Aboriginal Australian Arts and Craftsmanship
From Natives of Australia by Northcote W. Thomas, 1906.
Location: Australia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Natives of Australia by Northcote W. Thomas, 1906.
For decorative purposes white, red, yellow, and black pigments were in use. The first named was made from kaolin, carbonate of lime, or sulphate of lime. Some half-dozen oxides of iron, commonly called ochre, were the usual red pigments, but sulphide of mercury is reported to have been used at Brisbane. For yellow, ochre was again the common material, but a kind of toadstool is said to have supplied colouring matter to the Brisbane blacks, and the yellow strips of a kind of bark are also used for decorative effects. For black, charcoal is everywhere used; exceptionally oxide of manganese serves the same purpose.
Barks and roots were or are in use for producing colouring matter with which to stain manufactured articles, especially bags. The pigments might be moistened in the mouth; or human blood, iguana fat or gum cement might serve as media for fixing them.
Blue decoration is occasionally seen on weapons, but it seems to be a white man’s colour; it was, however, in use as a mourning colour. One of the early voyagers mentions the use of green, but we have no information as to the source of this pigment.
It has sometimes been maintained by Dr. Semon that the Australian blacks have no words save for white and black; but this is clearly erroneous. Colour-blindness is probably rare, but, like many other peoples, the natives have no names for many colours, such as green, apart from green objects. Brown, blue, black and green all receive the same name in one or two tribes which have been tested; but they can certainly distinguish between these colours.
The Australian makes use of cord or string in the decoration of his body, for nets of all kinds, the use of which will be described in Chapter VI., for fishing-lines, for the making of weapons, for the highly important industries of bag- and basket-making, in the manufacture of sewn bark canoes; in fact, string is more indispensable to him in daily life than it is to ourselves.
The material may be animal or vegetable; the animal products employed for this purpose include human, opossum, and kangaroo hair, kangaroo and emu tendons, and sometimes tendons from the neck of a snake.
In the manufacture of hair-twine a spindle is employed; this is a piece of wood about eight inches long, to which is attached a short hook, either naturally or by means of a piece of string. The hair is cut off short; it undergoes no preliminary preparation, but it must be dry. The operator is usually a woman, and squats in the usual position; the hair is taken in the palm of the left hand, having been previously teased out, and the spindle is held in the right; with the thumb and forefinger of the left hand a small portion of hair is drawn out of the left hand, but not separated from the mass, and this is entwined with the free end of the spindle string, if there is one; then the spindle is placed on the outside of the right thigh near the knee and rolled backwards with the hand, the left thumb at the same time rolling the hair in the opposite direction.
The hair strand is kept as taut as possible and fed from the bundle in the palm of the left hand. As the strand grows longer, it is wound round the hook of the spindle; the first strand finished, a second spindle is taken and another strand made in the same way as before. These two strands are then intertwined to form the hair twine. This is done by knotting the two together and looping these two ends thus united once or twice round a stick; the string from one spindle is wound round the left wrist, and as the spinner moves backwards from the stick, she unwinds the strands both from the spindle and from the wrist. Then the other ends are tied together and made fast by the spindle string to the spindle; this done, she rolls the strands together with spindle and hand, exactly as she originally formed the single strand.
The vegetable products in use are the stems, leaves, or bark of plants, or the complete plants. Some forty plants or trees are used in one of these ways, (lawyer cane or vine)being specially important in the first class, Pandanus in the second, Melaleuca, Sterculia, and Livistona in the third. Bulrush fibre was very important in South Australia and Victoria.
The preparation of the twine involved two processes, first the preparation of the fibre, and second the manufacture of the string.
The fibre is prepared by chewing it or soaking it in water; the subsequent spinning into twine is accomplished more simply than is the case with hair twine; the strand is manufactured by simply rolling the fibre on the thigh; then it is doubled in two, and rolled backwards and forwards, with the result that the two halves are rolled in different directions. Then the portion nearest the free end is unravelled and rolled so as to give it the same twist as the portion already finished; all fibre twine is two-ply in Queensland, where this process has been observed by Dr. Roth.
The methods of joining the ends of pieces of twine or tendon are various; splicing may be resorted to, the process being exactly the same as that used in inserting new strands in fibre twine. The end may be made fast by bringing it underneath, just as in binding a cricket bat, where it is not necessary to continue the work. Granny, slip, and other knots are made. Pandanus leaf is joined up in a very ingenious manner, the leaves being split and the tags passed through and tied up. Finally, gum of some sort may be used to join two ends or to strengthen other kinds of joins.
According to Dr. Roth, the processes by which twine is worked up into other articles include plait-work, chain-work, overknotting, fringing, winding, lacing, top-stitching.
Plait-work is used for necklaces, basket handles, and armlets; but in some parts the boys only make it, so that it must be regarded in the light of ‘play-work.’ Chain-work is used in Queensland for making mourners’ armlets. By overknotting, Dr. Roth means a method of mending bark or other vessels, when they have begun to split. Pairs of holes are pierced on either side of this portion to be repaired, and string passed through them and knotted on the outside, the free end of the string being in each case held by the succeeding knot, so as to prevent it from getting loose. The process of making fringes has already been described in connection with clothing; winding and lacing are processes sufficiently explained by the names.
In Australia, baskets, bags, and nets are indistinguishable, when we regard only the process of manufacture, and they may be treated together here. As a rule, the cord is continuous, being joined in one of the ways mentioned above; but it may also be finished off with a knot for decorative purposes and a fresh beginning made. As a preliminary step, a cord may be stretched between two posts, or they may employ a stirrup, as we do in Europe; Dr Roth distinguishes these as straight or circular basal strands or cords.
In addition to the variations caused by the basal cord, we may have continuous or non-continuous cords in the body of the work, or two continuous cords, or one of each. The pattern may be simple loop, loop and twist, double loop or netting stitch; with two continuous cords a chain twist is sometimes found.
Many different types of baskets are found in Australia; the Yarra tribe had one in shape just like the rush basket in which fish or game are sometimes carried; another type was rather wallet-shaped, with a fairly long handle; a third Yarra bag was four inches deep by twelve long, and could be stretched with ease. All over the southern parts of Australia a flat basket was in use, made of a round body with the opening on one side, on the top of which came a circular neck with a handle. Large round baskets were used in Gippsland, with or without handles, in shape like a cheese.
On the Burdekin River the basket was sometimes deep and comparatively narrow, with a long strap-handle. At Rockingham Bay one was in use which closely resembles in appearance a decanter with a handle over the mouth. In the interior of Queensland a cigar-shaped pouch, with a small mouth on one side, is used for carrying pituri. According to Lumholtz, a large basket is used in North Queensland for carrying children in; it has one small handle on one side of the opening. According to Lumholtz, they are sometimes carried with a browband, so that the hands are free for other purposes. A small basket is also carried round the neck on the Herbert River; only the men plait baskets, which are extremely decorative, many of them being ornamented with human blood or pigments.
In South Australia the Narrinyeri tribe made flat open baskets, the last two being provided with lids. They also made large circular mats worn on the back; these were of grass, and the pattern was not inartistic.
Grey has given a list of the contents of a West Australian woman’s bag; besides the articles enumerated, the woman would possibly carry a child in the bag or on her shoulders.
The collection was as follows: a flat stone to pound roots with; earth to mix with the pounded roots; quartz to make spears and knives; stones for hatchets; prepared cakes of gum for making and mending weapons; kangaroo sinews for sewing and for binding spears; needles of kangaroo shin-bones; opossum hair for belts; shavings of kangaroo skins for polishing spears; mussel shell for hair cutting; knives; axe; pipeclay; red ochre; yellow ochre; paper bark to carry water in; waist-bands and spare ornaments; pieces of quartz said to have been extracted by doctors from their patients, which they preserve like relics; Banksia cones or pieces of fungus for use as tinder or to carry fire from place to place; grease, when they can procure it from a whale; finally, roots which they have collected during the day.
In addition they have spare weapons which the husband does not wish to carry, skin in course of preparation for cloaks and other articles.
Thomas, Northcote W. Natives of Australia. Archibald Constable and Company, 1906.
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