Four generations of the Western Australian Native
For some time past I have been collecting all the facts of interest that I could concerning the natives of Australia, and have gathered a really fine collection of the native weapons, boomerangs, nulla-nullas, spears, waddies, womerahs, shields, &c. There are a good many aborigines about Geraldton at present, but civilisation has made them lazy, and it is not easy to get many of their weapons. Mine have chiefly been given to me by friends who have gone to the trouble of collecting them for years. The blacks are not a very pleasant race, still we ought to have a kindly feeling for the poor creatures, whose chief capacities seem to be hunting, fishing, and tracking. Their own laws, and the way they keep them, are somewhat remarkable, especially those relating to the affinities and the division of the people into families.
There are four tribes or clans amongst the aborigines of Western Australia, namely—Booranggnoo, Banagher, Kimera, Palgarie. A Booranggnoo man may marry a Banagher woman, their children will be Kimera; a Banagher man may marry a Booranggnoo woman, their children will be Palgarie; a Kimera man may marry a Palgarie woman, their children will be Booranggnoo; a Palgarie man may marry a Kimera woman, their children will be Banagher.
Children take the name of the mother, and intermarriage between the same tribe is not allowed. Polygamy is permitted. A native may have several wives and various families, but each family incurs the responsibilities of the mother, and all such relations become involved in the guilt of any crime; if the offender cannot be reached, any other relative may have to suffer instead. In case of death by violence, the nearest relative of the slayer is found and punished. Homicide in obedience to law is therefore common among them. Their law is blood for blood, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Girls are betrothed when they are young, and may be claimed at any time. A blackfellow must take his lubra (wife) from the clan or tribe which alone is eligible to give a wife to him, otherwise he becomes an outcast. The women are severely punished by the men even for trifling offences. On the death of the husband the wives and children pass to his brother; all property in land is held for hunting and obtaining food. They are very fond of music and dancing, their songs being chiefly extempore. The dances, or corroborees, are adapted to the various circumstances of their lives—marriage, birth, death, war or hunting. It is not usual for the women to take part in these dances, but on rare occasions they do, and they carry a peeled stick tufted at one end, as was the custom of the ancient Bacchantes. Songs are composed by musical natives of the clan, and are soon learnt: every blackfellow knows the songs of his clan, and if one is composed for any special occasion it is soon learned. The food of these natives is very varied and peculiar, one kind being the knomat, the gum of the swamp mimosa. There are also six kinds of kangaroo eaten, two kinds of opossum, twenty-nine sorts of fish, three kinds of turtle, emu, wild turkey, and many kinds of waterfowl; frogs, seven kinds of lizards, four kinds of grubs, twenty-nine roots, seven fungi, four gums, two kinds of manna, four fruits, four nuts—two of the zamia, which are poisonous without proper preparation—the seeds of many plants and the flowers of the banksia. Cannibalism is not common, but has been known in the North and East. The weapons employed are suited for the chase as well as war. These are the codja or hatchet, the dabba or knife, the meera or throwing-stick, the guicka or spear, the dowark or club, the womerah or digging-stick, and the killy or boomerang, which they throw with great skill. Their skill in hunting is remarkable, weirs are made for fish, stakes driven to intercept the kangaroos at their watering-places, and the fish are commonly speared by day and by torchlight. Their mias, or huts, vary in construction from a light shell made of brushwood to a dome, large enough to contain several persons, of logs covered with clay, and in size according to season and locality. From the Murchison northward, and also in the interior, the natives go naked; but southward, near the coast, the dress is the “booka,” a sort of cloak made of kangaroo-skins, that of the men being longer than that of the women, who use bags of skin, coota or boka, and mats of vegetable fibre, for carrying their children and domestic necessaries. They have many ornaments, and work opossum fur with yarn to make girdles for carrying things and bands to twine round the head to stick feathers in. They tattoo their bodies, and during the operation of tattooing, other natives swing round small curved pieces of wood, producing a whirring noise. They cover themselves with wilgey, a sort of red ochre, charcoal, or white clay. They send messages by marked sticks or bomar, the markings being quite intelligible to them, but to us just looking like a number of jagged chips in the sticks. They are not deficient in gratitude, but rather treacherous, although they will offer themselves up for punishment, a thing which very few white men ever do. They are very superstitious; the power of evil is a constant source of terror to them. They have their karakats, boolga-men, or medicine-men, able to inflict as well as cure diseases. They greatly fear an evil spirit, Jingie, and an imaginary monster, Wangul, inhabiting the fresh waters, and chiefly making victims of women. Each family has its kobong, or cognisance, some animal or vegetable for which they have a reverence, and which, therefore, is not used as food by the family who adopt it. Some of the domestic and personal habits of the natives resemble those inculcated by the laws of Moses. Their social intercourse is regulated by very strict and ceremonious customs. There are forms of meeting, also forms of parting. Mrs. Canfield, who had charge of the school at Amesfield, Albany, especially reports their fondness for music. One girl, sent to Sydney, played the harmonium in St. Philip’s Church for some time. Several other native scholars have become good housewives; some are now employed as school-teachers. Mrs. Canfield also notes the fondness of the boys for mechanical arts. The native Mission home is near Guildford, and another is in the Vasse district, but there are only about 40 children in each place. The natives around Geraldton are half-civilised; in fact, some speak quite good English. I suppose the heavy fine of £50 for supplying drink to natives keeps them sober, as they find it difficult to obtain strong drink, of which they are very fond. They have been known to go to a large heap of bottles, and taking one, empty into it the dregs of all the others, until they get sufficient to take a drink, which they seem to relish exceedingly.
Aborigines with Spears
Native wells or “namma-holes” have saved may a prospector from death by thirst, and men well used to the Bush soon know how to find them. Some of the wells are not more than two feet deep; others go down to ten or twelve feet, and are usually found by rock-holes, or certain trees that are near them. Some wells have a small drive at the bottom, so arranged by the blacks that, when the water gets shallow, it cannot be seen from the top of the hole. The old prospectors have learned from the blacks how to find these oases in the desert, but “new chums” might pass dozens while parched with thirst and never find one.
After saying good-bye to the numerous friends I had made in Geraldton, I set out for the south in the Perth mail-train, my destination, however, being Dongarra, a little station 24 miles from Geraldton. On alighting there I found that the hotel was some distance off, and I regretted that I had got out of the train at all. However, a good-natured boy with a cart solved my dilemma by saying: “Get up, missus, I’ll give you a lift.” I accepted his invitation with much pleasure, and drove on through wonderful grass lands. I thought, as it waved in the wind, that this must be a cultivated crop, but found it to be common wild grass. A great deal of the land about here is rented to the farmers at 10s. per acre, and they have an average yield of 16 to 25 bushels of wheat and 30 bushels of barley. Wheat can be grown at a large profit, as the cost of growing it is not more than 4d. a bushel, and the timber being light in the district, the expense of clearing the land is small.
There are a number of farms about Dongarra, which is one of the prettiest little country places I have seen in the colony. The township is situated near the mouth of the Irwin river, and so there is no lack of water. There is a small and safe harbour at Dongarra, formed by a reef at the river’s mouth, which is the outlet to the valley of the river. There are many early settlers living here. The following notice that was fastened on a tree I thought very comical: “If any man or woman’s cows or horses get into this paddock, his or her tail will be forthwith cut off, with no respect to persons.” This is on a par with a letter written by a justice of the peace in one of the places that shall be nameless:—