Identifier: nativesofaustral00thomuoft (find matches)
Title: Natives of Australia
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Thomas, Northcote Whitridge, 1868-
Subjects: Ethnology -- Australia Australia -- Social conditions Australia -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : A. Constable
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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t, which, however, are not important in Australia, there is nothing to prevent her from bringing her child back to the camp, as soon as she has washed it, perhaps with the aid of an old woman, in a neighbouring creek. Children are carried in various ways; in South Australia the large mat, in other parts the opossum rug on the back serves as a pouch in which to put the child. When it can hold on, it sits astride her shoulder or on her hip; as we have seen in the chapter on canoes, it may hold on by her hair. There are no patent foods for native children, and they are consequently weaned late, perhaps at the age of four or five, though before this they have begun to forage for themselves. Kissing is unknown to the aboriginal; the black mother places her lips on the child and blows. When the child begins to move about, it will go on all-fours, or on its hands and knees occasionally; but a characteristic mode of progression is for it to drag itself along in a sitting position with its hands and Plate 27
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00 &H o < hz CHILDREN 179 heels. When it begins to run, it turns its toes out very markedly. Up to the age of about seven, boys and girls play together and are not separated in any way. Then the boy begins to receive instruction in manly arts; he leaves the society of girls and sleeps in the bachelors' camp, and in some cases undergoes the first of a long series of initiation ceremonies then or soon after. The girls have already been learning women's work, but now their instruction begins in real earnest; hut-building, net-making, thread- and line-making, food-collecting, all female accomplishments are acquired, one by one. The treatment of children is universally kind, indeed the Australian parent is foolishly indulgent in the view of those who follow Solomon's maxim; for they never chastise their children; at most in Queensland the maternal grandmother applies the palm of her hand in a way not unknown in more civilised communities. In some parts children are named from some circumstance conn

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