spirit in Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of several tribes of aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia

Record context

Record ID

3227

Source

Internet Archive

Publication

Australian Aborigines: the languages and customs of several tribes of aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia; James Dawson

Published

1881 public-domain western Victorian ethnographic source exposed through an exact Internet Archive item

Narrative type

Spirit-Person Narratives

Public-text label

spirit

Archive period

Gold Rush Colonial

Location

Western District, VIC (VIC): B

State or territory

VIC

Source voice

Source Grounded Section Record

Publicness

Public Text Item

Source-grounded excerpt

aborigines of Victoria at the time of its first occupation by the white man. Some of the ideas described above may possibly have originated with the white man, and been transmitted from Sydney by one tribe to another. On the sea coast, opposite Deen Maar—now, unfortunately, called Julia Percy Island—there is a haunted cave called Tarn wirring, ‘ road of the spirits, which, the natives say, forms a passage between the mainland and the island, When anyone dies in the neighbourhood, the body is wrapped in grass and buried ; and if, afterwards, grass is found at the mouth of the cave, it is proof that a good spirit, called Puit puit.

The excerpt is presented as public-source context. Terminology belongs to the cited source and may be historical, contested, culturally specific, or outdated.

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