If the mother died in childbirth her offspring was buried alive with
her. When a man attained puberty, he was bound to submit to certain
ceremonies, some of them painful, and dictated by phallic superstitions.
Funeral rites were simple: the corpse was either burnt, with howls and
superstitious functions, or it was placed in the hollow trunk of a tree
in a sitting position, with the chin supported by the knees, as was the
custom with Peruvian mummies; and the belief in another world prompted
them to place the weapons and utensils used, during life beside the
corpse. Sometimes a wooden lance, with fragments of human bones affixed
to it, was placed below the tumulus, as a defence for the dead during
his long sleep. It appears from these customs, and from others mentioned
by Clarke, that they had a vague idea of another life, holding that the
shades went up to inhabit the stars, or flew to a distant island where
they were born again as white men. These beliefs were necessarily
connected with the rites which they fulfilled when living, and served as
a kind of obscure sanction for them.

Milligan and Nixon tell us that the Tasmanians believed in the existence
of evil and sometimes of avenging spirits, destroyers of the guilty.
They supposed that the shades of their friends or enemies returned, and
caused good or evil to befal them; and according to Milligan there were
four kinds of spirits. Purely superstitious rites were used for
marriage. Old women and witches were often the arbiters of peace and war
between the tribes, and they had the right of pardoning. Sorcerers
intervened in many social acts, and before beginning their operations
and incantations they revolved the mysterious _Mooyumkarr_, an oval
piece of wood with a cord, which was certainly connected with phallic
superstitions. Bonwick asserts that on many private and public
occasions, the more skilled sorcerers called up spirits with appropriate
ceremonies and formulas. They were powerful, and produced diseases, and