When one wades more deeply into the subject, only skimmed above, the following points suggest themselves to one: Our line of racial development was very early dissociated from the Mongoloid and Negroid lines; and geographically it ran between the latter two. There are considerable racial differences between the other races and the Australoids, the most highly specialized and cultured division of which is now represented by the modern Caucasian. The last-named deductions are entirely supported by the shallowness of the pigmentation in the aboriginal’s skin, and by the fair hair of children found among certain tribes of central Australia. In fact, the colour question, so far as the Australian aboriginal is concerned, is a relative conception, the difference in the amounts of pigment in his skin and in the “white” man’s being in all probability due to climatic influences extending over long periods of time. It is doubtful whether the primitive Australoid or the Proto-Australian possessed a skin so dark as that of the present-day Australian. We may now understand why it is that the quarter-blooded progeny derived from the union of a half-blooded aboriginal woman with a European father is always lighter in colour than its mother, and the octoroon lighter still. Unions further on the European side produce children practically white; and no case is on record where the colour in a later generation reverted to the darker again. The latter, we know, happens only too often when there is a taint of Negroid blood running in a family, even though the mixing of race took place generations back.
Apart from its great scientific significance, this matter is of considerable social and national interest to citizens of Australia, and we might well ask ourselves: “Are we justified in referring to the half-blooded aboriginal, with European parentage on one side, as a half-caste, or in even stigmatizing him as a bastard?”
CHAPTER X
AN ABORIGINAL’S BIRTH
Recognition of pending maternity—Peculiar beliefs in connection with the cause of pregnancy—Larrekiya legend and maternal dietary—Maiyarra’s accouchement—Birth—Twin births—After-treatment—Artificial termination of pregnancy—Preparing the new-born—Children’s lot decided by peculiar group-relationships—Parents’ affection—Children unclothed—How they are kept warm and reared—Different methods of carrying and nursing children.
It had been talked among the old men for some time past that the lubra Maiyarra was giving cause for suspicion. Her husband Pitjala agreed; to his knowledge there had been no occasion for her to leave his camp for some moons past. His mother, old Indarrakutta, had told him that when she and Maiyarra were gathering roots down by the Womma waterhole, many of the gum trees were covered with manna and they partook freely of the sweet meal, which, as he knew, does not often come to their district. The old woman had cautioned the girl and growled at her when she did not obey, because she knew Maiyarra was of the Yalliadni clan and should not be allowed to eat the manna. This disobedient gin had, however, not eaten much before she became sick and was obliged to lie in the hot sand of the creek where the bullrushes stand. Indarrakutta had stood aghast, Pitjala explained to the old men, when unexpectedly disturbing a snake from the bullrushes, she observed that the creature, in gliding over the ground, touched the body of Maiyarra with its tail and, in its great haste to disappear, had left portion of its glossy slough beside her. “Yakai,” gasped the men, as if from a single mouth, “then it is clear the ever wakeful spirit of Womma has caught the neglectful Maiyarra sleeping and it is certain she is with child.”
Such was the history of the case as narrated to us. It corroborated previous observations from central and northern tribes. The recognition of maternity is not connected primarily with any conjugal liberties a husband or number of tribal husbands may be privileged to enjoy, but more with the recollection of any accidental contact with an object by which it is supposed a spirit child can enter the body of a woman. The spiritual ingress may take place in a variety of ways, but as often as not it is believed to be by means of a hollow object of some description. In the present instance it was a snakeskin. On the Victoria River the gins have a dread of the whirlwind, thinking that if such should pass over one of them, a spirit child would immediately enter the woman. In the Cambridge Gulf country, young women very reluctantly go into a water hole in which lilies are growing, fearing that as they step over the leaves, which are hollow, a similar fate may overtake them.
In the ancestral days of the Larrekiya in the Port Darwin district, for instance, it is believed that a baby boy was once seen to spring from the burrow of a rabbit bandicoot; whence he had come no one knew. He was invited to come to the Larrekiya camp and live with them, but he refused. Some time after, when the boy had become a man, he was again met by the tribe, who once more invited him to their camp; but he declined as before. Thereupon the men became angry and dragged him to a waterhole, and threw him in. The stranger immediately sank, and five bubbles of air rose to the surface as he disappeared. The men sat down and watched the water, when suddenly the man’s face reappeared. The Larrekiya hurled a spear at him, and he was killed because they knew he had no father and no mother and was the accomplice of the evil spirit, who, it is asserted by the Wogait, makes a big fire, from the smoke of which he takes an infant and places it, at night, into the womb of a lubra; and she must then give birth to the child.