The colors used by the natives in painting the caves which were visited by Capt. Grey were white, black, red, yellow, and blue. Blue is rarely used by the Aborigines, and in some districts it was unknown prior to the colonization of Australia by the whites. This color was perhaps obtained by mixing black and white.
In ornamenting their rugs they copied from nature. One man told Mr. Bulmer that he got his ideas from the observation of natural objects. He had copied the markings on a piece of wood made by the grub known as Krang; and from the scales of snakes and the markings of lizards he derived new forms. The natives never, in adorning their rugs or weapons, as far as Mr. Bulmer knows, imitate the forms of plants or trees.
A red pigment was obtained by the natives, either from decomposed rocks, where it is found as clay, or by burning some trap-rock or porphyry. Yellow clays and yellow-ochre are not plentiful, and in some districts the pigment is not found at all.[1] White is got in the areas occupied by granite and Palæozoic rocks almost everywhere; but in the large tracts occupied by Tertiary rocks, where white clays are not found near the surface, the natives collected gypsum and selenite, burnt the mineral, and produced a very good pigment. A black color was made from charcoal or from soot. The charcoal or soot was mixed with fat and used as a paint.
The color most commonly used during periods of mourning was white, but, as already stated, both white and red are used by different tribes. Amongst the natives living within the water-shed of the Murray, white alone, Mr. Bulmer thinks, is used. On the eastern side of the Cordillera, however, he has seen the bodies painted with a mixture of red-ochre and fat. The natives take the fat of the deceased, mix it with ochre, and smear their bodies. Both white and red are commonly applied at other times, for purposes of decoration.[2]
- ↑ In an official report addressed to the Government of South Australia, and dated 30th June 1874, which I have just received from Mr. E. A. Hamilton, the Sub-Protector of Aborigines in South Australia, it is stated that serious depredations have been committed by Aboriginals known as the Saltwater blacks. These men come down every year from Cooper's Creek and elsewhere to obtain supplies of ochre from the Aroona cave. On returning to their own country, they not unfrequently rob the huts of shepherds. Mr. Buttfield, one of the Sub-Protectors, has suggested that a supply of ochre should be sent to Mount Hope, so that the natives might no longer be obliged to travel a long distance to obtain it.
- ↑ "The next day the women separated from the men and painted themselves all over with white clay, and the men did so with red, at the same time ornamenting themselves with emu feathers, which they tied round their waists. They were in every other way quite naked."—Buckley's Life and Adventures, p. 47.
"They grease and paint themselves with red and white ochre. They pluck the white hairs out of their beards."—Ibid, p. 72-3.
"They use three colors in painting themselves—viz., black, red, and white. The black and red colors are the produce of a soft stone, which they draw from a great distance in the north. By rubbing or scraping it they obtain a powder, which they rub into the fat which they have before put on their faces, arms, and breasts; the colors then assume quite a metallic lustre. The white color is prepared of a soft clay or chalk. It is applied on particular occasions only—among others, for dancing and when in mourning. . . . . For indicating mourning, the women paint their whole front, a ring round each eye, and a perpendicular line about the stomach; but the men paint the breast by making drawn or punctured streaks down from the shoulders, all verging
