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THE WEST AUSTRALIAN
ABORIGINES.
MARRIAGE LAWS AND SOME
CUSTOMS.
(By Daisy M. Bates.)
Read before the Royal Geographical
Society (Melbourne) and the Na-
tural History Society (Perth).
I endeavoured, in my previous paper,
to capitulate the chief geographical
attractions of Western Australia, in
order to arouse enthusiasm amongst
scientists in geology and geography, by
a short description of its wonders in
those great branches of science. I
will now touch briefly the ethnological
branch.
In its ethnological aspect, West
Australia offers the most interesting
field of study in the whole continent
of Australia. It is rich in possibili-
ties, and unique from its position, for,
according to the almost universal tra-
dition of its peoples, its earliest migra
tions entered from the Nor'-West,
leaving traces of their arrival and pro
gress southward and eastward in the
kitchen middens (mentioned in King's
voyages) and the rare and, apparent-
ly, ancient paintings and carvings
found by Grey and others throughout
the Nor'-West and upon Depuch Is-
land. Here, in Western Australia,
we have human beings who are still in
the so-called palaeolithic age, using the
primitive implements of the first Stone
age men. I had thought that the
Murchison district alone presented
this type; but I find, on further in-
vestigation, that the Southern natives
used only chipped implements, and on
the tableland country in the Nor'-West
all the implements were paleolithic,
except the axe, which was ground. A
specimen of this ground axe was re
cently sent to Professor Tyler, who had
expressed a desire to see the solitary
neolithic implement of the tableland.
In the Kimberley, and other places
in the north of this State several of
the implements are ground. Amongst
the aborigines there are varieties of
human types that would send into
raptures the most plethoric ethnologist
or anthropologist. Who are these
aborigines? Whence have they
come? What mingling of races has
produced the complex customs, the
peculiar physique of a race so very an
cient that it fades out of existence on
the first touch of civilisation? A
race that is so far separated through
countlesa ages of isolation from its cos-
mopolitan supplanters that their very
atmosphere is fatal to it. 'The smell
of the dead spirit kills us," they say.
Janga (spirit) was the name given by
the Southern aborignes to the first
white settlers in Western Australia. Is
it that, as we are credited with pos-
sessing the oldest land, in the world,
we have also the oldest people?--a
people so old that coming in contact
with a civilisation that has been slowly
evolving during the thousands of cen-
turies which are presumed to have
elapsed since the first humans were
framed and fashioned, they obey a cer
tain mysterious law of Nature that
forbids the amalgamation of such ex
tremes.
Nature moves slowly, but surely.
Nature has been busy from time im
memorial in mingling and adjusting
the humans over the rest of the world
to their environment. Yet, here in
Australia, she has seemingly left a
primitive portion untouched, in order
that, in the year 1778, she should be
able to stand aside and watch the re
sult of the contact of extremes. In
that year the earliest and latest of
human beings met when Cook came in
contact with Port Jackson (Botany
Bay) natives. Sixty years afterwards,
the last of the Port Jackson tribe,
which had numbered 1,500 on Cook's
arrival, had vanished.
There have been many theories as
to the origin of the Australian race.
India, Africa, America, Asia, and even
Europe, have been assigned by various
writers as their primeval home. Yet,
the question appears to be no nearer
solution now than it was in the
seventeenth century, when Dampier
first described its humans as 'the
poor winking people of New Holland."
More theories have been added, and
that is all. It is the easiest thing in
the world to form a theory, and there
will always be a variety of theories as
caution is necessary in making any
statements regarding the origin of the
Australian race is a fact that is re
cognised by all recent writers who
have seen the conclusions of the
highest authorities upset by later in
vestigations into the philology and
ethnlogy of the aborigines.
Evidence has been adduced from the
Warrnambool quarries and elsewhere of
the presence of tertiary man in Aus
tralia, and it has been stated that the
aborigines have been wandering and
hunting over the continent since the
late Pliocene and early Pleistocene
ages, their palaeolithic implements
having been found beside distinctly
Australian fossils.
The theory of Dr. J. P. Thomson
(hon. sec. R.G.S.Q.) whose valuable
treatise on the "Geographical Evolu
tion of the Australian Continent," has
given him'a high place in the scienti
fic world, is "that the Australian race
is an independent division of the hu
man family, that just as we have had
in prehistoric times, and have now at
the present period distinctive and
purely Australian types of the fauna
of the globe developed, and existing
for ages on our local soil, so here we
have also a race of people exclusively
our own." It is stated by Dr. Schoe
tensack, of Heidelberg ("Science of
Man," 1901), that "Australia and the
Indian Archipelago present a wide do
main that, during the Pliocene
period, fulfilled all the conditions neces
sary to render intelligent the evolution
of man."
Professor Klaatsch, of Heidelberg, is
now in this State in pursuit of evi
dences of the existence of prehistoric
man in Australia. Dr. Klaatsch is of
opinion that "Australia was at one time
connected with an Antarctic continent.
and also with Asia and Africa, and
that it was the home of prehistoric
man."
Not to pursue in detail the great
variety of theories advanced as to the
primeval home of the aborigines of
Australia, it will only be necessary to
mention that one which has the great
est number of supporters-the Dravi
dian or Indo-Egyptian theory. Rid
ley. Howitt, Fison, Rusden, Huxley,
Caldwell. the Rev. J. Mathew. the Rev.
Dr. Fraser, Mr. Carroll. and other noted
ethnologists and philologists, have re
cognised a system of kinship between
the Dravidans and Australians, in cus
toms and language, the strongest bond
of affinity being observed in the lan
guage of both peoples. Mr. Caldwell
and the Rev. J. Mathew, the former in
his Dravidian Grammar, the latter in
his valuable work, "Eaglehawk and
Crow" (Melbourne: Melville, Mullen,
and Slade), have proved linguistic kin-
ship in "the similarity of syllabation,
first and second personal pronouns, the
use of post positions, two forms of first
person plural (one inclusive of the per
son addressed, the other exclusive), the
formation of certain verbs by the ad
dition of certain syllables to the root,
the structure of words, and the posi
tion of words in the sentence." (Eagle
hawk and Crow." page 50.) The Dra
vidians also, have no common term
for brother, sister, aunt. etc., but use
the word elder, second, third, younger
and youngest, brother or sister. This
peculiarity is particularly noticeably
in the language of the southern tribes
of Western Australia. There are
many either marked resemblances be
tween the two languages which how
ever cannot be alluded to within the
limits of this paper.
The Dravidian system of matriarchial
relationship obtains amongst the
southern tribes of Western Australia.
though not amongst the northern por-
tion. The true Australian boomerang
has been found both in Egypt and
India, specimens from Thebes (Egypt)
and Kattyawar (Bombay) being now in
the British Museum, side by side with
the Australian weapon.
Tho Rev. J. Mathew, Dr. A. Carroll,
and many other writers on Australian
ethnology assign a Negritan-Papuan-
Dravidian origin to the race, the Tas
manian aborignes having but the first
two mixtures, while the natives on the
continent possess all three ingredients.
The Malay element, although evident
here and there, amongst the peoples,
has never been strong enough to leave
any permanent effect amongst them.
It is more observable in the northern
portion of Western Australia than in
the south.
These are some of the theories ad
vanced by writers, but they have all
been formulated without the study of
what, in my opinion, is the most im
portant of all, and that is the West
Australian southern section. As far
as I have gone in my investigations
with the few living representatives of
these ancient peoples, I am firmly of
opinion that an exhaustive examina
tion of the western section, particularly
the southern coastal portion, under
taken by a few leading ethnologists
and phioloogists will tend more towards
solving the problem of the origin of
the race than anything that has yet
been attempted, in this respect, in the
scientific world. Nowhere on the con
tinent is there such a wealth of ma
terial as there is in Western Australia.
Ethnologically speaking, the State is
unknown, both within and beyond her
borders. A few works of doubtful ac-
curacy. bearing the date of the "for
ties," have been issued, but these have
covered only a tiny portion of this
great State. R. H. Mathews. L.S. of
Sydney, has hitherto been the most
painstaking inquirer into the peculiar
laws and customs of the West Austra
lians. Sir John Forrest was one of
the first to draw attention to the sec
tional divisens and class marriage sys
tem of the Nor'-West natives, and the
marriage laws and system of con
sanguinity obtaining amongst them
have, of late years, been frequently dis
cussed; but the southern portion of the
State has been left severely alone, and
it is to some interesting points that I
have discovered in connection with the
southern tribes that I would particu
larly draw your attention. Native
tradition throughout the continent as
signs the north. and Nor'-West as the
points where the remote ancestors of
the present race are presumed to have
landed. The various migrations (some
writers state there are two, others
three, migrations) are supposed to have
spread southward and eastward, but I
shall "only attempt to deal with those
in Western Australia. Here in this
State there seems to be two great divi
sions--a northern and a southern--or,
perhaps, they might be defined more
particularly by classifying them as a
circumcised and uncircumcised peo
ple. Both these divisions bear
distinct class names, both have
peculiar customs and laws han
ded down by oral tradition from
father to son for countless generations.
The great northern division covers, as
far as I have at present ascertained,
the. portion of country lying between
East Kimberley and a point somewhere
in the neighbourhood of Jurien Bay
(about lat. 30 degrees), but at what
exact spot I cannot find out until I
make a personal investigation. The
same customs habits, marriage laws,
and laws of descent obtain amongst
this division, a slight difference in
nomenclature being the only variation.
This division, from Kimberley down to
a little below the Degrey River. prac
tises crcumcision and sub-incision
the former compulsory, the latter not
generally so. Just below the Degrey,
from the coast inland, to about forty
miles or so, the coastal natives have
given up the practice, and all along the
coast down to Eyre's Sand Patch (or
thereabouts), the "natives have sub
stituted nose-piercing for circumcision.
The circumcised tribes touch the coast
at the Degrey and Eyre's Sand Patch.
The nearest point at which they
touch the coast between these two
places is at Geialdton, where they en
croach within twenty miles of that
port, the reason for this being that
the uncircumcised are being constantly
adopted into the circumcised tribes. A
circumcised man does not enter into
and reside amongst the uncircumcised
people, but an uncircumcised man may
be adopted into the circumcised tribes.
(I use the word tribe throughout this
paper, although it is incorrect.)
There is tradtional evidence that the
custom of circumcision has only com
paratively recently died out in many
parts of the Nor'-West, below the De
grey. At Roebourne it has been re
placed by the tying, at initiation, of a
ligature so tightly round the upper
part of the arm that, if worn for a
lengthy period, it sometimes causes
that member to withler and become
useless, but this is a rare occurrence.
(This statement I received, when at
Roebourne, from four settlers of several
years' residence in the district.)
The principal class divisions of the
Nor'-West aborigines (with various mo
difications in nomenclature) are as
under:
Boo'-rong.
Ban'-aka.'
Ky'-mora.
Pal'-jeri.
These are the four great classes, and
as far as I have at present ascertained,
these divisional names obtain from
Derby to the Murchison. Here I am
told, Bool-goo-loo takes the place of
Banaka, and further east, some other
changes in nomenclature appear to
occur. The marriage laws of these
four classes are as follow :
Boorong marries Banako, and their
children are Kymera.
Banaka marries Boorong, and their.
children are Paljeri.
Kymera marries Paljeri, and their
children are Boorong.
Pal-jeri marries Kymera, and their
children are Banaka.
It will be noticed the children enter
their grandfather's class. I would
like to draw your attention to the
similarity existing between the above
names and the sectional names of some
of the Arunta nation, as given ,by
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in their
latest work. ("Northern Tribes of
Central Australia," page 96 et seq.) I
think that, as these authors traced the
changes in the laws of descent occurring
amongst the different tribes, so that
they should "fit in." so to speak, with
the system of "marrying into the right
division," so on investigation the same
changes will he found amongst those
natives who, for some reason or other,
have changed their sectional names,
more partienlarly in parts of the Mur
chison district, on the Eastern gold
fields. where there appears to he a
crossing of the classes and a difference
in the sectional names. Persons hear-
ing the same class name must not
marry. Severe penalties, frequently
death, follow a breach of this law. A
settler, who has been a resident of the
Tableland district (inland from Roe
bourne) for over twenty years, is a
Boorong, having been adopted into that
division: his wife is a Banaka, and
their children are Kymera. This
settler stated that the union of Boo-
orong and Boorong is, to the natives,
the union of brother and sister, al-
though there may be no real blood re
lationship between the pair, and
union of that kind is looked upon with
horror, and the perpetrators very se-
verely punished and separated, and if
the crime is repeated they are both
killed. A Nor'-West settler who had
been adopted into one these classes,
married a wife who had also been adopt-
-ed into the same class, and the natives
have passively resented the union,
even though the wrongdoer is a white
man.
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