The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont

by Louis de Rougemont

Judged by our standard, the women were far from handsome. They had very bright eyes, broad, flat noses, low, narrow foreheads, and heavy chins. But there are comely exceptions. And yet at big corroborees on the occasion of a marriage, the men always chanted praises to the virtue and beauty of the bride!

The girl who possessed an exceptionally large and flat nose was considered a great beauty. Talking about noses, it was to me a remarkable fact, that the blacks consider a warrior with a big nose and large distended nostrils a man possessed of great staying power. For one thing, they consider his breathing apparatus exceptionally perfect.

As a general rule (there are exceptions in the case of a very “beautiful” woman), when a woman dies she is not even buried; she simply lies where she has fallen dead, and the camp moves on to another place and never returns to the unholy spot. And it may be mentioned here that the blacks never allude to a dead person by name, as they have a great horror of departed spirits. And so childish and suspicious are they, that they sometimes even cut off the feet of a dead man to prevent his running about and frightening them at inconvenient moments. I used to play upon their fears, going out into the bush after dark, and pretending to commune with the evil spirits. The voice of these latter was produced by means of reed whistles. Once I made myself a huge, hideous mask out of a kangaroo skin, with holes slit in it for the nose, mouth, and eyes. I would don this strange garb in the evenings, and prowl about the vicinity of the camp, holding blazing torches behind the mask, and emitting strange noises—sometimes howling like a wolf and at others shouting aloud in my natural voice. On these occasions the blacks thought I was in my natural element as a spirit. But they never ventured to follow me or attempted to satisfy themselves that I was not fooling them all the while. Yamba, of course, knew the joke, and as a rule helped me to dress for the farce, but she took good care never to tell any one the secret. No doubt had the blacks ever learned that it was all done for effect on my part, the result would have been very serious; but I knew I was pretty secure because of the abnormal superstition prevalent among them.

The women, as I have before hinted, are treated in a horribly cruel manner, judged from our standpoint; but in reality they know not what cruelty is, because they are absolutely ignorant of kindness. They are the beasts of burden, to be felled to the earth with a bludgeon when they err in some trivial respect; and when camp is moved each woman carries virtually the whole household and the entire worldly belongings of the family. Thus it is a common sight to see a woman carrying a load consisting of one or two children and a quantity of miscellaneous implements, such as heavy grindstones, stone hatchets, sewing-bones, yam-sticks, &c. During the shifting of the camp the braves themselves stalk along practically unencumbered, save only for their elaborate shield, three spears (never more), and a stone tomahawk stuck in their belt of woven opossum hair. The men do not smoke, knowing nothing of tobacco, but their principal recreation and relaxation from the incessant hunting consists in the making of their war weapons, which is a very important part of their daily life. They will even fell a whole tree, as has already been explained, to make a single spear shaft. As to the shield, the elaborate carving upon it corresponds closely with the prowess of the owner; and the more laurels he gains, the more intricate and elaborate becomes the carving on his shield. Honour prevents undue pretence.

But we have wandered away from the consideration of the girl-children. The baby girls play with their brothers and participate in their fights until they are perhaps ten years of age. They are then expected to accompany their mothers on the daily excursions in search of roots. When the little girls are first taken out by their mothers they are instructed in the use of the yam-stick, with which the roots are dug up out of the earth. The stick used by the women is generally three feet or four feet long, but the girl novices use a short one about fifteen inches in length. Each woman, as I have said elsewhere, is also provided with a reed basket or net, in which to hold the roots, this being usually woven out of strings of prepared bark; or, failing that, native flax or palm straw.

But the unfortunate wife occasionally makes the acquaintance of the heavy yam-stick in a very unpleasant, not to say serious, manner. Of course, there are domestic rows. We will suppose that the husband has lately paid a great amount of attention to one of his younger wives—a circumstance which naturally gives great offence to one of the older women. This wife, when she has an opportunity and is alone with her husband, commences to sing or chant a plaint—a little thing of quite her own composing.

Into this song she weaves all the abuse which long experience tells her will lash her husband up to boiling-point. The later stanzas complain that the singer has been taken from her own home among a nation of real warriors to live among a gang of skulking cowards, whose hearts, livers, and other vital organs are not at all up to the standard of her people.

The epithets are carefully arranged up a scale until they reach bandy-legged—an utterly unpardonable insult. But there is, beyond this, one other unpublishable remark, which causes the husband to take up the yam-stick and fell the singer with one tremendous blow, which is frequently so serious as to disable her for many days. The other women at once see to their sister, who has incurred the wrath of her lord, and rub her wounds with weird medicaments. The whole shocking business is regarded as quite an ordinary affair; and after the sufferer is able to get about again she bears her husband not the slightest ill-feeling. You see, she has had her say and paid for it.

The girls, as they grow up, are taught to cook according to the native fashion, and are also required to build ovens in the earth or sand; make the fires, build “break-winds,” and generally help their mothers in preparing meals. When at length the meal is cooked, the manner of eating it is very peculiar. First of all, the women retire into the background. The lord and master goes and picks out the tit-bits for himself, and then sits down to eat them off a small sheet of bark. More often, however, he simply tears the meat in pieces with his hands. During his meal, the wives and children are collected behind at a respectful distance, awaiting their own share. Then, as the warrior eats, he literally hurls certain oddments over his shoulder, which are promptly pounced upon by the wives and children in waiting. It sometimes happens, however, that a favourite child—a boy invariably, never a girl (it is the girls who are eaten by the parents whenever there are any superfluous children to be got rid of)—will approach his father and be fed with choice morsels from the great man’s “plate.”

Each tribe has its own particular country over which it roams at pleasure, and the boundaries are defined by trees, hillocks, mountains, rocks, creeks, and water-holes. And from these natural features the tribes occasionally get their names. Outside the tribal boundary—which often incloses a vast area—the blacks never go, except on a friendly visit to a neighbouring camp. Poaching is one of the things punishable with death, and even if any woman is caught hunting for food in another country she is seized and punished. I will tell you later on how even Yamba “put her foot” in it in this way.