Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/79

Rh determination, at last sent for the tribal executioner, Pundeet Puulotong, who pushed a spear through him, and the body was burned.

Natural deaths are generally—but not always—attributed to the malevolence and the spells of an enemy belonging to another tribe.

When a person of common rank dies under ordinary circumstances, and without an enemy being blamed, the body is immediately bound, with the knees upon the chest, and tied up with an acacia bark cord in an opossum rug. Next day it is put between two sheets of bark, as in a coffin, and buried in a grave about two feet deep, with the head towards the rising sun. All the ornaments, weapons, and property of the deceased are buried with him. Stone axes are excepted, as being too valuable to be thus disposed of, and are inherited by the next of kin. If there is no time to dig a grave—which occasionally happens in hot weather—or if the ground is too hard, the body is placed on a bier and removed by two men to a distance of a mile or two. There the relatives prepare a funeral pyre, on which the body is laid, with the head to the east. All the effects belonging to the deceased are laid beside the body, with the exception of stone axes. Two male relatives set fire to the pyre, and remain to attend to it till the body is consumed. Next morning, if any bones remain, they are completely pulverized and scattered about. When a married woman dies, and her body is burned, the husband puts her pounded calcined bones into a little opossum-skin bag, which he carries suspended in front of his chest until he marries again, or till the bag is worn out, when it is burned.

When two persons die in a wuurn at the same time, if they are brothers or sisters, they are interred close together in separate graves. If they are not so related, one of the bodies is tied with the knees to the face, and buried with the head towards the rising sun, in a shallow hole, or in a deserted mound; the other is put up in a tree till nothing remains but skin and bones, when it is taken down and burned.

The bodies of children between the ages of four and seven years are wrapped in an opossum rug, and put in a sheet of bark rolled up into a tube. This is pushed up into a hollow tree till the remains are quite dry, when they are taken down and burned. The bodies of children under four years of age, who died a natural death, are kept a day and a night, and are then interred or burned without any ceremony. Infants who have been put to death by their parents, in accordance with the customs of the tribe, are burned without ceremony.