The Euahlayi Tribe A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia
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Langloh Parker >> The Euahlayi Tribe A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia
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The Euahlayi Tribe--A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia
by K. Langloh Parker
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. THE ALL FATHER, BYAMEE
III. RELATIONSHIPS AND TOTEMS
IV. THE MEDICINE MEN
V. MORE ABOUT THE MEDICINE MEN AND LEECHCRAFT
VI. OUR WITCH WOMAN
VII. BIRTH--BETROTHAL--AN ABORIGINAL GIRL FROM INFANCY TO WOMANHOOD
VIII. THE TRAINING OF A BOY UP TO BOORAH PRELIMINARIES
IX. THE BOORAH AND OTHER MEETINGS
X. CHIEFLY AS TO FUNERALS AND MOURNING
XI. SOMETHING ABOUT STARS AND LEGENDS
XII. THE TRAPPING OF GAME
XIII. FORAGING AND COOKING
XIV. COSTUMES AND WEAPONS
XV. THE AMUSEMENTS OF BLACKS
XVI. BUSH BOGIES AND FINIS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
By one of the Euahlayi Tribe (Omitted from etext)
A NATIVE CARRYING A MESSAGE-STICK
TWO NATIVES READY FOR A CORROBOREE
THE FUNERAL OF A NATIVE. A BARK COFFIN
A NATIVE SINGING TO HIS OWN ACCOMPANIMENT
A NATIVE GRINDING GRASS SEED ON A DAYOORL-STONE
A NATIVE WITH SHIELD AND WADDY IN FRONT OF HIS CAMP
INTRODUCTION
No introduction to Mrs. Langloh Parker's book can be more than that
superfluous 'bush' which, according to the proverb, good wine does not
need. Our knowledge of the life, manners, and customary laws of many
Australian tribes has, in recent years, been vastly increased by the
admirable works of Mr. Howitt, and of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. But
Mrs. Parker treats of a tribe which, hitherto, has hardly been
mentioned by anthropologists, and she has had unexampled opportunities
of study. It is hardly possible for a scientific male observer to be
intimately familiar with the women and children of a savage tribe. Mrs.
Parker, on the other hand, has had, as regards the women and children
of the Euahlayi, all the advantages of the squire's wife in a rural
neighbourhood, supposing the squire's wife to be an intelligent and
sympathetic lady, with a strong taste for the study of folklore and
rustic custom. Among the Zulus, we know, it is the elder women who tell
the popular tales, so carefully translated and edited by Bishop
Colenso. Mrs. Parker has already published two volumes of Euahlayi
tales, though I do not know that I have ever seen them cited, except by
myself, in anthropological discussion. As they contain many beautiful
and romantic touches, and references to the Euahlayi 'All Father,' or
paternal 'super man,' Byamee, they may possibly have been regarded as
dubious materials, dressed up for the European market. Mrs. Parker's
new volume, I hope, will prove that she is a close scientific observer,
who must be reckoned with by students. She has not scurried through the
region occupied by her tribe, but has had them constantly under her
eyes for a number of years.
My own slight share in the book as it stands ought to be mentioned.
After reading the original MS., I catechised Mrs. Parker as to her
amount of knowledge of the native language; her methods of obtaining
information; and the chances that missionary influence had affected the
Euahlayi legends and beliefs. I wrote out her answers, and she read and
revised what I had written. I also collected many scattered notices of
Byamee into the chapter on that being, which Mrs. Parker has read and
approved. I introduced a reference to Mr. Howitt's theory of the 'All
Father,' and I added some references to other authorities on the
Australian tribes. Except for this, and for a very few purely verbal
changes in matter of style, Mrs. Parker's original manuscript is
untouched by me. It seems necessary to mention these details, as I
have, in other works, expressed my own opinions on Australian religion
and customary law.[MAKING OF RELIGION, second edition; MYTH, RITUAL, AND
RELIGION, second edition.] These opinions I have not, so to speak, edited
into the work of Mrs. Parker. The author herself has remarked that,
beginning as a disciple of Mr. Herbert Spencer in regard to the
religious ideas of the Australians--according to that writer, mere
dread of casual 'spirits'--she was obliged to alter her attitude, in
consequence of all that she learned at first hand. She also explains
that her tribe are not 'wild blacks,' though, in the absence of
missionary influences, they retain their ancient beliefs, at least the
old people do; and, in a decadent form, preserve their tribal
initiations, or Boorah. How she tested and controlled the evidence of
her informants she has herself stated, and I venture to think that she
could hardly have made a better use of her opportunities.
In one point there is perhaps, almost unavoidably, a lacuna or gap in
her information. The Euahlayi, she says, certainly do not possess the
Dieri and Urabunna
custom of Pirrauru or Piraungaru, by which married, and unmarried men,
of the classes men and women which may intermarry, are solemnly
allotted to each other as more or less permanent paramours.[See
Mr. Howitt's NATIVE TRIBES OF SOUTH-EAST AUSTRALIA, and my
SECRET OF THE TOTEM, chapter iii.] That custom, for some unknown reason,
is confined to certain tribes possessing the two social divisions with the
untranslated names MATTERI and KIRARU. These tribes range from Lake Eyre
southward, perhaps, as far as the sea. Their peculiar custom is unknown to
the Euahlayi) but Mrs. Parker does not inform us concerning any recognised
licence which may, as is usual, accompany their Boorah assemblies, or
their 'harvest home' of gathered grass seed, which she describes.
Any reader of Mrs. Parker's book who has not followed recent
anthropological discussions, may need to be apprised of the nature of
these controversies, and of the probable light thrown on them by the
full description of the Euahlayi tribe. The two chief points in dispute
are (1) the nature and origin of the marriage laws of the Australians;
and (2) the nature and origin of such among their ideas and practices
as may be styled 'religious.' As far as what we commonly call material
civilisation is concerned, the natives of the Australian continent are
probably the most backward of mankind, having no agriculture, no
domestic animals, and no knowledge of metal-working. Their weapons and
implements are of wood, stone, and bone, and they have not even the
rudest kind of pottery. But though the natives are all, in their
natural state, on or about this common low level, their customary laws,
ceremonials, and beliefs are rich in variety.
As regards marriage rules they are in several apparently ascending
grades of progress. First we have tribes in which each person is born
into one or other of two social divisions usually called 'phratries.'
Say that the names of the phratries mean Eagle Hawk and Crow. Each
born Crow must marry an Eagle Hawk; each born Eagle Hawk must marry a
Crow. The names are derived through the mothers. One obvious result is
that no two persons, brother and sister maternal, can intermarry; but
the rule also excludes from intermarriage great numbers of persons in
no way akin to each other by blood, who merely share the common phratry
name, Crow or Eagle Hawk.
In each phratry are smaller sets of persons, each set distinguished by
the name of some animal or other natural object, their 'totem.' The
same totem is never found in both phratries. Thus a person marrying out
of his or her phratry, as all must do, necessarily marries out of his
or her totem.
The same arrangements exist among tribes which derive phratry and totem
names through the father.
This derivation of names and descent through the father is regarded by
almost all students, and by Mr. J. G. Frazer, in one passage of his
latest study of the subject, as a great step in progress.['The Beginnings
of Religion and Totemism among the Australian Aborigines,' FORTMIGHTLY
REVIEW, September 1905, p. 452.] The obvious result of paternal descent is
to make totem communities or kins local. In any district most of the
people will be of the same paternal totem name--say, Grub, Iguana, Emu,
or what not. Just so, in Glencoe of old, most of the people were MacIans;
in Appin most were Stewarts; in South Argyll Campbells, and so on.
The totem kins are thus, with paternal descent, united both by supposed
blood ties in the totem kin, and by associations of locality. This is
certainly a step in social progress.
But while Mr. Frazer, with almost all inquirers, acknowledges this, ten
pages later in his essay he no longer considers the descent of the
totem in the paternal line as necessarily 'a step in progress' from
descent in the maternal line. 'The common assumption that inheritance
of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it through
the father need not hold good,'[IBID. p. 462.] he remarks.
Thus it appears that a tribe has not necessarily made 'a great step in
progress,' because it reckons descent of the totem on the male side. If
this be so, we cannot so easily decide as to which tribe is socially
advanced and which is not.
In any case, however, there is a test of social advance. There is an
acknowledged advance when a tribe is divided into, not two, but four or
eight divisions, which may not intermarry.[IBID. p. 454] The Euahlayi have
four such divisions. In each of their intermarrying phratries are two
'Matrimonial Classes,' each with its name, and these are so constituted
that a member of the elder generation can never marry a member of the
succeeding generation. This rule prevents, of course, marriage between
parent and child, but such marriages never do occur in the pristine
tribes of the Darling river which have no such classes. The four-class
arrangement excludes from intermarriage all persons, whether parents
and children or not, who bear the same class name, say Hippai.
Among the central and northern tribes, from the Arunta of the
Macdonnell hills to the Gulf of Carpentaria, the eight-class rule
exists, and it is, confessedly, the most advanced of all.
In this respect, then, the Arunta of the centre of Australia are
certainly more advanced than the Euahlayi. The Arunta have eight, not
four, intermarrying classes. In the matter of rites and ceremonies,
too, they are, in the opinion of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, more
advanced than, say, the Euahlayi. They practise universal 'subincision'
of the males, and circumcision, in place of the more primitive knocking
out of the front teeth. Their ceremonies are very prolonged: in Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen's experience, rites lasted for four months during a
great tribal gathering. That the Arunta could provide supplies for so
prolonged and large an assembly, argues high organisation, or a region
well found in natural edible objects. Yet the region is arid and barren,
so the organisation is very high. For all these reasons, even if we do not
regard paternal descent of the totem as a step in progress from maternal
descent, the Arunta seem greatly advanced in social conditions.
Yet they are said to lack entirely that belief in a moral and kindly
'All Father,' such as Byamee, which Mrs. Parker describes as potent
among the less advanced Euahlayi, and which Mr. Howitt has found among
non-coastal tribes of the south-east, with female descent of the totem,
but without matrimonial classes--that is, among the most primitive tribes
of all.
Here occurs a remarkable difficulty. Mr. Howitt asserts, with Mr.
Frazer's concurrence, that (in Mr. Frazer's words) 'the same regions in
which the germs of religion begin to appear have also made some
progress towards a higher form of social and family life.'['The Beginnings
of Religion and Totemism among the Australian Aborigines,' Fortnightly
Review, September 1905, p. 452.] But the social advance from maternal to
paternal descent of the totem, we have seen, is not necessarily an advance
at all, in Mr. Frazer's opinion.[ IBID. p. 462.] The Arunta, for example,
he thinks, never recognised female descent of
the totem. They have never recognised, indeed, he thinks, any
hereditary descent of the totem, though in all other respects, as in
hereditary magistracies, and inheritance of the right to practise the
father's totemic ritual, they do reckon in the male line. By such
advantage, however it was acquired, they are more progressive than,
say, the Euahlayi. But, progressive as they are, they have not, like
the more pristine tribes of the south-east, developed 'the germs of
religion,' the belief in a benevolent or ruling 'All Father.' Unlike
the tribes of the south-east, they have co-operative totemic magic.
Each totem community does magic for its totem, as part of the food
supply of the united tribe. But the tribe, though so SOLIDAIRE, and
with its eight classes and hereditary magistracies so advanced, has
developed no germs of religion at all. Arunta progress has thus been
singularly unequal.
The germs of religion are spoken of as the results of social advance,
but, while so prominent in social advance, the Arunta have no trace of
religion. The tribes northward from them to the sea are also very
advanced socially, but (with one known exception not alluded to by Mr.
Frazer) have no 'All Father,' no germ of religion.
From this fact, if correctly reported, it is obvious that social
progress is not the cause, nor the necessary concomitant, of advance in
religious ideas.
Again, the influence of the sea, in causing a 'heavier rainfall, a more
abundant vegetation, and a more plentiful supply of food,' with an
easier and more reflective life than that of 'the arid wilderness of
the interior,' cannot be, as is alleged, the cause of the germs of
religion.[IBID. p. 463.] If this were the case, the coastal tribes of the
Gulf of Carpentaria and of the north generally would have developed the
All Father belief. Yet, in spite of their coastal environment, and richer
existence, and social advance, the northern coastal tribes are not
credited with the belief in the All Father. Meanwhile tribes with no
matrimonial classes, and with female descent of the totem--tribes
dwelling from five to seven hundred miles away from the southern sea--do
possess the All Father belief as far north as Central Queensland, no
less than did the almost or quite extinct tribes of the south coast,
who had made what is (or is not) 'the great step in progress' of
paternal descent of the totem.
Again, arid and barren as is the central region tenanted by the Arunta,
it seems to permit or encourage philosophic reflection, for their
theory of evolution is remarkably coherent and ingenious. The theory of
evolution implies as much reflection as that of creation! Their magic
for the behoof of edible objects is attributed to the suddenness of
their first rains,[IBID. p. 465.] and the consequent outburst of life,
which the natives attribute to their own magical success. But
rainmaking magic, as Mrs. Langloh Parker shows, is practised with
sometimes amazing success among the Euahlayi, who work no magic at all
for their totems. Their magic, if it brings rain, benefits their totems
at large, but for each totem in particular, no Euahlayi totem kin does
magic.
Again, agricultural magic has been, and indeed is, practised in Europe,
in conditions of climate unlike those of the Arunta; and totemic magic
is freely practised in North America, in climatic conditions dissimilar
from those of Central Australia.
For all these reasons I must confess that I do not follow the logic of
the philosophy which makes social advance the cause of the belief in
the All Father, and coastal rains the cause of social advance. The
Arunta have the social advance, the eight classes, the relatively high
organisation; but they have neither the climatic conditions supposed to
produce the advance, nor the religion which the advance is supposed to
produce. The northern coastal tribes, again, have the desired climatic
conditions, and the social advance, but they have not the germs of
religion found in many far inland southern tribes, like the Euahlayi,
whose social progress is extremely moderate. We thus find, from the
northern coast to the centre, one supposed result of coastal
conditions, namely, social progress, but not the other supposed result
of coastal conditions, namely, the All Father belief. I do not say that
it does not exist, for it is a secret belief, but it is not reported by
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. On the other hand, among tribes of the
south-east very far from the coast, we find the lowest grades of social
progress, but we also find the All Father belief. I am ready, of
course, to believe that good conditions of life beget progress, social
and religious, as a general rule. But other causes exist; speculation
anywhere may take crudely scientific rather than crudely religious
lines. Especially the belief in ancestral spirits may check or nullify
the belief in a remote All Father. We see this among the Zulus, where
spirits entirely dominate religion, and the All Father is, at most, the
shadow of a name, Unkulunkulu. We may detect the same influence among
the northern tribes of Australia, where ancestral spirits dominate
thought and society, though they receive no sacrifice or prayer.
Meanwhile, if we accept Mrs. Parker's evidence, among the Euahlayi
ancestral spirits are of no account in religion) while the All Father
is obeyed, and, on some occasions, is addressed in prayer; and may even
cause rain, if property approached by a human spirit which has just
entered his mansions. Clearly, climatic causes and natural environment
are not the only factors in producing and directing the speculative
ideas of men in early society.
We must also remember that the neighbours of the Arunta, northwards,
who share certain peculiar Arunta ideas, possess, beyond all doubt,
either the earliest germs of belief in the All Father, or that belief
in a decadent condition of survival. This is quite certain; for,
whereas the Arunta laugh at all inquiries as to what went before the
'Alcheringa,' or mythic age of evolution, the Kaitish, according to
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, aver that an anthropomorphic being, who
dwells above the sky, and is named Atnatu, first created himself, and
then 'made the Alcheringa,'--the mythic age of primal evolution. Of
mankind, some, in Kaitish opinion, were evolved; of others Atnatu is
the father. He expelled men to earth from his heaven for neglect of his
ceremonies, but he provided them with weapons and all that they
possess. He is not TROS FERRO SUR LA MORALE: he has made no MORAL laws,
but his ritual laws, as to circumcision and the whirling of the
bull-roarer, must be observed as strictly as the ritual laws of Byamee
of the Euahlayi. In this sense of obedience due to a heavenly father
who begat men, or some of them, punished them, and started them on
their terrene career, laying down ceremonial rules, we have certainly
'the germs of religion' in a central tribe cognate to the Arunta.
Mr. Frazer detects only two traces of religion in the centre, omitting
the Kaitish Atnatu, ['The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the
Australian Aborigines,' FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, September 1905, p. 452,
Note 1.] but I am unable to see how the religious aspect of Atnatu,
non-moral as it is, can be overlooked. He is the father of part of the
tribe, and all are bound to, observe his ceremonial rules. He accounts for
the beginning of the beginning; he is the cause of the Alcheringa; men owe
duties to him. We do not know whether he was once as potent in their
hearts, and as moral as Byamee, but has DOGRINGOLO under Arunta
philosophic influences; or whether Byamee is a more highly evolved form of
Atnatu. But it is quite certain that the Kaitish, in a region as far
almost from the north sea as that of the Arunta, and further from southern
coastal influences than the Arunta, have a modified belief in the All
Father. How are we to account for this on the philosophic hypothesis of
Oceanus as the father of all the gods; of coastal influences producing a
richer life, and causing both social and religious progress?
Another difficulty is that while the Arunta, with no religion, and the
Kaitish, with the Atnatu belief, are socially advanced in organisation
(whether we reckon male descent of the totem 'a great step in
progress,' or an accident), they are yet supposed by Mr. Frazer to be,
in one respect, the least advanced, the most primitive, of known human
beings. The reason is this: the Arunta do not recognise the processes
of sexual union as the cause of the production of children. Sexual
acts, they say, merely prepare women for the reception of original
ancestral spirits, which enter into them, and are reincarnated and
brought to the birth.
If the women cannot accept the spirits without being 'prepared' by
sexual union, then sexual union plays a physical part in the generation
of a spirit incarnated, a fact which all believers in the human soul
are as ready as the Arunta to admit. If the Arunta recognise the
prior necessity of ' preparation,' then they are not so ignorant as
they are thought to be; and their view is produced, not so much by
stark ignorance, as by their philosophy of the eternal reincarnation of
primal human spirits. The Arunta philosophers, in fact, seem to
concentrate their speculation on a point which puzzled Mr. Shandy. How
does the animating principle, or soul, regarded as immaterial, clothe
itself in flesh? Material acts cannot effect the incarnation of a
spirit. Therefore, the spirit enters women from without, and is not the
direct result of human action.
The south-eastern tribes, with female descent of the totem, and with no
belief in the universal and constant reincarnation of ancestral
spirits, take the 'schylean view, according to Mr. Howitt, that the
male is the sole originating cause of children, while the female is
only the recipient and 'nurse.' These tribes, socially less advanced
than the Arunta, have not the Arunta nescience of the facts of
procreation, a nescience which I regard as merely the consequence and
corollary of the Arunta philosophy of reincarnation. Each Arunta child,
by that philosophy, has been in being since the Alcheringa: his mother
of the moment only reproduces him, after 'preparation.' He is not a new
thing; he is as old as the development of organic forms. This is the
Arunta belief, and I must reckon it as not more primitive than the
peculiar philosophy of reincarnation of ancestral spirits. Certainly
such an elaborate philosophy manifestly cannot be primitive. It is,
however, the philosophy of the tribes from the Urabunna, on Lake Eyre
(with female descent of the totem), to the most northerly tribes, with
male descent.
But among none of these tribes has the philosophy that extraordinary
effect on totemic institutions which, by a peculiar and isolated
addition, it possesses among the septs of the Arunta nation, and in a
limited way among the Kaitish.
Among all tribes except these the child inherits its totem: from the
mother, among the Urabunna; from the father in the northern peoples.
But, among the Arunta and Kaitish, the totem is not inherited from
either parent. According to the belief of these tribes, in every
district there is a place where the first human ancestors--in each case
all of one totem, whichsoever that totem, in each case, might happen to
be--died, 'went under the earth.' Rocks or trees arose to mark such
spots. These places are haunted by the spirits of the dead ancestors;
here they are all Grubs, there all Eagle Hawks, or all Iguanas, or all
Emus, or all Cats. Or as in these sites the ancestors left each his own
sacred stone, CHURINGA NANJA, with archaic patterns inscribed on it,
patterns now fancifully interpreted as totemic inscriptions. Such
stones are especially haunted by the ancestral souls, all desiring
reincarnation.
When a woman becomes aware of the life of the child she bears, among
the Arunta and Kaitish, she supposes that a local spirit of the local
totem has entered her, and her child's totem is therefore the totem of
that locality, whatever other totems she and her husbands may own. The
stone amulet of the ancestral spirit, WHO IS THE CHILD, is sought; if
it cannot be found at the spot, a wooden CHURINGA is made to represent
it, and it is kept carefully in a sacred storehouse.
Even in the centre and north, where the belief in reincarnation
prevails, this odd manner of acquiring totems is only practised by the
Arunta tribes and the Kaitish, and only among them are the inscribed
stones known to exist as favoured haunts of ancestral spirits desiring
incarnation. The other northern tribes believe in reincarnation, but
not in the haunted sacred stones, which they do not, north of the
Worgaia, possess; nor do they derive totems from locality, but, as
usual, by inheritance.
It thus appears that these Arunta sacred stones are an inseparable
accident of the Arunta method of acquiring the totem. How they and the
faith in them cause that method is not obvious, but the two things--the
haunted sacred stone, and the local source of totems--are
inseparable--that is, the former never is found apart from the latter.
Now such stones, with the sense and usage attached to them, cannot well
be primitive. They are the result of the peculiar and strictly isolated
Arunta custom and belief, which gives to each man and woman one of
these stones, the property of himself or herself, since the mythical
age, through all reincarnations.
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