Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/119

Rh CHAPTER XXII.

NATIVE MOUNDS. mounds, so common all over the country, are called 'pok yuu' by the Chaa wuurong tribe; 'po'ok,' by the Kuurn kopan noot tribe; and 'puulwuurn' by the Peek whuurong tribe; and were the sites of large, permanent habitations, which formed homes for many generations. The great size of some of them, and the vast accumulation of burnt earth, charcoal, and ashes which is found in and around them, is accounted for by the long continuance of the domestic hearth, the decomposition of the building materials, and the debris arising from their frequent destruction by bush fires. They never were ovens, or original places of interment, as is generally supposed, and were only used for purposes of burial after certain events occurred while they were occupied as sites for residences — such as the death of more than one of the occupants of the dwelling at the same time, or the family becoming extinct; in which instance they were called 'muuru kowuutuung' by the Chaa wuurong tribe, and 'muuruup kaakee' by the Kuurn kopan noot tribe, meaning 'ghostly place,' and were never afterwards used as sites for residences, and only as places for burial. There is an idea that when two persons die at the same time on any particular spot, their deaths, if not attributed to the spell of an enemy, are caused by something unhealthy about the locality, and it is abandoned for ever. It is never even visited again, except to bury the dead; and the mounds are used for that purpose only because the soil is loose, and a grave is more easily dug in them than in the solid ground. The popular notion of their having been ovens is refuted, not only by the unanimous testimony of all the old aborigines, but also by a careful examination of the structure and stratification of the mounds. On opening a very perfect circular mound, sixty-five feet in diameter and five feet high, and intersecting it by parallel trenches dug at intervals of three feet, down to the original surface soil, and through that and a bed of gravel to the clay, not the slightest sign was observed of the ancient alluvial soil having been disturbed. Had an oven ever existed there, it would have been distinctly visible in the floor of the wuurn, as native ovens are always formed by digging deep holes in the ground. In cutting