FUNERAL OF A BLACK TRACKER.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1936, 18 March 1875, Page 4

FUNERAL OF A BLACK TRACKER.

Towney, four years -attached to the Bourke police, as tracker, died on Wednesday from injuries i*eceived by a kick from a horse, and was buried on the following day with all the ceremonies of his tribe. Soon after death the body was covered with gum leaves, and rolled in an opossum rug and a blanket. His gin lay with her head resting on the corpse, and one of the oldest men lay in a similar manner.' All were' silent, and remained so for 24 hours. When preparations were made for the funeral, two widowed gins, with hair' cut short and heads covered or plastered with pipeclay, took prominent parts in the arrangements. The oldest men carried the! body to the grave (some half-a-mile from the camp) on a pole, one end resting on each shoulder and passed through the cords/ which secured the blanket and opossum rug on the corpse. A grave was dug in the shape of a well, about 4ffc. 6in. deep. When the grave was ready, the bier was raised by two old warriors, and at this moment a pitiful cry was raised by all the blacks. After silence was proclaimed, an old warrior named Kangaroo, with a small branch of gum tree in his hand, commenced addressing the corpse, with his head close to the body. He continued doing this incessantly for 20 minutes, and was answered by an old man in a stooping posture on the opposite side of the bier. Two men in the grave laid an opossomrug round it to receive the remains, which were lowered down amidst the cries of every black present. Gum leaves were then thrown over the body. And now comes the revolting part. Two men adjusting the body in the grave, stand up. One takes a boomerang, the other stoops and receives a blow which draws blood freely. The boomerang is handed to the other; he then strikes, and both bleed copiously over the corpse. They are then removed, and three men" go into the grave and strike each other till they bleed, bowing down their heads the while. One throws/ himself down, and is with difficulty femovedv Three others repeat the sameihirig. These men all bleedfreely, and in submission, till the gray© was almost covered with blood. Thebleeding men now retired in sadness under trees ; the gins applied gum leaves until the blood was stopped, meanwhile keeping up an unceasing cry. They submit, it seems, to their heads being cut, in order to strengthen the deceased in the grave, and assist him to rise in another country, not, as is generally supposed, a white man, but a black. They carefully covered in the grave, but built a sort of gunyah over it, with a bush fence round it. They • swept round all the old graves, and returned to camp, leaving the wife of deceased and the widowed gins at the grave.—Central Australasian.