tion>Peter Beveridge
The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066314583
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTORY.
In this age of enlightened progression and scientific explorations, it is singular that ethnologists have permitted such a fruitful field for research as the colony of Victoria offers, to remain so long unutilised. In this, as in all the other settled sections of Australia, the aborigines are rapidly vanishing from off the face of the land, and although little more than fifty years have passed since the waters of the Yarra were first stirred from their normal placidity by the white man's oar, there is scarcely a single primitive inhabitant, or the descendant of one, to be met with, near any of the metropolitan centres; and ere another cycle has been added to the one now passing away, this primitive race will be extinct, as is that of the Moa—that is to say, unless some prompt remedial measures be adopted, other than those which have hitherto been obtained for their conservation.
From the earliest days of our Victorian colonisation, in fact, long before Australia Felix had attained to the rank of a State, when it was merely Port Phillip, a small appanage of the elder colony of New South Wales, there have been so-called Black Protectorates. The Moravians, too, have had missions to the heathen in various portions of the colony; and in Melbourne there is, and has been for years, a Board, designated the Central Board for the Protection of the Aborigines. Notwithstanding, however, the combined efforts of these bodies, the records of each year show a sad diminution in the numbers of the natives upon those of preceding years. There are many reasons to account for the abortiveness of the attempts to ameliorate the condition, and conserve generally the dwindled remnants of these people, the principal one being found in themselves—viz., entire lack of self-restraint, when any one of their animal instincts chances to be in the ascendant. If it is frequently found, even amongst civilised races, that vice is preferred to virtue, is it wonderful that in most cases these poor savages desire that which we tell them is vicious, instead of that which is good?
Vice and virtue, as a matter of course, are only used here in a conventional sense, the aborigines not having any such arbitrary distinctions. Whatever pleases the preponderating propensity, for the time being, is deemed good, and that which fails to do so is evil according to their ethics. As, for example, most natives would sooner work hard a whole day for a bottle of bad rum, and be half starved as to food, than attend to the teachings of a missionary, though with little labour, and abundance of provisions. To this, it will doubtless be said, that rum-drinking is the white man's vice, and that he has no manner of right to imbue the unsophisticated native with it. We freely admit the truthfulness of this fact, but in doing so, contend that wherever the white man puts his foot there will intoxicating drink be found, and the poor ignorant savage has only to taste of the "fire water" a few times to become a confirmed drunkard, which he makes patent enough on every favourable opportunity. White men, Christians though they be, will not forego their wonted stimulant, though so destructive to the savage races. We have seen yearly reports from time to time eminating from various of the protectorate bodies, some of which we knew, from actual contact with both the teachers and the taught, to be—well, unreliable. Consequently, judging by analogy, our faith in the flowery progress reports, as given to the public, is of the smallest.
The profligacy of their women is another fell source from whence much destruction to life proceeds; they contract disease, which spreads from them to the males, and being ignorant of its fatal character when unchecked, it is allowed to run its course, resulting speedily in a general prostration of the whole system, and finally in death. Did it cease then, however, it would not be so bad, but unfortunately it does not, as it is reproduced in the progeny to a frightful extent; and those of them who struggle on to the age of puberty transmit it again through their children, until at last the whole population eventually become tainted with the foul malady, and are therefore constitutionally unable to throw off the attacks of comparatively trivial ailments. Hence the numberless cases of consumption, or decline, together with almost countless disarrangements of a pulmonary character; whilst yet another phase of this fell disease is the wasting away of the tissues, until the frame becomes attenuation personified.
