirling a fire-making stick until it becomes nearly red-hot, then quickly holding the point against the skin. The process is repeated time after time, each time selecting a new point on the skin, until a chain-pattern results. The latter type of scar is more commonly found on women than on men, and is much adopted by the coastal tribes of the Northern Territory.
It would be futile even to attempt a scheme of classification of the different tribal markings. In some districts, only one or two are made; in others, the better part of the body is covered. As a general rule, the men display a greater number than the women; the latter often only have one or two horizontal cuts across the chest or abdomen, at times, indeed, only a single prominent scar connecting the breasts. Generally speaking, the central Australian tribes do not cicatricize their bodies nearly as much as the northern. The Yantowannta, Ngameni, and other Cooper Creek natives leave the chest clean above the breasts, but cut a few horizontal lines immediately below them on the abdomen; the Dieri add one or two short irregular marks above; at Durham Downs the women have a number of short horizontal lines on each breast. Among the Aluridja, Arunndta, and Arrabonna, one notices principally short horizontal lines across chest and abdomen, with, occasionally, a few vertical bars, less than an inch in length, around the shoulders; a number of the small circular fire-marks are also as a rule noticeable on the forearms of the Arunndta. On the north coast a great variety of marks may be studied. The tribes east and west of Port Darwin have very prominent scars horizontally across chest and abdomen, short vertical bars around the shoulders, sloping bands composed of either parallel vertical cuts or fire-whisk scars, passing from the central point between the breasts upwards to the shoulder on one or both sides, and occasionally a vertical band, consisting of two parallel rows of fire-whisk scars, on one side of the abdomen just beside the navel. An additional pattern is a sagging band across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, consisting of about twenty short vertical cuts.
It must not be supposed that these marks are all regularly observed upon every individual one meets. On the contrary, it is very rare to see a person with all the scars referred to, some having only one or two horizontal lines across the chest or abdomen like the central tribes.
The Melville and Bathurst Islanders imitate the frond of the zamia palm (Cycas media) by cutting a series of V-shaped figures, one within the other, in a vertical row, upon one or both sides of the back, and on the upper and outer surfaces of the arms and thighs. Horizontal lines are cut across the chest, as above described, and here and there a person also has a horizontal band on his forehead, immediately over the eyes, consisting of from eight to twelve short vertical cuts.
The Cambridge Gulf natives, both male and female, cut numerous lines (“gummanda”) horizontally across the chest, abdomen, buttocks, and thighs, and long vertical lines down the upper arms, whilst on the back, occasionally, a “waist-band” or “naualla,” consisting of numerous short vertical nicks, is added, together with about ten vertical cuts on each calf ([Plate XVI], 2). The gins have one or two vertical bands of punctate scars between the breasts.