Ngarkat

Last updated

The Ngarkat is a recorded title of a tribal group from South Australia. The Ngarkat lands had linked the mallee peoples of Victoria and South Australia to the river peoples of the Murray River Murraylands. Ngarkat language has been loosely grouped with Peramangk language though not by linguists, and the grouping was perhaps partly owed to the co-ownership of lands in both the Ninety Mile Desert and Echunga by John Barton Hack, and partly to the occasional meeting of tribes. The language of the Ngarkat was recorded as being Boraipur by Ryan in recent times [1] though sources were not given, while it may yet be telling that the citing work concerns Mallee peoples to the east. The language may have been midway between that of mallee peoples to the east, and that of peoples to the west recorded by Teichelmann and Schurman. [2] It is known that songlines linked the Coorong to the Mallee regions, [3] hence went through Ngarkat land. It is also known that Ngarkat people did meet regularly with tribes to the east, at sites along the Murray. [4] [5]

Contents

Country

The Ngarkat's traditional lands have been estimated by Norman Tindale to have extended over some 8,700 square miles (23,000 km2) of the Mallee scrub belt lying east of the Murray River. They took in Alawoona south as far as Pinnaroo, Taunta, Keith, Tintinara, and Coonalpyn. Their eastern boundaries reached Tatiara and about Murrayville [6] [a] Kimber argued that Tindale had pushed the Ngarkat territorial extension into lands properly possessed by the Wotjobaluk to their east, and takes the Jackegilbrab around Bordertown as belonging to the latter, but a distinct tribe. [8]

Ecology

The Ngarkat lived on a largely waterless karst plateau. [9] Rainfall varies from 8 inches in the north to 18 in the south. Winters can be freezing, while temperatures could hit 118 °F (48 °C) in summer, though averaging 100 °F (38 °C). In no part of the land was there a single perennial stream; water was found in soakages, by working mallee roots or culling whatever hollow trees retained, or rock cleavages held. Waterskins were manufactured from kangaroo and wallaby hides. [10]

The lack of surface water determined much of their lifestyle. Neighbouring tribes such as the Warki, Jarildekald, and Portaulun lived in areas where they could hunt and trap animals, fish and ducks, and such resources enabled a more settled tribal existence. [11] The Ngarkat, conversely, were an ever-shifting nomadic people, lacking even a fixed nomenclature for the mallee groves where they pitched camp and drew water from the mallee roots. The few stable points of return, which allowed a seasonal living base, were named and the lore of the ancestral beings of each clan developed only in such places. [12] [13]

In periods of severe drought the Ngarkat withdrew to the Devon Downs Rock-shelter, [b] called Ngautngaut , on the Murray River, to which they were permitted access by a track down the cliff. In local mythology this Ngautngaut was a Being who dwelt in the mallee scrubland, who had been murdered when he knelt down on his knees to slake his thirst at a water-hole. [c] [d]

Social organization

The Ngarkat subtribal units were widely dispersed given the scarcity of water [16] and were divided into six hordes, according to an old Tatiara informant: [e]

Material culture

The Ngarkat faced a particular problem in making implements, millstones, hammers and axes, since suitable stone or rock materials were quite rare in their area. Onsets of highly arid weather, on draining soakages, yield evidence, aside from skeletons, of tools fashioned from chert, quartzite and jasp-opal. [8]

Despite its arid inhospitable terrain, Ngarkat territory was crisscrossed by trade routes, from Lake Hindmarsh to Bordertown, from Nhill to Murrayville and Pinnaroo, from the Wirrurgren Plain north of Lake Albacutya through Pinnaroo country to the Murray Bridge area. The items bartered along these trails were things like yabbyclaw necklaces, pipe clay, red ochre, diorite stone axes, and the like. [19]

Relations with other tribes

The Ngarkat, who often had to seek water on other tribal lands, had difficult relations with several tribes. One aetiological legend, according to the Ngarrindjeri elder Matt Rigney, explains the pink waters of Lake Bumbunga, often called by settlers "Pink Lake", as the outcome of a bloody battle between the Ngarrindjeri and the Ngarkat which left many slain warriors in its waters. [20]

Their lands were considered in surrounding tribal lore as dangerous and "legends of fear" circulated concerning its proneness to hurricanes, or its putative infestation by malign spirits. Its Tatiara denizens were said to prey on human flesh, though ritual cannibalism was also attested among many other tribes, and was not uncommon. had the Ngarkat practised it, in times of extreme scarcity of food, they would not have been an exception. [19]

History of contact

The explorer Edward Eyre passed through Ngarkat lands during his 1940-1841 travels. He wrote of the tribe (calling them Arkatko [f] ) that they shared similar "dialects" but were mutually unintelligible unless a common third dialect was used to bridge misunderstandings. [g]

According to Richard Glyn Kimber only 50 of the Jackegilbrab horde survived into the mid-1840s, attributing the decline to disease. [22] It has also been suggested that many of the Ngarkat were massacred though it is unclear by who. A burial site of 70 skeletons weas documented at a soakage in the Lameroo district by early pioneers. [23]

The tribal name has been restored and conserved in the South Australian landscape by the establishment of a locality called Ngarkat, and by setting aside part of its traditional land as the Ngarkat Conservation Park.

Alternative names

Tribal exonyms

Notes

  1. ↑ Ronald Berndt placed them on the western side of Lake Alexandrina opposite the Jarildekald on the eastern banks [7]
  2. ↑ Devon Downs Rock Shelter was to become the first site of an Australian archaeological dig. It was conducted by Norman Tindale and Herbert Hale in 1929. Their stratification analysis established a seminal framework for the periodization of habitative sequences on the Australian continent. [14] [15]
  3. ↑ Tindale cites Mathews, 1904 (Gr. 6452) p. 367. This is a slight error: the reference should be G6451 [16]
  4. ↑ Ngautngaut, of the mythical ngurumba-nguttya people, murdered blacks to suck their blood. He was immune to injury, save for one part of his body: his Achilles’ heel was his tongue. The twin Brambambulaty brothers of northwestern Victorian mythology set up a trap to kill him. They created a spring at one of his lurking places, Gurabo, and stuck in the water a sharpened legbone from a kangaroo. Then they assumed the form of two dead trees nearby. Coming to the site, Ngautngaut could sense their presence, and shook the trunks, but both appeared to be rotting, Still uneasy, he left, and the trees "sang" a duet to induce him to be more thirsty. Three times the scene repeated itself. Then he bent down almost touching the surface of the water with his mouth, but again, wary, several times he withdrew. Finally, reassured, he knelt and drank, and the shaft of bone shot up and drilled him through the tongue, killing him. [17]
  5. ↑ Yilgoonin gave testimony to a police trooper, Humphries, stationed at Bordertown. He named the Ngarkat "Jackegilbrab", which Tindale takes as a section. [18]
  6. ↑ "Eyre being tone deaf to initial ng heard the tribal name as Arkatko." [16]
  7. ↑ In others the dialects are so totally unlike one another, that natives, meeting upon opposite sides of a river, cannot speak to or understand a word of what each other say, except through the medium of a third language, namely that spoken by the natives of the river itself, and which is totally unlike either of the other two. This is the case at Moorunde, where three different dialects meet, the Yakkumban, or dialect spoken by the Paritke tribe, or natives inhabiting the scrub to the west and north-west of the Murray. The Boraipar or language of the Arkatko tribe, who inhabit the scrub to the east of the Murray, and the Aiawong or river dialect, extending, with slight variations, from the junction of the Murray and Lake Alexandrina to the Darling [21]

Citations

  1. ↑ Ryan, Edward (2023). "Water for country, words for water". Water for country, words for water: Indigenous placenames of north-west Victoria and south-west New South Wales. ANU Press, in Indigenous and Minority Placenames: Australian and International Perspectives, Eds: Ian D. Clark, Luise Hercus, Laura Kostanski (2014). pp. 293–304. ISBN   9781925021622. JSTOR   j.ctt13www5z.19. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  2. ↑ Teichelmann, C. G.; C. W. Schürmann (1840). Outlines of a grammar, vocabulary and phraseology of the Aboriginal language of South Australia spoken by the natives in and for some distance around Adelaide. Lutheran Missionary Society, Adelaide.
  3. ↑ "Timeless Macedon (Macedon Ranges, Wurundjeri, Taungurrung & Dja Dja Wurrung Countries, VIC)". Back to Nature. Episode 4. 31 August 2021. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  4. ↑ Harris, C.R. (1982). A brief history of the Ninety Mile Desert. Nature Conservation Society of South Australia. ISBN   9780949751041 . Retrieved 1 October 2021.
  5. ↑ "Peramangk A Social History of the Aboriginal People of the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges (2011)" (PDF). Phasai at Deviantart. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
  6. 1 2 Tindale 1974, pp. 215–216.
  7. ↑ Berndt 1940, p. 164.
  8. 1 2 Kimber 1969, p. 3.
  9. ↑ Keast 2013, p. 41.
  10. ↑ Kimber 1969, p. 2.
  11. ↑ Tindale 1974, p. 61.
  12. ↑ Tindale 1974, p. 40.
  13. ↑ Tindale 1974, p. 60.
  14. ↑ Lower-Eskelson 2014, p. 224.
  15. ↑ Smith 1982, p. 109.
  16. 1 2 3 Tindale 1974, p. 215.
  17. ↑ Mathews 1904, pp. 364–369.
  18. 1 2 Taplin 1879, p. 59.
  19. 1 2 Kimber 1969, pp. 3–4.
  20. ↑ Weir 2009, p. 141.
  21. ↑ Eyre 1845, p. 331.
  22. ↑ Kimber 1969, p. 4.
  23. ↑ Kimber 1969, p. 5.

Sources

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ngarrindjeri</span> Australian Aboriginal group

The Ngarrindjeri people are the traditional Aboriginal Australian people of the lower Murray River, eastern Fleurieu Peninsula, and the Coorong of the southern-central area of the state of South Australia. The term Ngarrindjeri means "belonging to men", and refers to a "tribal constellation". The Ngarrindjeri actually comprised several distinct if closely related tribal groups, including the Jarildekald, Tanganekald, Meintangk and Ramindjeri, who began to form a unified cultural bloc after remnants of each separate community congregated at Raukkan, South Australia.

The Ramindjeri or Raminjeri people were an Aboriginal Australian people forming part of the Kukabrak grouping now otherwise known as the Ngarrindjeri people. They were the most westerly Ngarrindjeri, living in the area around Encounter Bay and Goolwa in southern South Australia, including Victor Harbor and Port Elliot. In modern native title actions a much more extensive territory has been claimed.

The Ngadjuri people are a group of Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands lie in the mid north of South Australia with a territory extending from Gawler in the south to Orroroo in the Flinders Ranges in the north.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mallee Football League (South Australia)</span>

The Mallee Football League (MFL) was an Australian rules football competition in South Australia. The league comprised teams located in south eastern South Australia and one team (Murrayville) located in western Victoria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jarijari</span>

The Jarijari are an indigenous Australian people whose traditional territory is in the Mallee region of Victoria.

The Erawirung people, also known as Yirau, Juju and other names, were an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional territory was located in what is today the Riverland of South Australia. They consisted of sub-groups or clans, including Jeraruk, Rankbirit and Wilu, and have been referred to as Meru people, which was a larger grouping which could also include the Ngawait and Ngaiawang peoples.

The Maraura or Marrawarra people are an Aboriginal group whose traditional lands are located in Far West New South Wales and South Australia, Australia.

The Bininj are an Aboriginal Australian people of Western Arnhem land in the Northern Territory. The sub-groups of Bininj are sometimes referred to by the various language dialects spoken in the region, that is, the group of dialects known as Bininj Kunwok; so the people may be named the Kunwinjku, Kuninjku, Kundjeyhmi (Gundjeihmi), Manyallaluk Mayali, Kundedjnjenghmi and Kune groups.

Scorpion Springs Conservation Park was a protected area in the Australian state of South Australia located in the state’s south-east in the locality of Pinnaroo at the border with the state of Victoria about 215 kilometres (134 mi) south-east of the state capital of Adelaide and about 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) south of the town of Pinnaroo.

The Barindji, also written Parrintyi, are an indigenous Australian people of the state of New South Wales. They are to be distinguished from the Paaruntyi, who spoke a similar language but whom they called the spitting people.

The Jarildekald people, also known as Yarilde or Yaralde, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia originating on the eastern side of Lake Alexandrina and the Murray River.

The Ngaiawang (Ngayawang) were an Aboriginal Australian people of the western Riverland area of South Australia, with a language considered part of the Lower Murray group. They are now considered extinct. They have sometimes been referred to as part of the Meru people, a larger grouping which could also include the Ngawait and Erawirung peoples. They were called Birta by the Kaurna and Ngadjuri peoples, variations of Murundi by the Jarildekald people, and were also known various other terms and spellings.

The Ngintait, or Ngindadj, are an Australian Aboriginal peoples of the northwest corner of the state of Victoria, and partly in South Australia. 9 people, all of one family, claim descent from the tribe, which was dispersed in the 19th century.

The Latjilatji, sometimes spelt Latji Latji or Latje Latje are an Indigenous Australian people of the state of Victoria, Australia.

The Girramay are an Australian Aboriginal tribe of northern Queensland.

The Bodaruwitj, also rendered Bedaruwidj or Potaruwutj, and referred to in some early sources as the Tatiara, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. David Horton believed they were the group his sources referred to as the Bindjali people. Austlang refers to Bindjali / Bodaruwitj as alternative names for the same language.

The Wotjobaluk are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria. They are closely related to the Wergaia people.

The Thangkaali (Danggali) are an indigenous Australian people of the state of South Australia.

The Ngawait, also spelt Ngawadj and other variations, and also known as Eritark and other names, were an Aboriginal Australian people of the mid-Riverland region, spanning the Murray River in South Australia. They have sometimes been referred to as part of the Meru people, a larger grouping which could also include the Ngaiawang and Erawirung peoples. There were at least two clans or sub-groups of the Ngawait people, the Barmerara Meru and Muljulpero maru.

The Dhirari were an indigenous Australian people of the state of South Australia. They are not to be confused with the Diyari people, though the Dirari/Dhirari language was a dialect of the Diyari language.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.