Boris wrote on Aug 15
th, 2023 at 8:02am:
They ate babies soon after birth
“The natives to the south eat human flesh. It is said that they engage in regular human hunting parties for this purpose … It is even said that they roast and eat their own infants, if they succeed each other too quickly. Only last year a woman not far from here did it, and when reproved for so doing, by means of an interpreter (for they speak a different language), she was surprised at being found fault with, as she considered the roasting and eating of her own child as something quite natural.” (Rev. Louis Schulze, missionary, “The Aborigines of the Upper and Middle Finke River: Their Habits and Customs”, in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, vol. 14, 1891.)
“Mr Willshire declares that infanticide is a very common crime among the natives, and that lubras [Aboriginal women] as a rule kill off their surplus offspring, two being considered a full family. A sable matron once owned to him that she had killed three of her five children immediately after birth, and remarked, ‘me bin keep em one boy one girl, no good keep em mob, him too much wantem tuckout’.” — Review of W.H. Willshire’s The Aborigines of Central Australia, in the South Australian Register, May 14, 1889.
“In parts of New South Wales such as Bathurst, Goulburn, the Lachlan or Macquarie, it was customary long ago for the first-born of every lubra to be eaten by the tribe, as part of a religious ceremony; and I recollect a blackfellow who had, in compliance with the custom, been thrown when an infant on the fire, but was rescued and brought up by some stock-keepers who happened accidentally to be passing at the time. The marks of the burns were distinctly visible on the man when I saw him, and his story was well known in the locality.” –– R. Brough Smith, The Aborigines of Victoria, Volume One, 1878.
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