Her Life and Fortune Given to a Dying Race

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23269, 11 February 1939, Page 18 (Supplement)

Her Life and Fortune Given to a Dying Race

faults, and steadily disappearing from their ancestral home as their numbers decline year by year.

Seventy-eight years have not dimmed Mrs. Bates' memory, or detracted one whit from her Irish sense of humour. Sad as is her story, it is not Wholly gloomy. leather it is a faithful account of a lifetime fighting against mounting odds and a modest record ol a courageous woman's determination to do all in her power to comfort and succour one of the most unfortunate races on earth. The volume is rich in humorous stories, none of them malicious, all having an underlying motif of tragedy, for it is the humour of ignorance and the unsuccessful efforts of a primitive people to take in one leap the distance between the stone-ace and the 20th century. "Blood Brotherhood" Beading this book one marvels that comparatively few people outside Australia have heard of Daisy Bates. Her work is anything but spectacular and her aim has not been personal triumph. Rather she has sacrificed her own life, to say nothing of a substantial private fortune, for the welfare ol the aboriginals who have accepted her as one of themselves. Also she has become to them an arbiter and giver l of laWs. There can be few women in the world who have had conferred upon them the blood brotherhood of savage tribes. This honour, and it is one of the highest that the savage can give, was bestowed not as a gesture to a benefactress, but as an unquestioned token of the tribe's complete acceptance of this woman who so courageously espoused their cause and who won on her own merits a place in the complex social sytem of the aboriginal It is little wonder that Mrs. Bates understands the native mind perhaps better than any other living white man or woman. She is mistress of 188 native dialects; she is familiar with totemic ceremonies of which knowledge means death of the native women; she is custodian of sacred emblems and is almost a diety upon earth to her tattered subjects. Personality and Character An amazing authority has been established by Mrs. Bates solely by reason of her own example, personality and character. Without undue interference with native custom, and with no attempt to civilise the natives, she has none the less brought about the general acceptance of a code and sees that it is observed. Violently as various groups may disagree among themselves, they are united in their homage to tho magical figure of Kabbarli, who by the exercise of tact, persuasion and her own peculiar brand of authority has maintained order where chaos Would have been normal. Mr. Arthur Mee has written an introduction to Mrs. Bates' book. In paying rich tribute to her devotion, he also sets out her aim, explaining the ambition that lies behind a life of hardship growing harder as the passing years take toll of strength. "She has a strong belief in British administration, has always wanted a

AN elderly Irishwoman lias for nearly 4ft years devoted her • time, talents and fortune to an exclusive object, the care of primitive folk to whom the coming of modern civilisation meant extinction. Joint 'spirits of service and of sacrifice have inspired one of the most remarkable women of the day in her lifetime of devotion, and now, on the,- threshold of old age, she maintains a determination to spend the rest of her days in befriending the scattered and bewildered remnants of a stone-age people.

ever known, she is medical expert to superstitious blacks and, of living people, she is probably one of the most expertly versed in the languages, mysterious rites, customs and beliefs of* the Australian natives.

Two years ago Mrs. Bates returned to civilisation; not for the sake of her own comfort, but because she had to set on paper the results of nearly 40 years' experience and observation. Her retirement from active work among the natives was only temporary. Now her book has been published, not as a triumphant story of difficulty overcome and goal attained, but as a plea to the Empire not to forget the tragic survivors of this fast-dying race. There is no record of brilliant success in Mrs. Bates' book. Written with a wealth of imagery, deep understanding and passionate affection, it is a sad story of failure. Not personal failure to win the trust aud friendship of the people she .seeks to succour, but failure to -prevent these stone-age aboriginals from dying out in the land that is their own. Steadily Disappearing

"Modern Florence Nightingale"

Surely there was never greater contrast than that between the honours held by this modern Florence Nightingale. She is a Commander of the British Empire, recipient of an honour conferred by the late King George V., and she is also Kabbarli. blood-brother of cannibals. To the world she is Mrs. Daisy Bates, C.8.E., honoured alike by her King and by her primitive charges, versed in the mysteries of both races, and ever mindful of the duty which she rightly feels modern Australia owes to the people who inhabited the. great Island Continent before the white man came.

It is not the way of this courageous woman to paint a false picture of her untutored charges. Brutal savages, given to cannibalism, warfare and ritual practices not described in detail, she knows them to be. As such she reveals them, yet she also shows them as the original Australians, tainted by contact with civilisation, quick to fall victim to the white man's vicious

Mrs. Daisy Bates is not a missionary; at least, she is the accredited representative of no church or organisation. She is not a doctor, nor is she an anthropologist. Yet paradoxically she is one of the greatest missionaries Australia has

Daisy Bates is "Grandmoth

AUSTRALIA'S MODERN FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

By SCRUTATOR

King's Man to look after these people,", be says. "It is for this end that she has lived the life of an heroic woman, labouring in solitude in a climate often parching and only rarely bursting into beauty, seeking to succour a noisome race, melancholy in outlook and terrible in habits. For a little while she has left them. She left them for three enchanting weeks in 1933 when the Government invited her to Canberra to discuss the aborigines. "A surprising figure she must have been in tho streets of the capital, this white-haired old lady from the uncivilised world, wearing the shirt blouse, the high collar and the long skirts of the early years of ojjr century. For her there are no changing fashions. For a little while, again, she returned to civilisation to set down this story, and, tiring of city streets, she has set up her tent once more on the banks of the great Murray River, where years ago these people made their home. She has found their old haunts deserted. With not a native left. The Remnant "Perhaps she may return to them; perhaps not; but still she dreams that the Empire will not fail this human remnant in its keeping." In the early years of this century, Mrs. Bates, who deserted her native Ireland for a literary career in London, first went out among her aborigines. She had previously paid a brief visit to Australia, during which she had

barely seen the native tribes; but on the occasion of her second visit she was brought into immediate contact with them, a contact that has grown into a deep understanding and an intimate knowledge. They named her Kabbarli, grandmother, and by that name she is known and respected by aborigines throughout Australia. When her husband died, Mrs. Bates was left with a station and thousands of head of cattle, a comfortable assurance for a widow against poverty, and indeed a guarantee of independence for the rest of her life. Yet her instinct to minister to the needs of others was greater than any desire to live in comfort herself, and she sold her property to become the protector of a dying race. Allegations of cruelty to the natives, for which she could find no foundation after a tour of 800 miles by buggy i" the course of six months, served to introduce Mrs. Bates to the aborigines. She then furthered this acquaintance by visiting the Beagle Bay Mission, in tiie remote North-West country, where Trappist fathers had come to minister to the blacks in the neighbourhood of Broome.

The journey from Beagle Bay to the mission, nine miles, was an ordeal for Mrs. Bates, but in her book she has made fun of it. "Mounting from the ship's deck on horseback, we set out, the Bishop and 1, across the nine miles of bleak flat that lay between the beach and the mission, Dean Martello and the brothers following with tho bullock-

team which had been sent in for stores," she writes. "I rode side-saddle on a stride-saddle —a painful ordeal. A few half-clad natives straggled along behind us. As we jogged on through the heat and flies and blankness, the Bishop intoned the rosary, and the natives joined in when they knew the words. The horses were Trappists, too, sl<in and bone in thcil poverty. They stopped so often for their meditations and devotions that the bullock-team arrived before us."

Living amid poverty and almost incredible hardship, the priests had little they could offer in the way of comforts to a lone woman arrived in their spartan settlement. Yet Mrs. Bates lived as they lived, sharing their starvation diet and doing a man's work. First White Woman

"I was the first white woman to appear among thern at the Mission, she writes, "and the first that the natives of the region had seen. From the newly-arrived stores, Brother Sebastian had provided a strange and varied meal for us according to his lights, extraordinary stews and puddings served in any order and all strongly flavoured with garlic; milkless tea in a huge jug that wad both teapot and cups for us all.

"Poor Brother Sebastian may have been a paragon of piety, but he was no cook. In my keeping to-day is a fragment of petrified bread roll he made for me in 1900! It has been mistaken for a geological specimen, and, always carried with me in loving memory, it

has survived, without losing a crumb, thousands of miles of rough transport." For four months Mrs. Bates remained at the little mission, engaged daily in manual work of the most arduous nature, sharing the work with the brothers and the Macks, and the Bishop in his shirt-sleeves. "Manual labour has been the keynote of all my work for the aborigines," she continues. "I have never made servants or attendants of them. I have waited upon the sick and the old, and carried their burdens, fed the blind and the babies, sewed for the women and buried the dead —only in the quiet hours gleaning, gathering, learning, always hastening, as one by one the tribes dwindled out of existence, knowing how soon it would 'be too late." Kindred Spirit After reading Mrs. Bates' book, it is easier to understand how she came to accumulate her marvellous store of knowledge of the Australian aborigine. She began by compiling a Broome dictionary, of several dialects and 2000 words and sentences, with notes of legends and myths. She laid claim to a native name and the identity of a magic woman, one of the 22 wives of a legendary patriarch, and thus was accepted as a kindred spirit and taught in detail the complicated relationships and class-groups, the marriage laws, the tribal tabus, and the traditional songs and dances. The natives even allowed her free access to the sacred places, and the v;:cred initiation ceremonies.

"Sitting in a neighbouring creek-bed, or boiling the billy by an old tank out in the plain, the men would gather round me, taking infinite pains to tutor me in the rippling inflexions and the difficult double vowels of their language —a series of vocal gymnastics quite impossible to tha average white linguist, and which, I am perfectly sure, in all my years of juggling with them, have altered the formation of my larynx," she tells, with evident amusement. "Thc-y explained in detail the purpose of all their Weapons and implements, why the boomerang and the shield and the spear-thrower were curved or hooked just so; they let me watch their making and the chipping

of stone tools, and told me the half legendary stories of their origin "Dances and songs were explained to me at symbolic and play-corrobom* and so we progressed naturally from the world of actuality to the dream world At last, with the utmost simpHeitvJJ frankness, the old men disclosed to dm little by little their most secret «>- and initiations, without fear of ridicnfe or objection, just as they disclosed the mythologies and allegories of the mini of the primeval black man as mystical in their beauty as the sagas of the old Norse gods."

Realisation that the Australian aboriginal was doomed came omVMr to Mrs. Bates She saw the disastrous results of well-meant efforts to civile these nornadic tribes; and determined to ease their sufferings if she could not prevent them.

"The re is no hope of protecting the Stone Age from the 20th centurr 7 ' she says. "When the native's little Woun area is gone, he loses the will to ]}J and when the will to live is gone, he Governor's Tribute Student and ethnological research specialist for the Western Australian Government, adviser to various departments, on matters associated irith aboriginal welfare, author of articles in leading anthropological and other journals, Mrs. Bates was all .the time the friend of the native. She decided after full experience of lonely life in a lonelv land to dedicate the lest of her days to the study of the aboriginal, and to the promotion of his welfare.

How well she succeeded is expressed by Sir George Murray in a brief .foreword: "For her devoted service to a primitive race which, it is to be feared is slowly perishing under the influence of a civilisation which is alien to their instincts and destructive to their means of subsistence, she was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by his late Majestv King Geonre V in 19,33. * '

"As Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, it was my privilege to invent her with the Order: I said then and I still think, that the Order was never more worthily bestowed."

"Passing of the Aborigines," by Daisy Bates (John Murray)