TRIAL BY ORDEAL

Evening Star, Issue 18533, 16 January 1924, Page 2

TRIAL BY ORDEAL

ABORIGINAL MORAL CODE. To fast for days, and then, given tin opportunity, to' stop short of appeasin' the pangs of hunger; to have teetl Knocked out with r. pointed stick and ; stone hammer; to sleep on an ant-bed after having been blistered by lying upo; hot coals; to welcome snakes as bed fellows; to defy ghosts—all these horrors had to be endured before a young aboriginal was esteemed by a tribe as a man or a woman.

These facts wero ■ dealt with by M > David Uniapon, the Australian aboriginal orator, in the course of an address to men at the Sydney Y.M.C.A. Hall. It was quite a mistake, he said, te suppose that the aborigines were with out a moral code, and without religion.faith. They had both. The former wa< designed to train the people of the race, in thoir earlier years, to conquer the appetite.and lusts of the body, to endure pain and suffering without complaint, and to banish fear, Acting on tho assumption that the mind was above all, the elders of the tribes were accustomed to devise test.through which every child must pass. After being starved for three days, food would be sot before them, and those who did not gorge, but contented themselves with a 'normal meal, had taken their first step on the moral ladder'—the mind had triumphed over the stomach.

The “ pain and suffering " test was a much more trying ordeal. Every boy and gir!—the sexes were dealt'with in different areas—was made to lie down with mouth wide open. Somebody who had been through the mill would then put a pointed stick against a tooth, and hammer away with a stone until the tooth dropped out. If no complaint was made by the patient, he was said to have done well.

But his troubles were not, by any means, over. He then usually had his flesh scarified, and his back blistered and burned by a brief siesta upon live coals, thinly covered with gum leaves. Mr Uniapon admitted that many of the children lost no time In running away, but the more stoical amor:,: them endured the excruciating agony without cry of protest. The initiates were subsequently conducted in the dark to a camping place, only to find that their sleeping quarters were situated on ant-beds, which more often than not were the headquarters of an army of ball ants. Those who could not put up with the almost ceaseless stinging ran yelping into the bush, but the brave ones clung to their job of becoming moral, and reported to the elders in the morning that their night had been undisturbed.

To arm the youthful against fear they were first regaled with hair-raising ghost stories, and then made ■to sleep in a burial ground. In case their slumbers would bo too profound, the tribe dressed themselves in the garb of “ ghosts,” and made a genera.! assault with the most blood-cfirdling cries as an accompaniment. Tlie children who did not beat a hasty retreat earned the good opinion of the elders when they reported -at sunrise that they had had a good night. Another “courage” test was to put the child in the wav of a snako, which usually took a delight in twining itself affectionately round the more or less quaking body of the novice. Frequently, courage, or no courage, morals or no morals, the little blackfellow would incontinently seek safer quarters with all expedition. As to the religious beliefs of the tribes, they implicitly put their faith in a Father —a protecting Father—and his Son. Their god was too sacred to have a name —ho was simply “Father.” This strange resemblance to the principles of the Christian faith, and the utter absence of any form of idolatry, explain why the aborigines were so susceptible to the teaching of the Gospel. Mr Uniapon, who spoke with the accent and facility of a cultured man, was warmly applauded by his hearers.