CRAFT VERSUS CRIME

Evening Star, Issue 22689, 1 July 1937, Page 15

CRAFT VERSUS CRIME

AUSTRALIA'S BLACK TRACKERS DETAIL AND DEDUCTION Black trackers have shown their value and proved their prowess iu assisting the police in murder cases. Whence 1 came this eerie skill, which is denied the ivhite man? Will civilisation destroy it and will civilisation need it? (asks a writer iu the Melbourne ‘ Argus ’). It was at the time of the Boer War that the world beyond Australia began to recognise the prowess of the Australian aborigine as a scout and <a tracker. Then it spread as the story of a wager. With the Australian contingent in South Africa was Billy, an aborigine from Queensland, who had been taken as a scout. Five English officers, regarding an Australian officer’s stories of black trackers as fairy tales, made a wager that Billy could not trace their movements on the veldt. Billy was locked up while the five men—three mounted and two on foot—left the camp and wandered on five separate paths for some hours and then returned. Billy was then asked to give an account of the adventures of each. The wager was paid, and the story sped to all parts of Africa, to Britain, and to India, when Billy returned with a complete account of each officer’s wanderings. What is more, he admitted each of the five, although that was not required iu the terms of the wager. He returned with evidence—the match which A had thrown away when he had lit his pipe; a blood-stained thorn where B, who travelled in his stockinged feet to baffle the tracker, had hurt his foot; a tuft of hairs from C’a bay mare, and so on. TRAILING THE KELLYS. To people from afar the feat was almost unbelievable, but to the Australians it was not surprising, for Billy came from Queensland, the home of the black trackers. Even now Queensland aborigines are considered the best of trackers. Before the Queensland police force was well 'formed, graziers in the outlying districts kept trackers on their station staffs to assist in tracing marauders—usually aborigines also—• who stole cattle and occasionally, murdered a lonely white man. It was not until the Kelly gang had baffled the police for some time that the Victorian authorities brought aborigines from Queensland to help them, and the help they gave was material in, breaking up the gang. Since that time there has scarcely been a major crime away from the city in which black trackers have not assisted. The prowess of the tracker gives * direct 'denial to those who would belittle the mentality of the Australian aborigine. Primitive the aborigine undoubtedly is; there is probably no more primitive race, judged by anatomical standards and by standards of modern civilisation. In bushcraft, however, there is probably no type of human being who could excel him. GAMES FOR PICANINNIES. Culture, as we know it, would be of no use to the Australian aborigine. The bush is his book, and he has learned to read it vffill. Because of the peculiarities of the Australian environment, his whole life is occupied in seeking food and in protecting himself from human enemies. The bush-bred aborigine is, therefore, a specialist in bushcraft, and that is why he can follow a track where any white man would consider the prospect hopeless. The faculty is almost inborn. The tiniest toddlers in an unspoilt tribe begin their kindergarten games by tracing tracks of bush creatures in the sand. It is a merry game. It may be seen today in Central Australia, where tiny naked picaninnies sit in the sand, draw up their knees to their chests, and twiddle their toes. They rise and point to the result with shrieks of laughter—a perfect impression of a camel pad, complete even to the impressions of the toenails. The more arduous the search for food, the more adept the aborigine becomes at tracking. It is a matter of the survival of the fittest, for the imperfect tracker may starve at worst, and at best he will not be a favoured subject for matrimony. It should not bo imagined, though, that proficiency comes merely with keenness of sight. Observation and experience of the habits of the quarry and clever deduction from slight clues play a large part. PRINCIPLES OP TRACKING. From tracking food to tracking wrongdoers js a short step. The principles are the same. Where others see nothing, the black tracker reads a detailed story. It is not merely a matter of tracing the path of a fugitive; in many instances the black will tell what his quarry has been doing. “ Him cany swag,” he will say. finding the impression of one foot slightly more defined than that of the other. “ Swagon other shoulder now,” he says, and it is so. In Nature’s smaller print he will read the age of a track, and it js difficult to foil, him. One fugitive from justice in Victoria shod his horse backwards to put the trackers off the scent, but the trackers observed the ruse in a moment, and they soon led the police to their quarry. A curious development in the aborigines’ bushcraft was the invention of what are called “ murderer’s slippers.” These are made of fur and feather woven together and designed to prevent the impress of heel and toe. They are worn on one-man expeditions so that the wearer may not be tracked. In remote parts of Australia “ murderer’s slippers ” are still used. There is one amiable characteristic of the black man in association with the white which is occasionally embarrassing in this work. The aborigine always tries to please “ the boss,” and truth matters little to him. One of the hardest lessons a blaoktracker must learn is to tell what he sees, and not what he thinks will please. Tin's lesson, well learned, led to the apprehension of a murderer in Queensand some years ago in strange circumstances. The trackers told the police that Billy Broom, one of their company, was not tolling; the truth. He would not let themTollow the track which they knew was right. The police were suspicious immediately, and it was proved that Billy Broom was the murderer they wore seeking. He was hanged in the Brisbane gaol. This question of the impact of the white man has another implication. Bush-bred blacks are scarce, and they are becoming scarcer. Do generations of living the white man’s life dull the edge of their acuity? 'Are blacktrackers as clever as they used to be? The question is being asked in many places.