Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central Australia And Overland From Adelaide To King George's Sound In The Years 1840-1: Sent By The Colonists Of South Australia By Eyre, Edward John
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Mr. Moorhouse, Who Has Taken
Great Pains In His Inquiries Among The Natives Around Adelaide Upon
Questions Of This Nature,
States that they believe in a Soul or Spirit
(itpitukutya), separate and distinct altogether from the body, which
at death
Goes to the west, to a large pit, where the souls of all men go.
When all are dead, the souls will return to their former place of
residence, go to the graves of their forsaken bodies, and inquire,
are these the bodies that we formerly inhabited? The bodies will reply,
"we are not dead, but still living." The souls and bodies will not be
re-united; the former will live in trees during the day, and at night
alight on the ground, and eat grubs, lizards, frogs, and kangaroo rats,
but not vegetable food of any description. The souls are never again
to die, but will remain about the size of a boy eight years old.
[Note 86: "For that practice, they are, as far as I could learn, unable to
give any other reason than that of its being the custom of their
forefathers which they are therefore bound to follow." - Burchell's
Bichuana tribes, vol. ii. p. 531.]
The account given me by some of the natives of the Murray of the origin
of the creation, is, that there are four individuals living up among the
clouds, called Nooreele, a father and his three male children, but there
is no mother. The father is all-powerful, and of benevolent character.
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