Bodaruwitj

The Bodaruwitj, also rendered Bedaruwidj or Potaruwutj, and referred to in some early sources as the Tatiara,^[1] 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.^[2] Austlang refers to Bindjali / Bodaruwitj as alternative names for the same language.^[3]

Name

Potaruwutj is an autonym, meaning in their language, "wandering" (-wutj is a suffix meaning "man"), referring to their continuous shifting of their campsites throughout the mallee scrubland.^[1]

Language

Further information: Kulin languages

The name of their language, or of the version spoken around the Padthaway district, was Yaran, though it is also now known as Bindjali.^[4][a] William Haynes, an earlier resident of the area, provided E.M.Curr with two distinct vocabularies of the area, which he designated as that of the Tatiara.^[7] Norman Tindale compiled a word-list relying on information supplied to him by Milerum, whose mother Lakwunami was a Potaruwutj from the Keilira region.^[8] R.M: Dixon managed to elicit a vocabulary of Bindjali from a Bordertown informant, Bertie Pinkie, as late as 1973.^[2] In his classification, Polinjunga, one of the alternative names for the Bodaruwitj, or a clan name of the same, is listed as a dialect of the Bungandidj-Kuurn Kopan Noot subgroup of the Kulinic languages.^[9]

Country

Relying on two informants, Clarence Long (Milerum) and Alf Watson,^[10] Tindale estimated that the Potaruwutj's lands covered 3,000 square miles (7,800 km²), extending westwards from Naracoorte down to within the third inland dune range of the Coorong area, some 10 miles from the coastline. The northern reaches touched Tatiara. It included Bordertown, Wirrega, and Keith.^[11]

Ecologically, Potaruwutj territory was less fertile and suffered from lower rainfall than neighbouring areas.^[11] The Ngarkat foraged to their north, with the Potaruwutj also present south of the main belt of mallee where the Ngarkat predominated. Like the Tanganekald and Jarildekald, the Potaruwutj marked out their territory with stones or cairns.^[12] The Potaruwutj clans, following a usage shared by these two tribes, named the major features of their territory by a name that referred to a distinctive characteristic of the zone, suffixed with a word like -injeri (belonging to) or -orn (an abbreviation of the word for "man"] attached to denote the area possessed. The suffix -injeri had the meaning of "belonging to" while -orn is said to be a contraction of korn meaning man or person,^[12]

Social organisation

According to William Haynes, writing about the Tatiara in 1887, their numbers were thought to have amounted to some 500 at the beginning of white settlement, but only scattered remnants of the several distinct groups had survived within a few decades,^[13] and knowledge of them is fragmentary. At least five clans are known to have constituted the Potaruwutj group:

• Coolucooluk (horde name)
• Wirigirek (to the north. Cf. the toponym Wirrega, a place name)
• Tatiara (toponym)
• Polinjunga^[1][14]
• Kangarabalak

They practised neither circumcision nor ritual avulsion of the front teeth.^[4]

History of contact

According to material gathered by Ronald and Catherine Berndt, as large number of Tatiara were killed at Piwingang near Tailem Bend after the former in a raid on a Ngarrindjeri camp. The affected group had too few warriors to retaliate and went south to organise a retaliatory hunt among several different groups. The large band of warriors managed to track the Tatiara down at Piwingang and only few survived the onslaught. Notwithstanding traditions that the Tatiara and Yaraldi did not intermarry, records indicate that intermarriage did take place between them and the Yaraldi Piltindjeri clan.^[15]

A Scottish businessman and immigrant, Robert Lawson, established a pastoral station on Bodaruwitj territory near Padthaway, and in later reports called the Indigenous people of that district the Coolucooluck, but also Padthaway. He defined these Coolucooluck as denizens of the area between Salt Creek, Galt's Station and Padthaway.^[16]

Culture

The Bodaruwitj (Tatiara) men had a repute among other tribes, including the Yaraldi, for being well-endowed and having strong sexual appetites, just as native outsiders attributed to their women large labia majora.^[17] Some of this is reflected in a number of recorded songs.

The pelekaw song form is one in southeastern South Australia that makes a defiant accusation in the expectation it will be challenged. One notable case concerned the rules of exogamous exchange regarding women. A dispute with the Coorong lagoon Tanganekeld, whom the Potaruwutj called Tenggi, arose when the Tatiara Wepulprap clan of the Potaruwutj suspected the women they gave to the former were maltreated and subject to the sorcery of lethal bone-pointing. The reality was one of resentment over a perceived break-down in one-on-one exchanges arising from women being sent to the wrong, rather than the right, clan they were contracted to marry into.

A Potaruwutj big man with a repute for powerful magic, Dongaganinj,^[b] composed a pelekaw refrain which articulated these feelings of grievance.

We call the Tenggi people women chasers
They are mating throughout the tribe
We call the Tenggi people women chasers
They are all chasing and mating.^[18]

The neighbouring Meintangk, who sided with the Tanganekeld, on hearing this rude insinuation, composed a slanderous weritjinj variant on the pelekaw song which both slandered the Potaruwutj and challenged them to battle at the traditional combat grounds at Nunukapul (Telauri Flat) near Marcollat station.^[c] This song, chanted while men danced imitating their enemies coupling with dogs, rang:

Big man Dongaganinj makes his own rules
About the woman Manggeartkur^[d]
Dongaganinj helps himself
Frightens Manggeartkur to come to him
M! m! wi! wo!^[e]

A resolutive battle was arranged, and seven warriors were left dead on the Nunukapul field.

The Tanganekeld then took up the challenges, and composed a song:

The Tatiara people we hear
Have erect penises and swollen testicles
Our women are tired of carrying them
Hei! ja!
Weritjamini has an erect penis and big testes
His women carry them for him
Bad woman Manggeartkur lies for any man
We men will not sleep with her
Weritjamini and all the stupid (deun) spirits (powoqko) are bad marriage makers

Weritjamini was another influential Potaruwutj headman, associated with Dongaganinj. In this region's lore, the spirit, powoqko, was, on death, believed to travel northwest and cross over the sea to dwell on the island of Karta, and the implications of the original language were so abusive that the two groups would not intermarry for another two generations.^[18]

Alternative names

• Bindjali
• Bunyalli
• Cangarabaluk
• Coolucooluk^[16]
• Dadiera
• Djadjala
• Jaran (language name)
• Kangarabalak (of the Tanganekald, kangara meant "east"+balak, "people.")
• Padthaway tribe^[16][1]
• Polenjunga
• Polinjunga
• Potangola
• Potaruwutj/Potaruwutji
• Tatiara (toponym)^[f]
• Tattayarra, Tatiarra
• Tyattyalla
• Tyatyalli
• Tyedduwurrung
• Tyeddyuwurru
• Wepulprap.(an exonym meaning "southern people" in Tanganekald)
• Wereka
• Wereka-tyalli
• Werekarait
• Wergaia
• Wimmera
• Wirigirek (a northern horde; Wirrega, a place name)
• Wirrega^[2]
• Woychibirik
• Wra-gar-ite (see Marditjali)
• Yaran

Some words

• kadleira eared Otaria seal
• kal/kaal tame dog.
• maranipo/wrakan Red wattlebird^[19]
• mingka wedge-tailed eagle.^[g][h]
• pirit Noisy miner.^[19]
• teriterit willy wagtail.^[20]
• tuwul white-backed magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen)^[21]
• weirintj (whale). This Bodaruwitj term lies behind the indigenous term for the area of Rivoli Bay, namely Weirintjam/Wilitjam.^[22]
• wereka (no)^[i]
• wilkra wild dog^[23][j]
• wutj (man)

Notes

1. R. H. Mathews identified a Tyattyalla language,^[5] now written Djadjala, spoken between the Werringen and Albacutya lakes and provided some grammatical and vocabulary notes. Norman Tindale regarded Tyattyalla as a heteronym both for the Wotjobaluk^[6] and the Bodaruwitj.^[1] The Wotjobaluk ranged over into Tatiara country, which is usually taken to be Bodaruwitj country. (Tindale 1974, p. 208)
2. "Dongaganinj was a man who practised magic. He had a wooden bull-roarer or mimikur that he kept suspended in a katal or ' talking tree,' that is, one in which the branches chafed together and supplied him with information of events in other places. When Dongaganinj spoke a man's name to the mimikur in the talking tree, that person would become ill and might die. " (Tindale 1974, p. 35))
3. This toponym anglifies the native term Matkalat. (Tindale 1974, p. 35)
4. Manggeartkur belonged to the Potaruwutj Kangarabalak clan (Tindale 1974, p. 35)
5. "Their lewdly enunciated 'm! m!' were expressions of derision. When they shouted 'wi!' they shook their bodies fiercely and then shouted 'wo!' In effect this meant 'Send her back where she came from; let the dogs have her!'." (Tindale 1974, p. 35)
6. Known by the Ngarrindjeri as the Merkani according to George Taplin. (Berndt, Berndt & Stanton 1993, p. 21)
7. word for a bird whose cry portended death or evil, and one perhaps borrowed into modern Ngarrindjeri to refer to a muldarpi bird in their lore bearing the same symbolic function, though their death bird was the southern stone-curlew. (Bell 1998, pp. 312ff., 316)
8. "Belief in the mingka spirit being extended beyond the Lower Murray area. The Aboriginal name for the mingka (minkar) was said to be a Potaruwutj language term from the south-east of South Australia, and to be the equivalent of merambi from the Tangani language of the Coorong. The Potaruwutj believed that the mingka was a 'being, sinister, who may assume form of totem animal' and 'is an evil being, warns about death or trouble'. The spirit being was recorded as being able to assume the form of various ngaitji (totemic 'friends') such as an eagle, dog or hawk. In these forms, the mingka carried the spirits of sinister people, connected to their owners by nunggi or kortui described as 'like a spider web.' Men could kill these beings and the sorcerer owners of the attending spirits with a 'sacred club'. Ngarrindjeri said that the mingka was connected to the kowuk bird, which they described as a Tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides). Berndt suggested that the mingka in the Lower Lakes was an owl." (Clarke 2018b, p. 22)
9. In William Haynes's vocabularies of the Tatiara, two words for "no" are given, one being wawrek, the other allanya. (Haynes 1887, pp. 457, 459)
10. Tindale speculated on the prehistorical indications potentially resident in the etymological link between the word for "native dog", whose introduction into Australia can be periodized archaeologically, and the word for fur seal; "Is the word for seal derived from the word for wild dog and coined when the Potaruwutj arrived near the shore of South Australia in post-dog-arrival time, or was the word for dog coined by an old established people confronted with a strange new animal that reminded them of the fur seal?" (Tindale 1974, p. 119)

Citations

1. Tindale 1974, p. 218.
2. AIATSIS.
3. AIATSIS 2019.
4. Lawson 1879, p. 59.
5. Mathews 1902, pp. 71–106, 77.
6. Tindale 1974, p. 208.
7. Haynes 1887, pp. 456–459.
8. Gale & Sparrow 2010, p. 398.
9. Dixon 2004, p. xxxv.
10. Monaghan 2009, p. 232.
11. Tindale 1974, p. 68.
12. Tindale 1974, p. 29.
13. Haynes 1887, p. 456.
14. Clarke 2015, p. 219.
15. Berndt, Berndt & Stanton 1993, p. 21.
16. Lawson 1879, p. 58.
17. Berndt, Berndt & Stanton 1993, pp. 20–21.
18. Tindale 1974, p. 35.
19. Condon 1955, p. 94.
20. Condon 1955, p. 91.
21. Condon 1955, p. 96.
22. Clarke 2018a, p. 92.
23. Haynes 1887, pp. 456, 458.

Sources

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