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Updated: June 1, 2025
In Australia, amongst the Euahlayi tribe, the mother who has lost her baby or her young child may yet believe that it is restored to her and born again in the form of another child.
But if we put ourselves in the position of opponents whom he was trying to convert, of the two Marys for example, we cannot but perceive that his method was hopelessly mistaken. In attempting to evangelise an Euahlayi black fellow, we should not begin by threats of damnation, and by railing accusations against his god, Baiame.
Among the great Kamilaroi tribe, akin in speech to the Euahlayi, the names of phratries, DILBI and KUPATHIN, are of unknown significance. The Euahlayi names, we have seen, are Gwaigulleeah, Light blooded, and Gwaimudthen, Dark blooded.
Ridley translated our 'God' by 'Baiame. He supposed that native term, which he found and did not introduce, to be a derivative from the verb BAIA, or BIAI, 'to make. Literally, however, at least in Euahlayi, the word BYAMEE means 'great one. In its sense as the name of the All Father it is not supposed to be used by women or by the uninitiated.
The term for the being called 'The All Father' by Mr. Howitt is also the term used by the Wir djuri and Kamilaroi, 'Baiame' or 'Byamee. The Euahlayi, however, possess myths, beliefs, and usages not recorded as extant among the Kamilaroi, but rather forming a link with the ideas of peoples dwelling much further west, such as the tribes, on Lake Eyre, and the southernmost Arunta of the centre.
Moreover, the women of the Euahlayi have some knowledge of, and some means of, mystic access to Byamee, though they call him by another name. Byamee, in the first place, is to the Euahlayi what the 'Alcheringa' or 'Dream time' is to the Arunta.
The following pages are intended as a contribution to the study of the manners, customs, beliefs, and legends of the Aborigines of Australia. The area of my observation is mainly limited to the region occupied by the Euahlayi tribe of north-western New South Wales, who for twenty years were my neighbours on the Narran River.
The phratries have thus no presiding animals, and in the phratries there are no totem kins of the phratriac names. The cause of these peculiarities is matter of conjecture. A peculiarity in the totemic system of the Euahlayi the right of each individual to kill and eat his own totem has been mentioned, and may be associated here with other taboos on food.
Unmistakable traces of such a deity are found amongst the Australian black fellows in the "father of all," "the all-father" described by Mr. Howitt. The worship of the "all-father" is indeed now of a fragmentary kind; but it fortunately happens that in the case of one tribe, the Euahlayi, we have evidence, rescued by Mrs.
But though prayers are still offered by the Euahlayi and may have at one time been offered by all the Australian tribes, there is no evidence at present to show that the prayer is accompanied by a sacrifice, as is customary amongst tribes whose worship has not disintegrated so much as is the case amongst the Australians.
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