In the corrobboree, when an effect had to be produced at night in front of the fires, they used white. The ribs were indicated by lines of white, and the prominent bones and limbs by daubs and streaks. The aspect of a crowd of natives so painted is hideous.
Mr. Bulmer says that the men generally smeared themselves with red when they wished to make themselves attractive, or smart (Taa-jaan). A young man would cover his hair with red powder, put on a jimbirn, or brow-band, and rub his body with fat and red-ochre. In some parts yellow, as well as red and white, is used for painting the body. Oxley met with men on the Lachlan whose faces were daubed with a red and yellow pigment.[1] In painting their weapons they generally used white and red. The smaller lines on a shield were filled with white, and the broader lines were colored red. Sometimes they painted the herring-bone lines white, and then drew a streak of bright-red paint along the lines formed by the angles, producing a curious and not unpleasing effect.
None of the natives of Australia appear to have practised the art of tattooing. They marked themselves by scars ordinarily in a very rude manner, but occasionally men have been seen whose bodies were covered with cicatrices in regular lines, making a sort of pattern. One remarkable instance of the kind, illustrated by a drawing after a photograph (Fig. 6), is shown in this work. It is a portrait of a native of Queensland.
Mr. Bulmer tells me that, according to his observations, the natives of each tribe scarred themselves after a pattern common to the tribe. The people of one tribe, he says, had a mark of this form—(Fig. 47); another used this—(Fig. 48); another, with lines after this fashion—(Fig. 49). In some tribes the scars were on the back, in others on the arms, or on the chest or abdomen.
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| FIG. 47. | FIG. 48. | FIG. 49. |
We may regard these markings as the rudiments of the art practised by the New Zealanders and Polynesians, whose methods of tattooing have been brought to the highest state of perfection. The cicatrices are made by cutting the skin,
- ↑ The natives of the Louisiade Archipelago, Macgillivray states, paint themselves with two pigments—pounded charcoal mixed up with cocoa-nut oil, and lime, obtained from burnt shells, similarly treated. They also decorate their persons with flowers and strongly-scented plants, and with large white cowries appended to the waist, elbows, and ankles. They use, too, fragments of other shells, and human bones made into bracelets.—Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, 1852, vol. I., pp. 215-16.
towards and joining at the navel. The difference in the design of the painting indicates the nearer or more remote degree of the relationship with the deceased. The black color in some parts is also used for mourning, according to what Mr. Schürmann has been able to ascertain, at the death of a relation by marriage, while the white is used at the death of blood relations. It thus becomes evident that the natives do not paint themselves in one and the same manner, but differently, according to the degrees of relationship between them and the deceased, which is expressed by the various designs."—Natives of the Port Lincoln District, by C. Wilhelmi.
