Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/469

VIII things being completed for the disposal of the body," one word was uttered, "animadiate" which means, "He is gone to be made a white man," In another place it is again said that "amadiate" means a white man. It is evident that this must have occurred after the blacks had obtained some knowledge of white men, other than Buckley. Yet they must have been prepared for the pale tint of the skin of the white men by what they must have seen when they burned the body of a dead tribesman, or roasted the flesh of a slain enemy. The burning of the dead seems to have been a common practice, and the change in colour which takes place when the epidermis with its colouring-pigment is removed must have been observed. Indeed one of the Jajaurung, in speaking to me of the practice of roasting and eating the skin of the sides and of the thighs of people killed by the tribes of the Wotjo nation, said, "All of the people beyond St. Arnaud did this." His people called it Amidiat, that is, light-coloured, or white. Parker remarks that the very term applied to white men indicates the belief that they were their deceased progenitors, returning to their former haunts. He gives Amydeet (Jajaurung), Amerjig (Witowurung), as specimens of the designation applied to the white race, and the same term designates the state of the spirit when the body is dead."

Although the burning of the body was not much practised by the Wurunjerri, Berak remembered two cases of it. One was of a man who died where Kew is now, the other was to the westward of Geelong, and thus in the country where Buckley lived. This was, as Berak put it, "before white men came to Melbourne." Buckley says that a woman was burned, who had been killed in a combat between the tribe he lived with and another they had visited. They made a large fire, and having thrown her body upon it, they heaped on more wood, so that it was burned to ashes. This done, they raked the embers of the fire together, and stuck the stick she used to dig roots with upright at the head.