Savage Life in Central AustraliaDeals mainly with Wonkonguru people to east of Lake Eyre. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aborigines Aiston amongst the Wonkonguru animal Arunta ball bands barter Beltana Birdsville blackfellow blacks bone boomerang burnt bush called camp ceremony charpoo chipped circumcision Cooper's Creek corroboree country moora Cowarie curve Diamantina Dieri digging-stick dogs edge emu feathers feet fibre string fight fire gibbers gypsum hair string hand Howitt inches Innamincka kalara Killalpaninna killed kirra knife knives koondi tuhla Koonkoo kopi Kopperamanna kulchera kurdaitcha lagoon Lake Eyre message-stick miles mindrie moora mulga Mungeranie munyeroo mura-mura murdus murrawirrie nardoo natives Nutatacullie piece pirrha pirrie pitcheri poonga Queensland rain rain-making red ochre root round sand sand-hill scraped seed side skin sometimes spear spokeshave stick stone stuck Tallapittie throw told tool toona tracks tree tribe ungobbera usually wadna Warburton Warburton river warroo weapon wilpie Wilyaroo wirra wirrie woma woman women wood yards Yaurorka yudika yutchawunta
Popular passages
Page 132 - While hunting or travelling the aborigine was always on the look-out for any stones of unusual shape. If any were found that were small enough to carry home, they were taken and shown to the assembled old men. These invariably identified the stones as something to do with the moora, and usually invented a use for them.
Page 123 - Mooramoora, in answer to which he ordered that the tribe should be divided into branches, and distinguished one from the other by different names, after objects animate and inanimate, such as dogs, mice, emu, rain, iguana, and so forth, the members of any such branch not to intermarry, but...
Page 167 - Cooper's Creek .... tells me that, although he has lived there since the early seventies, he has never seen them used, or noticed by natives, and that they are known there simply by the name of Moora.
Page 12 - Seniority runs through the whole of the aboriginal systems. It is maintained by the old men, who always retain some rite or ceremony which is not made known to the juniors.
Page 124 - I have not been able to discover a corresponding male totem, if such exists." 1 With regard to the mooras or mythical heroes of the farpast time, to whom the aborigines, as usual, attributed the origin of their institutions, including totemism, Mr. Home tells us that : " The Wongkonguru group, which includes amongst others the Dieri, Yaurorka and Ngameni, seems to have a sort of ancestor worship, the ancestors being the mooras. " A moora sometimes appears to have been a master mind who was the first...
Page 121 - For instance, bone-pointing is regarded as absolute nonsense, and to our superior knowledge it certainly looks so. Now the black argues thus : I point a bone at a man, that man dies. Nothing could be clearer than the cause and effect. The flaw in the argument is the omission from the premisses of the fact that the victim knows or thinks that the bone has been so pointed. Take, again, the example of rainmaking, which more often than not comes wrong.
Page 72 - In a fight, after all of the man's throwing weapons had been discharged, he would grasp the murrawirrie with both hands over his head, and holding it with hands about a foot apart at one end, with the curve downwards, he would use it as a sword, trying to use about only a foot of the end. The result would be that the motion of hitting with it was a drawing stroke when aimed at the chest. The wound usually inflicted penetrates into the pleural cavity, if it does not go right through the body.
Page 165 - The districts where these are found are very marked, being the country drained by the Darling on the east over to Lake Eyre on the west. This includes all the land of the Itchumundi, Karamundi and Barkinji over to the territory of the Lake Eyre tribes, which include the Yaurorka, Ngameni, Wonkonguru and Dieri.
Page 138 - They were very necessary, for in the old days the tribes were continually at feud with one another and the track of every one of a tribe's own people was known. A stranger crossing their country would be tracked down and killed as a matter of course, so they had recourse to boots made of hair rope and emu feathers; these effectually disguised the tracks made by their wearer. The fear of the uncanny kept a hostile tribe from attempting to track an unknown man, who might be a moora, so that the wearer...
Page 17 - ... peoples. It is therefore interesting to try to see what is the real meaning of the possession of these seemingly more advanced forms of social structures by food-gathering peoples. It is agreed that the Australian natives are very conservative and unoriginal. For instance, Messrs. Home and Aiston say: ' The old habits and the old thoughts cling very firmly, and, after all, it is on the surface that the change is greatest. Behind the real inward beliefs and feelings the weight of centuries presses...