R. H. Mathews recognised that ceremonial life was integral to the social cohesion of Aboriginal communities. The practice of initiation, he explained, ‘tends to strengthen the civil authority of the elders of the tribe and enables them to administer the laws in a more effectual manner’. Strengthened through ritual, Aboriginal law possesses ‘all the force of divine precepts … or the might of divine authority’.^[1] Mathews’ interest in ritualistic practices dates from the beginning of his career as an ethnographer. His first publication in 1893, a paper on rock art, was quickly followed by a description of a Bora ceremony, held by Kamilaroi people at Gundabloui in 1894.^[2] He returned to the subject of Kamilaroi initiation in his last paper, ‘Description of Two Bora Grounds of the Kamilaroi Tribe’ (1917), published the year before his death.^[3]

In the intervening years, Mathews wrote extensively on ceremonial life, mostly in southeast Australia. His more limited descriptions of ceremonies in South Australia and the Northern Territory were written with the aid of correspondents. Of his 171 anthropological publications, 50 are partly or wholly concerned with ceremony. The majority consist of a detailed description of the initiation ritual practised by a particular community.^[4] As early as 1897, Mathews could claim to have documented the initiations of about three quarters of the land mass of New South Wales.^[5] His publications continued well beyond that date, and, had he collected all his writings on the subject, they would have made a substantial book.

It should be emphasised that the subject here is ceremony and not corroboree (with which it is sometimes conflated). Mathews recognised this distinction, as we see in the ‘The Mŭltyerra Initiation Ceremony’, translated here. Explaining how people filled the time as they assembled from disparate locations, he stated that ‘corroborees were held nearly every fine night during which the different contingents took it in turns to provide the evening entertainment’. Corroboree is, as Mathews realised, a form of campfire entertainment, typically involving music and dance, and accessible to all. Ceremony, in contrast, concerns the sacred, ritualistic life of the community and in a secret-sacred society, participation is often restricted according to gender and seniority.

Mathews’ first paper on the Bora at Gundabloui opens with a brief literature review—evidence of the time he spent in libraries, scouring historical sources for descriptions of ritual.^[6] From the earliest days of British settlement in Australia, a few Europeans witnessed secret-sacred rituals or received information about them. Mathews mentions the well-known observations in An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1804) by the First Fleet chronicler David Collins. He also consulted John Henderson’s Observations on the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (1832) and various works by Rev William Ridley including Kamilaroi and Other Australian Languages (1875), a book he cited frequently in his work on New South Wales. Equally, or perhaps more, important, although not mentioned in the survey of literature, were several writings on initiation, dating from the 1880s, by Mathews’ eventual rival, A. W. Howitt. In a valuable study of Howitt’s methods and exposition, the archaeologist and historian D. J. Mulvaney gives an account of Howitt’s role in opening up the secret-sacred life of Aboriginal people to the scientific gaze.^[7]

Mulvaney argues that in contrast to the often brief and sometimes casual observations of earlier writers, Howitt produced detailed narratives of ceremony from an ‘inside’ perspective. Mathews certainly read this work in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, and it is likely that the narrative structure of Howitt’s paper ‘The Jeraeil, or Initiation Ceremonies of the Kurnai Tribe’ (1885) influenced his deliberations about how a long and complex ceremony is best described.^[8] But there are many differences between the two writers; among them Mathews’ surveying background which led him to measure and map the ceremonial grounds (usually forest clearings connected by pathways). Many of his initiation papers contain detailed maps of the sites. He also prepared line drawings that illustrate the sacred motifs often carved into tree trunks or cut into the ground. Indeed, Howitt’s relative deficiency in mapping ceremonial sites, and his vagueness about locations, may have played a role in the drastic falling out between the two men. In ‘The Būrbŭng of the Wiradthuri Tribes’ (1896), one of Mathews’ early contributions to Journal of the Anthropological Institute, he took the liberty of including maps that detailed the locations of ceremonies described by Howitt in his articles ‘On some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation’ and ‘The Jeraeil, or Initiation Ceremonies of the Kurnai Tribe’, published in the Journal some 10 years earlier.^[9] There is no suggestion of malice on Mathews’ part; in the article he refers to Howitt as his ‘friend and co-worker’—a description almost surreal in light of their later feuding.^[10] But Howitt drew scant comfort from the knowledge that Mathews was taking an interest in his ‘own’ areas of southern New South Wales and Victoria, let alone adding postscripts to his work. Describing the incident to Baldwin Spencer, he wrote: ‘[s]ince I saw you I have found that our “friend” Mathews described the Bora ground & the proceedings therein … At any rate his description (Journ. Anth. Inst. 1896) relates to the very same locality’.^[11]

At the beginning of this volume I cited the testimony of Mathews’ friend W. J. Enright who described the readiness with which Mathews was accepted as an initiated man by the Aboriginal community at Port Stephens. Mathews was highly respectful of ceremonial traditions, and it is likely that differences in attitude to secret-sacred matters worsened the relationship between him and Howitt, which became overtly hostile in 1898 (see the general introduction to this volume). Unlike Mathews, who in his many writings on this subject endeavoured to describe ceremonies in fairly objective terms, Howitt’s paper on the Jeraeil reveals a sort of role play in which the anthropologist casts himself as a ceremonial leader. In saying this, it should be acknowledged that the Kurnai people of Gippsland had reportedly not held a major Jeraeil since the 1850s. The event witnessed by Howitt in 1884 was something of a staged revival, performed at his request.^[12] Even so, there is quite a degree of fantasy with which Howitt portrays himself as ‘tribal elder’, to use Mulvaney’s phrase. Not just an observer, he portrays himself as the instigator of the proceedings: ‘[t]hus, in calling together the Jeraeil which I describe in this paper, I sent out my messengers to the headman of the Brabra clan in August, and the Jeraeil was held at the end of January following.’^[13]

Even in the long and extravagant tradition of whitefellows claiming positions of ‘high degree’ in Aboriginal knowledge systems, Howitt’s approach was ethically dubious. Mulvaney reveals that he used various ruses, including the manufacture of a bullroarer, to create the impression that Aboriginal men in other parts of the country had inducted him into their sacred rites.^[14] It seems that some of the Kurnai had serious misgivings about the way secret information had been divulged to Howitt.^[15] It is possible that some of these rumblings reached Mathews, who had many connections with the Aboriginal communities of the New South Wales South Coast and through them the culturally connected areas of eastern Victoria. As mentioned earlier, there is oral testimony from this part of the country that Mathews himself went through the rites of initiation, but he made no claims to this effect (see the general introduction to this volume). Whatever the truth of the claim, it is easy to see how Howitt’s self-casting as ceremonial ringleader would have rankled with Mathews. The latter took a very different path in investigating ceremony, and in terms of the territory and number of communities covered, he went much further.

*

Although extensive, Mathews’ study of ceremonial life was strictly demarcated. Not only did he focus almost exclusively on male initiation, but he dealt predominantly with its initial rites. Anthropologists such as Elkin have shown how the first stage of initiation is only a part of a greater educational process with many degrees of induction.^[16] Thus preoccupied, Mathews said little about other aspects of ritual. Mourning rites, for example, are enormously important throughout Australia, and Mathews himself knew something about the subject, as we see in his work on material culture. He wrote five papers, all fairly similar, that describe the manufacture and use of ‘kopai balls’ and ‘widow’s caps’—gypsum artefacts associated with burial rites and mourning along the Darling River and its tributaries.^[17] He also wrote descriptive papers about the shaped and incised stones, often referred to as ‘cylcons’ or cylindro-conical stones. These artefacts apparently served ceremonial or medicinal purposes, with an importance similar to that of the tjurunga in Central Australia. Mathews recorded evidence for their use in increase ceremonies in western New South Wales. One of these papers suggests a possible reason for his failure to explore such matters further. Information was provided by Harry Perry, a Nawalgu man, who stated that the stones ‘were used in incantations for producing an abundant supply of nardoo and other seed bearing plants, as well as for an increase in game and fish’.^[18] Although ‘an old aboriginal’ (who had died at the time of writing), Perry had never seen an increase ceremony performed. The account he gave to Mathews was told to him by his father.

Harry Perry’s experience was part of a broader pattern. With the incursion of white people and their hard-footed livestock, yam beds were compacted and destroyed. Native grasses disappeared with the introduction of exotic species. The artefacts associated with both ritual and sustenance (if the two categories are really separable) were distributed through the traditional territories. This made them extremely vulnerable. Even the heavy grindstones, used for milling the spore cases of nardoo and the seeds of native grasses, were trampled and broken by cattle. So the fragile objects made from gypsum and left upon graves had no chance of survival. The rise of antiquarianism brought its own dangers, as Aboriginal artefacts and bodily remains became fetishised by collectors. It is worth mentioning that apart from the small number of bullroarers discussed below, Mathews did not amass a collection of artefacts. At least none is mentioned in an inventory of his possessions, drawn up after his death.^[19] The objects described in his writings on material culture were borrowed from collectors such as E. J. Suttor, a grazier from Tilpa on the Darling River, who picked them up by the cartload.^[20] The removal or destruction of sacred objects played its own part in contributing to the despair felt by Aboriginal people at the loss of life, tradition and territory. Old ways were abandoned, sometimes by necessity and sometimes for strategic purpose. Given the importance in Aboriginal culture of being laid to rest in one’s ancestral country, burial in a Christian cemetery might have seemed a safer prospect than a traditional entombment where the bones could be easily robbed.^[21]

This complex historical situation was the context for Mathews’ documentation of initiatory practices. In the case of southeast Australia, his writings on the subject constitute the most important documentary evidence concerning such rituals. Like any body of evidence, the documentation presents problems of interpretation. Are these writings a reflection of what Mathews chose to document, or were the older men particularly keen to discuss this aspect of their culture with a trustworthy outsider? Could it be that Aboriginal people made special efforts to maintain these traditions when other rites had fallen into abeyance? Perhaps all these questions can be answered in the affirmative. The tradition of ‘man-making’ was enormously important, and if we read Mathews carefully we get some intimation of the factors that allowed it to endure; among them the unique requirements of location. Although the actual rituals were secret-sacred, they involved a great coming together of entire communities, often from a wide catchment. People from Cobar, for example, travelled 200 km to reach one of the events described by Mathews.^[22] As ‘The Mŭltyerra Initiation Ceremony’ makes clear, there was a festival atmosphere as the different mobs arrived. It is important to bear in mind the diverse aspects of ceremony, ranging in mood from the highly serious to the carnivalesque. This diversity, combined with the affirmation of kinship ties, and the aesthetic quality of the performances, helps explain the determination to keep initiations going when other rituals had perished, just as it explains the readiness of older people to supply Mathews with detailed descriptions of initiations in areas where they were no longer practised.

Outsiders have come to think of initiation as a painful ‘ordeal’, but this is a gross over-simplification. During recent research in western Arnhem Land, I discussed film footage of the Wubarr ceremony (a genre of initiation not performed since the 1970s) with older men who had participated in the rite.^[23] So intense was the affection for the ceremony and the wonderful memories prompted by the film, that one man spoke of it in terms of endearment normally reserved for a lover. Although Mathews’ investigations were confined to men’s ceremonies (a reflection, of course, of his gender) men, women and children were all brought together by these events. Entertainment occurred every evening, and in some communities a degree of sexual liberty was permitted. When all the tribes had assembled, the neophytes were ceremonially taken from their mothers. They were led by the men to the place of the ceremony proper. Although strictly out of bounds to non-initiates, it was never far from the main encampment where women and children remained. Where topography permitted, as it usually did in coastal regions, rugged and forested sites—less attractive to settlers—were invariably chosen. This in itself might explain why some continued as long as they did, even when the bulk of a community’s ancestral territory had been seized by Europeans.

Colonisation affected the initiation rituals in a variety of ways. We know from Mathews’ reportage that sometimes rituals were adapted so people could make sense of their historical situation. At one Bora site visited by Mathews the motifs cut into the ceremonial ground included a train complete with carriages, windows, wheels and rails; a bullock attached to a colossal chain; and the four aces from a deck of cards.^[24] Not all settlers in the 1890s and early 1900s were opposed to Aboriginal ceremony. Many depended on Aboriginal labour and some were prepared to indulge their employees with periods of vacation for the pursuit of traditional business. Some graziers provided food,^[25] and for a time there was the possibility of government largesse. Mathews notes that the New South Wales Aborigines’ Protection Board supplied rations for the 98 people who attended a Wiradjuri initiation in 1893.^[26] The Bora at Gundabloui received similar support the following year.^[27] Mathews later wrote:

Mathews’ admission that he and other whites prolonged the Tallwood ceremony raises further questions about the impact of observers on the display of traditional culture. In this case, which occurred during a time of drought and limited employment, prolonging the ceremony was a strategy for survival. Mathews’ observation also points to the double standards at work in the competitive world of Australian anthropology. The same year that he wrote this, he chastised W. Baldwin Spencer for providing Arrernte people at Alice Springs with food and other inducements to ‘rehearse all their old ceremonies’. Mathews complained that this had misled some English commentators into thinking ‘that the Arunta natives possess a higher degree of culture than other Australian savages’.^[29]

Initiations might have endured longer than other forms of ceremony, but their future was far from certain. The writings translated here describe initiations from western New South Wales, northeast Victoria and southern Queensland. Mathews was not a witness to any of these ceremonies. Rather, as he writes of the Queensland ritual, the information was ‘obtained by me direct from the mouths of old natives of the region indicated, who had themselves passed through all the stages of the Bundandaba ceremony’. In fact, Mathews attended very few of the ceremonies he documented, not always from want of trying. Flooding prevented him from reaching the 1893 Wiradjuri initiation; the late arrival of several contingents forced him to depart before the commencement of the Tallwood Bora in 1895. However, these setbacks did not prevent him from writing about the ceremonies. He walked the sacred grounds with senior men who narrated a chronology of the ritual. Sometimes they acted out parts of it for him. Marked trees, ground drawings and other features of the site were carefully documented. While the limitations of this method are self-evident, it had some advantages. Mathews gained a clear idea of events that occurred in darkness, and he was often in a position to describe the activities that occurred in the women’s camp while the men and neophytes were absent. The names of many Aboriginal women are listed in Mathews’ field books, so it is possible that he spoke to women about these matters. The descriptions are sufficiently detailed to suggest that female informants were his source. The fact that Mathews was approaching 60 when he began this work might have affected his success in gaining information. With old age it seems that the rules of secrecy between men and women were loosened. Confidences were sometimes shared between husbands and wives on ceremonial matters.^[30]

Mathews’ general conviction that Aboriginal traditions were rapidly disappearing was confirmed by much of his work on ceremonies. By the turn of the century the tradition was very much in decline. In Invasion to Embassy (1996), a study of land and Aboriginal politics, Heather Goodall describes the brutal impact of government policy on Aboriginal life in New South Wales.^[31] In the early twentieth century, cajoled by settlers who wanted a greater distance between themselves and the Aboriginal population, the Aborigines’ Protection Board began to relocate large segments of the Indigenous population to institutions known as Aboriginal stations. It was a far cry from supporting Aboriginal ceremony through provision of rations. All aspects of traditional culture suffered from this uprooting and amalgamation of disparate groups. The effect on community life was devastating, since many children were sent to institutions or apprenticed to settlers, far from their families. Mathews’ writings on initiation were increasingly informed by older men who took him to ceremonial grounds now overgrown, recalling events that had occurred decades earlier.

Jimmie Barker (1900-75), the Muruwari man whose autobiographical tape recordings were collected and written up by Janet Mathews (granddaughter-in-law of R. H.), related how he missed out on initiation by just a few years. Prior to being sent to the Brewarrina Aboriginal Station, Barker lived with his mother’s people near the Culgoa River. He was only 11 when two senior men raised the possibility of his initiation. ‘The normal age for going through the bora was fourteen and Mother refused them firmly, saying that she considered I was too young.’^[32] The implication here is that the elders proposed a premature initiation because they feared the ceremony would not occur again—as seems to have been the case. R. H. Mathews, however, published an account of it in ‘Initiation Ceremonies of the Murawarri and Other Aboriginal Tribes of Queensland’ (1906-07).^[33] While ceremonies in so many areas declined, memories of them were retained and there are numerous examples of twentieth-century revival, even in areas long-settled by whites. Writing of the North Coast of New South Wales in the 1930s, Elkin described a deliberate ‘return’ to tradition as a means of dealing with the exigencies of poverty and colonial dispossession.

Elkin was convinced that regimes of secrecy were an understandable response to the racial segregation experienced by these communities.

Obviously, there is much more that could be said about so important a subject, documented at such length. Mathews’ writings on initiation are essential reading for understanding the influence of Baiame, the great creation hero of southeast Australia, who was honoured in many of the rituals. And they tell us much about the degree to which he was trusted by Aboriginal elders. Unlike Howitt, who made his own bullroarer in a bid for status as an initiate, Mathews was entrusted with bullroarers as gifts from both Kamilaroi and Wiradjuri people. These sacred instruments were at the heart of the rituals he described.^[36]

The three articles reproduced here are all translated from the German. They are evidence of the international interest in the subject. Mathews’ writings on Australian ceremony, like those of his rivals Spencer and Howitt, were studied closely by Europeans and cited, for example, by his Parisian friend Arnold van Gennep, in his classic study Les Rites de Passage (The Rites of Passage) (1909). Only one of these three articles, the description of the Birdhawal initiation from Victoria, had an English-language version—and it was abridged.^[37] The description of the Bundandaba ritual from Queensland has a special place in Mathews’ writings on ceremony, which were almost exclusively concerned with the initiatory rites that followed the removal of the adolescent boy from his mother. As already noted, this was only the first stage of a process that occurred incrementally over a number of years. The Bundandaba, as Mathews explains, is a secondary ritual, performed after the Toara ceremony, which he had described in 1900.^[38]

Even after the lapse of 100 years, the translation and republication of these articles pose ethical quandaries, given that the descendant communities have strong feelings about the material. To ensure that publication would not violate contemporary values about the status of secret-sacred knowledge, the texts were sent to relevant community organisations and in some cases individuals. No objections were expressed, although members of the Kurnu community in western New South Wales requested that a few sections from ‘The Mŭltyerra Initiation Ceremony’ be edited out because it was felt that they might not be understood by non-Aboriginal people, and could be used to ridicule or stigmatise Aboriginal customs. The process of discussing the articles with descendants of people who worked with Mathews brought many insights. One of the men consulted told me how he discussed the matter in a general way with several senior women, although he did not go into the detail of the ceremony. ‘I explained to them that it was a man’s initiation ceremonial paper, but there are things we could pull out to help teach the young girls too, because a lot of it is about discipline and respect. They all agreed.’^[39] Mindful of its educational value and its potential to strengthen the contemporary culture, many Aboriginal people see enduring value in Mathews’ research.