Indigenous Australians

“ I may be quite wrong in this, but I think that most of the folk-stories coming from the natives are just their attempts to imitate white-man stories, and not original ideas of their own. The conditions or life in Australia for the aboriginal were so harsh, the struggle for existence was so keen, that he had not much time to cultivate ideas. Life to him was centred around the camp-fire, the baked ’possum, and a few crude tribal ceremonies.
Usually the Australian black is altogether spoilt by civilization. ”

“ In their territory very few white settlers lose their lives or property by attacks from the native blacks; our loss is enormously more heavy than theirs. Yes, but—we shall be told—the South Australians go to great and unnecessary expense in dealing with the aboriginals. That they are unnecessarily punctilious, and go further than we recommend, we are prepared to admit. They employ a white, not a black force, and they transport aboriginal offenders long distances to gaol. ”

“ The aborigines are a Dravidian people, and, some think, of the same parent stock as ourselves. Thousands of years ago, long, long before our remote ancestors had learned how to build houses, make pottery, till the soil, or domesticate any animal except the dog—long years, in fact, before history began, the aboriginals left their primitive home on the hills of the Deccan and drifting southward in their bark canoes landed at last on the northern and western shores of the great island continent. ”

“ The plan that will be adopted will therefore be to give a general sketch of the natives, together with an account of those habits in which they agree, and then to glance over as much of Australia as travellers have laid open to us, and to mention briefly the most interesting of the manners and customs which exist in the several tribes.
In color the Australians are quite black, as dark indeed as the negro, but with nothing of the negro character in the face. The forehead does not recede like that of the negro ”

“ Even in Australia, although there remain one or two areas where comparatively little havoc has been wrought among the primitive institutions of the indigenous man, yet the influence of civilization is slowly, but very surely, encroaching indirectly upon his ancient cults by such means as inter-tribal barter, if not actually by the hand of the white intruder. ”

“ The flattening of the head and the squeezing of the nose as practised amongst the Tahitans, the distortions brought about by the cradle used by the tribes inhabiting the Columbia River, the Chinese mode of shortening and thickening the foot, and the European custom of compressing the ribs of females by a cruel framework of whalebone, are all unknown to the Australians.
In the treatment of their children generally they are undoubtedly superior in some respects to the more civilized races. ”

“ The Australian aboriginal is indeed a puzzle: he lives like a beast of the field, using neither clothes nor house, and to the casual observer is a savage of the lowest type, without brains, or any senses other than those possessed by animals ”

“ And so the life of the Australian aboriginal is lived, and so their condition was when the colony was proclaimed. It is impossible to estimate the number of Western Australian natives at that time, but it must have been more than 50,000 souls. When the white men came and seized the territories of the different black tribes, and killed their kangaroos and other live stock, they also sowed the germs of an insidious and deadly Exterminator, which slowly ate into the life of these light-hearted, simple, ignorant, active people. ”

“ According to this view, it must have been reforming aborigines who gained the ascendancy in India, rather than new-comers ; and those of the aborigines who clung to their old ways got left behind in the struggle for existence.
In an article devoted to the Australians, Professor R. Semon writes as follows. "We must, without hesitation, presume that the ancestors of the Australians stood, at the time of their immigration to the continent, on a lower rung of culture than their living representatives of to-day. ”

“ If, however, our knowledge of Australia and its black aboriginal tribes is as yet very scanty, it has not assuredly been due to any cold indifference on the part of the new settlers for the history of a country and a race of men who are rapidly disappearing from the face of the country. It is rather to be found in the physical conditions of the continent, and especially in the great scarcity of perennial springs. In fact, there is hardly any country, with the exception of Africa, the exploration of which has cost the lives of so many scientific travellers as this fifth quarter of the world. ”

“ The tribes are distinguished by the colours they make use of, and by the number and arrangement of the incisions which the warriors make on their limbs, their chest, and their shoulders. Their arms are spears pointed with heads of jagged flint, and hatchets of the same material. The indigenous population of Australia is rapidly decreasing; it does not exceed a total of 3000 souls. In Tasmania the aborigines are reduced to four, three aged women, and a young man, who has recently visited England. [183]
Papuans. ”

“ At that time the population was largely full-blooded aborigines. To-day the population is practically all half-caste. On one station we have only six full-bloods and on the other only 26. It appears essential to merge these people into the white race, and a start should be made without any great delay. Most people, I think, are of the opinion that the half-castes and those of lesser degree of aboriginal blood should ultimately be absorbed. People of other races are being absorbed in Australia to-day and are becoming part and parcel of our general community. ”

“ Many books have been written on the Australian aborigines, but we feel constrained to devote a chapter to them, their daily life, habits, and customs, before proceeding with the historical narrative of European settlement and of the consequent silent, solemn, deadly fight between white and black—the sad, gradual extermination of the original possessors of the soil. ”

“ Though they might serve him solely for their own benefit, and were for the most part thieves and rogues, the coolies had no desire to harm the white man personally.
But wandering stealthily through the woods, homeless and lawless, is a race that hates the white man—the aborigines of Australia. Civilization has driven them farther and farther north, for the Australian black-fellows cannot be tamed and trained—their nature is too wild and fierce to be kept within bounds except by fear and crushing. They are treacherous and savage, and most repulsive in appearance. ”

“ The aboriginal races of Australia have hitherto been much misrepresented and misunderstood, and have too often been depicted as the lowest and most degraded of mankind; forming, as it has been asserted, only a connecting link between the human family and the lower orders of the creation. This opinion is, however, as unjust as it is unfounded; for though the natives of Australia are not advanced in the scale of civilisation, they have as great natural intelligence as, and an equal capacity for improvement with, other races. ”

“ The natural, the inevitable, but the no less melancholy result must be, that in the course of a few years more, if nothing be done to check it, the whole of the aboriginal tribes of Australia will be swept away from the face of the earth. A people who, by their numbers, have spread around the whole of this immense continent, and have probably penetrated into and occupied its inmost recesses, will become quite extinct, their name forgotten, their very existence but a record of history. ”

“ In Western Australia the problem of the aborigines has three phases. In the far—north there are between 7,000 and 8,000 pure-blooded aborigines; in the middle-north the number of half-castes is increasing, and the full-blooded aborigines are becoming detribalized, and in the south-west there are about 5,000 coloured people. ”

“ But the kangaroo, wallaby, and emu are not branded, and are somewhat wilder than the sheep and cattle of the white man. And as the European resents a neighbour killing his stocks so does the native object to another tribe encroaching on his domains. This is the cause of aboriginal wars, and the native may resent with some justification the white man's taking away his freehold and despoiling his stock. A district is partly vested in the male, who, if he pleases, may sub-divide it among his sons and heirs. But if there be no male children, the sons of his daughters succeed to the land. ”

“ Here, in the case of this young Aboriginal, an opportunity seemed to be presented to the Board of proving to the world that the Aborigines of Australia are degraded rather by their habits than in consequence of the want of mental capacity, and though the boy showed only an average ability, it was thought that, by careful education and instruction, he would probably become a good citizen, and of the highest usefulness as an agent in dealing with the Aboriginal race. ”

“ Were a policy of laissez faire followed, the aborigines would probably be extinct in Australia within 50 years. Most of the aboriginal women would become sterilized by gonorrhœa at an early age; many would die of disease, and some of starvation. If aborigines are protected physically and morally, before long there will be in the Northern Territory, a black race, already numbering about 19,000, and multiplying at a rate far in excess of that of the whites. ”

“ The different States are creating institutions for the welfare of the native race, and, as the result of this policy, the native population is increasing. What is to be the limit? Are we going to have a population of 1,000,000 blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there ever were any aborigines in Australia? There are not many now, whereas not so many generations ago there were a great many. When Western Australia was first settled in 1829 it is alleged that there was a population within the State of 55,000 natives. ”

“ It was the aboriginals of Australia who put me first upon the right track; a miserable, low-caste race they appear to those who see them hanging about the white settlements, clad in fantastic rags, the cast-off garments of the white fellow, and taking, with the rags, all the debasing vices of the conquerors, but a very different race when in their native wilds, with their mystic institutions and hereditary laws. ”

“ There is no reason why a custom may not be indigenous in many parts of the world, among peoples labouring under like conditions; and if the same customs be evolved the same cultural types will also be found to exist. Thus it is easy to find even striking resemblances between these Indians of Amazonia and such distant peoples as the Arunta of Central Australia, the cannibal tribes of pagan Malay, or, to go even wider afield, the Basque people of Southern Europe. ”

“ But the frequent conflicts that have occurred between the colonists and the Aborigines within the limits of the colony of New South Wales, make it, I think, sufficiently manifest that the Aboriginal tribes are neither a conquered people, nor have tacitly acquiesced in the supremacy of the settlers. The rights of the Aborigines of this district if the testimony which has been adduced as to the civilization and capacity be true, cannot, I should imagine, differ from those of other Aboriginal tribes within the limits of the same government. ”

“ Scarcely on the earth is to be found a race similar to the aboriginals, whilst their antiquity is beyond doubt, and also the fact that they have a common origin. Their speech, habits, colour, customs, and superstitions, proclaim in the strongest terms that they all came from a common source; from the far north of Australia to the farthest south, a hundred proofs are forthcoming to show a common ancestry. Words that have a similar meaning are used on the Darling River and in places in the Gulf of Carpentaria; the weapons are similar all over the continent ”

“ It is probable that Billi-billari gave a truthful account of Kul-ler-kul-lup's statements. It is more than probable that the Australians have always had a belief in the existence of races both superior and inferior to their own; and it is certain that the accidental intrusion of members of distant and strange tribes, acquainted with modes of fighting and decoration somewhat different from their own, must always have been regarded as proofs of the existence of peoples different from them. ”

“ The British communities in Australia bred and exhibited the usual Saxon sense of race discrimination; almost from the first they drew a racial frontier between themselves and the native blacks, and so strictly has this frontier been maintained that there is no trace of the vanishing aboriginal blood in the veins of the new nationality. The 50,000 survivors of the original owners of the continent now present a philanthropic rather than a racial problem. ”

“ Here I was to find the natives in their original condition, uninfluenced by intercourse with the white man. I had long desired to study these savages—the Australian aborigines, the lowest of the human race—in their actual conditions of existence; for the ethnological student no phase of human life is so interesting as the most primitive one. It also seemed clear at the outset that new species of animal life must be found there, and that I might secure them with the aid of the blacks. ”

“ The fact of the tribes inhabiting so extensive an area of country, all speaking one tongue, induces us to imagine that the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia originally spread over the country from the neighbourhood of the Gulf of Carpentaria, breaking up into small sections such as families, so that food might be found for all, such breaking up taking place after getting well south to the country of rivers and creeks ”