The Native Tribes of North Central Australia: Chapter VIII. Initiation Ceremonies (Continued) the Engwura Ceremony

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Each ceremony, further, is not only connected with some totem, but with a particular local group of the totem, and its name indicates the fact. Thus we have the Quabara Unjiamba

1 which is a performance connected with the Unjiamba or Hakea flower totem of a place called Ooraminna, the Quabara Ulpmerka of Quiurnpa, which is a ceremony concerned with certain Ulpmerka, or uncircumcised men of the plum tree totem of a place called Quiurnpa, and so on.

Naturally the ceremonies performed at any Engwura depend upon the men who are present—that is, if at one Engwura special totems are better represented than others, then the ceremonies connected with them will preponderate. There does not appear to be anything like a special series which must of necessity be performed, and the whole programme is arranged, so to speak, by the leading man, whose decision is final, but who frequently consults with certain of the other older men. He invites the owners of different ceremonies to perform them, but without his sanction and initiation nothing is done. Very often the performance is limited to one or perhaps two men, but in others a larger number may take part, the largest number which we saw being eleven. The man to whom the performance belongs may either take part in it himself, or, not infrequently, he may invite some one else to perform it, this being looked upon as a distinct compliment. The performer, or performers, need not of necessity belong to the totem with which the ceremony is concerned, nor need they of necessity belong to the same moiety of the tribe to which the owner does. In some cases while preparations are being made for the ceremony only the members of one moiety will be present, but very often there is no such restriction as this. In many instances those who are present during the preparation are the men who belong to the district with which the ceremony is associated. Frequently we noticed, for example, that the men from a southern locality would be associated in preparing for a ceremony connected with a southern locality, and, in the same way, men from the north would be present during the preparations for a ceremony concerned with a northern locality.

Not infrequently two performances would be prepared

1 As soon as the Atnimokita performance was concluded, another called the Illyonpa was commenced, and this also occupied ten nights. Two days after it had begun the old leader of the Engwura went down to the ground which had been chosen—the corrobborees mentioned taking place at a separate spot visited by men and women alike—and digging up the loose, sandy soil he made a low mound called the Parra, measuring about thirty feet in length, two feet in width and one foot in height. It was ornamented with a row of small gum tree boughs, which were fixed one after the other along the length of the mound, and is said to represent a tract of country, but, despite long inquiry, we have not

1 as the original pattern with which they had been ornamented was almost entirely obliterated by the innumerable rubbings to which they had been subjected in course of time. When decorated the performer went at first some distance along the creek bed so as to be out of sight of the other men, who assembled not far from the Parra at a spot where they spread out a small patch of gum boughs. Standing behind this they waited for a few minutes, after which the lizard was seen in the distance throwing up clouds of dust as he came up from his hiding place in the creek and approached the ground. He came on slowly in a zig-zag course, stooping down and assuming a variety of attitudes, always of course with the high knee action. The younger man, to whom the Churinga were being handed over, now appointed two men to go and meet him. This they did about thirty or forty yards away from the group, after which the performer pretended every now and then to turn back, whereupon the two men circled round him holding their arms up as if to prevent him from going away while they cried out “chrr-chrr,” and did their best to encourage him to come on to where the group of men stood waiting. Gradually he came on, and, when close to, the men forming the audience went to the boughs and spread them out as if inviting him to sit down, which he did after a short time,

1 Occasionally a kind of compound one is made in which a small one is attached to the top of a larger one, in much the same way in which a small Nurtunja is sometimes attached to the top of a larger one.

The use of the Waninga extends far south, right down, in fact, to the sea coast at Port Lincoln, and it evidently passes out westwards, but how far it is impossible to say. At Charlotte Waters various totems use it, such as the Irrunpa or lizard (the equivalent of the Echunpa of the north), Okira or kangaroo, Arunga or euro, and Quatcha or water. The Irrunpa Waninga is similar in structure to that of the Quatcha, but the parts have an entirely different significance; the projecting end represents the head, the triangular part following this the neck, the top transverse bar the fore limbs, the main part the body, the lower bar the legs, and the bottom end of the spear the tail. Exactly as in the case of the different marks on the Churinga, so in the Waninga the different parts represent entirely different objects according to the totem with which the particular one is associated.

In connection with this ceremony and the use of the Waninga, we learned the following particulars with regard to the wanderings of certain Okira, or kangaroo men, in the Alcheringa, which we insert here to give some idea of the nature of the instruction with respect to the doings of their ancestors in the Alcheringa, which is given by the old men to the younger ones during the performance of the Engwura.

1 First of all one man came up to where the audience was sitting by the Parra. He pretended to knock plums down and to eat them, and after a short time he sat down amongst the audience. Then two others came up, one of whom remained standing, while he knocked down imaginary plums, which were eaten by the other man, who seated himself on the ground. This over, both of the men went and joined the audience, and the fourth man came and went through the same pretence of knocking down and eating plums. The interesting point in connection with this and many other very similar ceremonies lies in the fact that the Alcheringa ancestors are so frequently represented as freely eating the animal or plant, from which they derive their totemic name. 2 At the present time the conditions with regard to this point are markedly different from those which evidently obtained in times past.

During the evening close by the Parra a dense group was formed with the older men standing in the centre, and the

Footnotes

278:1 Attention may be drawn to the fact that in the Arunta tribe the men who are supposed to be able to hold intercourse with the spirits and to receive these ceremonies from them are quite distinct from those usually called “medicine-men,” and that both the former and the latter are characteristically the reverse of nervous or excitable in temperament.

279:1 In the case of names such as this which are in ordinary use, and are indicated on maps, we retain the accepted spelling, though this word, for example, as pronounced by the natives, should be spelt Urüminna.

281:1 Mr. Roth has described this same handing on of corrobborees from group to group in the case of the Queensland tribes, and, as he has already pointed out, the result is that the words are, as a general rule, quite unintelligible to the performers, the corrobboree performed on any occasion having probably originated in a distant tribe speaking a different language. For a full description of one of these ordinary dancing corrobborees, the general features of which are much the same over the whole continent, Mr. Roth's work may be consulted.

304:1 Amongst many hundred Churinga examined we have only seen five of this shape, and, curiously, all of them belonged to a lizard totem.

309:1 Ceremonies in which the Waninga is used are described in connection with the rite of Lartna, Chapter VII.

320:1 Illonka is the fruit of a species of Marsdenia.

320:2 The performers in each ceremony represent, of course, individuals of the totem with which the ceremony is concerned. In this instance each of the four men represented, for the time being, a plum-tree man.