For much the same reason, the hut or wurley of the dead person is immediately destroyed by the relatives of the dead man; if the habitation is allowed to stand, the spirit of the dead will endeavour to come back and occupy it. The natives would be continually encountering the ghost, if not actually then certainly in their imagination, and the fear of such a possibility would make their existence intolerable. Most of the tribes, moreover, so soon as they have destroyed the dead man’s wurley, instantly leave the district and select another camping site, well removed from the latter. The only exception to this general rule is the Adelaide tribe who, as previously mentioned, used to build a special bark hut over the grave for the spirit to dwell in.
The person who fares worst is a widow. To begin with, she is required to absent herself and live apart from the rest of the people in a small humpy of her own; and she is not allowed to eat anything during the term of the mourning ceremonies. Quite apart from the general avoidance of mentioning the deceased’s name, a widow is positively forbidden to speak to anyone for a term of from a week or two to several months. During all that time, she must observe the strictest rules of tribal mourning; for, if she does not, the spirit will see that her late husband’s memory is not sufficiently revered, and it will starve the woman to death.
Directly after the death of her husband, a Yantowannta woman must cut off her hair, short to the scalp, and burn it. In its place, she applies a thick coating of pipeclay paste, which is periodically added to if there be a tendency for it to crumble away. In addition, she covers most of her face with a similar paste which adheres to the skin like a mask. Vide [Plate XXVI], 2.
The early Murray River tribes made a skull-cap of burned gypsum or lime, about three inches thick, which the widows had to wear during the term of mourning. These encumbrances weighed up to sixteen pounds. The hair was generally removed previously by singeing it with hot ashes.
In addition the relict has to regularly cover her body and face with white ashes. In the Daly Waters district, whenever she pays a visit to her late husband’s burial place, she will submit herself to the agony of re-opening the wound in her scalp, until it bleeds profusely, to prove how deep her sorrow is.
The Aluridja widows do not cut their hair short, but smear pipe-clay paste and ashes thickly over the scalp, intimately mixing it with the woolly growth. Often the hair is worked up into a large number of locks or strands, round which the white paste is moulded in such a way that the head is surrounded by an array of pendant, cylindrical masses resembling so many candles ([Plate XXVI], 1).
A woman, upon the decease of her husband, becomes the property of her late partner’s brother; if there are more than one brother surviving, she falls to the senior among them. In the case of no brothers remaining or existing, she is claimed by the dead husband’s nearest (male) tribal relative. The law prevails practically all over the Southern Continent. It is not until she is actually received by her new husband that the woman is permitted to speak to anyone. This usually ends the first period of mourning, so far as the gin is concerned, and she returns to live with the others in the main camp; but in most cases she will continue to smear pipe-clay over her scalp for some time longer.
An Arunndta woman who survives three tribal husbands is not required by law to marry again, and she is, consequently, left unmolested.
The second period of public mourning is a comparatively short one; it is begun by collecting the dead man’s bones from the tree or platform. In nearly every case the bulk of the bones are packed in sheets of paperbark and hidden or buried. In the north-central and north-western districts, the parcels are either hidden in a cave, buried in an anthill, or stuck into the fork of a dead tree. The cranium is often smashed to pieces or the facial skeleton broken away from the skull-roof. In the old Narrinyerri and certain tribes of the Adelaide plains the calvarium was used as a drinking vessel; a handle was attached by fastening a piece of strong fur-string to the occiput through the foramen magnum, on the one side, and to the frontal portion, after breaking a passage through the orbital cavities, on the other. Many tribes besmear the skulls with red ochre before assigning them to their last resting place. In the Northern Kimberleys some of the sepulchral caves are so crowded with skulls, arranged in perfect order, that one is reminded of the classical catacombs.