bury his deceased friend a little further off
from the kitchen door.[251] A practice of this sort would be
intelligible on the theory of the Central Australians, who imagine that
the spirits of all the dead return to the very spots where they entered
into their mothers' wombs, and that they wait there until another
opportunity presents itself to them of being born again into the world.
For if people really believe, as do many Australian tribes, that when
they die they will afterwards come to life again as infants, it is
perfectly natural that they should take steps to ensure and facilitate
the new birth. The Unmatjera and Kaitish tribes of Central Australia do
this in the case of dead children. These savages draw a sharp
distinction between young children and very old men and women. When very
old people die, their bodies are at once buried in the ground, but the
bodies of children are placed in wooden troughs and deposited on
platforms of boughs in the branches of trees, and the motive for
treating a dead child thus is, we are informed, the hope "that before
very long its spirit may come back again and enter into the body of a
woman--in all probability that of its former mother."[252] The reason
for drawing this distinction between the young and the old by disposing
of their bodies in different fashions, is explained with great
probability by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen as follows: "In the Unmatjera
and Kaitish tribes, while every old man has certain privileges denied to
the younger men, yet if he be decidedly infirm and unable to take his
part in the performance of ceremonies which are often closely
concerned--or so at least the natives believe them to be--with the
general welfare of the tribe, then the feeling undoubtedly is that there
is no need to pay any very special respect to his remains. This feeling
is probably vaguely associated with the idea that, as his body is
infirm, so to a corresponding extent will his spirit part be, and
therefore they have no special need to consider or propitiate this, as
it can do them no harm. On the other hand they are decidedly afraid of
hurting the feelings of any strong man who might be capable of doing
them some mischief unless he saw that he was properly mourned for.
Acting under much the same feeling they pay respect to the bodies of
dead children and young women, in the hope that the spirit will soon
return and undergo reincarnation. It is also worth noticing that they do
not