The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson.

  • Henry Ling Roth
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The aborigines of Tasmania / by H. Ling Roth ; assisted by Marion E. Butler and Jas. Backhouse Walker ; with a chapter on the osteology by J.G. Garson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and Oyster Bay tribes. She knew them by their footmarks.’ ” Calder also says (ibid.): “ We learn from . . . Jorgen Jorgensen, that they possessed a faculty for discovering water in situations where no European would thing of looking for it, and that these strange places were their favourite camping grounds.” Reproduction. Brough Smyth makes the following statement (II. p. 387): “The women were seldom accompanied by many children ; but there is no reason to suppose that they were less prolific than people of other races.” With the latter part of his statement we have no cause to differ in so far far, of course, as it relates to the aborigines before contact with civilization: but the first part of the statement is quite opposed to the very complete and reliable evidence of the early French voyagers. On the other hand it does not follow because the children are not always mentioned, that there were none. In the three interviews narrated below it will be seen children predominated over the adults. Peron states (ch. xii. pp. 225-226), “ As soon as they [a family of aborigines] saw us, they • . . . doubled their pace in order to rejoin us. Their number was increased by a young girl of from sixteen to seventeen- years of age, by another little boy of from four to five years, and by a little girl of three to four years. This family was composed therefore of nine people, the elders being apparently the father and mother: the young man and his wife appeared to us to be at the same time ‘ epoux et frere ’ : we considered the young girl to be the sister of the latter ; the four children must have been those of the young man and the young woman. La Billardiere (II. ch. x. p. 37) encountered a party of forty-two savages, “ seven of whom were men, eight women, the rest appeared to be their children ; and among these we observed several marriageable girls,” and further on (ilfid. p. 54) he says : “ We had scarcely gone a mile before we found ourselves in the midst of eiglit-and-forty natives ; ten men, fourteen women, and twenty-four children, among whom we observed as many girls as boys.” Bonwick states (p. 85), “ Apart from the long suckling, for three or even four years, the period during which their powers of reproduction existed was much shorter than with Europeans. Very few of them had children after thirty-five years of age, and the majority perhaps, were barren before thirty.”