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[Page 147]
TRADITIONS
I.- THE CREATOR.
The greatest of the Australian traditions - that there is one Maker of all things in heaven and earth, who sustains and provides for us all--has been already spoken of. Baia-me (from "baia" for make or build) is the name, in Kamilaroi, of the Maker, who created and preserves all things. Generally invisible, he as sometimes (they believe) appeared in human form, he has bestowed on their race various gifts, and he will bring them before him for judgment, and reward the good with endless happiness.
The Rev. James Günther (of Mudgee), who was many years engaged on a mission to the Aborigines of the Wellington District in this Colony, where the Wiradhuri language is spoken, has recorded in his Grammar of that language this conclusion: -"There is no doubt in my mind that the name Baia-mai (so it is pronounced in Wiradhuri) refers to the Supreme Being; and the ideas held concerning Him by some of the more thoughtful Aborigines are a remnant of original traditions prevalent among the ancients about the Deity." Mr. Günther states that he has found in what the Aborigines said to him about Baia-mai "traces of three attributes of the God of the Bible, viz. :--eternity, omnipotence and goodness." He also says "the idea of a future state of existence is not quite extinct among the aborigines." Some of the more thoughtful expressed to him their belief that "good natives will go to Baia-mai when they die."
It may be thought strange that the Rev. L.E. Threlkeld, who laboured zealously for years among the Aborigines at Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle, and who has recorded many of their traditions concerning various spirits, has made no mention of any belief entertained by them concerning one Supreme Being. If the blacks of Lake Macquarie had held any such belief as that of the Kamilaroi people in Baia-me, surely Mr. Thelkeld would have heard and recorded it. But as the result of an extensive observation, I believe that the natives of some parts of the interior are superior to those on the coast. The Wiradhuri, Kamilaroi, Wolaroj, Pikumbul, and Kogai tribes may have retained a tradition of this kind, after it had been obscured and utterly lost among the tribes on the coast.