248 



■t^ATURE 



[April 22, 1920 



The Native Tribes of Western Australia. 



A T a meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute 

 **• on April 13, Sir Everard im rhurn, president, 

 in the chair, Mr. G. O. Neville read a paper on "The 

 Aborigines of Western Australia : Their Treatment 

 and Care." In introducing the speaker, the president 

 laid stress upon the importance of papers dealing 

 with the practical side of native questions. It was 

 often said that the Government did not assist scientific 

 societies enough, but he was sometimes in doubt 

 whether scientific societies on their side gave sufficient 

 assistance to the Government. 



Mr. Neville said that the aborigines of .Western 

 Australia were most numerous in the north, diminish- 

 ing as they came nearer civilisation, until almost extinct 

 where the white man has lived since the early days of 

 occupation. By nature a nomadic race, they live by 

 hunting alone and cultivate nothing. They com- 

 municate with each other by means of a cipher, intel- 

 ligible only to themselves, cut upon message sticks, or 

 Bambarro, the bearer of which is granted a safe 

 passage through hostile tribes. Numbers of crude 

 figures, representations of beasts, birds, or reptiles, 

 are to be found drawn in coloured pigments upon flat 

 rocks or inside caves in the far north. The gradual 

 disappearance of the natives continues unceasingly, in 

 spite of constant effort. This is due to change of 

 food, their hunting-grounds being occupied by the 

 squatter, and the necessity for their having to clothe 

 themselves and live more or less under shelter. The 

 aborigines do not believe that any person dies a 

 natural death, but suppose the deceased to have been 

 hoidyaed (bewitched) by some member of another 

 tribe, and it becomes the duty of a near relative, 

 generally a brother of the dead person, selected by 

 the Bulyas or medicine-men, to avenge his death by 

 Ivilling the supposed murderer or another one of the 

 tribe to which the murderer is supposed to belong. 

 One of the most remarkable means of disposing of 

 the dead, known as the stone system, occurs in the 

 north; There the body of the dead person is elevated 

 to a platform of sticks built in a tree, a layer of large 

 stones being placed immediately beneath the body. 

 The stones represent individuals who might have 

 caused the death of the victim ; and if the fat from 

 the body, evaporating in the heat of the sun, falls 

 upon any stone, the individual represented by that 

 •stone is the one upon whom vengeance will sooner or 

 later fall at the hnnds of the near relatives of the 

 deceased person. If no fat falls, a near relative will, 

 after the removal of the body to an adjacent ant-heap, 

 wher6 only the bones are soon remaining, sleep upon 

 the pile, and it will be revealed to him in a dream 

 which is the selected stone. 



No native can be emoloyed except under a permit 

 Issued by a Protector. Generally speaking, the treat- 

 ment of Western Australian natives at the hands of 

 their emplovers leaves little to be desired. The 

 .Aborigines Act provides the necessarv machinerv for 

 bringing offenders to book. The Chief Protector being 

 constituted by law the legal guardian of everv 

 aboriginal and half-caste child until the age of sixteen, 

 it is possible to rerhove any child from undesirable 

 surroundings. Some eighty Protectors, under the 

 Chief Protector, are resident in various parts of the 

 State where there are natives. Seventy Government 

 relief stations prpvide assistance for indigent and 

 destitute natives. The Departrhent.owhs cattle settle- 

 ments in Kimberley, and two farming and industrial 

 settlements have been established recently in the south 

 for the reception of indigent and agred people, with 

 <^oeciar provision for the care and training-of orpHan 

 -children. The reserves upon which these settlerrterits 



NO. 2634, VOL. 105] 



are established are for the natives only, and whites, 

 other than the staff employed, are rigidly excluded bv 

 law. The provision of medical attendance has been the 

 special care of the State; all natives receive free 

 advice, medicine, and hospital treatment in case of 

 sickness. The nine mission stations in Western Aus- 

 tralia, nearly all subsidised by the State, have done 

 useful work, especially in the care and rescue of 

 children. Though the people are dwindling away, the 

 work of the Department must go on, in the hope that 

 the last days of a dying race can be made the' easier 

 and happier. 



In declaring the subject open for discussion, the 

 president said that the cause of the decrease in a native 

 population when it came into contact with civilisation 

 was its failure to adapt its psychological constitution 

 to changed circumstances. 



Dr. Cornev said that as a result of his experience 

 in dealing with immigrant labour— male only — in Fiji, 

 he had arrived at the conclusion that the tvpe of soil 

 had an important effect on certain groups ; for 

 instance, an alluvial soil was fatal to Gilbert Islanders 

 and Solomon Islanders, although the former throve 

 on sandy soil such as that of the islands on which 

 coconuts were grown, and the latter made excellent 

 sailors. It was also evident that all were peculiarly 

 susceptible to. the attacks of micro-organisms frorn 

 which the European population was to some extent 

 immune, as shown by the virulence of the epidemics 

 of measles and influenza. 



Mr. N. W. Thomas pointed out that Pater Schmidt 

 has shown that in the 'north mode of burial and lan- 

 guage coincide in distribution, and asked whether the 

 distribution of drawings also coincided with platform 

 burial and language. 



Prof. Arthur Keith said that if we were placed 

 in the Australian desert and asked to live the life of 

 the aborigines, he doubted whether we would survive. 

 Would we not rather die as they die in our environ- 

 ment? When they were brought into contact with 

 our civilisation we asked them to make a jump of 

 perhaps two thousand generations within a lifetime; 

 to change at once from the life of a prince to that of 

 civilisation, the life of a horse in a mill. The govern- 

 ing factor in deciding the fate of native populations 

 lay in the domain of psychologv. Here the man of 

 science came into touch" with the practical problem, 

 for he was trying to understand the 'back of the black 

 man's mind. 



Miss Freire-Marreco compared the measures adopted 

 in Western Australia with those vi^hich had been fol- 

 lowed in the United States of America, especiallv in 

 relation to the dying out of the native races. Until 

 about ten years ago the native races there had 

 diminisfied ranidly. Since then, however, the Indian 

 population had been on the up-grade, owing largelv to 

 the attention paid by the Central Government to' the 

 food-supply and the checking of tuberculosis and other 

 diseases by isolation and the inculcation of sanitarv 

 and hygienic rules. 



University and Educational Intelligence. 



Mr. F. a. Heron has given to Queen's Universitv, 

 Belfast, the sum of 5000?. to provide the necessarv 

 equipment for teaching physical chemistrv, and loooZ. 

 towards the provision of accommodation for the 

 department. 



In connection with the faculty of medicine of the 

 University of Birmirfgham, a course of ten weekly 

 lectures (free .. to medical men) on '' Principles o'f 

 Psychotherapy" is to be given bv Dr. •: W. 



