The massacre of Running Waters was the killing of 80 to 100 Arrernte (formerly known as Aranda) men, women and children of the Southern Aranda language group [1] of Aboriginal Australians by a raiding party of 50 to 60 Matuntara warriors [2] in 1875. The massacre took place at Irbmangkara, a permanent water stretch of the Finke River about 200 kilometres (120 mi) south-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia.
The Matuntara planned the attack as a punishment for an act of sacrilege by the neighbouring southern Arrernte. [3]
The account of what occurred at Irbmangkara is based on the writings of Lutheran anthropologist, linguist and genealogist Carl Strehlow, but the people of Hermannsburg have stated that the events have remained a shaping factor in the area's local politics.
The massacre was triggered thanks to a middle-aged man called Kalejika, who belonged to a Central Aranda local group. Kalejika paid a visit to Irbmangkara, and then told some Upper Southern Aranda men that Ltjabakuka, the aged and highly respected ceremonial chief of Irbmangkara, together with some of his assistant elders, had committed sacrilege by giving uninitiated boys men's blood to drink from a shield into which it had been poured for ritual purposes. Sacrilege was an offence always punished by death. [4]
According to historian Geoffrey Blainey, the party of Aboriginal warriors sent to avenge the sacrilege and selected Running Waters [as the place where the Southern Arrernte could be readily be surprised], "and timed their secret raid for... when their enemies were cooking their meals before making their beds on the ground". [3]
Three parties of warriors, hidden among the bushes of the nearby mountain slopes and in the undergrowth in the river bed at their foot, were watching the men and women of Irbmangkara returning to their camp; the armed men [then]... rushed in, like swift dingoes upon flock of unsuspecting emus. Spears and boomerangs flew with deadly aim. Within a matter of minutes Ltjabakuka and his men were lying lifeless in their blood at their brush shelters.[ according to whom? ][ citation needed ]
Then the warriors turned their murderous attention to the women and older children, and either speared or clubbed them to death. Finally, according to the grim custom of warriors and avengers, they broke the limbs of the infants, leaving them to die "natural deaths". The final number of the dead could well have reached the high figure of from 80 to 100 men, women, and children. [5] One of the Aranda women had merely pretended to be dead and escaped northward to raise the alarm. [1]
As a small boy, Moses Tjalkabota was greatly affected by the massacre, given that two of his friends and their mother were killed in the raid, [1] and he had himself witnessed the great clouds of smoke arising from the funeral pyres when the bodies were burnt the next day. [6] Much later, his reminiscences of the killings were recorded and translated into English, and in some details, they are the same when describing the ruthlessness of the raid. [1]
The first European explorers had arrived in this area in 1860 and, by 1872 to the east, the Overland Telegraph Line had been surveyed and constructed.[ citation needed ][ relevant? ]
The massacre occurred in 1875,[ citation needed ] two years before the Germans set up their Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg in 1877. [7] Tjalkabota, who was an Aboriginal translator for both Carl Strehlow (who led the mission from 1894 to 1922 [8] ) and his son Ted Strehlow, [9] was a young boy (6 to 9 years of age) at the time of the massacre and, according to researcher Peter Latz, "he recalls it [the massacre] in some detail". [10]
Carl Strehlow's recordings of the massacre appear in his grandson John Strehlow's historical biography of this grandparents. [11]
Ted Strehlow wrote a detailed account of the massacre in his 1969 book, Journey to Horseshoe Bend. [12]
Strehlow wrote of the massacre as an example of an incompatibility in integrating Indigenous Australian customary law with the modern Australian legal system. He describes the capital punishment enacted against the Arrernte people who were unwitting in the crime as an unacceptably harsh punishment in the Australian legal mind and contrary to mens rea. [13]
Professor Sam Gill of the University of Colorado Boulder has analysed Strehlow's account in his book Storytracking, published in 1998. He concluded that it was likely that something occurred at Irbangkara on a scale that was considered important by the peoples of the region. [14] Gill was assured by the local people at Hermannsburg/Ntaria that the events at Irbangkara remained a shaping factor in the local politics of the area, [15] and believed that a possible source of the evidence of manoeuvres and stealth of the Mantuntara attackers could have been an existing story tradition told by the Arrernte that was built on circumstantial evidence. [16] He also stated that there was independent evidence of subsequent attacks, one of a hunter survivor of the 1875 incident, Nameia, in 1890; [14] and where local constable William Willshire had been involved in the deaths of Aboriginal people at nearby Tempe Downs Station in 1891. [14]
However, Gill noted that Strehlow's accounts are embellished with a literary trope [17] and go beyond reporting the events, [14] and that the account must be read in light of Strehlow's role as a missionary, academic and literary figure in order for the account to be critically appreciated and responsibly used. [18]
The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal beliefs. It was originally used by Francis Gillen, quickly adopted by his colleague Baldwin Spencer and thereafter popularised by A. P. Elkin, who, however, later revised his views.
Tjilpa is the name given to a marsupial cat amongst the Arrernte language group of Australian Aboriginal people. There are many Dreamtime stories of tribes of ancestral Tjilpa-men, who had a significant mythological role. The geographical range of these stories includes Aranda, Anmatyerre, Kaytetye, Ngalia, Ilpara and Kukatja lands.
Hermannsburg, also known as Ntaria, is an Aboriginal community in Ljirapinta Ward of the MacDonnell Shire in the Northern Territory of Australia, 125 kilometres (78 mi); west southwest of Alice Springs, on the Finke River, in the traditional lands of the Western Arrarnta people.
Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer, commonly referred to as Baldwin Spencer, was a British-Australian evolutionary biologist, anthropologist and ethnologist. He is known for his fieldwork with Aboriginal peoples in Central Australia, contributions to the study of ethnography, and academic collaborations with Frank Gillen. Spencer introduced the study of zoology at the University of Melbourne and held the title of Emeritus Professor until his death in 1929. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1900 and knighted in 1916.
Theodor George Henry Strehlow was an Australian anthropologist and linguist. He notably studied the Arrernte Aboriginal Australians and their language in Central Australia.
A Tjurunga, also spelt Churinga and Tjuringa, is an object considered to be of religious significance by Central Australian Aboriginal people of the Arrernte groups. Tjurunga often had a wide and indeterminate native significance. They may be used variously in sacred ceremonies, as bullroarers, in sacred ground paintings, in ceremonial poles, in ceremonial headgear, in sacred chants and in sacred earth mounds.
Carl Friedrich Theodor Strehlow was an anthropologist, linguist and genealogist who served on two Lutheran missions in remote parts of Australia from May 1892 to October 1922. He was at Killalpaninna Mission in northern South Australia, from 1892 to 1894, and then Hermannsburg, 80 miles (130 km) west of Alice Springs, from 1894 to 1922. Strehlow was assisted by his wife Friederike, who played a central role in reducing the high infant mortality which threatened Aboriginal communities all over Australia after the onset of white settlement.
Arrernte or Aranda or sometimes referred to as Upper Arrernte, is a dialect cluster in the Arandic language group spoken in parts of the Northern Territory, Australia, by the Arrernte people. Other spelling variations are Arunta or Arrarnta, and all of the dialects have multiple other names.
The Arrerntepeople, sometimes referred to as the Aranda, Arunta or Arrarnta, are a group of Aboriginal Australian peoples who live in the Arrernte lands, at Mparntwe and surrounding areas of the Central Australia region of the Northern Territory. Many still speak one of the various Arrernte dialects. Some Arrernte live in other areas far from their homeland, including the major Australian cities and overseas.
Ntaria Choir, formerly known as Ntaria Ladies Choir, Hermannsburg Ladies Choir, Hermannsburg Choir], and various other names, is a choir of Australian Aboriginal people from Hermannsburg in Central Australia. The members of the choir are Arrernte people from the area and they sing a mixture of English, Arrente, and Pitjantjatjara.
Moritz Freiherr von Leonhardi was a German anthropologist.
The Anmatyerr, also spelt Anmatyerre, Anmatjera, Anmatjirra, Amatjere and other variations) are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory, who speak one of the Upper Arrernte languages.
Arrernte Sign Language, or Aranda Sign Language, also known as Iltyeme-iltyeme (handsigns), is a highly developed Australian Aboriginal sign language used by the Arrernte people of central Australia.
Peter Kenneth Latz is an agrostologist, botanist, ethnobotanist, and author from Central Australia. For 55 years he worked with the Eastern and Western Arrernte, Alyawarre, Anmatyerre, Pintupi/Luritja, Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara, and Warlpiri people to organise and share their cultural and scientific knowledge of central Australian plants. In many areas of Australia this knowledge has been lost, but it has been preserved in the Red Centre as a result of this lifelong collaboration. He has published articles and books on Australian plants, particularly on arid grasses and vegetation and Aboriginal plant use.
Friederike Johanna Henriette Strehlow née Keysser better known as Frieda Strehlow, was a German missionary who lived and worked at Hermannsburg in the Northern Territory of Australia in the early 1900s. She was best known for overcoming the high rate of infant mortality for Aboriginal children.
The Matuntara are an Indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory.
The Luritja or Loritja people, also known as Kukatja or Kukatja-Luritja, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Northern Territory. Their traditional lands are immediately west of the Derwent River, that forms a frontier with the Arrernte people, with their lands covering some 27,000 square kilometres (10,300 sq mi). Their language is the Luritja dialect, a Western Desert language.
Bertha Gwendoline Alexandra Strehlow was an educator and pioneer, the first wife of Ted Strehlow, an anthropologist and linguist who worked primarily with the Arrernte People. Although she is often forgotten, Strehlow was her husband's main supporter, and edited his works; she also published some accounts of their activities.
Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht was a Lutheran missionary and pastor who was the superintendent at Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia from 1926 to 1952 where he made a significant contribution.
John Strehlow is an Australian stage director, playwright, and author. He is known for his workThe tale of Frieda Keysser: Frieda Keysser & Carl Strehlow, an historical biography, about his grandparents, Lutheran missionaries Carl and Frieda Strehlow, who served for many years at Hermannsburg Mission in the Northern Territory.