DEATH, MOURNING AND BURIAL CEREMONIES OF THE WARRAMUNGA TRIBE

Whilst staying amongst the Warramunga tribe we were fortunate enough to see what, so far as we could tell, was the complete series of ceremonies from the moment of death until the final burial of the bones of a dead native in the earth.

The different ceremonies were of course concerned with more than one individual, because the entire series in the case of one person is spread over a period of two years or even longer.

A middle-aged man who, when first we arrived, took an active part in the ceremonies, fell ill. He was a medicine man, but only a comparatively young one– perhaps thirty or thirty-five years of age–and there were certain foods, such as emu flesh and eggs, which he was not only forbidden to eat but which he was supposed, according to strict etiquette, to bring in to the older medicine men for them to eat. Not only had he omitted to do this, but on more than one occasion he had actually been known to eat them himself–a very grave offence in the eyes of the older men, who had warned him that if he persisted in doing so something serious would happen to him. Accordingly, when his illness came, it was clearly a case of “ We told you so.”