AUSTRALIAN NATIVES

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1931, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN NATIVES

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION [by CABLE —PBESS ASSN. —COPYBIGHT.] (Recd. May 11, 9.30 a.m.) SYDNEY, May 11. Doctor D. S. Davidson, anthropologist, after fifteen months’ work among Australian aborigines in the far north, on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania, and the social Research Council of New York, declares that the natives are much maligned, so far as intelligence is concerned. They have been described generally as among the lowest intellectual races -of the world, but nobody is able to prove such a description. They are a race peculiarly placed, rendering recognised psycholo- . gieal standards useless for comparative purposes. Simultaneously with Dr. Davidson's observation comes a message from Darwin that native women are being sold at Bathurst Island for bags of flour, sugar or knives and tomahawks. The purchasers, however, are Catholic missionaries whose object is to retrieve girlg from some chiefs, who collected harems, including young children. The priests are ' endeavouring to break down a custom, and find the chiefs ready to sell. The children are glad to escape into the sanctuary of the mission, where they are taught useful household knowledge, and grown up will be given an opportunity to make a natural selection of husbands. The experiment has not yet lasted long enough to show how this phase is going to work out.