340 "widow's cap" of the Australian aborigines, 



of the Rankbirit Tribe, at that place, that the "relatives make a 

 pipeclay paste and place it on the head, and wear it till quite 

 hard, when it is placed on the grave." Buhner supplements these 

 statements by saying* that in some of the Murray Tribes " the 

 woman proceeded to the grave, and after lying at full length on 

 it for some time, she would deposit the cap, after which another 

 one had to be made." The same observer, according to E M. 

 Curr,t also adds the following interesting fact that in the Maro- 

 wera Tribe, at the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers, 

 " after removal the cap was baked in the fire " before being laid 

 on the grave. 



From wdiat I have been able to learn, this custom appears to 

 have been common to the Aborigines inhabiting the Murray 

 River Valley from near the mouth of the river to its junction 

 with the Darling, thence up the latter certainly as far as Fort 

 Bourke and possibly beyond. Returning to the junction, it is 

 traceable along the Murray in N.S. Wales and Victoria, but how 

 far it extended in that direction, there is not sufficient evidence to 

 show. 



In the preceding pages I ha\'e confined myself to a considera- 

 tion of the "Widow's Cap" proper, but it was and is customary 

 amongst tribes outside wdiat may be termed the cap-bearing area 

 to merely smear the head, or dress the hair, as well as other parts of 

 the body with white pigment as a sign of mourning. The material 

 so used in the Boulia District of West-Central Queensland by 

 the Pitta-Pitta Tribe is called Pa-ta, or Kopi, and the mourner is 

 called Pa-ta-7)ia7-o, or " plaster-possessor. "| In the Moorloo- 

 bulloo Tribe, at the junction of King's Creek and the Georgina 

 River, S.W. Queensland, it is again termed Kojyi.^ 



The form this smearing or coating took was also varied. In 

 the Boulia, Cloncurry, and Leichhardt-Selwyn Districts, amongst 



* Journ. R. Geogr. Soc. Austr. (Vict. Br.), 1888, v. Pt. 1, p. 23. 

 + Australian Race, 1886, ii. p. 238. 

 + Roth, Ethnological Studies, 1897, p. 164. 

 § J. 0. Macarthur and J. S. Little in Curr, Australian Race, 1886, ii. 

 p. 366. 



