When an Australian tribe is looked at from the standpoint of an ordinary observer, the conclusion that there is no recognised form of government seems to be justified. Apparently no person, or group of persons, has the right to command, under penalties for disobedience, or who is obeyed by the community. There seems to be no person to whom the whole community yields submission, who has peculiar privileges which are patent to observation, or who is surrounded by more or less of savage pomp and ceremony. All that is seen by a general superficial view of an Australian tribe is, that there is a number of families who roam over certain tracts of country, in search of food, and that while they appear to show a considerable respect to the old men, all the males enjoy such liberty of action, that each may be considered to do what seems best to himself.

A more intimate acquaintance with such a tribe, however, shows that there must be some authority and restraint behind this seeming freedom, for it is found that there are well-understood customs, or tribal laws, which are binding on the individual, and which control him, as well as regulate his actions towards others.

In the Kurnai tribe the infant child is at first recognised merely as Lit, that is, “child,” although it receives some name when it begins to walk, frequently from some trivial occurrence which happened about its birth. When a boy is eight or nine years of age he is called Wotti, and the girl Kuere-jung. The child is named by the paternal grandfather or grandmother, or in default by the mother's parents, and its name may be that borne by some former member of the family. For instance, the before-mentioned Tulaba was, when a child, named Barrumbulk (teal duck) by his maternal grandfather. This was the name of his mother's deceased brother. When as a youth he was initiated at the Jeraeil ceremonies, a maternal uncle called him Tulaba, which was the name of a grand ancestor.

When the new name is given at initiation, the child's name becomes secret, not to be revealed to strangers, or to be mentioned by friends. The reason appears to be that a name is part of a person, and therefore can be made use of to that person's detriment by any who wish to “catch” him by evil magic. Thus one of the Kurnai, of whom I inquired as to his child's name, told me in a whisper, when no one else was present.

These legends relate more or less to the initiation and other ceremonies of these tribes, at which they are repeated by the old men, and are thus handed down from generation to generation. They form the precedents for the ceremonial proceedings.

Taking Lake Eyre for the central point, the range of these tribes extends northwards to the Wonkamala, and southwards to the Parnkalla, who occupied the country on the west side of Spencer Gulf, as far as Port Lincoln, and inland to the Gawler Ranges. This is about seven hundred miles north and south. To the north-west it extends to where it comes in contact with the southern part of the tribes of which the Arunta is the typical example. To the west its range is not known to me, further than the Kukata, Tangara, and Willara, which are west of the Urabunna and Wirangu tribes which border Lake Eyre on that side.

To the north-east and east it would include the tribes which attend the ceremonies of the Mura-mura Minkani, from a considerable distance within the State of Queensland. On the east the Grey and Barrier Ranges make the boundary of the Lake Eyre tribes.

THE ORIGIN OF THE MURDUS AND OF THE KANA

In the Beginning, the earth opened in the midst of Perigundi Lake, and there came out, one murdu after the other, Kaualka (crow), Katatara (shell parakeet), Warukati (emu), and so on.

The question of the origin of the Australian and Tasmanian aborigines has engaged the attention of many writers, who have attempted its solution by inferences drawn from language, from custom, from the physical character of those savages, and, while direct evidence is not existent, from what some writers apparently assume to be fact.

Before entering upon the conclusions to which I have been led in this inquiry, it will be well to note in chronological order the views of various authorities, in doing which I have found it necessary to include those dealing with the Tasmanians.

Mr. R. H. Davis considered the Tasmanians to be scions of the Australians, and that their ancestors, being driven to sea in a canoe from the vicinity of King George's Sound, would, by the prevailing winds and currents, be apt to reach the western part of Van Diemen's Land. He selected that point of departure apparently for the reason that the word for “water” among the western tribes of Tasmania is similar to that used by the natives of Cape Leeuwen.

In 1839 Captain Robert Fitzroy, in his narrative of the surveying voyages of the Adventure and the Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836, attributes the origin of the aborigines of Tasmania and Australia either to a party of negroes who might have been driven by storms from the coast of Africa, and thus reached New Zealand or Van Diemen's Land, or to negroes escaping or being brought to the northern shores of Tasmania as slaves by “red men.”

One of the very earliest works on Australia, that of Collins, describes parts of the ceremonies practised by the natives of Port Jackson. Since that time travellers, missionaries, and residents in the Australian bush have become aware of and reported the existence of certain ceremonies—the “making of young men” as the practice has come to be called. Fragmentary accounts are to be found in works describing Australia and its inhabitants, but so far as I am aware no one has attempted to give any authentic, detailed description of the ceremonies themselves, from the observation of an eye-witness accustomed to scientific methods of investigation, until I published an account of the Kuringal and Jeraeil ceremonies in 1884.

It is perhaps worth recording here that I discovered the bull-roarer in the Kurnai tribe, and was, I think, the first to draw attention to the important part it plays in the ceremonies of Australian tribes. I had been for some time obtaining particulars from my friends among the Kurnai as to their ceremonies at which boys were made into men. I had been able to piece together a good deal, which I now know related to the part of the ceremonies in which women take part, and which might lawfully be told to any one. I once happened to meet Turlburn, whom I have before mentioned, on the plains between Sale and Rosedale, and stopped to have a talk.

The materials for this work were collected during the past forty years, commencing during explorations in Central Australia, where I came into close and friendly contact with two tribes who were in a condition of complete savagery. Circumstances later on enabled me to acquire considerable influence over tribes in South - East Australia, and to become acquainted with their sacred ceremonies and be present at them.

In 1873 I joined Dr. Lorimer Fison in investigating the classificatory system of relationships which obtains among these savages. In connection with this inquiry, our attention was directed to the tribal class system, and the rules of marriage and descent connected therewith.

In these investigations we were assisted by correspondents living in places scattered over the greater part of Eastern Australia, and in a less degree in the western half. Without their aid it would not have been possible to have brought together the collection of facts which was necessary to enable us to draw sound conclusions as to the real character of the organisation and beliefs of the native tribes.

In the course of our work we found the conclusions to which we were led regarding the system of relationships, the character and origin of the tribal and social organisation, and the rules of marriage and descent, brought us into conflict with hypotheses as to primitive society and its organization and development advanced by certain leaders of anthropological thought.

A study of the evidence which has been detailed in the last chapter has led me to the conclusion that the state of society among the early Australians was that of an “Undivided Commune.” Taking this as a postulate, the influence on marriage and descent of the class division, the sub-classes and the totems may be considered on the assumption that there was once an Undivided Commune. It is, however, well to guard this expression. I do not desire to imply necessarily the existence of complete and continuous communism between the sexes. The character of the country, the necessity of moving from one spot to another in search of game and vegetable food, would cause any Undivided Commune, when it assumed dimensions greater than the immediate locality could provide with food, to break up into two or more Communes of the same character. In addition to this it is clear, after a long acquaintance with the Australian savage, that in the past, as now, individual likes and dislikes must have existed; so that, admitting the existence of common rights between the members of the Commune, these rights would remain in abeyance, so far as the separated parts of the Commune were concerned. But at certain gatherings, such as the Bunya-bunya harvest in Queensland, or on great ceremonial occasions, all the segments of the original community would re-unite.

THE UNIVERSE

There seems to be a universal belief among the Australian aborigines that the earth is a flat surface, surmounted by the solid vault of the sky. The legend of the Yuri-ulu tells how, after the holding of the Wilyaru ceremony they went on their wanderings, and finally beyond the mountains passed through what may be briefly termed a “hard darkness” into another country, whence looking back, they recognised what they had passed through as the edge of the sky. The Kapiri legend shows that the earth is supposed to be bordered by water; the Mura-mura Madaputa-tupuru, and the Mankara Waka and Pirna having both reached it in their wanderings.

The Wolgal belief is that there is water all round the flat earth. They know of the sea round the coast for a great distance, and heard of it from the more distant blacks, even before the white men came.

The sky is a something, on the other side of which is another country like this, with trees and rivers. It is there that Thuramulung lives with the Bulabong, the ghosts.

A Wotjobaluk legend runs that at first the sky rested on the earth and prevented the sun from moving, until the magpie (goruk) propped it up with a long stick, so that the sun could move, and since then “she” moves round the earth.

In all tribes there are certain men who are, so to say, free of one or more of the adjacent tribes. This arises out of tribal intermarriage; and, indeed, marriages are sometimes arranged for what may be termed “state reasons,” that is, in order that there may be means of sending ceremonial communications by some one who can enter and traverse a perhaps unfriendly country, with safety to himself and with security for the delivery of his message. In some cases these ceremonial messengers, as will be seen later on, are women. But the bearing of merely friendly messages within the tribe is usually by a relative of the sender. The message itself is, in other tribes, conveyed by what the whites in certain districts call a “blackfellow's letter”—a message-stick. There has been much misunderstanding, not to say misstatement, as to the real character of these message-sticks, and the conventional value of the markings on them. It has been said that they can be read and understood by the person to whom they are sent without the marks on them being explained by the bearer. I have even heard it said that persons, other than the one to whom a stick is sent, can read the marks with as much ease as educated people can read the words inscribed on one of our letters.