Pangerang
The Pangerang, also spelt Bangerang and Bangarang, are the Indigenous Australians who traditionally occupied much of what is now north-eastern Victoria stretching along the Murray River to Echuca and into the areas of the southern Riverina in New South Wales. They may not have been an independent tribal reality, as Norman Tindale thought, but one of the many Yorta Yorta tribes. For the purposes of this article, they are treated separately, according to those sources that maintain the distinction.
Country
Pangerang lands covered some 2,600 square miles (6,700 km2), running through the lower Goulburn River valley and extending westwards to the Murray River. It covered areas east and west of Shepparton, taking in also Wangaratta, Benalla, and Kyabram. The southern reaches extend as far as Toolamba and Violet Town.[1]
Social structure
The Bangerang collective of tribes, or nation, also known as the Yorta Yorta, consists of 8 hordes, according to Norman Tindale, though others have been included in the list.
- Moiraduban
- Waningotbun. (at Kotupna)
- Maragan. (perhaps Maraban.)
- Owanguttha.[lower-alpha 1]
We know somewhat more about the fish-loving Wongatpan and the opossum-hunting Towroonban, two Pangerang clans, simply because they happen to have been the tribes inhabiting the area where the ethnographer Edward Micklethwaite Curr took over his pastoral run.[2]
Alternative names
- Panggarang, Pangorang, Pangurang, Pine-gorine, Pine-go-rine, Pinegerine, Pinegorong
- Bangerang, Banjgaranj
- Pallaganmiddah
- Jabalajabala. (from the word jabala meaning no), a name applied to western Pangerang hordes)
- Yaballa, Yabula-yabula
- Waningotbun
- Maragan
- Owanguttha
- Yurt. (exonym used by northerners and the Ngurelban, from jurta, meaning no)
- Yoorta
- Moiraduban
- Moitheriban[3]
- Bangarang[4]
History
Some Pangerang were killed in colonial frontier wars, such as at the massacre at Moira Swamp/Lake Barmah.
Notes
- "There were eight well-defined hordes the names of which generally terminated in [-pan] or [-ban]. Curr and Mathews both show that Pangerang hordes extended a little way downriver from Echuca on both banks; these western hordes were called Jabalaljabala by downriver tribes. Three of Curr's Pangerang hordes are separated as the Kwatkwat. The hordes shown by Curr north of the Murray River belong to other tribes." (Tindale 1974, p. 207)
Citations
- Tindale 1974.
- Furphy 2013, p. 37.
- Tindale 1974, p. 207.
- Tindale & Jones 1974, p. 156.
Sources
- Barwick, Diane E. (1984). McBryde, Isabel (ed.). "Mapping the past: an atlas of Victorian clans 1835–1904". Aboriginal History. 8 (2): 100–131. JSTOR 24045800.
- Bowe, Heather; Morey, Stephen (1999). The Yorta Yorta (Bangerang) language of the Murray Goulburn: including Yabula Yabula. Pacific Linguistics. ISBN 978-0-858-83513-9.
- Furphy, Samuel (2013). Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History. Australian National University. ISBN 978-1-922-14471-3.
- Smyth, Robert Brough (1878). The Aborigines of Victoria: with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania (PDF). Vol. 1. Melbourne: J. Ferres, gov't printer – via Internet Archive.
- Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Pangerang (VIC)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.
- Tindale, Norman Barnett; Jones, Rhys (1974). Aboriginal tribes of Australia: their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits, and proper names. University of California Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-7081-0741-6. Note: mentioned as derived from Fraser; cannot find that spelling in Fraser (1892), but Sutton (2004), p.95 mentions that spelling as from R.H. Mathews. Needs further investigation.
- West, Raymond (1962). Those Were the Days: A Story of Shepparton, Victoria, and to Some Extent, Its District. Waterwheel Press.