Aboriginal peoples

“ It is time for us now to turn to the aboriginal tribes, to inquire what had been and were their territorial rights before and while they were being ground in the mill by rival European nationalities, all intruders. ”

“ The aboriginal inhabitants are still numerous in the mountain districts, and along some parts of the eastern shores, but they, are said to be much oppressed by the Chinese colonists, and also by the authorities. ”

“ Reliable and learned authors who have made the aboriginal race of America an object of deep study and research, have arrived at the conclusion, that the numerous tribes into which they are divided, belong not to the same primitive family or generic stock, but are to be ranged under several well-defined heads or types. ”

“ In numbers they did not at any time exceed 20,000 souls, if they ever reached that number. Precarious subsistence and incessant warfare repressed numbers in all the aboriginal tribes, including the Village Indians as well. ”

“ There is in the nature of the aboriginal races a religious fervour which apparently forms an integral part of their character. They are also submissive and inoffensive, and it can be understood how any invading and warlike tribe would, without difficulty, conquer and control people having this mild disposition. ”

“ Think not, then, that the Aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, offspring of the same great parent with yourselves, and partakers of all the kindred feelings of a common humanity, can resign the mountains and seas, the rivers and lakes, the plains and the wilds of their uncradled infancy, and the habitation of their fathers for generations immemorial, to a foreign foe, without the bitterness of grief. ”

“ Furthermore let it be noted that, according to his explicit statement, the aboriginal village organization had broken down utterly, and the Indians were living in new places in conformity with new economic and social requirements. No wonder modern informants frequently cannot look past the period of upheaval and give us a clear picture of untouched aboriginal life before the white man came! ”

“ I have often seen the aboriginal man in all his primeval wildness, when he first came in contact with the evils and benefits of civilization,—have admired his noble form and lofty bearing,—listened to his untutored and yet powerful eloquence, and yet have found in him the same humbling and melancholy proofs of his wretchedness and want, as is found in the remnants on our borders. ”

“ For this purpose the United Band of Temperance Aboriginals was formed, blankets were distributed, moralising influences were brought to bear, and I am proud to be able to state my opinion, founded upon, statistics, that in the course of fifty years from the present time, not a single intoxicated aboriginal will be found in the length and breadth of the colony. ”

“ The aboriginal nation, whose statistics and history, past and present, are brought into discussion in the following report, stand out prominently in the foreground of our own history. They have sustained themselves, for more than three centuries and a half, against the intruding and progressive races of Europe. ”

“ By this firm administration of equal justice the Aboriginal population, instead of being, as formerly, a hostile, treacherous, and troublesome race, had become harmless, docile, and in some degree useful to the settlers. ”

“ The human figure, too, very often appears half in full and half in profile.
The aboriginal is a keen observer, and takes careful note of many things besides a kangaroo, a snake track, or other similar natural objects which may lead him to his daily bread. When travelling in the Buccaneer Archipelago in the far north-west I remember one of the natives drawing my attention to a peculiar formation in the clouds, and saying, in the Sunday Island dialect: “Arrar ninmiddi,” which means, literally: “Cloud knee.” ”

“ Our relations with the numerous tribes of aboriginal natives of this country, scattered over its extensive surface and so dependent even for their existence upon our power, have been during the present year highly interesting. ”

“ There is a tradition—common, I believe, to many black tribes, even outside Australia—that, long before the coming of the white people into this country, two beautiful white girls lived with the blacks. ”

“ We have learned that the remnant of an aboriginal people, now living in the inhabited pueblos of the West, present us, in their primitive usage, with the fading outlines of a culture once widespread in the section of country we have examined. Many of the early sedentary tribes have vanished completely. Traditions state that other tribes have moved southward into regions unknown. ”

“ There is a half-caste man and a half-caste woman married, and they have one child. There are three half-caste women on the station who have had children to white men, but they were not married. The children of the latter have the complexion of Europeans, and have but little of the Aboriginal caste in the face. Only those who are well acquainted with the peculiar features of the Aborigines would suspect that these children had Aboriginal blood in their veins. ”

“ Happiness seems the essence of their existence, and indeed none but an aboriginal could, or would, keep on smiling under the terrible bondage which our vaunted civilization has imposed upon him.
Among the members composing a tribe, one finds a diversification of character and talent much the same as builds up a modern community—it includes orators, warriors, artists, and clowns. ”

“ Let us begin with Australia, where the aboriginal population is in a more primitive condition than any other race whose institutions have been investigated. In certain tribes the family has hardly begun to be distinguished from kin in general. The group is divided into male and female classes, in addition to the division into clans. ”

“ The few aboriginals that we saw were repulsive in the extreme, and our sense of smell rendered it desirable to keep at a distance from them. Strange that they should say and do the same to all white men. These aboriginals are not allowed to live in the town, but are turned out at sundown, when they swim two miles across to the opposite shore to the aboriginal settlement. We were glad when, after two hours' "tacking" against a contrary wind, we reached the steamer again, feeling we had had a fruitless and vexatious afternoon's expedition. ”

“ In presenting the motion from Queensland for discussion, I feel that it will be generally agreed that the care of the aboriginal races should be considered from a nation-wide, rather than from the individual State point of view. ”

“ They are to be regarded as the type of aboriginal mind, as the measure of intellectual power of our Sons of the Forest; as speaking their sentiments, their hopes and their fears, whatever they were or are, whether elevated or depressed, whether raising the race or sinking it in the scale of untutored nations. ”

“ It is painful to turn from reviewing the progress of the European population and their descendants established in this portion of America, to contemplate the condition and prospects of the aboriginal tribes. It cannot, I fear, be affirmed with truth, that the difficult problem of reconciling the interests of an inferior and native race with those of an intrusive and superior one, has as yet been satisfactorily solved on this continent. ”

“ All the early writers in reference to the colony represent the aboriginal natives as a peaceably-disposed, tractable, and unobtrusive people, seeking in general rather to preserve their old haunts inviolate, and to follow their old pursuits, than to trespass upon the possessions or property of the new-comers. ”

“ Another striking trait of the race is found in their legends and tales. Those of the aboriginal race who excel in private conversation, become to their tribes oral chroniclers, and are relied on for historical traditions as well as tales. It is necessary, in listening to them, to distinguish between the gossip and the historian, the narrator of real events, and of nursery tales. For they gather together everything from the fabulous feats of Manebozho and Misshozha, to the hair-breadth escapes of a Pontiac, or a Black Hawk. ”

“ Upon beginning at the first appearance of Europeans on any part of the coast, he found himself invariably confronted by the aboriginal population, whom he could neither ignore nor properly represent without making a special study of ethnology. ”

“ A neighbour of mine exclaimed, when I mentioned that I proposed making a small collection of the folk-lore legends of the tribe of blacks I knew so well living on this station, "But have the blacks any legends?"—thus showing that people may live in a country, and yet know little of the aboriginal inhabitants ”

“ When aborigines are taken from their wild outdoor life, and kept under European conditions, more or less confined, their skin becomes unquestionably lighter; this is particularly noticed in their faces. ”

“ I have often heard natives myself tell me, in answer to my own questions on the subject, who were the Aboriginal owners of particular tracts of land now held by Europeans; and indeed this idea of property in the soil, FOR HUNTING PURPOSES, is universal among the Aborigines. They seldom complain of the intrusion of Europeans; on the contrary, they are pleased at their sitting down, as they call it, on their land: they do not perceive that their own circumstances are thereby sadly altered for the worse in most cases ”

“ Thirdly, That our presence and settlement, in any particular locality, do, in point of fact, actually dispossess the aboriginal inhabitants. [Note 14: Vide, Notes on the Aborigines, chap. I.]
Fourthly, That the localities selected by Europeans, as best adapted for the purposes of cultivation, or of grazing, are those that would usually be equally valued above others, by the natives themselves, as places of resort, or districts in which they could most easily procure their food. ”

“ It is not so much the ultimate destruction of the aboriginal race, as it now exists, that my uncle seems to have hoped might be prevented, nor did he apparently deplore that such a thing should take place eventually. ”

“ Such are the six principal tribes who form the nucleus, or, to use a military phrase, the right wing of the expatriated aboriginal population, as the bands are arranged in their order from south to north, in the trans-Ozark or Indian territory. ”

“ Although they are a different type of people from, and superior to the mainland aboriginal, being Polynesian in strain, and naturally village dwellers and horticulturists as well as fishermen, the Torres Strait tribes, whose islands have been closely reserved, afford an example of the degree to which natives can be developed to self-dependence. ”

“ There can be no doubt that this desperate forecasting of the destiny of our aboriginal tribes has, latently or in avowal, swayed the minds of a vast number in each generation here, and has by no means been confined to those violent, merciless fighters and desperadoes who have done their utmost to carry out the presumed decree of fate. ”

“ In those parts of the country which are in a prosperous condition ideas and manners imported from the coast districts are gradually overcoming and absorbing all aboriginal conceptions, but on the other hand, in jungle-covered and backward lands the colonists are always corrupted by the superstitions of the indigenous races. ”

“ But the primitive man, who realizes that his very existence is dependent upon these factors, has learned to respect, preserve, and worship them as legacies he imagines to have been left him by some of his illustrious forbears who, he supposes, have gone to an unknown realm where they live in peace and can only return temporarily to their former haunts in the invisible form or through the medium of some other object which is related to the individual in some mysterious way.
The aboriginal looks upon fire as one of the great indispensible quantities of his social existence ”

“ The most hopeful direction in which this inquiry admits of being pursued is among the Hill tribes of India, Australian blacks, and other diverse and so-called aboriginal races. The field of ethnology is large, and it would be unwise as yet to neglect the chance of somewhere finding characteristic patterns. ”

“ The saying is common among them, 'That the men and not we are the masters.' The kind of treatment evinced towards the aboriginal natives in remote parts of the interior by this class of persons, may be easily imagined ”

“ Secondly, there are the semi-civilised aborigines, living in the neighbourhood of white settlements—chiefly pastoral properties—and it is proposed that they shall continue more or less as at present. They will continue to be employed on stations, care being taken that they and their dependants shall not suffer by reason of the employment of able-bodied young men. ”

“ Within a generation diligent search has begun among some of the Indian tribes, to ascertain, through a sympathetic study of rites, ceremonies, and customs, what were the red man's ideals, what his beliefs, and what his actual attainments. Already this labour is bearing fruit. Scholars are recognising that the aboriginal conditions on this continent throw light on the slow development of human society and its institutions ”

“ Such is the history of the aboriginal tribes of Australia, whose remarkable manners and customs are fast disappearing, together with the natives themselves. The poor creatures are aware of the fact, and seem to have lost all pleasure in the games and dances that formerly enlivened their existence. Many of the tribes are altogether extinct, and others are disappearing so fast that the people have lost all heart and spirit, and succumb almost without complaint to the fate which awaits them. ”

“ It is sufficient if, by fixing with any degree of accuracy the numbers of the aboriginal race, we have indicated for the benefit of such statesmen, legislators, philanthropists, missionaries, and others as may, either from a sense of duty or from feelings of humanity and religious obligation, be disposed to turn their attention to the reclamation of that race, the extent of the field on which they purpose to expend all or a portion of their labours. ”