Native Tribes of Central Australia

by Baldwin Spencer, F. J. Gillen

Sir Baldwin Spencer (1860–1929) was a British/Australian biologist and anthropologist, best known for his work amongst the indigenous Aboriginal tribes of Australia. After graduating from Exeter College, Oxford in 1884, Spencer was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, before being appointed the Professor of Biology at the University of Melbourne. In 1896 Spencer joined his friend and co-author Francis James Gillen (1855–1912) to undertake fieldwork during the Aboriginal tribal gathering known as the Engwura. This pioneering volume, first published in 1899, is the result of this fieldwork. Spencer and Gillen were initiated as members of the Arunta tribe and became the first Europeans to witness many tribal customs and social structures. The kinship structures, marriage and burial ceremonies and religious beliefs of several tribes are described. This fascinating volume influenced contemporary ideas concerning palaeolithic society and the origins of art and religion.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

740 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1899

Reviews

[Niplav]

Content warning: description of gruesome (though consensual) mutilation; detached description of what is possibly sexual assault.

I read all of William Buckner's blog Traditions of Conflict (substack), and later saw him tweet that reading anthropologies is one of the best ways of learning what it means to be human, because it lets you see another facet of the whole edifice.

My father had had an interest in the aboriginals for quite a while, so I snatched this anthropology from him after checking that it wasn't a waste of time. I was also curious to learn specifically about cultures separated from Afro-Eurasia, and aboriginals have been mostly separated from Afro-Eurasia for >~50k years (except for some mild cultural, genetic and fauna inflow 4k years ago), so it's a different experiment in culture-formation.

Sure, I liked this book, though it was focussed a bit too much on ritual proceedings (sometimes resulting in a slog) and not enough on the statistics of everyday life, which would have interested me more. A few questions whose answers would've interested me:

How often do aboriginals eat? How much? How varied? How long are periods of starvation or thirst, how much food is there in time of plenty? (Food sharing is described, a little bit.) How much and when do they sleep? How often do they get sick, from which illnesses, how often do they recover, to which degree? How much interchange between different groups? How different are neighboring groups? How much childcare is happening, by whom? How much intercourse do they have? How much time is spent on toolmaking vs. hunting vs. foraging, hunting in groups vs. alone, stag vs. hare dynamics? How often is there violence, to which degree? How much status differentials, change in status over time? People living outside a tribe? How often change of locations, how far are distances travelled per day? How quickly do children acquire language, in which stages? How much time is spent on rituals, hunting, foraging, cooking, other activities?

⁂

THINGS THAT STOOD OUT ABOUT THE ABORIGINALS

• Aboriginals experienced nocebo effects strong enough to result in death, even from mild injuries, if the weapon causing the injury was believed to be enchanted.¹

• Each aboriginal man had the right to at least one wife.²

• Aboriginals were very good at tracking, for example easily able to distinguish individuals from their tracks.³

• The central Australian aboriginals plausibly had a form of specialization/division of labour independent of differences in supply of resources.⁴

• Aboriginals had a lot of rituals resulting in injuries, sometimes gruesome ones; the cost of not engaging in these rituals was ridicule, which is highly aversive.⁵
　◦ The most shocking one was penile subincision (extra content warning, very unpleasant images of mutilated penises).
　　▪ Basically, penile subincision is a cutting-open of the urethra along the length of the penis starting from the tip, differing in how far it is cut.⁶
　　▪ Very surprisingly to me, many men willingly undergo the subincision a second (and even third!) time.⁷
　◦ In order to become capable of magic, aboriginals would make a hole in their tongue⁸ (without, apparently, any guidance on how to do that) and push small stones far under their fingernails.⁹
　◦ One minor ceremony involved the knocking out of one or more teeth, both in men¹⁰ and women.¹¹
　◦ Commentary: I find it interesting how gruesome and costly social signals can become. Penile subincision is quite fitness-reducing (ejaculate flows out along the subincision), but there are so many things Australian aboriginals do that reduce fitness by a large amount — bloodletting, knocking out of teeth, &c.

• Aboriginals didn't experience much sexual jealousy,¹² but had strong norms on who was allowed to marry whom (noncompliance with which was severely punished, often by death). They also don't connect sex to conception,¹³ which is instead explained by spirits entering women in totem localities.¹⁴

• A person was mostly not allowed to eat from their totem animal.¹⁵
　◦ Commentary: This makes me wonder if food taboos are a way of implementing Ostromian common-pool resources, though it doesn't quite fit this case.

⁂

THINGS THAT STOOD OUT ABOUT THE AUTHORS

• The authors are slightly racist, but they are far more sexist than racist in tone (e.g. describing¹⁶ old aboriginal women in derogatory terms¹⁷).
　◦ They do not thank any aboriginals in the acknowledgements section despite having lived among aboriginals and having been introduced into the tribe, even though we know that aboriginals helped them immensely by acting as guides to Francis Gillen, like Erlikilyika later did. Yet, no mention of their name(s).
　◦ And yes, the book contains an appendix with a table of measurements of heads and faces (the authors inform us that they couldn't desecrate graves to find skulls to measure¹⁸ without having soured relations with the aboriginals).

• The authors frequently make passing æsthetic judgements on aboriginal tribal objects and the skills of aboriginals; my vague recollection is that positive judgments are slightly more common than negative ones.

• Commentary: Overall I find the authors to be fairly scientific by my modern WEIRD standards, but slightly disrespectful at times and rarely highly disrespectful. I enjoy that they attempt to directly report observations, and usually don't mix observations with inferences.
　◦ The racism of the authors is often marked by the absence rather than the presence of certain actions/statements (taking photos of churinga (sacred objects) which should never be seen by uninitiated outsiders, without even commenting on it; not acknowledging any individual aboriginals for their help), which I found curious. I believe this is because they didn't have the type of anti-racism to contrast themselves against, as many people explicitly racist today would have to; today you have to wear your racism on your sleeve to counter-signal.

⁂

NOTES (highlighting not in the original text)

¹ p. 537/538:

In addition to procuring death by giving an enemy a bone or stick it is a very common thing to charm a spear by singing over it. Any bone, stick, spear &c, which has thus been “sung” is supposed to be endowed with what the natives call Arungquiltha, that is magical poisonous properties, and any native who believes that he has been struck by, say, a charmed spear is almost sure to die whether the wound be slight or severe unless he be saved by the counter magic of a medicine man. […] He simply lies down, refuses food and pines away. Not long ago a man from Barrow Creek received a slight wound in the groin. Though there was apparently nothing serious the matter with him, still he persisted in saying that the spear had been charmed and that he must die, which accordingly he did in the course of a few days. […] Instances of occurrences such as these could be multiplied, and though of course it is impossible to prove that death would not have followed under any circumstances, […] it is not possible to explain death under such circumstances except as associated directly with the firm belief of the injured man that Arungquiltha has entered his body, and that therefore he must die.

² p. 554:

The use of these objects is a well recognised method of obtaining wives, as is shown by the fact that a man's right to a woman, secured by means of one or other of them, is supported by the men of his local group, provided always that the woman stands to the man in the relationship of Unawa or lawful wife.

³ p. 483:

Any even moderately experienced native will, without the slightest difficulty, tell from the faintest track—from an upturned stone, a down-bent piece of grass or a twig of shrub—not only that some one has passed by but also the direction in which he has travelled. […] once an experienced native—almost incredible though it may sound to those who have not had the opportunity of watching them—has seen the track of a man or woman he will distinguish it afterwards from that of any other individual of his acquaintance.

⁴ p. 586/587:

In regard to these Central natives it is a striking feature that men who live in particular districts are famous for making particular forms of implements and weapons, and that this is by no means wholly dependent upon the fact that suitable material for their construction is only to be found in the districts occupied by them. Thus the best pitchis, made of the bean tree, are the work of groups of natives who live out to the west of Alice Springs; the best shields […] are those made away to the north, the best spear-throwers are made in the south-west, the best boomerangs away to the east and north-east, and the best spears in the north part of the Arunta tribe, in the Alice Springs district. The western men, for example, though they have the bean tree and make pitchis out of it, get their shields by exchange from the north; the Alice Springs blacks in like manner exchange their spears for the boomerangs of the eastern natives, and so on. Even in the old traditions we find reference to the excellence of the pitchis made by the western natives […]. The tradition may at any rate be regarded as indicative that this distribution of work is of very old standing. It seems, generally speaking, to be independent of the existence in any particular locality of the material necessary for the manufacture of any particular article. […] Every Arunta man is sure to have one of these shields, and yet the majority of them have not been made in the tribe, nor, indeed, within a hundred miles of the district occupied by it, but by a tribe speaking a quite different language.

⁵ p. 451:

in fact any one, whatever his or her totem be, may undergo the rite at pleasure, but in the case of just the one totem it is obligatory, or practically so, though at the same time the non-observance of the custom would not prevent any man from being admitted to the secrets of the tribe, but it would subject him to what is most dreaded by the native, and that is the constant ridicule of the other men and women, with whom he is in daily contact.

⁶ p. 285:

The oldest Okilia man now said “Who will be Tapunga?” Two men volunteered […]. The former at once lay on his stomach on the ground and the latter on the top of him, and when this kind of living table was ready the Kumara Arakurta was led from the Nurtunja […] and then placed lying at full length on his back on top of the Tapunga. As soon as ever he was in position another man sat astride of his body, grasped the penis and put the urethra on the stretch. The operator who is called Pininga […] then approached and quickly, with a stone knife, laid open the urethra from below.

⁷ p. 287:

It very often happens that, as soon as the operation has been performed on an Arakurta, one or more of the younger men present, who have been operated on before, stand up and voluntarily undergo a second operation. In such cases the men do not consider that the incision has been carried far enough. Standing out on the clear space close by the Nurtunja, with legs wide apart and hands behind his back, the man shouts out “Mura Ariltha atnartinja yinga aritchika pitchi”;—“Mura mine come and cut my Ariltha down to the root.” Then one Mura man comes and pinions him from behind, while another comes up in front and seizing the penis first of all cuts out an oval shaped piece of skin which he throws away and then extends the slit to the root. Most men at some time or other undergo the second operation and some come forward a third time.

⁸ p. 523:

At break of day, one of the Iruntarinia comes to the mouth of the cave, and, finding the man asleep, throws at him an invisible lance which pierces the neck from behind, passes through the tongue, making therein a large hole, and then comes out through the mouth. The tongue remains throughout life perforated in the centre with a hole large enough to admit the little finger […]. How the hole is really made it is impossible to say, but as shown in the illustration it is always present in the genuine medicine man. In some way of course the novice must make it himself; but naturally no one will ever admit the fact

⁹ p. 528:

The next operation consisted in one of the Nung-gara taking a ‘pointing stick,’ and after having tied some hair string round the middle joint of the first finger of the man's right hand he forced the pointed end of the stick under the nail and for a considerable distance into the flesh, making thus a hole into which he pretended to press a crystal.

¹⁰ p. 485:

If the operation [of knocking out of teeth] be performed on a man he lies down on his back, resting his head on the lap of a sitting man who is his tribal Oknia (elder brother) […]. The latter pinions his arms and then another Okilia or Unkulla fills his mouth with fur-string for the purpose, partly, they say, of absorbing the blood and partly of deadening the pain, and partly also to prevent the tooth from being swallowed. The same man then takes a piece of wood, usually the sharp end of a spear, in which there is a hole made, and, pressing it firmly against the tooth, strikes it sharply with a stone. When the tooth is out, he holds it up for an instant so that it can be seen by all, and while uttering a peculiar, rolling, guttural sound throws it away as far as possible in the direction of the […] camp of the man's mother in the Alcheringa.

¹¹ p. 486:

When a woman or girl is to be operated on […] the operation is conducted as in the case of the men and boys […]. The girl now springs to her feet, and seizing a small pitchi which has been placed close at hand for the purpose, fills it with sand, and dancing over the cleared space agitates the pitchi as if she were winnowing seed. When it is emptied she resumes her seat amongst the women.

¹² p. 129:

amongst the Australian natives with whom we have come in contact, the feeling of sexual jealousy is not developed to anything like the extent to which it would appear to be in many other savage tribes. For a man to have unlawful intercourse with any woman arouses a feeling which is due not so much to jealousy as to the fact that the delinquent has infringed a tribal custom.

¹³ p. 265:

We have amongst the Arunta, Luritcha, and Ilpirra tribes, and probably also amongst others such as the Warramunga, the idea firmly held that the child is not the direct result of intercourse, as it may come without this, which merely, as it were, prepares the mother for the reception and birth also of an already-formed spirit child who inhabits one of the totem centres. Time after time we have questioned them on this point, and always received the reply that the child was not the direct result of intercourse.

¹⁴ p. 133:

The tradition of the natives is that when the spirit child goes inside a woman the Churinga is dropped. When the child is born the mother tells the father the position of the tree or rock near to which she supposes the child to have entered her, and he, together with one or two of the older men, […] goes to the locality […] and searches for the dropped Churinga.

¹⁵ p. 202:

A man will only eat very sparingly of his totem, and even if he does eat a little of it, which is allowable to him, he is careful, in the case, for example, of an emu man, not to eat the best part, such as the fat. The totem of any man is regarded […] as the same thing as himself: as a native once said to us […], ‘that one,’ pointing to his photograph which we had taken, ‘is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo’ (his totem).

¹⁶ p. 66:

there may be occasionally a well-marked development of hair on the lip or chin, which is especially noticeable in the old women, some of whom are probably fifty years of age and have reached a stage of ugliness which baffles description.

¹⁷ p. 72:

As is usual, however, in the case of savage tribes the drudgery of food-collecting and child-bearing tells upon them at an early age, and between twenty and twenty-five they begin to lose their graceful carriage […] until, at about the age of thirty, all traces of an earlier well-formed figure and graceful carriage are lost, and the woman develops into what can only be called an old and wrinkled hag.

¹⁸ p. 643:

We did not attempt to obtain any skulls, for the simple reason that while the desecration of native graves might have enabled us to secure a few, it would at once have put a stop to work in other branches which we have been as yet more anxious to study than to obtain anthropometric data.

[Emily Van Coolput]

I would have happily traded the detailed description of dozens upon dozens of ceremonies for a more structured analysis of the society as a whole, but for a book I picked up almost at random in a second-hand shop it provides a fascinating glimpse into what was still, at the turn of the 20th century, one of the last traditional communities uncontaminated by Western civilisation (and on a side note, I'd be really curious to know how my copy made its way to Mechelen, Belgium from the public library of Sydney).

[Mark]

This book is detailed description of various ceremonies performed by various totems of the tribes of central Australia. Most of the work focuses on the Aranda tribe and the work is greatly helped with photographs of the men in costume conducting their rites. There are elaborate headdresses and body decoration created with bird down, ochre, clay and human human blood. The everyday lives, food sources and social structure of the people is only hinted at in connection with ceremony. Still, the writers were able to collect a staggering amount of data and native artifacts for the reader to enjoy. The tribes of central Australia were more resilient to the changes brought on by colonial contact, due to inhospitality of the desert environment and their location in the center of the continent.

[Nick]

Lots of detail