1906-7.] Notes on Aboriginals of South Australia. 
63 
“Singing Dead.” 
The custom of pointing the death-bone is well known. The thing 
pointed is not always a bone : in some places a piece of wood is used. In 
parts of the Territory, if the victim does not die within a reasonable time, 
his tribe fellows gather together, sit round him, and “sing him dead.” 
This peculiar custom seems to be little known. 
What strikes one forcibly when moving among these blacks is their 
restlessness. They shift camp on the least provocation, or for no cause that 
one can discern. When you ask where a certain blackfellow is, you are 
told, “ Him wuk alonga Mr So-and-so’s.” You don’t know whether the 
word is “ walk ” or “ work,” but it amounts to pretty much the same thing. 
The blacks will work for a day, a week, a month, so steadily that you think 
they have become domesticated, or at least domiciled ; then one day they 
are missing, and nothing will induce them to return, unless they are allowed 
to take a “ spell ” of rest or wandering when the symptoms of restlessness 
begin to manifest themselves. This restlessness is characteristic of all 
Australian blacks, and stands out in strong contrast to most South Sea 
Islanders, who are examples of extreme stayers at home. This is probably 
the one universal character among Australian aboriginals. As regards 
local characters and customs, the student cannot be too careful. Anthro- 
pology has suffered much from assuming that what is true of one tribe is 
true of another, especially if it has lived in close proximity. It is a safe 
rule in dealing with aboriginals never to reason from analogy, but to write 
down every fact, with the informant’s name and the exact locality or tribe 
to which it refers, and then to verify and reverify it. One will generally 
be right in affirming and wrong in denying. 
The blackfellow is difficult to understand. You think you know him, 
but you don’t. You believe you have got the better of a blackfellow when 
you have forced him to work and hear him going about it, singing in his 
native tongue. But the song is composed of all the curse- words he knows, 
and a history, accurate or hypothetical, but in any case not creditable, of 
you and your ancestors. The more we know of the blackfellow the more 
we are convinced that there are whole subterranean rivers of anthropology 
unmapped and untapped. 
( Issued separately April 29, 1907.) 
