Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/530

504 understood his meaning, the sacred and secret teachings of the initiation ceremonies. In my experience, men have in such circumstances put on an appearance of dense stupidity, or have resorted to absolute denial of any knowledge, and even to lies.

In reading Mr. Curr's work, The Australian Race, I find, however, that such beliefs as those I have stated are noticed by his correspondents. The Larrakia believe in a being who dwells in the stars, and never dies. The Cape River tribes believe that when a blackfellow dies whose actions have been in life what they hold to be good, he ascends to Boorala (i.e. the Creator, literally "good"), where he lives much as he did on the earth. In this we may recognise the Birral of the tribes inland from Maryborough (Queensland) referred to a few pages back.

Some of the authorities whom I have quoted to show the wide range of this belief in the tribal All-father have raised upon it a structure which has caused others to feel the doubts which Mr. E. M. Curr has expressed. It seems therefore advisable that I should give the reasons which appear to me to prove conclusively the aboriginal origin of the belief in the tribal All-father as I have given it.

It has been necessary for me, in recording and discussing these beliefs, to bear in mind the possibility of fraud or error on the part of my native informants. Especially is this the case as to those who have been much with the missionaries in Gippsland. The two mission-stations were, as far as I remember, established there about 1860, therefore subsequently to the Jeraeils at which my most trusted native informants were initiated. The strongest instance bearing upon the possibility of later external beliefs having been engrafted upon the primitive beliefs of the Kurnai is that of the man who at first identified Brewin with Jesus Christ, and afterwards with the Devil, I gave that as an instance of what one might assume to be the grasp of the Christian religion obtained by a converted Australian savage of fairly good intelligence, I knew this man, and I believe he said what he really thought. I was the more struck by it because