Customs of the Australian AboriginesSource: The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 9(1880), pp. 459-460Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2841711 .

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Anthropological MiWcellanea. 459

ANTHROPOLOGICAL MESCELLANEA.

CUSTOMS OF THE AUSTRALI AN ABORIGINES.

THE followinog notes are extracted from a communication forwarded to the Institute by Captain William E. Armit, F.L.S. They relate to practices still existing among the tribes of the Australian continent and will be perused with interest as the result of resident observation.

Captain Armit writes: " The natives of the north-west coast ate visited yearly by Malay Prahus brought over to trade for pearl shells, beche-de-mer, &c. These Malays have, by interbreeding, considerably altered the races inhabiting that portion of the continent. We here find bold and aggressive savages, who have lost the dread of the white man evinced by all inland blacks. They practise the rite of circumcision and are in several other points superior to the other tribes. It is, however, singular that their customs should prevail through the whole length and breadth of Australia. It cannot be accounted forbythe intercourse existing between the above mentioned tribes and the Malay Archipelapo, as if introduced by the latter they would merely be found amongst these tribes and not inland, a constant war being waged between tribe and tribe; thev must therefore owe their introduction to very remote times when perhaps access to this country was much less difficult than it is at present.

" The law eniacted in Leviticus xii. ver. 2-4, is observed by all the tribes with which I have come in contact during twelve years' sojourn in the country between Brisbane and Carpentaria. The women are rigorously excluded for a month or six weeks after childbirth, and during this period the father does not see his offspring.

"Again, Leviticus xv. ver. 19, enacts another law which is also universally respected and obeyed by the Australian blacks. In one instance near Townsville, in 1870, a case came under my notice where a Gin was put to death for having gone into her husband's Mi-Mi and lain in his blanket during her period of menstruation. In this instance the black-fellow had slept in his humpy as usual, and did not discover that the Gin had used his bed until the next day, when he killed the woman, and his own superstitious dread of evil killed him within a fortnight! That such laws should be respected by races who in point of psychological power rank scarcely

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460 Anth1bropological Miscellanea.

higher than the Andamanese would be inexplicable were it not obvious that they are merely sanitary laws, a breach of which, often repeated, would lead to the most miserable consequences.

" Nor is it likely that these laws would have been binding with such low savages as our Australians, had they not been clothed in the garb of superstition, with penal clauses, entailing no less a penalty than death on the persons violating them. The women under quarantine are secluded from the rest of the camp, nor will a black-fellow approach them under any circumstances. I have repeatedly been amused by seeing my troopers make a detour to avoid crossing the tracks of the Gin or Gins who occupied the quarantine hut. Mr. Wallace alludes to the custom of secluding women at child-birth as prevalent in Celebes and Borneo among the Dyaks and other savage tribes.* The rite of circumcision is also practised by several Australian tribes, and was noticed by Doctor Comrie, R.N., when visiting the south-eastern peninsula of New Guinea in H.M.S. 'Basilisk.' The custom is, I believe, also known to exist in New Zealand.

" One of my troopers, a native of the Leichhardt river, Carpentaria, informs me that a curious custom is observed in his tribe. The first-born of any couple is treated with great affection and made much of until his younger brother attains the age of manhood. When this happens the father quarrels with his eldest son, beats and illtreats him, and ultimately drives him from the camp with curses and every mark of aversion. A lapse of one month finds the whole tribe encamped on the same spot, and the outcast son rejoins his tribe, his presence being henceforth tolerated, but he remains a stranger to his family.

" That such laws should exist at all in the nineteenth century among such savage races is most interesting, and I think points clearly to the fact that they must in prehistoric ages have held intercourse with Asia or the Old World, and with the Semitic branch of the Caucasian race; or, which is perhaps still more probable, with a people who derived many of their manners, customs, and tradi- tions from that race.

" We have only to study the different types of man, as found in the Archipelago, to have this conclusion forced upon our minds."

The GREAT ToE of the ANNAMESE. By CHARLES F. TREMLETT, H.B.M. Consul, Saigon, 15th November, 1879.

GIAO-CHI.

FiRST to show what these characters mean and to mark their application to the Annamite.

In his "Notes pour i'histoire de la nation Anaiamite," Pere Legrand de la Lyraye says that the existence of the country of the

* ' Malay Archipelago," p. 217. Fourth Edition, 1872.

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