Volume II Part 1 (2/2)

Apparently the reply of Gustav Roskoff to Sir John Lubbock (1880) did not alter that writer's opinion. Roskoff pointed out that Waitz-Gerland, while denying that Australian beliefs were derived from any higher culture, denounced the theory that they have no religion as ”entirely false”. ”Belief in a Good Being is found in South Australia, New South Wales, and the centre of the south-eastern continent.”* The opinion of Waitz is highly esteemed, and that not merely because, as Mr. Max Muller has pointed out, he has edited Greek cla.s.sical works. _Avec du Grec on nepeut gater rien_. Mr. Oldfield, in addition to bogles and a water-spirit, found Biam (Baiame) and Namba-jundi, who admits souls into his Paradise, while Warnyura torments the bad under earth.** Mr. Eyre, publis.h.i.+ng in 1845, gives Baiame (on the Morrum-bidgee, Biam; on the Murray, Biam-Vaitch-y) as a source of songs sung at dances, and a cause of disease. He is deformed, sits cross-legged, or paddles a canoe. On the Murray he found a creator, Noorele, ”all powerful, and of benevolent character,” with three unborn sons, dwelling ”up among the clouds”.

Souls of dead natives join them in the skies. Nevertheless ”the natives, as far as yet can be ascertained, have no religious belief or ceremonies”; and, though Noorele is credited with ”the origin of creation,” ”he made the earth, trees, water, etc.,” a deity, or Great First Cause, ”can hardly be said to be acknowledged”.***

* Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologic, vi. 794 et seq.

** Oldfield, Translations of Ethnol. Soc., iii. 208. On this evidence I lay no stress.

*** Eyre, Journals, ii. pp. 355-358.

Such are the consistent statements of Mr. Eyre! Roskoff also cites Mr.

Ridley, Braim, Cunningham, Dawson, and other witnesses, as opposed to Sir John Lubbock, and he includes Mr. Tylor.* Mr. Tylor, later, found Baiame, or Pei-a-mei, no earlier in literature than about 1840, in Mr.

Hale's _United States Exploring Expedition?_ Previous to that date, Baiame, it seems, was unknown to Mr. Threlkeld, whose early works are of 1831-1857. He only speaks of Koin, a kind of goblin, and for lack of a native name for G.o.d, Mr. Threlkeld tried to introduce Jehova-ka-birue, and Eloi, but failed. Mr. Tylor, therefore, appears to suppose that the name, Baiame, and, at all events, his divine qualities, were introduced by missionaries, apparently between 1831 and 1840.*** To this it must be replied that Mr. Hale, about 1840, writes that ”when the missionaries first came to Wellington” (Mr. Threlkeld's own district) ”Baiame was wors.h.i.+pped there with songs”. ”These songs or hymns, _according to Mr. Threlkeld_, were pa.s.sed on from a considerable distance. It is notorious that songs and dances are thus pa.s.sed on, till they reach tribes who do not even know the meaning of the words.”****

* Roskoff, Das Religionstoesen der Rohesten Naturvolher, pp.

37-41.

** Ethnology and Philology, p. 110. 1846.

*** Tylor, The Limits of Savage Religion, J. A. I., vol.

xxi. 1892.

**** Roth, Natives of N.-W. Central Queensland, p. 117.

In this way Baiame songs had reached Wellington before the arrival of the missionaries, and for this fact Mr. Threlkeld (who is supposed not to have known Baiame) is Mr. Hale's authority. In Mr. Tylor's opinion (as I understand it) the word Baiame was the missionary translation of our word ”Creator,” and derived from _Baia_ ”to make”. Now, Mr. Ridley says that Mr. Greenway ”discovered” this _baia_ to be the root of Baiame. But what missionary introduced the word before 1840? Not Mr.

Threlkeld, for he (according to Mr. Tylor), did not know the word, and he tried Eloi, and Jehova-ka-biru, while Immanueli was also tried and also failed* Baiame, known in 1840, does not occur in a missionary primer before Mr. Ridley's _Gurre Kamilaroi_ (1856), so the missionary primer did not launch Baiame before the missionaries came to Wellington.

According to Mr. Hale, the Baiame songs were brought by blacks from a distance (we know how Greek mysteries were also _colportes_ to new centres), and the yearly rite had, in 1840, been for three years in abeyance. Moreover, the etymology, _Baia_ ”to make” has a compet.i.tor in ”Byamee = Big Man”.** Thus Baiame, as a divine being, preceded the missionaries, and is not a word of missionary manufacture, while sacred words really of missionary manufacture do not find their way into native tradition. Mr. Hale admits that the ideas about Baiame may ”possibly” be of European origin, though the great reluctance of the blacks to adopt any opinion from Europeans makes against that theory.***

* Ridley, speaking of 1855. Lang's Queensland, p. 435.

** Mrs. Langloh Parker, More Australian Legendary Tales.

1898. Glossary.

*** Op. cit., p. 110.

It may be said that, if Baiame was premissionary, his higher attributes date after Mr. Ridley's labours, abandoned for lack of encouragement in 1858. In 1840, Mr. Hale found Baiame located in an isle of the seas, like Circe, living on fish which came to his call. Some native theologians attributed Creation to his Son, Burambin, the Demiurge, a common savage form of Gnosticism.

On the nature of Baiame, we have, however, some curious early evidence of 1844-45. Mr. James Manning, in these years, and earlier, lived ”near the outside boundaries of settlers to the south”. A conversation with Goethe, when the poet was eighty-five, induced him to study the native beliefs. ”No missionaries,” he writes, ”ever came to the southern district at any time, and it was not till many years later that they landed in Sydney on their way to Moreton Bay, to attempt, in vain, to Christianise the blacks of that locality, before the Queensland separation from this colony took place.” Mr. Manning lost his notes of 1845, but recovered a copy from a set lent to Lord Audley, and read them, in November, 1882, to the Royal Society of New South Wales.

The notes are of an extraordinary character, and Mr. Manning, perhaps unconsciously, exaggerated their Christian a.n.a.logies, by adopting Christian terminology. Dean Cowper, however, corroborated Mr. Manning's general opinion, by referring to evidence of Archdeacon Gunther, who sent a grammar, with remarks on ”Bhaime, or Bhaiame,” from Wellington to Mr. Max Muller. ”He received his information, he told me, from some of the oldest blacks, who, he was satisfied, could not have derived their ideas from white men, as they had not then had intercourse with them.”

Old savages are not apt to be in a hurry to borrow European notions. Mr.

Manning also averred that he obtained his information with the greatest difficulty. ”They required such secrecy on my part, and seemed so afraid of being heard even in the most secret places, that, in one or two cases, I have seen them almost tremble in speaking.” One native, after carefully examining doors and windows, ”stood in a wooden fireplace, and spoke in a tone little above a whisper, and confirmed what I had before heard”. Another stipulated that silence must be observed, otherwise the European hands might question his wife, in which case he would be obliged to kill her. Mr. Howitt also found that the name of Darumulun (in religion) is too sacred to be spoken except almost in whispers, while the total exclusion of women from mysteries and religious knowledge, on pain of death, is admitted to be universal among the tribes.* Such secrecy, so widely diffused, is hardly compatible with humorous imposture by the natives.

There is an element of humour in all things. Mr. Manning, in 1882, appealed to his friend, Mr. Mann, to give testimony to the excellency of Black Andy, the native from whom he derived most of his notes, which were corroborated by other black witnesses. Mr. Mann arose and replied that ”he had never met one aborigine who had any true belief in a Supreme Being”. On cross-examination, they always said that they had got their information from a missionary or other resident. Black Andy was not alluded to by Mr. Mann, who regarded all these native religious ideas as filtrations from European sources. Mr. Palmer, on the other hand, corroborated Mr. Manning, who repeated the expression of his convictions.** Such, then, is the perplexed condition of the evidence.

* Howitt,.7. A. I., xiii. 193.

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