Aboriginal Australian Burials, 1906
The burial customs of the aborigines are extremely varied, more than one method of disposing of the body being in use in a single tribe in some cases.
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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.
The burial customs of the aborigines are extremely varied, more than one method of disposing of the body being in use in a single tribe in some cases.
In West Australia the grave was made in a north and south direction, and the face of the corpse was turned towards the east; the legs were doubled under the body so that the heels touched the thighs; the hair was cut off and a nail from the little finger of the right hand; the finger and thumb were tied together. White earth was smeared on the forehead; a fire was lit upon the grave, the ashes and smoke of which were feared by all. The spear and wommera, or spear-thrower, of the dead man were broken and a screen of boughs erected round the sepulchral mound; in front of it was a fire; on the surrounding trees were cut rings and notches.
Among the Arunta the body is buried very soon after death; it is placed in a sitting position, the face looking towards the place from which the spirit of the deceased was believed to have come in the first instance. According to another account, the Arunta of the Finke River bury their dead in a grave at the bottom of which there is a little recess for the body on one side; the object of this is to prevent the corpse from being incommoded by the pressure of the earth. Wood and stones are removed from the neighbourhood of the grave, perhaps with the idea of preventing the spirit of the dead man from finding its way back to the camp; on the grave itself are thrown brushwood and bones, and water is sprinkled on it for the spirit of the dead man.
Further to the north burial in the earth is preceded by a longer or shorter sojourn in a tree, save in the case of the old women; the tribes say frankly that it is not worth while to trouble about them; we may therefore perhaps infer that the placing of the body in a tree is in some way a protection of the living, or to their advantage. When a young woman or a man or even a child dies, on the other hand, the body is placed in a tree on a platform of boughs; on the actual spot on which a man dies is placed a small mound and the camp removed from the neighbourhood. A day or two after death this mound is carefully examined to see if any animal or creeping thing has left its traces there; if any traces are found they infer from them the direction in which the murderer of the dead man lives.
For it must be understood that death is not a natural phenomenon to the Australian native; even if a man has violated the tribal law, or suffered from disease, it is often believed that his death is due to the malefice some hostile wizard. Accordingly they set themselves to find out where this wizard lives, as a preliminary to taking vengeance on him, or on one of his kinsmen, for in Australia it is immaterial whether the penalty for evil-doing falls on the malefactor himself or his innocent relatives.
After this search is over a visit is paid to the tree grave; here, too, there may be some signs of the murderer; perhaps his spirit is lurking around. Accordingly, with the idea of stalking the ghost of a living man, every precaution is taken; no opportunity of seeking cover on the way is neglected, and the surroundings of the tree are carefully scrutinised. Some days later the neighbourhood of the tree is again searched; and if a small beetle is found, it is seized. Then they say, ‘Our eyes are made bright—now we know,’ and promptly kill the unoffending beetle, in the belief that they are thereby killing the murderer.
If no beetle is found, the matter is by no means at an end; some of the dead man’s tribal or blood relatives go to the place and dislocate the bones of the dead man; then one of them binds some fur-string loosely round his legs and arms, and shutting his eyes, tumbles down from the tree. When he reaches the ground, he keeps his eyes shut and tells the others to run off as hard as they can; then tearing off the fur-string, he follows them; and they all sit down in the camp and fast for two days. In some way the water of which they deprive themselves is believed to injure the murderer; and the proof that it has done so is that they hear a voice in the distance, calling ‘ What is the matter with me?’ But for this they sometimes have to wait some time.
The spirit of the dead person is believed to hover about the tree; sometimes it visits the camp and is recognised by its strange, whistling voice. At intervals it is asked if the time has come for the body to be finally buried; when the proper opportunity has arrived, a few men go to the tree, cut a bark basket, and one of them rakes the bones out on to it; the skull is smashed into fragments. An anthill is then selected and the top of it taken off; into this the bones are put, with the exception of the thigh bone, which is wrapped round with fur string and made into a torpedo-shaped parcel.
On the next day the burumburu, as it is called, is brought to the camp and received by some of the women, who wail at intervals. After some further ceremonies the bone is broken into fragments with a blow of an axe, and put into a pit, which is then covered with a stone. After this the spirit part of the dead person, which is said to be about the size of a grain of sand, goes to the place of spirits and remains there till it is time for it to be reincarnated. A curious feature of the belief in reincarnation is that the spirit becomes a male and a female alternately; perhaps this accounts for the even-handed justice that is meted out to men and women in the matter of burial rites.
Further to the north-east, on the Gulf of Carpentaria, the tribes eat the flesh of the dead man, and then, after some elaborate ceremonies, bury the bones. In the Binbinga tribe a fire is made in a hole in the ground, the head is cut off, the liver taken out, and the limbs dismembered. No woman may take part in the cannibal feast. The bones are taken to the camp of the dead man’s father, and he puts them in a parcel: a stout stick is placed upright in the ground, and in the fork of this the parcel is placed; a fire is lighted in a clear space round it, and in the smoke of this fire is supposed to be seen the spirit of the dead man. Only his father and mother may approach the fire. After a time the bones are placed in a log, and this in the boughs of a tree overhanging a water-hole, to be finally disposed of by a great flood or some similar catastrophe.
South of the Arunta are the Dieri. After a death they wail for hours at a time and smear their bodies with pipeclay. Tears course down the cheeks of the women, but when they are addressed the mourning stops as if by magic. As soon as the breath leaves the body of the sick man, the women and children leave the camp, the men pull down his hut so as to get at the body, and it is prepared for burial by being tied up. The great toes are fastened together, and the thumbs are secured behind the back; this they say is to prevent ‘walking.’ Eight men take the corpse on their heads, and the grave is filled, not with earth, but with wood, in order to keep the dingo at bay. The space round the grave is carefully swept, and the camp is moved from its original situation, so as to evade the attentions of the spirit if it should happen to get back to its old haunts. Mr. Gason, not a very reliable authority, says that the fat of the corpse is eaten; the mother eats of her children, the children of their mother, brothers-in-Iaw eat of sisters- in-law and vice versa; but the father does not eat of his offspring, nor they of him.
Further south among the Adelaide tribe the body was placed on a bier and the spot on which it had rested was dug with the women’s sticks; the little heap of earth was supposed to contain the wingka or breath, which they set free by loosening the soil. The bier was made of ten or twelve branches arranged like the hub of a wheel, and the bearers revolved rapidly round a man who supported the hub of the wheel on his head; when they came near a large tree they rested the bier against it, probably in order to allow the spirit of the dead man to pass into the tree; for in this tribe it was believed that the dead took up their abode in trees. It is interesting to note that among the Arunta Ilpirra of Finke River the souls of new-born infants are held to come from trees, which are probably those into which the spirit of a dead man has passed.
In the south of Victoria the dead are tied up for burial, but not in the same manner as among the Dieri. As soon as life is gone, the attendant, who has made his preparations before the eyes of the dying man, passes a cord of grass or fibre round the deceased’s neck; the knees are then brought up to the breast, the elbows are made fast near the hips, and the hands raised and pressed against the chest; all the time the friends of the dead man carefully avoid contact with the corpse. The grass round the body is then burned and an axe put in the circle thus cleared; with this the mourners aim blows at themselves in succession, but one is always at hand to see that they do themselves no serious injury.
After performing divinatory ceremonies of the kind previously described, the friends of the dead man proceed to dig the grave. At the bottom of it is put a piece of bark which is strewn with soft leaves and twigs; more leaves are strewn on the top of the body, and another piece of bark is put on the top of them. Finally, a mound of earth is raised, the ground round it cleared, a fence erected, and a fire made at the eastern end. The spot is then deserted.
In the north of Victoria a thatched hut is erected on the grave, and on the Bogan River, New South Wales, they make regular cemeteries; in some parts it is the custom for the widow to put on her head a quantity of gypsum or kopi, which forms a regular skullcap; this is put upon the grave when the period of mourning is at an end.
The Encounter Bay tribe of South Australia subjected the corpse to a preliminary roasting; the knees were drawn up and the hands placed between the thighs. Under the combined heat of two fires and the sun, the skin soon peeled off, leaving the body white; this probably explains why the natives regarded Europeans as natives who had died and come back again. They inquired pertinently enough how the white man found his way to Australia, if he had not previously lived there as a black. The next process is to put the corpse over a fire and dry it, so that it can be carried about. After having been transported from place to place by the relatives for several months, it is placed on a platform of sticks and left till completely decayed; finally, the skull is taken off and used as a drinking-vessel; after this the name of the deceased, which might not be mentioned, again comes into common use.
In the Ovens River district of Victoria the bodies of married people were burned, whether as a mark of attention or not is not clear. The body of a man who was killed by accident received special attention, probably because, like so many other people, the natives thought that his soul was likely to prove troublesome; his bones were placed in a hollow tree. The bodies of children were disposed of in the same manner, the hollow being cleared of rotten wood and lined with bark; the body was encased in a sort of bark coffin and a lid of bark placed over the hole in the branch.
In New South Wales the custom was to burn the bodies of the old and bury the young. On the Clarence River, so Angas tells us, a circle of stones was raised on the grave with an upright stone in the middle, and in other parts of New South Wales curious-looking stones, marked with scratches and of the shape of a banana, were put upon the graves, just above the head of the corpse; one sort is said to have been used for men, another for women.
East of the Fitzroy River the corpse of a woman was put in an open trench and left exposed; after a time the bones were collected by the relatives and placed in a hollow tree, thus reversing the rule of the Central Australians. An old warrior receives more attention; his body is put on a platform made of bark which rests on forked sticks. He is laid on his back with his knees up, just like the woman. For a long time the place is carefully avoided; when he is quite shrivelled, the bones are taken away and put in a tree which is painted red or red and white. A common man is disposed of in the same way as a woman, and a child is put bodily into a tree.
South of the Gulf of Carpentaria the body is enclosed in a net and placed so that the head points to the north. The deceased’s property is usually destroyed by fire; more rarely it is distributed among his tribal brethren; the children never get any of it. Here, too, the head is covered with kopi. When someone has committed a serious crime, he is often killed by the tribe acting collectively. In this case he is often compelled to dig his own grave.
In one part of Queensland a very curious custom is reported to exist, which seems to argue a very considerable amount of anatomical knowledge on the part of those who practise it, if, as seems to be the case, the object was to prevent the deceased from ‘walking.’ According to a report of the Queensland Museum, the knee-cap of the dead man was removed before the corpse was deposited in the grave. From another district is reported the custom of burying the dead head downwards; this, too, may have been intended to make it difficult for them to return to their former abode.
In the Moreton Bay district the custom of removing the skin was found, and the reason given was that the virtues of the dead man descended to the possessor of the skin; in other cases the skins were used as charms to improve the catch in fishing.
Thomas, Northcote W. Natives of Australia. Archibald Constable and Company, 1906.
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