Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/482

456 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 pulverised 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 in front of his chest until he marries again, or until the bag is worn out, when it is burned.

Immediately after the death of a chief, the bones of the lower part of the leg and the forearm are extracted, cleaned with a flint knife, and placed in a basket; the body is tied with a bark cord, with the knees to the face, and wrapped in an opossum rug. It is then laid in a wuurn (hut) filled with smoke, and constantly watched by friends with green boughs to keep the flies away.

When all the mourners, with their faces and heads covered with white clay, have arrived, the body is laid on a bier formed of saplings and branches, and is placed on a stage in the fork of a tree, high enough from the ground to be out of the reach of the wild dogs. Every one then departs to his own home. The adult relatives and friends of the deceased visit the spot every few days and weep in silence. At the expiry of one moon the relatives and the members of his own and the neighbouring tribes come to burn the remains. The body is removed from the tree. Each chief, assisted by two of his men, helps to carry it and to place it on the funeral pyre, while the relatives of the deceased sit in a semicircle to windward of the pyre, and each tribe by itself behind them. The fire is lighted and kept together by several men of the tribe, who remain till the body is consumed, and till the ashes are sufficiently cool to allow the fragments of the small bones to be gathered. These are then pounded up with a piece of wood and put into the small bag prepared for them. The widow of the deceased chief, by first marriage, wears the bag of calcined bones suspended from her neck, and she also gets the lower bones of the right arm, which she cleans and wraps in an opossum skin. These relics she carries for two years, and