The Family among the Australian Aborigines, a Sociological StudyMalinowski, Bronislaw
History
The Family among the Australian Aborigines, a Sociological Study
Malinowski, Bronislaw
Aboriginal Australians -- Social life and customs; Ethnology -- Australia; Families -- History
Curr, speaking of the laying out of a native camp in the Bangerang
tribe, says: "the fire of the bachelors ..." is "rather further
off and somewhat isolated from the rest."[789] The same author
says: "Over the girls his (the father's) authority ceased when
they became wives, and after his twelfth year or so the boy was
very little subject to the father."[790] "When eight or ten years
of age he was sent to sleep in the bachelors' camp, when there
was one at hand, with the young men and boys of various ages, his
parents still supplying him with food. In his new home, though no
violence was used, its inmates being all his relatives, the child
gradually became to some extent the fag" of all older and stronger.
In short this was the real school he had to pass through, the most
important moment of which formed the initiation, when he became
_kogomoolga_.[791] "The bachelors, in their camp, cooked each for
himself"[792] (at least the older ones; as for the quite young,
the family provided, according to what we were told above). "The
bachelors had one (hut) in common."[793] Curr also emphasizes the
importance of the training enjoyed by the youths in the bachelors'
camp for the general tribal order.[794]
[789] _Recollections_, p. 133.
[790] _Ibid._, p. 248.
[791] _Ibid._, pp. 250, 253.
[792] _Ibid._, p. 256.
[793] _Ibid._, p. 259.
[794] _Recollections_, p. 252.
J. Dawson says that one partition of a big wuurn "is appropriated
to the parents and children, one to the young unmarried women and
widows, and one to the bachelors and widowers. While travelling or
occupying temporary habitations, each of these parties must erect
separate wuurns."[795] Here the young boys and young unmarried
girls lived with their family, but in separate compartments of
the hut. We are not informed if, when travelling, they formed a
separate group in the encampment.
[795] _Loc. cit._, p. 10; this refers to the West Victorian
tribes.
"Young, unmarried men frequently muster in parties of six or eight,
and make a hut for themselves."[796] In cases when a larger number
of natives are assembled it is required by custom that "all boys
and uninitiated young men sleep at some distance from the huts of
adults."[797]
[796] Eyre, ii. p. 302 (Murray River tribes).
[797] _Ibid._, p. 304.
"Until his fourteenth or fifteenth year he (the boy) is mostly
engaged in catching fish and birds, because already, for some
years, he has been obliged to seek for food on his own account.
Thus he early becomes, in a great measure, independent; and there
is nobody who can control him, the authority of his parents
depending only upon the superstitions which they have instilled
into him from infancy."[798]
[798] Encounter Bay tribes, Meyer, _loc. cit._, p. 187.
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