Kaurna

Although Governors Hindmarsh (1836–1838) and Gawler (1838–1841) had orders to extend the protection of British law to the people and their property, the colonists' interests came first; their policy of "civilising" and "protecting" the Indigenous people nonetheless assumed a peaceful transfer of land to the settlers. All land was offered up for sale and bought by settlers.[21]

The Lutheran missionaries Christian Teichelmann and Clamor Schurmann studied Kaurna language and culture, and were able to inform the authorities of their exclusive ownership of land inherited through the paternal line. Gawler reserved several areas for the Kaurna people, but the settlers protested and these areas were subsequently sold or leased. Within ten years, all of the Kaurna and Ramindjeri lands were occupied by Europeans. Wild fauna disappeared as European garden practices were introduced and grazing animals destroyed the bulbs, lilies and tubers that the Kaurna had tended for food. Elders no longer had authority; their entire way of life had been undermined.[21]

The Kaurna may have numbered several thousand before European contact, but were down to about 700 by the time of the formal establishment of the colony in 1836.[22] Initially, contacts began with the arrival of sealers and whalers in the 1790s.[22] Sealers established themselves on Kangaroo Island as early as 1806, and raided the mainland for Kaurna women, both for the sexual opportunities and the help they could supply in skinning the sealers' prey.[9] Wary of Europeans from their experience with sealers, the Kaurna generally stayed aloof when the first colonists arrived.[23] The timing was important. Summer was a period when the Kaurna traditionally moved from the plains to the foothills, so that the initial settlement of the Adelaide area took place without any conflict.[24]

The population again severely declined upon the arrival of Anglo-European colonial settlers with South Australia Governor Captain John Hindmarsh as Commander-in-chief in December 1836 at Holdfast Bay (now Glenelg). According to an entry in the South Australian Register (30 January 1842), the Kaurna population numbered around 650.[25] They had suffered a serious drop in numbers in the early 1830s (and possibly again in 1889)[2] due to a smallpox epidemic which is thought to have originated in the eastern states and spread along the Murray River as Indigenous groups traded with each other.[26] This devastated their lives in every way.[2] An outbreak of typhoid, due to pollution by Europeans of the River Torrens, lead to many deaths and a rapid population decline, though accurate figures were not recorded.[26] Many contracted other diseases against which they lacked immunity, such as measles, whooping cough, typhus, dysentery and influenza. The groups lost their identities as they merged with others, and the Kaurna and Ramindjeri people were reduced to very few.[27] In the 1840s, Murray River people invaded, stealing women and children, while the government suppressed the Kaurna attempts at self-defence. Some Kaurna moved north to join other tribes.[28]

The Colonisation Commissioners had promised to protect the Aboriginal people and their property as well as making provision for their subsistence, education and advancement,[2] with the post of Protector of Aborigines set up with this aim. William Wyatt was followed by the first official appointment in the role, Matthew Moorhouse, who held the post from 1839 to 1856. He reported in 1840 that many Kaurna were friendly and helpful, and that by 1840, about 150 spoke at least some English. Many Kaurna men, such as Mullawirraburka ("King John") and Kadlitpinna ("Captain Jack") helped the police and new settlers, also sharing their language, culture and beliefs with the missionaries.[29] An early settler in Marryatville, George Brunskill, reported that the "local Blacks" were harmless, did not steal, and returned borrowed items promptly.[30] Much goodwill was shown on both sides, but as the settler numbers grew, their drunkenness, violence, exploitation and failure to practise the reciprocity expected in Aboriginal culture soured the relationships.[31]

After a few incidents involving the executions of Aboriginal men after the murders of settlers, sometimes on flimsy evidence, and a blind eye turned to violence against Indigenous people, the situation escalated. The Maria massacre of shipwrecked people on the Coorong led to further violent clashes and harsh penalties were imposed to protect the settlers. Missionaries Teichelmann and Schurmann, Protector Moorhouse and Sub-Protector Edward John Eyre questioned the use of a foreign legal code against the Indigenous peoples, and Moorhouse complained of police hostility towards Aboriginal people, but Governor George Grey stood firm, and martial law was applied even where there had been little previous contact with the settlers.[32]

Moorhouse and Grey gave up trying to settle the local Aboriginal people as farmers, and discouraged settlement at Pirltawardli. The 1847 Vagrancy Act restricted their free movement.[33] Teichelmann tried to establish an Aboriginal mission settlement at Happy Valley, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Adelaide, but he lacked the means to develop the property or make farming a viable option for the Kaurna.[34] Many Kaurna people worked for the settlers and were well thought of, but the work was seasonal and the rewards inadequate, and their tribal obligations were not understood by their employers. Grey started the use of rations to maintain the peace and to persuade the people to send their children to school.[35]

According to Moorhouse, "almost whole tribes" had disappeared by 1846,[36] and by the 1850s, there were few remaining Kaurna in the Adelaide area. In 1850 the children (mostly from the Murray River area, but including a few Kaurna[37]) at the Native School (which had been on Kintore Avenue since 1846) were transferred to the Poonindie Native Training Institution near Port Lincoln, on the Eyre Peninsula, over 600 kilometres (370 mi) away.[38] Moorhouse resigned as Protector in 1856, and in 1857 the position was abolished.[39]

The Kaurna people had to accept colonial domination more quickly than in other regions, and they mostly chose to co-exist peacefully with the settlers. Most, however, resisted the "civilising" policies of the government and the Christian teachings of the missionaries. Being so small in number by the 1850s, some were absorbed into the neighbouring Narungga or Ngarrindjeri groups, and some married settlers.[27]

By 1860 the Kaurna were vastly outnumbered by the colonists, who numbered 117,727. Adults were also relocated from the city to places such as Willunga, Point McLeay, and Point Pearce in the 1860s. In 1888 a German missionary reported that there was "scarcely one remaining".[27] Some of the Kaurna people settled at Point McLeay and Point Pearce married into local families, and full-blood Kaurna still lived at the missions and scattered in the settled districts in the late 19th century, despite the wide belief that the "Adelaide tribe" was extinct by the 1870s.[40]

Rations continued to be supplied in Adelaide and from ration depots in the country. Although the office of Protector was restored in 1861, the government did not play an active role in Aboriginal affairs, leaving their welfare to the missionaries. A Select Committee reported that the race was doomed to extinction. Some Aboriginal people (Kaurna and others) moved around and sometimes visited the city, camping in Botanic Park, then called the Police Paddocks. In 1874, 18 men and women were arrested and charged as "vagrants", and after a 14 days' imprisonment were sent back to Goolwa and Milang. Running battles between the police and similar groups continued for decades.[41]

History books about Adelaide have largely ignored the Aboriginal presence, and Womadelaide is held each year in Botanic Park without acknowledgement of the Aboriginal encampments 150 years ago on the same land. There is a tradition of performing corroborees and dances dating back to the 1840s, including the "Grand Corroboree" at the Adelaide Oval in 1885 and corroborees at the beaches of Glenelg and Henley Beach around the turn of the century. This huge omission in the history books has been described as "strategic forgetting" by anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner.[42]

The last surviving person of full Kaurna descent, a woman called Ivaritji (Amelia Taylor or Amelia Savage[43]) died in 1929.[44][lower-alpha 1] Born in Port Adelaide in the late 1840s, her name means "gentle, misty rain" in the Kaurna language. Her father, Ityamai-itpina, known as "Rodney", was one of the leaders of the Kaurna and prominent in the early settlers' accounts.[43] She was responsible for identifying locations of cultural significance in the city, such as the lake in the Adelaide Botanic Garden and Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga, and Whitmore Square has been given her name in honour of the prior occupation of the land by the Kaurna people.[45]

Items of Kaurna material culture, such as traditional objects, spears, boomerangs and nets etc. are extremely rare. Interest in collecting and conserving Kaurna culture was not common until their display at the 1889 Paris Exhibition spurred an interest in Indigenous culture, by which time the Kaurna traditional culture was no longer practised. Many hundreds of objects were sent to the Paris exhibition and these were never returned to Australia.

The Kaurna collection held by the South Australian Museum contains only 48 items. In September 2002, a Living Kaurna Cultural Centre was opened at Warriparinga in the southern suburbs area of Adelaide.

The Kaurna people lived in family groups called bands, who lived in defined territories called pangkarra which were "passed" from father to son upon his initiation. Pangkarra always had access to the coastline and ran extensively inland. The coastline was essential for seafood hunting and the inland territories provided food, clothing and protection for the people during bad weather. The pangkarra were also grouped into larger areas of land called yerta.[lower-alpha 2]

As all the members of a band were related, marriage between a man and a woman within the same band was forbidden. Bands were patrilineal and patrilocal: a woman always lived with her husband's band following her marriage. Each band was also composed of two exogamous moieties, the Karuru and Mattari, which traced their descent matrilineally to an ancestral totemic being. All the children of a marriage would take their mother's moiety as children were considered to have "inherited" their "flesh and blood" from their mothers alone. Marriage within the same moiety was forbidden.[59] Girls became marriageable at puberty, usually around 12 years of age. Conversely, men were only allowed to marry after the age of 25.[60]

Sexual relations were relatively free and uninhibited, regardless of marital status. Kaurna ownership of property was communal; the reproductive organs were seen no differently from any other form of property, and thus adultery was practically ubiquitous. The visitation of men from distant tribes was seen as a good opportunity to enhance the gene pool. The practice of milla mangkondi or wife stealing was also common, for the same reason.[lower-alpha 3] Although this custom was hated by some victims, as arranged marriages were the norm, some women saw it as an opportunity to choose their own partners and actively encouraged a preferred suitor; all Kaurna bands are said to have engaged in the practice regularly.[61]

Very little is known of Kaurna rites and mythology as colonial written records are fragmentary and rare. Physically, the Kaurna practised chest scarification and performed circumcision as an initiatory rite and were the southernmost Indigenous language group to do so. Waterfall Gully has been linked to initiation rites.[62]

Historical accounts of Kaurna burial rites are unreliable as any gathering of Kaurna was thought to be for a funeral. As soon as a person died the body was wrapped in the clothes they had worn in life. The body was then placed on a wiralli (crossed sticks that form the radii of a circle) and an inquest was held to determine cause of death. The body was then buried. Children under four years were not buried for some months, but were wrapped and carried by their mothers during the day with the bundle being used as a pillow at night.[63] Burial by bodies of water was common with the use of sandy beaches, sand dunes and banks of rivers. A large number of graves have been found on Glenelg beach and at Port Noarlunga.[64] Similarly, an unusually complex burial at Kongaratti was found. The grave was rectangular and lined with slate, the base was also lined with slate which had been covered with a bed of grass. An elderly woman was lying on her side, draped in a fishing net and wrapped in a Kangaroo skin cloak. The grave was topped with a layer of grass covered by marine sponges.[64]

Similar to a Peramangk dreamtime legend, the Kaurna regard the 35 miles from the Mount Lofty Ranges to Nuriootpa as the body of a giant called Nganno (often pronounced Nunoo) who was killed there after attacking their tribe. The peaks of the Mount Lofty Ranges and Mount Bonython are jureidla (conserved in the toponym Uraidla), namely his "two ears".[65] There are other traditional stories connected to the two peaks Mt Lofty and Mt Bonython, one story concerning two men and another referring to the two moiety groups of the Kaurna.[66] The general theme of these stories surrounding the two peaks is the importance of community and the notion of unselfishness as a practice which supports community.

A legend recounted variously by Unaipon and Milerum concerns a culture hero called Tjilbruke[67] has topographical features that locate it in Kaurna territory. In Tindale's version Tjilbruke is associated with the glossy ibis; the name actually refers to the blue crane.[68] The "Tjilbruke Dreaming Tracks" have been mapped from the Bedford Park area (Warriparinga), down the Fleurieu Peninsula, and efforts have been made to preserve and commemorate it where possible.[69]

Munaitjerlo is an ancestral being who created the Moon and stars before himself becoming the Sun. The word Munaitjerlo was believed by Teichelmann to also refer to the Kaurna Dreamtime itself. The mythology of the Mura-Muras, ancestral beings who created landscape features and introduced laws and initiation, can be found in southwest Queensland, the Northern Territory and in the Flinders Ranges through to Eyre Peninsula in South Australia. As it is known that the Kaurna shared a common Dreaming with these peoples it is likely they shared the Mura-Muras as well. By way of contrast, the travels of Tjilbruke are well known from Norman Tindale's research.[64]

The Kaurna seasonal calendar is divided into four seasons, roughly equivalent to summer, autumn, winter and spring:[70]

• Warltati, the hot season, from January to March (warlta = hot, heat and warmth)
• Parnati, the windy season, from April to June (waitpi = windy)
• Kudlila, the wet season, from July to September (kudlinthi = to wash the earth)
• Wirltutu, the mild warm season, October to December (indicated by the position of wirltu, the eagle's foot constellation, or Southern Cross, in the sky)

The Kaurna Aboriginal Community and Heritage Association (KACHA) is recognised as the representative body for all Kaurna people. Starting life as the Tjilbruke Track Committee based at the South Australian Museum, it was renamed as the Kaurna Heritage Committee before growing into KACHA, which encompasses broader issues than cultural heritage concerns, including rebuilding the language and culture.[72]

The Kaurna Yerta Aboriginal Corporation represents Kaurna people, and was involved in the creation of the Wangayarta memorial park and burial site in 2021.[73]