Long after the receipt of the message-stick from Queensland, the Honorable Fred. P. Barlee, M.P., the Colonial Secretary of West Australia, was good enough to send me two message-sticks.—(Figs. 172 and 173.)
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| FIG. 172. | FIG. 173. |
The stick shown in Fig. 172 is ten inches in length, and a little more than three-tenths of an inch in diameter. That shown in Fig. 173 is nearly seven inches and a half in length, and four-tenths of an inch in diameter.
They are formed of a hard yellowish wood, the name of which I am not able to give. The marks are neatly and clearly drawn, and are filled in with a black pigment, so as to be distinctly seen.
Mr. Barlee says, "The accompanying 'native sticks' used by Aboriginals in the vicinity of Shark's Bay are new to me, and will probably be of interest to you. They are used, I am informed, as messages to distant tribes in cases of hostility and other matters connected with tribal customs."
These message-sticks will be regarded by scientific men as of peculiar interest and value; and no doubt some special enquiries will be instituted in order to discover to what extent this system of conveying intelligence amongst savage tribes prevails, in what manner it originated, and how far it has been perfected.[1]
- ↑ Mr. Bulmer states that he has seen a stick [message-stick?] carried about from camp to camp as belonging to a particular corrobboree. It was used by the men—never by the women. He has known of such sticks having been carried for hundreds of miles. He mentions (under date 15th January 1874) that fourteen years ago a stick of this kind came down the Murray to the junction of the Darling. It had been carried the whole length of the river; and, to his astonishment, when he went to Gippsland he found it had penetrated even there, so that it must have been conveyed more than a thousand miles. The stick was of the dimensions of a common walking-stick, and was carved after the Aboriginal manner. It was smeared with red-ochre. It was an object of great curiosity to the blacks.
The late Mr. John Moore Davis stated in a letter to me, in 1874, that when on a visit to Benalla he became acquainted with the fact that the Aborigines have the means of communicating with each other at a distance, and that peculiarly-formed notches on a stick convey their ideas in a manner similar to the knots on a cord used in the days of old by the Mexicans.
