owned in life must be laid beside him in
death.[209] Again, among the tribes of the Lower Murray, Lachlan, and
Darling rivers in New South Wales, all a dead man's property, including
his weapons and nets, was buried with his body in the grave.[210]
Further, we are told that among the natives of Western Australia the
weapons and personal property of the deceased are placed on the grave,
"so that when he rises from the dead they may be ready to his
hand."[211] In the Boulia district of Queensland the things which
belonged to a dead man, such as his boomerangs and spears, are either
buried with him, destroyed by fire, or sometimes, though rarely,
distributed among his tribal brothers, but never among his
children.[212]

[Sidenote: Intention of destroying the property of the dead. The
property of the dead not destroyed in Central Australia.]

Thus among certain tribes of Australia, especially in the south-eastern
part of the continent, it appears that the custom of burying or
destroying a dead man's property has been very common. That the
intention of the custom in some cases is to supply the supposed needs of
the ghost, seems to be fairly certain; but we may doubt whether this
explanation would apply to the practice of burning or otherwise
destroying the things which had belonged to the deceased. More probably
such destruction springs from an overpowering dread of the ghost and a
wish to sever all connexion with him, so that he may have no excuse for
returning and haunting the survivors, as he might do if his property
were either kept by them or deposited in the grave. Whatever the motive
for the burial or destruction of a dead man's property may be, the
custom appears not to prevail among the tribes of Central Australia. In
the eastern Arunta tribe, indeed, it is said that sometimes a little
wooden vessel used in camp for holding small objects may be buried with
the man, but this is the only instance which Messrs. Spencer and Gillen
could hear of in which any article of ordinary use is buried in the
grave. Far from wasting property in that way, these economical savages
preserve even a man's personal ornaments, such as his necklaces,
armlets, and the fur string which he wore round his head; indeed, as we
have seen, they go so far as to cut off the hair from the head of the
deceased and to keep it for magical uses.[213] In the Warramunga tribe
all the belongings of a dead man go to the tribal brothers of his
mother.[214]