AUSTRALIAN MORALITY 153 



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. 7 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. 8 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. Eecent investigators unite in 

 testifying that the black-fellow, especially before contact with Euro- 

 peans, was most scrupulous in his obedience to the sacred duties im- 

 posed upon him by tribal usage. Of the Queensland natives Eoth 

 says (pp. 139ff.) : 



7 See also Bicknell, p. 104, who holds it was quite common. 



8 Angas, p. 225; Fraser, p. 56, as a sign of regard or in ceremonial. 



vol. lxxvi. 12. 



