T G H Strehlow

by Journey to Horseshoe Bend (retail) (epub)

  After this short interruption the vehicles moved on once more; and at noon the party had reached Irbmangkara or, as the white folk called it, Running Waters. Irbmangkara was situated about halfway between Hermannsburg and Henbury, being about thirty miles distant from either station.

  The party made a two-hour midday halt at Irbmangkara to enable Mrs Strehlow to read the letters out to her husband; for no reading was possible in the dim light of the kerosene storm lantern at night. Theo meanwhile chatted with the drivers while they sat on the edge of the long expanse of clear water that marked the beginning of the four-mile stretch of shallow, fish-filled pools known as Running Waters. These pools and the running streams that linked them were fed by springs bubbling out of the river bed of the Finke. As was to be expected, Irbmangkara had always been a natural home for wildfowl and for game. The pools were fringed by luxuriant stands of bulrushes and ti-tree bushes and by a forest of young gums, the bigger trees having been washed out of the river bed by the unprecedented floods of the previous year. The lush vegetation in a way reminded Theo of that in Palm Valley, except for the fact that there were no palms growing at Irbmangkara – a strange fact, seeing that the Palm Valley Creek continually washed palm seeds down into the bed of the Finke River.

  For centuries, or perhaps for thousands of years, before the white man’s coming Irbmangkara had been an important Aranda ceremonial centre. Its sacred cave was located only about a mile away from the upper pools, and no women or children had ever been allowed to enter these forbidden precincts. Even the fully initiated men could do so only on ceremonial occasions; and at such times no weapons were allowed to be carried. No game or wildfowl could be killed by hunters within a radius of about two miles from the hill containing the sacred cave. Irbmangkara had hence been, according to the ancient traditions, a game and wildfowl sanctuary ‘since the beginning of time’. Its ti-tree and bullrush thickets afforded magnificent breeding grounds for several varieties of ducks, for cormorants, pelicans, and spoonbills, and for all other waterfowl found in Central Australia; and these birds found ample food in the shallow parts of the pools, since these were richly stocked with several varieties of fish, ranging from the flat and bony ntapitnja (known among the whites as ‘bony bream’), which attained a maximum length of about eleven inches, to the shorter and rather fatter ntamintana and longulbura, whose rich white flesh was much freer of small bones.

  Irbmangkara looked a place of peace and undisturbed serene beauty; but, like many other seeming Edens on earth, it had known its full share of man’s cruelty and viciousness. Irbmangkara had always been an important ceremonial meeting ground for several Aranda groups; for it was linked by sacred myths with many other totemic centres. According to the local myths, Irbmangkara at the beginning of time had been the home of duck ancestors – of immortal beings that could take on the shape either of ducks or of humans. One large group of these duck ancestors had followed an ancestral leader called Remalarinja north-west through Western Aranda territory to Kularata, a place situated in the floodout swamps of the Dashwood River, north of Ulaterka. Another group of duck ancestors had been taken south by a local cormorant ancestor called Ankebera to Tnauutatara, on the southern bank of the middle Palmer River, in the Upper Southern Aranda area. Another cormorant ancestor from Irbmangkara, who had travelled west through the Matuntara area to a place west of Tempe Downs called Walbmara in order to steal some of the local ancestors’ pile of mulga seeds, had by this theft linked Irbmangkara with Walbmara; and the Walbmara snake ancestor, who had pursued the thief back to Irbmangkara, had decided to stay there forever. Travelling fish ancestors, who had come south in a flood created by themselves from Ankurowunga, in Unmatjera territory, to Uratanga, on the middle Finke River, had also passed through Irbmangkara, and broken through a fish-weir erected against them eight miles further on. This fish-weir had later on turned into a section of the Krichauff Ranges, and the gap through which the fish had escaped was called lltjanmalitnjaka (‘Where the Crayfish had dug’) or, in white terminology, Parke’s Pass. That well-known hunting pair of Upper Southern Aranda mythology, the Two Young Men (Nditja Tara) had hunted kangaroos with success in the open country east of Irbmangkara; and the Northern Aranda curlew ancestors of Ilkakngara had fled wailing to Irbmangkara after one of their number, who had died and was attempting to rise again from his grave, had been stamped back into the ground by the angry magpie ancestor of Urburakana, situated in the Central Aranda area. The human guardians of all the totemic centres that were linked by myths with Irbmangkara had the right to come as visitors to the Irbmangkara ceremonial festivals; and hence the members of the local Aranda group which owned the songs, myths, and ceremonies of lrbmangkara had always been well known to many Western Aranda, Northern Aranda, Central Aranda, Upper Southern Aranda, and Matuntara folk.

  About 1815, just before the establishment of the earliest stations on the Finke River, a sudden catastrophe overwhelmed the local Aranda group of Irbmangkara. A middle-aged man, called Kalejika, who belonged to a Central Aranda local group, 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. According to an old Aranda custom, fully initiated young novices, at a certain point of their manhood ritual, used to be given blood to drink which had been drawn from the veins of their elders. This was done during a special rite which was spoken of only in whispers of fearful secrecy. To offer any of this blood to uninitiated boys would have been a particularly detestable form of sacrilege. In Christian terms, it would have been equivalent to the action of a priest who had poured consecrated communion wine from a chalice into the drinking mugs of children attending a carefree birthday party. It seems incredible that Ltjabakuka and his elders would even have considered indulging in such a frivolous perversion of one of the most sacred Aranda rites; but Kalejika was an esteemed elder in his own region, and a number of Upper Southern Aranda men believed his story, or perhaps pretended to believe it in order to satisfy some private grudges that they might have held against Ltjabakuka. For sacrilege was an offence always punished by death.

  In the pre-white days capital punishment was easy enough to inflict when the offender was a young man. But when the ceremonial chief of an important centre and his chief elders had been accused of sacrilege, the only persons who could be called upon to punish them were men who came from totemic centres linked by myths with the home of the offenders. Though Tnauutatara lay in Upper Southern Aranda territory, few of the Tnauutatara clansmen were keen to undertake a raid on Irbmangkara: too many of them were linked by personal kinship ties with the Irbmangkara group, and no man could be compelled against his wish to kill his own kinsfolk. Similar kinship considerations affected the Western Aranda groups living along the mythical trail linking Irbmangkara and Kularata; indeed, these groups dismissed Kalejika’s story with indignation as an empty fabrication of malicious lies. It was rather easier to stir up to action some of the Matuntara men who lived on the trail linking Walbmara and Irbmangkara. In the end a band of avengers was organised, consisting of perhaps fifty to sixty warriors. Most of these were Matuntara men, but there were a few Upper Southern Aranda men to be found among them. The latter, as was to be expected, came mainly from places in the Horseshoe Bend area, situated more than a hundred miles away from Irbmangkara. However, at least two Upper Southern Aranda men from closer sites – Kangkia, who came from the eagle centre of Pmoierka, and Kaminnga, who came from the emu centre of Erpalka – were persuaded to join the avenging party. The leader of the combined band was a Matuntara man called Tjinawariti, who came from the region south of Tempe Downs. The name ‘Tjinawariti’, which meant literally ‘eagle’s foot’, was the term given to the Southern Cross in the Matuntara area. Tjinawariti, who belonged to the eagle totem, was a man renowned both for his
height and for his prowess with spear and boomerang. Another important man in the avenging band was Kapaluru, a native cat totem ceremonial chief from Akaua, on the Palmer River. His influence was directly responsible for the addition of several more young warriors to Tjinawariti’s band.

  And so, late one afternoon in 1875, 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 at Urualbukara, laden with the game and the vegetable foods which they had gathered during the day, for since the upper pools of Irbmangkara constituted closed territory to all except the initiated males on ceremonial occasions, the normal camping grounds of the Irbmangkara folk were located at Urualbukara, the southernmost pool, four miles below the source of the springs. The avengers were numerous enough to form a group of tnengka – this term being the name given to a body of men who could overwhelm a whole camp of victims by means of an open attack made in broad daylight. The only reason for this party’s going into hiding was to ensure that every member of the Irbmangkara population had returned to the camp before the murderous assault was undertaken. These fifty or sixty tnengka had accordingly been split into three parties upon arrival at Urualbukara – two parties took up positions on the hill slopes of Ilaltilalta and Lalkitnama respectively, while the third hid in the thick undergrowth that covered the river bed south of the camps. This arrangement was intended to frustrate any attempts of escape on the part of the victims.

  The sun had sunk very low in the western sky before the waiting warriors could be reasonably certain that all members of the Irbmangkara camp had returned. Keeping under the cover of bushes and trees, the armed men crept forward with the relentless and uncanny skill of hunters used to stalking suspicious game animals. As soon as the clearing around the camp had been reached, they rushed in, like swift dingoes upon a 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. 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 eighty to a hundred men, women, and children. Before leaving the stricken camp, the bodies of all clubbed victims were prodded with spears to make certain that there was no life left in them. For the warriors had to be sure beyond all doubt that no eyewitnesses had survived who could later on incite reprisals against them. Satisfied that they had carried out their grim task with flawless precision, the warriors now left the Urualbukara camp. But they had made one fatal mistake. Laparintja, one of Ltjabakuka’s wives, though severely clubbed, had merely shammed death, and had succeeded in stifling her urge to scream while being prodded by a spear point. She had in addition successfully covered her bloodstained baby son Kaltjirbuka under her own prostrate body. As soon as the avengers had departed, she raised herself cautiously; and, taking her child with her, she had slowly wriggled towards the bulrush thickets that grew on the edges of the closest pool. Once she had reached the bulrushes, it was an easy matter for her to make good her escape northward to Irbmangkara, and beyond the uppermost pools towards Arbanta, where another camp of Irbmangkara folk was located.

  As the warriors were about to return home, an unpleasant surprise awaited them: Nameia, a middle-aged Irbmangkara man, who was very late in returning from the hunt, suddenly burst into view. He was accompanied by a second man called Ilbalta who belonged, like himself, to the Paltara class. Suddenly fearful of having their grim deed betrayed to avengers, the warriors rushed at both hunters and hurled their spears and boomerangs at them in a frenzy of alarm. Ilbalta was handicapped by an old cut in the leg, and was quickly brought down and speared to death. But Nameia, though hurt by a spear-thrust in one leg, proved unexpectedly fleet-footed. When his pursuers drew uncomfortably close to him, he stopped, picked up some of the spears that had missed him, and threw them back at his attackers. The latter paused for a few moments, and the break enabled Nameia to continue his flight. Since rising clouds of smoke in the distance showed that there were other camps of people located upstream from Irbmangkara, the warriors did not dare to pursue him too far, lest they should encounter additional late-returning hunters. Tjinawariti called off the chase, and then dismissed from further service those Southern Aranda men who had assisted him, so that they could return to their homes. After that he set off for Akaua with his Matuntara followers. Over the whole band of tnengka warriors there now hung the fear of terrible retribution: Nameia had seen most of them, and had recognised all those that he had seen; for every man in the band had been a visitor to Irbmangkara in former years. Moreover, though Nameia’s conception site was situated at Tnotitja, on the Finke River upstream from Pantjindama, his parents had both been Matuntara people. His father Kurubila had been an important ceremonial chief from the great Matuntara native cat centre of Akaua. Many of the warriors who had raided Irbmangkara had hence been his personal relatives.

  Nameia, like Laparintja, made his way up the Finke valley to Arbanta. Like Laparintja, Nameia was completely overwhelmed by grief. His Western Aranda wife Tjakiljika, who came from Kaporilja Springs near Hermannsburg, and his two younger sons Pmatupatuna and Unkuarintana, had died in the general slaughter at Irbmangkara. Both Nameia and Laparintja quickly spread the grim story of the massacre at Arbanta and at other camps nearby; and soon the gorge walls above lrbmangkara were echoing with the wails of men, women and children, who were mourning their dead kinsfolk. Some days later several members of the Irbmangkara group who had been away on visits to other camps returned to Urualbukara, and buried the dead victims. The maimed infants had all perished in the meantime.

  The next step taken by the survivors was the selection and the ceremonial dedication and fitting out of a revenge party, who would be commissioned to go out as leltja and kill all of the men responsible for the massacre, down to the last guilty participant. Messengers went out as far as Njenkuguna in Central Aranda territory, Ulamba and Jamba in Northern Aranda territory, and the Ellery Creek and Upper Finke valley portions of Western Aranda territory; and everywhere mourning rites took place for the dead during which moral support was enlisted for the punishment of the Irbmangkara raiders. Finally a small party of avengers, chosen for their special prowess with weapons and their special skills in bushcraft, was assembled near Manta on the Finke River, some miles upstream from Irbmangkara. Here the men were put through the special ritual which was believed to endow avengers with the ability to creep upon their unsuspecting victims in safety and to evade without difficulty the spears of their enemies. For, unlike a band of tnengka warriors capable of destroying a whole camp in broad daylight, the leltja were avengers who had to move stealthily through hostile territory in order to kill isolated individuals who had left the security of their main group camps. After passing through their special ritual, the members of this leltja party made their way down the Finke valley. Their leader was Nameia, who had by now fully recovered from his wounds. The party included at least two of Ltjabakuka’s sons, also several of his close relatives. But the numbers of the avengers had to be kept to the lowest possible limits commensurate with safety. Possibly no more than ten men went out on this revenge expedition. They knew that it would take them at least a couple of years to achieve their retaliatory errand. For they were moving into the well-populated country of enemies who were expecting a reprisal visit, and who were therefore on their guard. They would have to pick their victims off, perhaps one man, and certainly no more than three men, at a time, preferably when they were out hunting; and after each kill the avengers would have to lie low for weeks till their victims’ relatives had given up looking for them. They would have to live off the land in hostile territory, and often move about singly so that any pers
ons sighted from a distance accidentally could not raise an alarm about a travelling band of warriors. But with their own lives continually at stake, these leltja avengers killed – and waited between kills – with the determination and the patience of highly intelligent beasts of prey. Sometimes the killing of a man might involve also the killing of his wife and children in order to wipe out all danger of eyewitness evidence. But slowly they achieved their purpose. One of the few Irbmangkara raiders who escaped retribution was Kangkia. He was cornered, but succeeded in convincing the avengers that he had been compelled by force to accompany the tnengka band, and that he had hung back during the attack so as not to kill anyone personally.

  After they had picked off the guilty Aranda warriors, Nameia’s band of avengers moved from the Horseshoe Bend area across the South Australian border as far south as the Hamilton River; for some of the Matuntara men had gone down into this distant region. After that the avengers made their way back in a northwesterly direction into the Palmer valley. In the end even the dreaded and watchful Tjinawariti and the respected Kapaluru succumbed to their spears. After these final successes the avenging party hastened to return to the security of the Krichauff Ranges, probably at some point south of Alitera; and then they made their proud return journey up the Finke River into Western Aranda territory.

  Here they found that the world which they had left behind over three years earlier had changed completely. It was 1878 by now; and white men had invaded their land during their long and dangerous absence. The first structures built by white men greeted their eyes on the banks of the Finke at Hermannsburg. Their friends and relatives in the native camp were overjoyed to see their courageous kinsmen returning. Their spare and gaunt forms proved how tough life had been for them during the past three years, and how often they had to endure hungry days and nights because there had been too many enemy hunters waiting for them in the best game country. But they had achieved their object, and there had not been a single casualty among them. They were given a heroes’ welcome, and no one ever forgot the amazing achievement of these warriors – an achievement that would bear comparison with that of any modern guerilla fighters in any other part of the world.