Inggarda

The Inggarda are an indigenous Australian people of Western Australia.

Country

The Inggarda's lands, lying between the Gascoyne and River Wooramel rivers in a wedge of land separating those of the Tedei to their south, and of their northern neighbours the Mandi. Their inland extension ran as far east as the vicinity of Red Hill and Gascoyne Junction. According to Norman Tindale's estimation, this territory covered about 4,200 square miles (11,000 km2).[1]

Social organization and rites

The Inggarda were said by some early explorers to have practiced circumcision.[lower-alpha 1] The Nanda on the southern end of Shark Bay were much in fear of the Inggarda whom they regarded as highly proficient in the art of sorcery (boollia), which included the power to conjure up rain at will.[3] This has been contested by modern descendants who state that this was a practice of the Watjarri to their west. Since the Inggarda social bands contiguous with the Watjarri were known under the distinct hordal name of Kurudandi (perhaps surviving in the contemporary station toponym Coordewandy, Tindale suggested that while the Inggarda to the east had not adopted this rite, the western hordes had at some time taken up the practice as current among the Watjarri.[1]

Alternative names

  • Ingarda, Inggad.
  • Angaardi, Angaardie.
  • Ingada.
  • Ingara, Ingarra, Ingarrah.
  • Ingra, Ingadi.
  • Inparra. (perhaps a misprint)[4]
  • Kakarakala (a generic term referring to several tribes, perhaps of Mandi origin.[1]

Notes

  1. ↑ 'Among the Angaardies, circumcision is performed by of a sharp flint, and after the consummation of the rite, the youth is forbidden to look on a woman for the space of two years, consequently he cannot associate with the rest of the tribe, except with the men when hunting, the women then being about their own business. When this time of probation past, he comes near the general camping-place, makes a good fire, and all his friends go to see him, felicitating him on the termination of his solitary mode of life, and if there be any female whom he has legal claims, she is at once surrendered.'[2]

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 Tindale 1974, p. 242.
  2. ↑ Oldfield 1865, p. 252.
  3. ↑ Oldfield 1865, pp. 242,283.
  4. ↑ Barlee 1886, p. 306.

Sources

  • "AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia". AIATSIS.
  • "Tindale Tribal Boundaries" (PDF). Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Western Australia. September 2016.
  • Barlee, Frederick (1886). "Shark Bay: The Majanna tribe" (PDF). In Curr, Edward Micklethwaite. The Australian race: its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over the continent. Volume 1. Melbourne: J. Ferres.
  • Oldfield, Augustus (1865). "On the Aborigines of Australia". Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London. 3: 215–298. JSTOR 3014165.
  • Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Inggarda (WA)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.
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