The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎656r] (202/239)

171
AMONG THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES.
them said, “We think that he is Jesus Christ.” When this
answer proved unsatisfactory, they laid their heads together
agam^and after mature deliberation declared that he must be the
evi . he anecdote is instructive, because it illustrates the
readiness with which the natives adapt their answers to the sup
posed taste of the inquirer, and the little dependence that can
consequently be placed on their statements as to this subject.
Now it is to be observed that the reports of moral Supreme
Beings among the Australian aborigines come chiefly from Vic
toria and New South Wales, that is, the parts of the continent
where the natives have been longest under the influence of the
white man. If we could deduct from these reports the elements
of error and fraud, we should probably find that the residue would
be small indeed; and we might acquiesce in the opinion of Pro
fessor Baldwin Spencer : “I do not think that there is really any
direct evidence of any Australian native belief in a ‘supreme
being’ in our sense of the term.” 24
But though the natives of Central Australia appear to be equally
destitute of ancestor worship, 20 and of a belief in a Supreme Being,
the guardian of morality, some of the tribes on the Gulf of Car
pentaria have a notion of spiritual beings who can help or injure
them. The Binbinga, Mara, and Anula tribes believe that the sky
is inhabited by two unfriendly beings who are always anxious to
come down and kill people, but are prevented from doing so by a
friendly spirit who lives in the woods. When an Anula man falls
ill, his friends sing to the friendly spirit in the woods to come
and make him well. 26 Such beliefs and such a practice might in
time develop into a regular propitiation of these spirits, that is,
they might grow into a religion.
Thus, if the Australian aborigines had been left to themselves,
they might have evolved a native religion along several more or
less independent lines. Their regard for the comfort of departed
friends might have given rise to a worship of the dead, provided
always that the theory of reincarnation, which prevails among
the Central tribes and is obviously incompatible with a deification
of the ancestral spirits, 27 had been exchanged for a belief that
these spirits, instead of returning to earth and being born again
in the flesh, dwell for ever in some happy land, whence, though
unseen by mortal or at least vulgar eyes, they watch over their
children and aid them in their time of need. Again, totemism
(23) Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 255.
(24) Letter to me dated 15th April, 1903.
(25) Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 494.
(26) Spencer and Gillen, of. cit., pp. 501 sq.
(27) Spencer and Gillen, of. cit., p. 494.