Smallpox and the Baiame waganna of Wellington Valley, New South Wales, 1829-1840: The earliest nativist movement in Aboriginal Australia

Ethnohistory

Volumn 49, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 821-869

  Carey, Hilary M ^a   Roberts, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 26244455196     PISSN: 00141801     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00141801-49-4-821     Document Type: Review

References (220)

1. In 1996, there was wide reporting of the decision to destroy stocks of the virus, e.g., "WHO Sets Date to Destroy Smallpox Stocks," Public Health Reports III (September-October 1996): 388. However, at the time of writing, in June 2001, this has not yet happened. In 1999, a WHO press release reported that the WHO Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research recommended retaining the world's two remaining smallpox virus collections for scientific purposes, including DNA sequencing, until as late as 2002.
2. See "Future Research on Smallpox Virus Recommended," WHO press release, 10 December 1999. Available on-line at www.who.int/inf-pr-1999/en/pr99- 77.html (accessed 21 January 2001).
3. For a recent review of demographic arguments, see Linea Sundstrom, "Smallpox Used Them Up: References to Epidemic Disease in Northern Plains Winter Counts, 1714-1920," Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 305-43. For the difficulty in assessing precontact evidence of smallpox impacts
4. see Robert Boyd, "Commentary on Early Contact-Era Smallpox in the Pacific Northwest," Ethnohistory 43 (1996): 307-28.
5. The debate about the virulence and long-term impact of epidemic disease on Aboriginal populations in the New World has even reached the popular scientific press. See Heather Pringle, "The Plague That Never Was," New Scientist, 20 July 1996, 32-35.
6. The major studies of the impact of smallpox on Aboriginal populations in the early settlement period are those by Judy Campbell and Noel G. Butlin: Campbell, Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia, 1780-1880 (Melbourne, 2002);
7. Campbell, "Smallpox in Aboriginal Australia, 1829-31," Historical Studies 20 (1983): 536-56;
8. Campbell, "Smallpox in Aboriginal Australia, the Early 18308," Historical Studies 21 (1985): 337-58;
9. Butlin, Our Original Aggression: Aboriginal Populations of Southeastern Australia, 1788-1850 (Sydney, 1983);
10. and Butlin, "Macassans and Aboriginal Smallpox: The '1789' and '1829' Epidemics," Historical Studies 21 (1985): 315-35.
11. In a more recent contribution, Alan Frost provides a thorough rebuttal of Butlin's suggestion that the 1789 epidemic was deliberately introduced: Frost, Botany Bay Mirages: Illusions of Australia's Convict Beginnings (Melbourne, I994), 190-210.
12. Studies of the impact of epidemic disease elsewhere has been more sporadic, but for central Australia, see R. G. Kimber, "Smallpox in Central Australia: Evidence for Epidemics and Postulations about the Impact," Australian Archaeology, no. 27 (1988): 63-68.
13. J. Burton Cleland, "The Naturalist in Medicine with Particular Reference to Australia," Medical Journal of Australia 1, no. 17 (April 1950): 553-62.
14. For the "Macassans," see C. C. Macknight, The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia (Melbourne, 1976).
15. See, for example, Eric Rolls, Sojourners (Brisbane, 1993), 300.
16. For the debate about Butlin's thesis, see Charles Wilson, "History, Hypothesis and Fiction: Smallpox and Aboriginal Genocide," Quadrant 29 (March 1985): 26-32;
17. Noel Butlin, "Reply to Charles Wilson and Hugh Morgan: Aboriginal Depopulation," Quadrant 29 (June 1985): 30-33;
18. Charles Wilson, "Aboriginal Depopulation: A Rejoinder to Noel Butlin," Quadrant 29 (July 1985): 17-19
19. See also Alan Gray, "Some Myths in the Demography of Aboriginal Australians," Journal of the Australian Population Association 2 (November 1985): 136-49.
20. Butlin also downplays the significance of the smallpox epidemics on the Aboriginal subsistence economy in his more recent Economics and the Dream-time: A Hypothetical History (Melbourne, 1993).
21. R. H. W. Reece, Aborigines and Colonists: Aborigines and Colonial Society in New South Wales in the 18305 and 18405 (Sydney, 1974), 28-52.
22. For a study of the ghost dance as a religious response to demographic crisis, see Elizabeth Vibert, "'The Natives Were Strong to Live': Reinterpreting Early Nineteenth-Century Prophetic Movements in the Columbia Plateau," Ethnohistory 42 (1995): 197-229.
23. Anthony D. Buckley, "God of Smallpox: Aspects of Yoruba Religious Knowledge," Africa 55, no. 2 (1985): 187-200;
24. for aspects of the Hindu goddess who rules over smallpox and other infectious diseases, see Ralph W. Nicholas, "The Goddess Sitala and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal," Journal of Asian Studies 41 (1981): 21-44;
25. Margaret Trawick Egnor, "Changed Mother or What the Smallpox Goddess Did When There Was No More Smallpox," in South Asian Systems of Healing, ed. E. Valentine Daniel and Judy F. Pugh (Leiden, 1984), 24-45;
26. Geoffrey Samuel, "Women, Goddesses, and Auspiciousness in South Asia," Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 2, no. 2 (1997): 1-23 and references cited in note 13 of that work.
27. Report of the Aboriginal Mission 1836 compiled from the Reports of Messrs Watson and Handt, Church Missionary Society Archives, Foreign Division, Overseas Missions series, C N O 92/29, University of Birmingham Library, Birmingham (hereafter CMS).
28. For a careful review of the terminology for new religious movements in preindustrial and colonized societies, including nativist, neotraditionalist, revitalist, messianic, prophet, cargo, and millenarian movements or cults, see Garry Trompf, "Millenarism: History, Sociology, and Cross-Cultural Analysis," Journal of Religious History 28, no. 1 (2000): 103-24.
29. For Native American religions, the debate is summarized in Russell Thornton, We Shall Live Again: The 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance Movements and Demographic Revitalization (Cambridge, U.K., 1986), chap. 1.
30. Most studies of Aboriginal "nativist" movements in Australia are restricted to the late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries and to the northern and western frontiers. For an overview, see Erich Kolig, "Religious Movements," in The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People, and Their Origins, ed. James Jupp (Sydney, 1988), 165-7;
31. Erich Kolig, "Post-Contact Religious Movements in Australian Aboriginal Society," Anthropos 82 (1987): 251-9;
32. Klaus-Peter Koepping, "Nativistic Movements in Aboriginal Australia: Creative Adjustment, Protest, or Regeneration of Tradition," in Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions: Ethnographic and Historical Studies, ed. Tony Swain and Deborah Bird Rose (Adelaide, Australia, 1988), 397-411.
33. For summary, see Les Hiatt, Arguments about Aborigines (Cambridge, U.K., 1995)) 100-119;
34. for the later fate of Baiame, see Hilary Carey, "'The Land of Byamee': K. Langloh Parker, David Unaipon, and Popular Aboriginality in the Assimilation Era," Journal of Religious History 22 (1998): 200-18.
35. Tony Swain, A Place for Strangers (Cambridge, U.K., 1993).
36. For reviews of Swain, see Australian Journal of Anthropology 4, no. 2 (1993): 96-110;
37. Oceania 65, no. 1 (1994): 94-95;
38. Anthropos 1-3 (1994): 312-3.
39. Swain, A Place for Strangers, 145, notes that the first evidence of the "cult of Baiami" comes from Wellington among the "heavily missionised" Wiradjuri. In fact, the earliest account of Baiame is Henderson's, which is based on observations made during his 1830 visit. There was a brief, ineffective mission conducted by the Wesleyan John Harper, but his information is very unreliable.
40. In an account of the mission published in the Sydney Gazette, 29 September 1825, Harper claimed there was a Supreme Being who the Wellington blacks called "Moorrooberrai" and who was believed to produce the thunder and lightning. According to James Günther's Wiradjuri word list, Mitchell Library MS B503, p. 163, murruburraigarra means "to thunder."
41. Helmut Petri, Gisela Petri-Odermann, and Erich Kolig, trans., "A Nativistic and Millenarian Movement in North West Australia," in Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, 391-5, refers to "nativistic and millenarian movements" as "largely, but not total[ly] absent from Australia."
42. For example, in his article on "revitalization movements," Anthony F. C. Wallace asserts that Australia (and Tasmania) was the only major cultural area in which such movements were completely unknown. David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (London, 1968), 11:7.
43. Kolig, "Religious Movements," 165.
44. Koepping, "Nativistic Movements," esp. 396-7.
45. Koepping, "Nativistic Movements,", Ibid., esp. 398.
46. For the potential importance of missionary records for accounts of traditional religion, see J. D. Y. Peel, "Problems and Opportunities in an Anthropologist's Use of the Missionary Archives," in Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues, ed. Robert A. Bickers and Rosemary Seton (Richmond, U.K., 1996), 70-94.
47. The settlement merited a visit from Augustus Earle, the official artist onboard Darwin's Beagle in 1826. Earle made a sketch of the convict establishment from the vantage point of the commandant's house, placing a Wiradjuri warrior in the foreground. The watercolor, now in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection [NK12/24], National Library of Australia, can be viewed from the library's on-line image collection, Image I, available at www.nla.gov.au/cgi- bin/images1/pic?13404+d. Note also the front and back portraits of the same warrior displaying his cicatrices, drawn at the same time, at www.nla.gov.au/cgi-bin/images1/pic?13413+d and www.nla.gov.au/cgi-bin/images1/ pic?13412+d.
48. David A. Roberts, "A Sort of Inland Norfolk Island? Isolation, Coercion, and Resistance on the Wellington Convict Station, 1823-26," Journal of Australian Colonial History 2 (2000): 50-72.
49. Ralph Darling to George Murray, 4 May 1830, Historical Records of Australia, ser. 1, vol. 14, p. 465.
50. N. B. Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names (Canberra, 1974).
51. Peter Read, "'A Rape of the Soul So Profound': Some Reflections on the Dispersal Policy in NSW," Aboriginal History 7 (1963): 23-32;
52. Read, "Breaking up These Camps Entirely," Aboriginal History 8 (1984): 45-55;
53. Read, A Hundred Years War: The Wiradjuri People and the State (Canberra, 1988).
54. Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier (Ringwood, Australia, 1982).
55. On the early contact history around Bathurst and Wellington Valley see T. Salisbury and P. J. Gresser, Windradyne of the Wiradjuri: Martial Law at Bathurst in 1824 (Sydney, 1971).
56. Pivotal works from this period include Charles D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society (Canberra, 1970);
57. Raymond Evans, Kay Saunders, and Kathryn Cronin, Exclusion, Exploitation, and Extermination: Race Relations in Colonial Queensland (Sydney, 1975)
58. (and the later edition, Race Relations in Colonial Queensland: A History of Exclusion, Exploitation, and Extermination, 2d ed. [St. Lucia, Australia, 1988]);
59. F. Robinson and B. York, The Black Resistance: An Introduction to the History of the Aborigines' Struggle against British Colonialism (Melbourne, 1977);
60. Michael Christie, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, 1835-86 (Sydney, 1979);
61. Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal-European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier, 1861-97 (Canberra, 1982).
62. See especially Ann McGrath's, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country (Sydney, 1987);
63. A. Pope, "Aboriginal Adaption to Early Colonial Labour Markets: The South Australian Experience," Labour History 54 (1988): 1-15;
64. Henry Reynolds, With the White People: The Crucial Role of Aborigines in the Exploitation and Development of Australia (Ringwood, Australia, 1990);
65. Pen Hetherington, "Aboriginal Children as a Potential Labour Force in Swan River Colony, 1829-1850," Journal of Australian Studies 33 (1991): 41-55;
66. Richard Broome, "Aboriginal Workers on South-eastern Frontiers," Australian Historical Studies 26 (1994): 201-20.
67. Beverly Nance argued that intertribal "warfare," exacerbated by European settlement, contributed more significantly to the decimation of Aboriginal populations than interracial violence. Nance, "The Level of Violence: Europeans and Aborigines in Port Phillip, 1835-1850," Historical Studies 19 (1981): 531-52.
68. Sydney Gazette, 14 October 1824;
69. David Roberts, "Bells Falls Massacre and Bathurst's History of Violence: Local Tradition and Australian Historiography," Australian Historical Studies 16 (1995): 615-33.
70. Percy Simpson to Frederick Goulburn, 2 March 1823, NSW Colonial Secretary's Papers: In-Letters (hereafter CSIL), State Records of New South Wales (hereafter SRNSW) 4/1818.
71. For a review of evidence for military uses of infection in the Spanish New World, see David Noble Cook and W. George Lovell, eds., Secret Judgments of God: Old World Disease in Colonial Spanish America (Norman, OK, 1991).
72. Charles Sturt, Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia during the Years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831, 2 vols. (London, 1833; reprint, Adelaide, Australia, 1963), 1:193 [extracted in the Appendix at 1829].
73. Alexander Imlay to James Bowman, 5 October 1831, CSIL 4/2103, SRNSW.
74. John Mair, "Observations on the Eruptive Febrile Disease Which Prevailed among Several Tribes of the Aborigines in New South Wales during the Year 1830 and 31." This report was enclosed in a letter to the NSW Colonial Secretary, dated 24 December 1831, CSIL 4/2130, SRNSW.
75. James Kinghorne to Alexander McLeay, 9 July 1830, CSIL 4/2045, SRNSW.
76. Mair, "Observations on the Eruptive Febrile Disease," CSIL 4/2130, SRNSW.
77. Governor Ralph Darling instituted the annual distribution of blankets (in honor of the king's birthday) in 1826 as a means of securing the protection of European life and property on the frontier by purchasing Aboriginal assistance and conciliation. M. Smithson, "A Misunderstood Gift: The Annual Issue of Blankets to Aborigines in New South Wales, 1826-48," Push from the Bush 30 (1992): 73-108.
78. In 1837, Lancelot Threlkeld and William Burton used the returns of blanket distribution to calculate a 25 percent decline in the colony's Aboriginal population over the last three years. See Threlkeld's Annual Report, 1837, in Niel Gunson, ed., Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L. E. Threlkeld, 2 vols. (Canberra, 1974), 2:135-7.
79. John Maxwell to McLeay, 29 August 1829, Letters of John Maxwell, Superintendent of Government Stock, 1823-31, ed. Bertha Mac Smith and Brian Lloyd (Wangaratta, Australia, 1982), 146-7.
80. For other Wellington blanket distributions, see Gustavius Christie to McLeay, 20 April 1827, and Kinghorne to McLeay, 9 July 1830, CSIL 4/2045, SRNSW.
81. For details of the compilation by Watson shortly before the Baiame waganna of 1835, which listed seventy men with their eighty-three women and children from eleven local "tribes," see Reverend William Watson, "Return of Aboriginal Natives Taken at Wellington Valley, 1834," to Col. Sec., 29 January 1835, CSIL 35/1068, SRNSW 6/6666b. Also see Table 1 herein.
82. The largest group ever reported by the missionaries comprised the ninety-six people, mentioned in Handt Journal, 29 December 1834, who gathered for a ceremony at Cobolyen [extracted in the Appendix at 1834].
83. A figure of one-third is also proposed for the victims of the 1850 epidemic of smallpox among the Bungyarlee and Parkungi tribes of the River Darling in western NSW by Frederick Bonney, an early settler, based on his conversations with survivors. See Bonney, "On Some Customs of the Aborigines of the River Darling, New South Wales," Journal of the Anthropological Society (U.K.) 13 (1884): 123.
84. Handt Journal, 4 November 1835, comments on the low number of children in large congregations.
85. Michael Pearson estimated what he calls the Wellington."clan grouping" to have numbered about eighty people, basing his figure on the postepidemic population suggested by the journals and lectures of the missionary James Günther. Pearson, "Seen through Different Eyes: Changing Land Use and Settlement Patterns in the Upper Macquarie River Region of NSW, from Prehistoric Times to 1860" (Ph.D. diss., Australian National University, 1981), 72.
86. The problems associated with assessing populations on the basis of the failure of the Wiradjuri to recover demographically mirrors that of Native Americans reviewed by Russell Thornton, Tim Miller, and Jonathon Warren, "American Indian Population Recovery Following Smallpox Epidemics," American Anthropologist 93 (1991): 28-45.
87. For the importance of taking account of demographic recovery when assessing pre-epidemic populations, see Thornton et al., "American Indian Population Recovery."
88. Handt could not convince the girl to leave the hut keeper. Handt Journal, 13 December 1832 [extracted in the Appendix at 1832].
89. According to Watson, Kobohn Bobby was "always in the bush" and had two wives, two boys ten or twelve years old, and a young child one-and-a-half years of age. Watson Journal, 20-21 April 1833.
90. The major descriptive ethnography is A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-east Australia (London, 1904; reprint, Canberra, 1996), though W. E. H. Stanner considers it "not his best memorial."
91. See entry by Stanner, Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne, 1851-90), 434.
92. For a list of Howitt's many papers, see Mary Howitt Walker, Come Wind, Come Weather (Melbourne, 1971), 313-9;
93. Howitt can be supplemented by R. H. Mathews, some of whose papers are re-edited by Janet Mathews, comp., The Opal That Turned into Fire, ed. Isobel White (Broome, Australia, 1994).
94. Major studies by Ronald and Catherine Berndt on southeastern religious beliefs include: R. M. Berndt, "Wuradjeri Magic and Clever Men," Oceania 17, no. 4 (1946-7): 60-86;
95. R. M. Berndt, "Wuradjeri Magic and Clever Men," Oceania 17, no. 18 (1947-8): 327-65 [Klaus Reprint, Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1971];
96. Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Religion (Leiden, 1974);
97. R. M. Berndt and Catherine Berndt, with John E. Stanton, A World That Was: The Yaraldi of the Murray River and the Lakes, South Australia (Melbourne, 1993).
98. George Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales (London, 1834), 2 vols., 1:148, 154 [extracted in the Appendix at 1831].
99. Campbell also notes dunnerb dunnerb brought by "Wundah," citing K. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe (London, 1905), 39.
100. Hale records from Wellington the "absurd idea" "that no person dies a natural death. If a man perishes of disease at a distance from his friends, his death is supposed to have been caused by some sorcerer of another tribe, whose life must be taken for satisfaction." United States Exploring Expedition during the years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 under the command of Charles Wilkes, vol. 6, Ethnography and Philology, by Horatio Hale, philologist of the expedition (Philadelphia, 1846; reprint, Ridgewood, NJ, 1968), 115.
101. For Wiradjuri concepts of illness, see Berndt, "Wuradjeri Magic," 60-86;
102. Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Religion, 306.
103. See Nance, "Level of Violence."
104. Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales, 1:153 [extracted in the Appendix at 1831].
105. Campbell, "Smallpox in Aboriginal Australia 1829-31," 556.
106. Wellington Valley was first established as a depot in preparation for Oxley's 1818 expedition down the Macquarie River. From 1823 it accommodated remote government agricultural and stock stations, manned by around eighty convicts, and several private stock-stations.
107. Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales, 1:148 [extracted in the Appendix at 1831].
108. George Busby to James Bowman, 19 October 1832, 31/9316, 4/2130.
109. For the account published by lay missionary John Harper in 1825, see note 16 above.
110. John Henderson, Observations on the Colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (Calcutta, 1832).
111. The bird called the "eaglehawk," now known as the wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax), is distributed throughout Australia. With a wingspan of two meters it is one of the largest eagles in the world. See also note 120 below and the Appendix, at Mudjegong (including note c) and at 1830.
112. See Swain, A Place for Strangers, 133-9.
113. Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales, 1:153 [extracted in the Appendix at 1831].
114. Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales, Ibid., 1:155-6.
115. The originals are held as part of the CMS archives. Most of the papers relating to the Wellington mission were microfilmed as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project miscellaneous series. However, microfilming proceeded prior to the reordering of the papers by Rosemary Keen, for which see her unpublished "Catalogue of the Papers of the Missions of the Africa (Group 3) Committee," vol. 7, New Zealand Mission, 1981, CMS.
116. Based on the reordered papers in Birmingham, the bulk of the missionary journals and correspondence, with other supporting information, has been developed into an ongoing electronic edition accessible on the Internet, see Hilary M. Carey and David Roberts, eds., "The Wellington Valley Project," available on-line at www.newcastle.edu.au/discipline/history/wv- project/index.html. Shelf marks have been omitted from citations to CMS Wellington mission records but may be recovered by referring to the electronic edition.
117. For the Wiradjuri war, see Read, A Hundred Years War.
118. For the Wellington mission, see papers by Jean Woolmington especially, "'Writing on the Sand': The First Mission to Aborigines in Eastern Australia," in Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, 77-92,.
119. For the overall context of mission activity in southeastern Australia, see Hilary M. Carey, '"Attempts and Attempts': Missions to Australian Aborigines in Colonial Australia," in Mapping the Landscape: Essays in Australian and New Zealand Christianity: Festschrift in Honour of Ian Breward, ed. Susan Emilsen and William W. Emilsen (New York, 2000).
120. Sydney, Mitchell Library, Günther Papers: Correspondence [A1450]; Lectures and Sermons [3503]; Journals [6504]; Papers on the Wiradjuri Dialect [3505]; Mitchell MS 8504 contains Günther's own copy of the journal he maintained from 1836-1840, in 1841, and in 1865.
121. Although he later claimed otherwise. See introductory note to circa 1860 in the Appendix.
122. Carey and Roberts, eds., "Wellington Valley Project."
123. Watson Journal, 5-6 October 1833 [extracted in the Appendix at 1833].
124. "Corrobborree," meaning a dance ritual, is a word from the Sydney Cove language, which quickly became creolized, as Howitt noted in Native Tribes, 413.
125. Watson Journal, 22 April 1834 [extracted in the Appendix at 1834].
126. Watson Journal, 1834, Ibid.
127. See note 121 below for the burbung.
128. Watson Journal, 17 May 1834 [extracted in the Appendix at 1834];
129. also see note 4 above.
130. This is possibly the site described by Henderson, Observations on the Colonies, 147, which included an extensive grove of totemic trees or dendroglyphs.
131. Handt Journal, 29 December 1834 [extracted in the Appendix at 1834].
132. Watson frequently reports making gifts of meat to parties of Aborigines in order to encourage them to remain close to the mission. On 9 May 1835, he notes that he had cut up from sixty to seventy pounds of beef for a party of sixteen young men and on n May 1835, lamenting the high cost of provisions: "It is a hard thing to say to a native, 'I cannot afford to give you bread.'" Watson Journal, 9 and 11 May 1835. On 22 December 1835 he gave a party of seventy natives a five-hundred-pound bullock [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
133. James Günther, "Lectures on Aboriginal People of Australia," Sydney, Mitchell Library, MS Z B505, p. 113, notes in connection to the preparation of a burial area: "They used hoes, spades and borrowed from the Missionary Station. With their original tools, it would have taken them much more time to finish the grave."
134. Günther "Lectures on Aboriginal People of Australia," pp. 15-16 [extracted in the Appendix at circa 1860].
135. Berndt, "Wuradjeri Magic," 330-1, and references to Howitt in Berndt's note 7.
136. Watson Journal, 9 February 1835;
137. Handt Journal, 15 February 1835.
138. Watson Journal, 9 February and 23 February 1835;
139. Handt Journal, 30 February 1835.
140. Handt Journal, 14 March 1835.
141. Handt Journal, 9 April 1835.
142. Watson Journal, 20 March and 28 March 1835.
143. Watson to Richard Hill, 25 March 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
144. Watson Journal, 28 March 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
145. The Mulunga was first reported by Walter Roth in the 18905 and spread rapidly throughout much of pastoral Australia. For a review see Kolig, "Religious Movements," 165-7. Adopting a characteristically extreme position, Swain argues that the Mulunga was largely millennialist in nature and, despite a dearth of supporting historical evidence, that it was sparked initially by the resistance to European occupation led by Djandomarra/Pigeon in northern Queensland.
146. See Swain, A Place for Strangers, 119-33.
147. As Kolig, "Religious Movements," 166
148. points out, the Mulunga was not perceived as too anti-European prior to the insightful reports by the missionary Otto Siebert, "Sagen und Sitten der Dieri und Nachbarstämme in Zentral-Australien," Globus 97 (1910): 53-59. It is possible that not all manifestations of the dance were anti-European in character.
149. Watson Journal, 6 April 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
150. Watson Journal, 28 March 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
151. Watson Journal, 1835, Ibid.
152. Günther, "Lectures on Aboriginal People of Australia" [extracted in the Appendix at circa 1860].
153. Watson Journal, 24 April 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
154. Watson Journal, 6 April 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
155. Bennett, Wanderings in New South Wales, 1:154 [extracted in the Appendix at 1831].
156. Thornton, We Shall Live Again.
157. Watson Journal, 17 October 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
158. In his "Return of Aboriginal Natives Taken at Wellington Valley, 1834," pp. 212-3, Watson profiles Gentleman Jackey as follows: "English Name: Gentleman Jackey; Native Name: Mooinba; Probable Age: 40; Number of Wives: 6; Children: 0; Designation of Tribe: Wellington; Place of District or Usual Resort: Wellington Valley."
159. Handt Journal, 15 February 1835.
160. Watson Journal, 6 April 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
161. Watson Journal, 1835, Ibid.
162. Handt Journal, 23 April 1835;
163. Watson Journal, 24 April 1835 [both extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
164. Watson Journal, 1835, Ibid.
165. Hale, Ethnography and Philology, 110 [extracted in the Appendix at 1838].
166. Watson Journal, 17 October 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
167. Watson Journal, 3 September 1835. Watson noted that his burial seemed to contravene the usual customs. Young men and women were present together, and he was laid to rest prone rather than being interred in a sitting position.
168. Watson Journal, 29 December 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
169. Watson Journal, 14 October 1835, CMS CN/093: "[Kabbarrin] is very unwell but when I began to address the natives, he usurped me, and talked to them on the subject of religion in a manner that truly astonished me." And again on 17 October 1835: "Had some conversation with the natives here this evening; as usual Kabbarrin was the chief speaker."
170. Patricia Grimshaw et al., Creating a Nation, 1788-1990 (Ringwood, Victoria, Australia, 1994), 131.
171. McGrath, Born in the Cattle, 68-94.
172. See also McGrath, "The White Man's Looking Glass: Aboriginal-Colonial Gender Relations at Port Jackson," Australian Historical Studies 24 (October 1990): 189-206.
173. Watson Journal, 27 August 1833 [extracted in the Appendix at 1833].
174. Watson Journal, 8 December 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
175. Howitt, Native Tribes, 740-1.
176. Watson Journal, 19 December 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
177. Watson Journal, 29 December 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
178. For a brief overview, see R. M. Berndt and Catherine H. Berndt, The World of the First Australians, 5th edition (Canberra, 1988), chaps. 7-8.
179. Handt Journal, 8 September 1834;
180. or Watson Journal, 23 September 1835: "The natives were singing their lewd songs till very late last night."
181. Watson Journal, 8 May 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
182. For the power of the clever men as remembered by informants in 1943, see Berndt, "Wuradjeri Magic," esp. 334-7 (on how Baiame gave power to the clever men). Terms for the Wiradjuri clever men are listed on p. 331.
183. There is additional evidence for this in the derivation of the two names. According to Watson, Tharrawiirgal has his name from a large tree growing out of his thigh and which is the basis of his name from Tharra "thigh" and Wiirgal "a cutter of wood" (Watson Journal, 6 April 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835]).
184. According to Janet Mathews, the name Daramulun was derived from dharru "thigh" and mulun meaning "one side." See Mathews, The Opal That Turned into Fire, 93-94.
185. Gunson, Australian Reminiscences, 1:3, notes that a metamorphic relationship appears to exist between the southeastern sky heroes and the eaglehawk, which was often the totem of the dominant class in many tribal structures, as well as having significance in Aboriginal cosmology as the bright star Altair.
186. For descriptions of Wiradjuri initiation ceremonies before the complete collapse of traditional life, see A. W. Howitt, "On Some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation," Journal of the Anthropological Institute (U.K.) 13 (1883-4): 432-59;
187. R. H. Mathews, "The Burbung, or Initiation Ceremonies of the Murrum-bidgee Tribes," Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 21 (1897): iii-53;
188. Mathews, "The Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," Journal of the Anthropological Institute (U.K.) 25 (1896): 295-318;
189. Mathews, "The Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," 26 (1897): 172-85; and subsequent papers by both authors listed by Berndt
190. "Wuradjeri Magic," 329, note 5.
191. Also Howitt, Native Tribes, 583-8;
192. and Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Religion, 27-30.
193. Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Religion, 27-28;
194. Howitt, Native Tribes, 585.
195. K. Langloh Parker, comp., and Henrietta Drake-Brockman, ed., Australian Legendary Tales (London, 1896), 15-24;
196. Parker, Euahlayi Tribe.
197. Berndt and Berndt, A World That Was, 240-2.
198. See R. H. Mathews 1898, 1899, 1908 as compiled by Janet Matthews, The Opal That Turned into Fire.
199. Hale, Ethnography and Philology, 110-1.
200. Günther's word list lists three different Wiradjuri words to which he gives the English meaning "tomahawk."
201. In Mathews, "Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," 300.
202. Howitt, "Some Australian Ceremonies," 442.
203. Janet Mathews, The Two Worlds of Jimmie Barker (Canberra, 1977), 70-71.
204. Parker, Australian Legendary Tales;
205. R. H. Mathews, Folklore of the Australian Aborigines (Sydney, 1899).
206. See Berndt, Australian Aboriginal Religion, fig. 51, for a photograph of the sacred tree marked by the three-clawed foot of Eaglehawk being climbed by a clever man during the bora ceremony.
207. For "Baiamai's Fire," which was kept constantly burning during the burbung, see Mathews, "Burbung of the Wiradthuri Tribes," 300.
208. Kolig, "Religious Movements," 166, notes that the phenomenon of wandering cults is "entirely traditional" and cannot be seen as the consequence of European contact.
209. Hale, Ethnography and Philology, 110 [extracted in the Appendix at 1838].
210. Hale, Ethnography and Philology, 110, Ibid.
211. Howitt, Native Tribes, 413-6.
212. Günther, "Lectures on Aboriginal People of Australia," 109-16 [extracted in the Appendix at circa 1860];
213. Watson Journal, 14 April 1835 [extracted in the Appendix at 1835].
214. Howitt, Native Tribes, 416. John Bulmer was at this time an Anglican missionary at Lake Tyers in eastern Victoria.
215. Berndt, "Wiradjuri Magic," 344-50.
216. Berndt, "Wiradjuri Magic,", Ibid., 347.
217. Gunson, Australian Reminiscences.
218. Howitt, Native Tribes, 496-7.
219. See note u of the Appendix.
220. Koepping, "Nativistic Movements," 397-411.