Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/157

Rh carried about on stretchers. In the Dalebura tribe a woman, a cripple from birth, was carried about by the tribes-people in turn until her death at the age of sixty-six. On one occasion they rushed into a stream to save from drowning an old woman whose death would have been a relief even to herself. Eraser emphasizes the respect in which old age was held by the aborigines of New South Wales, and the fact that they never desert the sick (see also Smith).

Cannibalism among the Australian blacks was by no means a promiscuous and regular practise as was at first supposed. It is true, Lumholtz says of those observed by him, that human flesh was regarded as a great delicacy. Palmer, writing of Queensland also, says that cannibalism was practised to a certain extent; in some sections those killed in fights being eaten, and often children who had died. An early writer reports that in South Australia bodies of friends were eaten on their death as a token of regard. Spencer and Gillen found difficulty in gathering evidence of its being practised among the central tribes. They were often told by one tribe that it was customary among others who lived farther on, they in turn saying the same thing of those beyond themselves. They think, in general, that human flesh was eaten as a matter of ceremony or at least for other than mere food reasons. They found much more evidence of it among the northern tribes. Howitt says the Dieri tribe practised cannibalism as a part of their burial ceremonies, that it was a sign of sorrow for the dead. Among others only enemies slain on their raids were eaten; the Kurnai, for instance, would not eat one of their own tribe. Among still other tribes, if a man were killed at initiation ceremonies he was eaten, as also any one killed in one of the ceremonial fights, and others again did not eat their » enemies. Howitt is positive that there is no such thing among any thus far observed as propitiatory human sacrifice, and he denies emphatically the statement made current by some that sometimes a fat gin (woman) was killed to appease their craving for flesh when they chanced to have been long upon a vegetable diet. He also says that at the tribal meetings of the Bunya, men, women and children, killed in fights or by accident, were eaten, but that there is no evidence that women and children were killed for cannibalistic purposes.

The morality of the Australian native was, in a word, the morality of tribal custom, and, if fidelity to duties so imposed may be taken as a criterion, it was of no low order. Recent investigators unite in testifying that the black-fellow, especially before contact with Europeans, was most scrupulous in his obedience to the sacred duties imposed upon him by tribal usage. Of the Queensland natives Roth says (pp. 139ff.):