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[Page 171]
INSTITUTIONS AND LAWS.
159
But this jealous maintenance of tribal property has sometimes yielded to the considerations of a wider policy. For instance, the tribe which occupies the bunya-bunya district in Queensland have a law by which they admit other tribes to enter their territory in peace, at the time when the fruit ripens – once in three or four years. Whether the neighbouring tribes originally acquired this right by war, or whether it was conceded of good will, does not appear; but certainly the law exists. When, however, the other tribes enter the district they are not allowed to take anything but the bunya-bunya fruit. The opossums and other common sources of food supply they must not touch. Their visit lasts six weeks or more. And so strong is the hold which this traditional rule has upon their minds, that when urged by an intense craving for animal food, rather than transgress the law by killing an opossum, they have been known (it is said) to kill one of their own boys or girls, and devour the flesh.
VII. – LEX TALIONIS
The Australian Aborigines carry out the principle of retaliation, not only as a dictate of passion, but as an ancient and fixed law. The relatives of a slain man are bound to avenge his death by killing some one of the tribe to which the slayer belongs. In some parts of the country a belief prevails that death, through disease, is, in many, if not in all cases, the result of an enemy's malice. It is a common saying, when illness or death comes, that some one has thrown his belt (boor) at the victim. There are various modes of fixing upon the murderer. One is to let an insect fly from the body of the deceased and see towards whom it goes. The person thus singled out is doomed.
VIII – BURIAL AND MOUNRING FOR THE DEAD
In all parts of the country the Aborigines show a great regard for their dead. They differ much in the mode of so doing. Some bury the dead in the earth, and raise a circular mound over the grave. And of those who do this, some dig the grave so deep as to place the deceased in a standing position; others place them sitting, and with the head higher than the surface of the ground but covered with a heap. They carefully preserve the graves, guarding them with boughs against wild animals. There are sometimes as many as a hundred graves in one of their cemeteries; and they present a sight that cannot fail to convince a stranger that the resting-places of the departed are sacred in the eyes of their friends and descendants. Sir Thomas Mitchell has given a sketch of the graves of two chiefs, on the top of a hill. It seems as if they had been buried with a hope of resurrection, that on rising from the dead they might at once survey the territory over which they had ruled.