Abstract
IN May of last year (1908) I had the good fortune to meet the Bishop of North Queensland (Dr. Frodsham) at Liverpool, and he gave me in conversation some valuable information as to the native Australian beliefs and customs based on his personal knowledge of the aborigines. He told me that he had travelled among the Arunta as well as among various North Queensland tribes, and he asked me whether I was aware that the Australian aborigines do not believe children to be the fruit of the intercourse of the sexes. His Lordship informed me that this incredulity is not limited to the Arunta, but is shared by all the North Queensland tribes with which he is acquainted, and he added that it forms a fact which has to be reckoned with in the introduction of a higher standard of sexual morality among the aborigines, for they do not naturally accept the true explanation of conception and childbirth even after their admission into mission stations. The Bishop also referred to a form of communal or group marriage which he believes to be practised among aboriginal tribes he has visited on the western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, but, unfortunately, I had not time to obtain particulars from him on this subject.
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FRAZER, J. Beliefs and Customs of the Australian Aborigines. Nature 81, 275 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/081275a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/081275a0
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