Identifier: handbooktoethnog00brit (find matches)
Title: Handbook to the ethnographical collections
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: British Museum. Dept. of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography Joyce, Thomas Athol, 1878-1942 Dalton, O. M. (Ormonde Maddock), 1866-1945
Subjects:
Publisher: (London) : Printed by order of the Trustees
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Fig. 98. —Chnringa, ceremonial objects of stone (in tlie centre) or wood,covered with totemic carvings or e.igle-down (specimen at bottom). Aruntatrilje. Central Australia. seems that the notches and marks made by one native cannot be readby another unaided ; such sticks, accompanied ))y verbal messages,pass from tribe to tribe, and act as credentials to the messengeras well as help to fix the message in his memory. Music is of themost primitive description ; tlie time is beaten with sticks or boome-rangs or with the hands on opossum skins rolled up or stretchedbetween the knees. Songs and dances are very varied, and passfrom one tribe to another over the whole continent; the per-formers are decorated with paint and birds-down, and variousornaments. Many dances are ceremonial and connected withinitiation ceremonies or ceremonies designed to further the I 2 ^-
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^.^..^^ AUSTRALIA 117 increase in number of the totem animal. Games of all sortsare very numerous ; cats-cradle is known, and the childrenplay with tops, balls, toy weapons, and the like : a peculiar toyis the tveet-iveet or kangaroo-rat, which the practised player canthrow to enormous distances (fig. 91 Ji). Wi-estling and practisingwith weapons are universal, and make believe games almostinnumerable. The Australians give various accounts of the souls fate afterdeath ; it travels west, lives in the sky, in trees, under the sea; itmaybe reincarnated in another man, black or white. Some tribesbelieve that the work of creation was performed by certain mythi-cal ancestors (Dieri, N. Arunta), and etiological myths generallyare very common. Gods, who are often sky-gods, vary from tribe totribe. Magic is largely practised, evil magic by any one who hasa grievance against another, curative magic only by the jiroperlyqualified magician. Evil magic is worked on an enemy by ap-pearing to insert

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