Tag Archives: Pallanganmiddang

First people of Beechworth — answering some criticisms

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Aboriginal, Beechworth, King Billy, Squatters, Tangambalanga, Uncategorized, Wangaratta, Yackandandah

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WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In particular, I acknowledge the Aboriginal ancestors whose words are quoted within this post, with the greatest respect for their legacy.

This post relates to my previous post on the Pallanganmiddang — First Peoples of Beechworth and Beyond, addressing some potential criticisms of the research. Be warned: it is technical!

In my last post, I stated that from a historical perspective, the first people of the Beechworth region, and in fact a much broader area, were a local area group (in anthropological language, an ‘areal-moiety’ grouping, ie: belonging to an area, with a moiety attached), called the Pallangan-middang. The Pallangan-middang spoke a unique language which was neither Pangerang/Yorta Yorta, nor Dhudhuroa. They also appear in multiple detailed references in one historical source (the journals of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines) as a sub-set of a larger group called the Waywurru (Waveroo).

Since the last post was published, I have has some suggestions which in turn constitute arguments to the effect that I (and others) have misinterpreted the historical source materials. The body of this argument is that when Europeans talked to Aboriginal people and then tried to write down what they said, they got it wrong. One reason they got it wrong is because Aboriginal languages are difficult for Europeans to interpret and transcribe. Another reason is that they didn’t understand Aboriginal culture and frequently misinterpreted things. As a professional historian who trained at a university (La Trobe University), whose history department was internationally known for its ‘ethnographic history’, I was exposed to individual historians who made it their life’s work to grapple specifically with these kinds of historical problems. In a nutshell, these issues of cross-cultural interpretation do constitute real problems for historians. No sound historian would negate that argument, and would always seek strategies to attempt to compensate for the possibility of such misreadings.

Conversely, to consign to the ‘rubbish bin’ written historical source materials just because they were created by European colonisers, would mean loosing a lot of valuable information. Very few scholars of Victorian Aboriginal history (Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal), would consign the massive journals of writers like George Augustus Robinson or William Thomas, written mainly in the 1840s, to the bin — no matter how offensive some of the actions of these individuals with regards to Aboriginal people were. All historians should be suspicious of what their sources have to say, and attempt to ‘test them’ using historiographical  practices such as cross-referencing, and placing source materials in their correct historical context.

Particularly when talking in a public forum, it is difficult to counter-argue an argument against one’s own work without actually pulling out enormous wads of source materials in order to demonstrate to lay people in the audience that I have already considered certain potential errors and done my best to compensate for the possibility of these errors. However, I would like to take this opportunity to address four specific arguments which suggest my work is the result of faulty interpretation of the historical source materials. I cannot prevent people from reading primary source materials however they like. However, I can at least respond to criticisms of my own work by explaining how I have gone about some specific points in relation to my interpretation of primary source materials.

Counter argument 1: ‘In the historical records, Pallanganmiddang is just a misspelling of Pangerang. They are the same thing.’

This argument was systematically dismantled by historian Dr Marie Hansen Fels in her monumental report ‘These Singular People — The Ovens Blacks, Supplementary Report, 28 July 1997’ written in response to anthropologist Rod Hagen’s critique of her initial report, produced for the Yorta Yorta Native Title case during the mid-1990s. However, because this report was never published, this argument continues to be raised.

My response to the argument that Pallanganmiddang is a misspelling of Pangerang runs like this: Yes, Europeans did struggle with spelling Aboriginal names and words, and frequently, they spelled the same name or word in several different ways. Aboriginal cultures were oral cultures, and there were no conventional ways of spelling Aboriginals names and words. However, when one sees attempts to write certain words written enough times, one can discern a similarity between these various attempts at spelling, which unifies them.

In Victoria generally, some common issues arise in spelling, which can be easily accounted for, if one is aware of them. The first is to do with the way Europeans struggled to record the sounds ‘P’ and ‘B’ which as a consequence are used interchangeably. Even today, as well as historically, one may often see ‘Pangerang’ written as ‘Bangerang’ (or even Bpangerang), but we are all aware that Pangerang, Bangerang and Bpangerang refer to the same group. Certainly one also finds, in the historical sources, Pallanganmiddang also written a ‘B’ instead of a ‘P’. (The same kid of transposition often occurs with the sounds ‘T’, ‘K’ and ‘Dj’.)

The second issue with spelling is cultural: it seems that the Pallanganmiddang people frequently deployed the Kulin areal-moiety (local area) group suffix ‘—illum’ instead of the north east Victorian alpine areal-moiety (local area) group suffix ‘—mittung’, depending largely on where they were in the landscape. So it is possible to see the name appearing as Pallangan-illum, or, Ballangan-illum, as well as Pallengan-mittung. (One also sees the second ‘a’ replaced with an ‘i’, and the third ‘a’ replaced with an ‘o’ — especially in geographical zones associated with Kulin peoples. So one sees Ballingo-illum, Ballingon-illum, or variations of this.)

In fact, we do see a lot of spelling variation in Robertson of the name Pallanganmiddang. However, he does spell Pangerang rather consistently throughout as ‘Pingerine’. Take, for instance, Robinson’s first visit into North East Victoria. On 20 April 1840, at Brodribb’s station on the Broken River (near Benalla), he meets a number of Aboriginal men, who may be passing through, or may be station workers. He writes:

‘We ascertained these natives belong to or were parts of three tribes [in fact, he goes on to list four, but I will list the two relevant to this discussion!]:
1. Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Brodribb (queri)
…
4. And the Pine.ger.rines, a large tribe inhabiting the country on the south and south west banks of the Murry.’

From this excerpt we can see that Robinson has clearly met two different groups, the Ballingoyallums and the Pinegerines.

The following February (1841) Robinson revisits north east Victoria, and on the 9th and 10th of February, he meets with a large mixed group of Aboriginal people on Bontharambo station (just out of Wangaratta). He sits down and records their names, gender, ages, what groups they belong to, and sometimes their kin relationship. On the 23 February 1841, he writes down his findings. He records the names of around 15 people who are specifically ‘Pallengoillum’ or ‘Pallengomitty,’ belonging to the ‘Waveroo’ or ‘Wave.veroo’ ‘nation’, plus another 10 or so generally Waveroo people. He also records about 28 ‘Pinegerine’ people. (As an aside, Robinson also records roughly equal numbers of Wiradjuri and Taungurung people on the same site on that occasion.) Insofar as I can see, Robinson has interviewed in this instance, around 95 people, and within that large group he has clearly identified people who are ‘Pallengoillum’/’Pallengomitty’ (Pallanganillum/Pallanganmiddang) as well as people who are ‘Pinegerine’ (Pangerang). The two groups are clearly identified, with exceptional clarity, as separate groups.

Counter argument 2: ‘Waywurru is really a misspelling of the Melbourne broader group Woiwurrung.’

This could easily be a legitimate concern. The argument runs along the lines that when Robinson was in north east Victoria, he was meeting a lot of Woiwurrung people who were in transit, using the Port Phillip route (ie: the modern day Hume Freeway, which was the original overlanding track), as a means of travel. Thus he was meeting Woiwurrung in North East Victoria, and he recorded them as ‘Waywurru’ (in fact, variations of this spelling such as ‘Wee-her-roo,’ ‘Waveroo’ and so on).

This seems plausible until one realises that Robinson had spent a lot of time in Melbourne around the Woiwurrung and that he could identify this language when he heard it spoken. However, in north east Victoria, he clearly treats the ‘Wee-her-roo,’ or ‘Wave-veroo’ as a new and unknown group, which he has to learn about. Whenever Robinson was unsure about something, and knew he had to continue to check the facts, he made a note in his journal to himself to ‘queri’ the statement.

When, on Monday 20 April 1840, Robinson met some ‘Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo, so says Mr Brodribb (queri)’ , Robinson made a note to ‘query’ further about this group.

On Thursday 23 April 1840,  Robinson wrote, ‘The natives at Dockers [ie: Bontharambo station] prostitute their women in like manner as do many other tribes: Goulburn, Waverong; Barrable, &c.’

Here we can see that within the same short period of time (four days), Robinson has chosen to identify ‘Wee.her.roo’ and ‘Waverong’ separately. Dr Ian Clark has accounted for the different ways in which Robinson wrote Waywurru: Wee.her.roo, Way.u.roo Wee.er.roo; Way.you.roo, Waveroo, Wavaroo, Wavoroo, Wave.veroo, Way.you.roo, Wayerroo (Ian Clarke, ‘Aboriginal languages in north-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered,’ Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): 2-22). Critically, Robinson only used these spellings in the geographical context of north east Victorian locations. 

We can compare this with the way Robinson wrote Woiwurrung, frequently as ‘Waverong’ (eg: on 18 July 1839, 11 October 1840, 16 November 1840 as examples) and ‘Way.you.rong’ (1 June 1840). (There are probably more examples  but I do not have time to scan the 800+ journal pages I have before me.) Moreover Robinson’s geographical context for using ‘Waverong’ never applies to north east Victoria (ie: country north of the Broken River).

It is easy to see that Robinson differentiated between Waywurru by creating the sound ‘—varoo’ on the end of the word — a linguistic gesture he retained exclusively for a group in north east Victoria; while in the case of Waverong, he created the sound ‘—erong’ on the end of the word, and used this in context appropriate to an area and people we now comprehend as Woi-wurrung.

One could argue that this differentiation is due to a dialectical difference between say Melbourne and North East Victoria, but that it still refers to the same group of people. That argument comes unstuck when one considers that none of the people whom Robinson associates with Wavaroo claim any connection to Melbourne: Quite the opposite; several openly claim specific connection to areas of land in north east Victoria. The same cannot be said for anyone associated with Waverong. There still exists a remote possibility that Pallanganmiddang were a non-contiguous areal moiety of ‘Woi-wurrung’, and that they pronounced it ‘Waveroo’. However it would require a lot of evidence to establish this in concrete terms, as a non-contiguous areal moiety speaking an entirely different language doesn’t fit the broader pattern of Kulin society.

Counter argument 3: ‘There is only one historical source for the term Waywurru, therefore its existence might be just the faulty perception of one person.’

In his paper published in the journal Aboriginal History (Volume 25, 2005, pp.216-227), titled ‘Ethnographic information and anthropological interpretation in a Native Title claim: the Yorta Yorta experience’, anthropologist Rod Hagen stated that with regards to the term ‘Waveroo,’ aside from the journal of George Augustus Robinson, ‘No other 19th century commentator makes mention of them.’  While there is not much evidence for ‘Waveroo’ as a term, it is easy to demonstrate Hagen’s statement as inaccurate. There are two other contemporary sources (squatters Benjamin Barber and David Reid) who agree with George Augustus Robinson, referring to a ‘Weeroo’ or ‘Weiro’ broad group in the area of north east Victoria north of the Broken River and south of the Murray River (Letter from Benjamin Barber, in ‘Replies to the following Circular Letter on the subject of the Aborigines, addressed to gentlemen residing too remote from Sydney, to expect the favour of their personal attendance upon the Committee, in Select Committee Enquiry into Immigration, NSW Legislative Council, 1841; and David Reid in ‘Aboriginal Population 1860, The Argus, Friday 5 October, 1860. p.5). While Barber’s knowledge was mainly in relation to the area of Barnawatha Station, Reid had lived on the Ovens at what is now Tarrawingee, and had also lived in Yackandandah, and consequently his statement would reflect this experience. Three independent sources is not a substantial historical record compared to other large groups such as the Wiradjuri or Taungurung, but the paucity of information about them must be contextualised by the fact that the Waywurru/Waveroo were a comparatively small group which bore the brunt of violence from numerous overlanding parties travelling to Port Phillip, as well as violent squatters who settled in north east Victoria, all through the late 1830s and early 1840s.

Counter argument 4: ‘There are old maps, and these maps show the Pangerang on country where you say the Pallanganmiddang should be.’

Another criticism of my work on the Pallanganmiddang is that what I have written and describe doesn’t accord well with maps of Aboriginal Victoria. Some of them, like Norman Tindale’s map of 1940, revised in 1974, are very famous and well-regarded. Unfortunately, maps have a power to them that people don’t often question, but one has to remember that maps of Aboriginal Victoria are based on historical information. 

The criticism of my work on Pallanganmiddang could be expressed more specifically as ‘Durrant’s work does not accord well with maps of Aboriginal Victoria produced before the 1990s.’ ‘Why discard maps produced before the 1990s?’ I hear you ask. ‘Surely old maps are more accurate?’ I hear you say. The simple answer is that in the 1990s, historians and linguists suddenly found themselves in possession of information about Aboriginal Victoria recorded far earlier than the oldest maps of Aboriginal Victoria (for instance, Brough Smyth’s map which appeared in his 1878 book The Aborigines of Victoria: With Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania.), and they began using this ‘new’ (in fact, much older) information to produce new maps. In particular, the Victorian Aboriginal Languages Corporation commissioned Dr Ian Clark to produce a new map, based on the new archival materials which had come to light. These new maps accord far more closely with the historical picture that I have painted of the Pallanganmiddang local group of the Waywurru broad group.

There is, in fact, a backstory behind the creation of these ‘new maps based on old material’:

By the early 1980s, the late, great anthropologist Diane Barwick (1938-1986), was dissatisfied with the Victorian section of Tindale’s maps, and was trying to unravel the issue of which Aboriginal groups occupied different parts of Victoria. She’d tackled some of Victoria, and published a major article titled ‘Mapping the Past, Part I’. She was in the middle of working on a new paper devoted to North East Victoria (intended as ‘Mapping the Past, Part II’) when she died tragically and suddenly of a brain haemorrhage. However, this is what Barwick had to say about Norman Tindale’s mapping in 1984, about two years before she died:

‘The best-known map of Victorian ‘tribes’ is the continental ‘tribal map’ published in 1940 by South Australian Museum biologist and ethnologist Norman B. Tindale, which was explicitly “based principally on recent fieldwork with additions from the literature”. Dr Tindale’s unparalleled record of ethnographic publications dates back to 1925, but it appears that the Victorian fieldwork which shaped this map was undertaken when he and Dr Joseph Birdsell were co-leaders of the 1938/39 Harvard-Adelaide Universities Anthropological Expedition. Tindale’s 1940 tribal labels were admittedly the basis for more recent maps of language distribution in Victoria — with some amendments resulting from linguistic research during the 1960s and/or consultation of the original notes compiled by amateur ethnographers A.W. Howitt, R.H. Mathews and John Mathew, which were not accessible for scholarly study until the 1970s. Tindale’s 1974 revision of his 1940 map incorporated available information from recent research but necessarily relied upon published material, mainly the writings of Howitt, Curr, Smyth, R.H. Mathews (whose reliability he had questioned in 1940 but now acclaimed), and the few accessible Protectorate records from the 1840s. His tentative boundaries in central and northeastern Victoria were admittedly deduced from discrepant published sources…’ (Barwick, Diane E. Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904 [online]. Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984: 100-131. This reference: pp.100-101. My emphasis added.)

What Barwick was saying is that, with regards to North East Victoria, Tindale’s first map was compiled principally from his interpretation of four historical sources, written by men who were contemporary to each other: R. Brough Smyth, Edward Curr, Alfred Howitt and R.H. Mathews (and some of his own research conducted at places such as Cumeragunga). At a later date, Tindale had access to some field notes and manuscript materials left by some of these same men. Each of these men had his own distinctive limitations, and when their work was combined, there were discrepancies between them which were difficult to reconcile. There were a number of professional jealousies between them, but perhaps the biggest limitation of their work as a whole is that each man had laboured under the misapprehension that Aboriginal people would soon be ‘extinct’, which led them to believe that if they simplified or fudged some information for publication, that no Aboriginal people would be around to question their work at a later date. They were wrong.

By 1986, the year of her death, Diane Barwick had credible reasons for thinking she could revise the map covering North East Victoria on Normal Tindale’s by now famous map of Aboriginal tribes. ‘Why not get Tindale to do it?’ I hear you ask. —Tindale was 86 years old. ‘Why did Barwick think she could do better?’ I hear you ask. — Let me reply first with some rhetorical questions: What if some absolutely critical sources of information had simply vanished from the historical record, only to reappear at a later date? What if some source materials previously inaccessible were suddenly entered into a local public institution and made available to researchers? This is precisely what happened with regards to information about Aboriginal history in North East Victoria. Where there had been, at first, slender and contradictory evidence, there came a pivotal moment that changed everything: and this a happened when the journal of G.A. Robinson was returned to Australia from Great Britain!

George Augustus Robinson was the Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip District, from 1839 to 1849. Robinson was a prolific writer, and kept a daily journal as he travelled around the Port Phillip district (in what would become Victoria in 1851). His observations about Aboriginal people were made on location, usually written on the same day, and he often conversed with Aboriginal people and even recorded their names (both Aboriginal and ‘conferred’ white names). Robinson visited the northeast of Victoria in 1840, January-February 1841, 1842 and 1844, and recorded a considerable amount of information about the people he met.

Historian Dr Marie Hansen Fels has lucidly described the impact that having access to Robinson’s journal had on historians:

‘The return to Australia of Robinson’s material in 1949 (he took his papers back to England with him in 1852 and there they remained, inaccessible to scholars for nearly 100 years) transformed the nature of Aboriginal research in Victoria. We no longer had to rely on 19th century collectors of information with all the dangers of their filling in the gaps in knowledge with speculation (Howitt is a good example of this – in the 1904 edition of Native Tribes of South Eastern Australia he states on page 54 that ‘I have not been able to obtain any information as to the tribes occupying the course of the Murray between the Bangarang and Albury, or on the Ovens River lower than the “Buffalo Mountains”,’ but this absence of information does not prevent him from conjecture about them on page 101.)’ (Marie Hansen Fels, ‘These Singular People…’ p.8)

There is, however, something that Fels fails to mention — and that is that Robinson’s handwriting was atrocious. Deciphering his journal notes would only ever be a labour of love for a handful of the most diligent historians, anthropologists and linguists, like Diane Barwick and Fels herself. Thus, even up to the latter part of the 1980s, the Robinson journals remained an under-utilised resource. Historian and archaeologist Dr Gary Presland began transcribing some parts of Robinson’s journal. As soon as he did, it seems that other historians started borrowing his transcripts. In 1989, Presland wrote:

‘…the journal has proved to be an invaluable and, in some cases, unique source of data. Ironically however, although it has been used widely and is informing an increasing number of studies, it remains substantially unknown and untapped. In part this is due to the sheer physical volume of the source (the manuscript takes up more than one shelf metre). It is due also in part to the difficulties of reading Robinson’s poor handwriting. To a limited extent this difficulty has been lessened but more needs to be done towards publishing this invaluable source of information.’ (Gary Presland, ‘The Journals of George Augustus Robinson’, The LaTrobe Journal, No 43, Autumn 1989, p.12).

In fact, it wasn’t until Dr Ian Clark (of Federation University at Ballarat) undertook the mammoth, almost monk-like task of transcribing Robinson’s journals in their entirety, initially publishing them in sections from 1996-2000, that the average researcher had ready access to this incredible storehouse of information. There are copies of Clark’s monumental work available for purchase, but they are still very expensive. (In north east Victoria, the only public copy is at Charles Sturt University’s Albury campus library, which has an annoyingly incomplete set of Clark’s transcriptions. The current complete volumes that I use are on loan to me from a generous local person!)

To recap once again: Tindale’s 1974 map did not make use of the journal of George Augustus Robinson. Diane Barwick knew the Robinson material. She knew that in the 1840s, Robinson had repeatedly met and talked with numerous Waveroo people at places like Wangaratta, Oxley and Albury-Wodonga. Robinson even recorded a vocabulary of the Pallanganmiddang (Waywurru) language in north east Victoria — a language which would later go on to be studied by linguists in the 1990s. Clearly, these people, the Pallanganmiddang people of the Waveroo ‘nation’ (as Robinson described them) existed, but were entirely absent from Tindale’s map. Barwick was also carefully reviewing other resources, such as Alfred Howitt’s field notes and correspondences (held between three different institutions, but now available on line here). She had also examined the unpublished manuscript notes of R.H. Mathews (manuscript material in the National Library of Australia catalogued as MS8006), rather than his publications, and learned that his ‘Minyambuta group’ overlapped a little too suspiciously with Pallanganmiddang/Waveroo (she surmised the Minyambuta was an exonym for Pallanganmiddang language), and extended geographically as far as Wangaratta, which once again, was at odds with Tindale’s map. And so, she had started re-mapping the northeast Victorian section of Tindale’s map. And then before she was finished, she died. Vale Diane Barwick.

Diane Barwick’s work laid the ground work for Dr Ian Clarke, who had also transcribed George Augustus Roninson’s papers, to substantially revise the map of Aboriginal groups in North East Victoria. Clarke did not use Barwick’s manuscript papers (now in the State Library of Victoria) uncritically. However, he seems to have used them as a starting point for creating a new map based on early and credible documents such as George Augustus Robinson’s journal (to which we can now add the journals and papers of Assistant Chief Protector of Aborigines, William Thomas). My work accords well with Clarke’s work not because I am drawing directly from it, but because we are both using a storehouse of primary source materials far more substantial than what Norman Tindale ever had access to. And if Tindale was alive today, I am sure he would revise his 1974 map based on new sources, just as he had previously revised his 1940 map after new sources came to light.

This is original written content that is copyright protected to ©Jacqui Durrant, 2019. You are welcome to share links to this blog, but please do not use the content elsewhere without permission. Thank you!

 

 

Who were the Aboriginal people of Beechworth? A historical perspective.

10 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by in Aboriginal, Beechworth, King Billy, Tangambalanga

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WARNING: Visitors should be aware that this blog post includes images and names of deceased people that may cause sadness or distress, particularly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In particular, I acknowledge the Aboriginal ancestors whose words are quoted within this post, with the greatest respect for their legacy.

There’s much confusion as to who were the first people of Beechworth and the surrounding areas. In this post I intend to lay out the historical evidence for which Aboriginal local group occupied the Beechworth area, the Pallanganmiddang.

Firstly, some clarifications…

Before leaping into this post, I would like to state clearly that in my opinion, how Aboriginal people choose to define their particular ‘clan’, ‘tribe’ and ‘country’ (or any other group category), in the present day is solely a matter for Aboriginal people, not to be defined by non-Aboriginal historians. However, historical information furnished by historians (Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike) may still be of interest to Aboriginal people, particularly as it contains the voices of their ancestors. As with any history ever written, what I present here is a historical (and linguistic) interpretation, supported by evidence; and my interpretation is open to debate if it is likewise supported by evidence.

The principal historical evidence that I will draw upon in this post will be the oral testimony of Aboriginal people, as told to various Europeans (mainly government officials) in the mid to late 19th century. I will do my best to privilege Aboriginal voices as they appear in historical documents, as I place a lot of weight on these ancestral voices. While it is true that the documents themselves have been created by Europeans, it is possible to discern when an Aboriginal person has related something directly to the author of a document, as opposed to the author’s later speculations, or speculations by other Europeans who have related information to a document’s author.

There are many interpretive considerations to take into account when reading historical documents in order to determine which Aboriginal groups existed and what country they belonged to, but for the sake of this blog post, I will point out this one major consideration: that in all the historical documents available in which there are Aboriginal people talking with Europeans about North East Victoria, Aboriginal people tend to identify first and foremost the names of what are now widely referred to as ‘clans’. A ‘clan’ can be considered a smaller ‘local group’ within what is colloquially known as a ‘tribe’. I will refer to them here as ‘local groups’, and ‘tribes’ as ‘broader groups’. Local groups appear to have been the principal unit of identity from an Aboriginal point of view — as least in terms of defining land ownership.

Finally, people unused to reading Victorian Aboriginal local group and broader group names may find this post a bit mind-boggling. For now, the post is necessarily argued in detail so that the sources of the information are as transparent as I can make them. I apologise if this makes the post difficult to read.

Pallanganmiddang, the people of Beechworth and surrounds

The local group historically associated with modern-day Beechworth, and in fact a much wider surrounding area, was the Pallanganmiddang. There are various ways in which their name is spelled in historical texts. Sometimes it begins with a B rather than a P, because Europeans apparently struggled to transcribe the sound ‘Bp’. Sometimes the local group name is given the suffixes ‘-illum’ and/or ‘-balluk’ (used by the ‘Kulin’ ‘tribes’ from the Broken River down to Melbourne) rather than the local group suffix common to local groups of north-east of Victoria and the southern Wiradjuri ‘-mittang’ or ‘-middang’. In both cases these suffixes (as Theddora woman Jenny Cooper related to anthropologist Alfred Howitt) simply mean ‘a group of people’. [1a]

Anyone reading the historical documents will soon notice that the name Pallanganmiddang has a number of ‘cognates’ (linguistically, a different spelling with the same etymological origin): Ballŭng-kara-mittang-bula, Ballinggon-willum, Bal.lin.go.yal.lum, Pallingoilum, Pallanganmiddang, Pallanganmiddah, Pallengoinmitty, Pal.lum.gy.mit.um, and so on. Although it may be difficult to grasp, ‘Pallanganmiddang’ and its cognates are not linguistically the same as ‘Bpangerang’. For the sake of making this post easier to read, I have put the various cognates of Pallanganmiddang in bold throughout the text.

The Pallanganmiddang was recognised as a local group by William Barak, ngurungaeta (respected head) of the Wurundjeri-willam local group (Melbourne area). When interviewed by anthropologist Alfred Howitt in the late 19th century, Barak stated that the local group associated with Wangaratta was the ‘Ballŭng-kara-mittang-bula‘. Incidentally, Barak separated this local group from the Bpangerang by stating that the ‘Baingerang’ were associated geographically with Echuca. Barak also provided an indication of the boundary of Pallanganmiddang country to the south by stating that the Yeerŭn-illŭm-ballŭk local group (a local group of the Taungurung ‘tribe’ or broad group) were associated with a ‘big swamp Below Benalla’. [1b] This geographical descriptor definitely associates the Yeerŭn-illŭm with Benalla, and perhaps also with the big swamp now known as Winton Wetlands (although this is not ‘below’ Benalla according to cardinal points). Importantly, this raw information appears in Alfred Howitt’s primary interview notes with Barak, which are entirely free of Howitt’s subsequent interpretations and categorisations, as seen in his The Native Tribes of South East Australia (1904).

The Pallanganmiddang were also recognised by Kulin people who gave information to Assistant Protector of Aborigines William Thomas in Melbourne in the early to mid-1840s. One or more Kulin men told Thomas that ‘The Goulborne Tribes comprehend 6 sections’; and list these sections (local groups), and the geographical localities for each local group (the geographical locality denoted mainly by the names of the pastoralists who held stations on that local group’s country). Thus the last of these six sections listed by Thomas’s informant/s was the ‘Ballinggon willum Dr Mackey, Mr Wendberg &c’. [2] This ‘Ballinggon-willum’ clan (or as Barak would have it, ‘Ballŭng-Kara-mittang’), is associated with a surprisingly accurate geographical descriptor, that of the pastoral run of ‘Dr Mackey’. At the time of Thomas’s writing, there was only one pastoralist with a station in the whole of the Port Phillip district with the name ‘Dr Mackey’, which was Dr George Edward Mackay at Whorouly.

The inclusion of ‘Ballinggon-willum‘ as comprising one of the six sections (local groups) of the Goulburn tribe (ie: Taungurung), is of interest — not least to the modern day Taungurung clans, but this is an issue which cannot be taken at face value, given the complexities of social relations between the Pallanganmiddang and several Kulin clans. For now, let us note that other Taungurung clans are absent from the same list: Leuk-willam, Moomoomgoondeet, Nattarak-bulluck and Waring-illum-balluk, and that these absences make it at best an incomplete if not inaccurate list. [3]

Pallanganmiddang local group was also recognised by Yowung-illum-balluk people (around Mansfield/Delatite River). When travelling through Yowung-illum-balluk country, Chief Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson, spoke with Yowung-illum-balluk people who provided him with a list of local groups occupying adjoining country (on 1 June 1840) [4]. Contained within this list, headed, ‘Vocabulary: Goulburn blacks at Mt. Buller and Crossing Place, May 1840’ is the clear statement ‘Pal.lin.go.mit.tite: this last [local group] at the junction of the Ovens’. The ‘junction of the Ovens,’ which was familiar to all ‘overlanders’ at this time was the junction of the Ovens River with the King River, at Wangaratta. Also contained within the vocabulary information is a numbered list of adjoining local groups [my clarification of modern-day spellings and localities in square brackets]:

‘1. Tin.ne.mit.tum; [Djinning-mittang, Mitta Mitta Valley]
2. Moke.al.lum.be; [Mogullumbidj, Mount Buffalo]
3. Peer.eng.ile: are the Ware.rag.ger.re; [‘Ware.rag.ger.re’ may be Wiradjuri]
4. Pal.lum.gy.mit.um: at Dow.koy.yong; to the NE of Mt Battery’

In this list, Robinson records the Pal.lum.gy.mit.um, at ‘Dow.koy.ong’, North East of Mount Battery. Unfortunately there does not seem to be a present-day Dow.koy.yong. However, north-east of Mount Battery is the location of present-day town of Barwite (still in Yowung-illam-balluk country), and further in that same direction in the ranges, lies the upper reaches of the King Valley.  So it would seem that ‘Dow.koy.ong’ is in the upper King Valley. 

This information constitutes as much as I could find that is on record that the Kulin peoples had to say about the Pallanganmiddang and their location: that they existed, and their country included Wangaratta, the King Valley, and Whorouly. As Kulin country lay to the south of Pallanganmiddang country (speaking in broad terms and leaving aside whether Pallanganmiddang were in fact also Kulin), it makes sense that Kulin people spoke about the southern extent of that country.

And now we must turn to what the Pallanganmiddang had to say about themselves and their country. Much of what is recorded of what Pallanganmiddang people had to say directly was recorded by the Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus Robinson, on three separate visits (April 1840, February 1841, and September 1844) to north-east Victoria. In particular, the visit of February 1841 was associated with Robinson escorting some Aboriginal men, who had been gaoled in Melbourne for an attack on Mackay’s station in May 1840, home — a journey on which he became quite closely acquainted with a young Pallanganmiddang man, Mul.lo.nin.ner (a.k.a. ‘Joe’).

Robinsons’ visit of April 1840: Robinson’s first encounter with some Pallanganmiddang people was at ‘Brodribb’s station’ at the Broken River (present-day Benalla), on Monday 20 April 1840. Robinson records that he has met 10 men of four different local groups, including [my clarification of modern-day spellings and localities in square brackets]:
‘1. Bal.lin.go.yal.lums, a section of the Ovens tribe, called I believe Wee.her.roo (queri); [Waywurru/Waveroo]
2. The Buth.er.rer.bul.luc, a section of the Tar.doon.gerong; [Butherballuk, Taungurung]
3. The Wor.rile.lum, a large tribe inhabiting the country down the Goulburn River by the Murray, east side; [likely Ngurai-illum]
4. And the Pine.ger.rines, a large tribe inhabiting the country on the south and southwest banks of the Murray.’ [Pangerangs]

At this point in time Robinson is aware that the Bal.lin.go.yal.lums are a section (local group) from a larger ‘Ovens tribe’, but still unsure that the ‘Ovens tribe’ is called ‘Wee.her.roo’ [ie: Waywurru, Waveroo], so he has written a note to himself (as he does at other places in his journals) to ‘queri’ this information. For now I will say that the debates about ‘Waywurru’ constitute a different discussion to the one in this post, but it is worth noting that modern-day descendants of Pallanganmiddang tend to identify as ‘Waywurru’. However, what is relevant to this post is that Robinson makes a clear distinction between the ‘Bal.lin.go.yal.lums’ who are an Ovens River clan, and the ‘Pine.ger.rines’ (Pangerang), who are a Murray River clan. His query about Waywurru seems to have been answered after he ‘spent time in conversation with the natives,’ on the 23 of April 1840. After this time he tends to refer to the Waywurru as a ‘nation’ (of which Pallanganmiddang is a constituent part), and two other contemporary sources (squatters Benjamin Barber and David Reid) agree with Robinson, referring to a ‘Weeroo’ and ‘Weiro’ broad group in the area. [6]

Specifically, Benjamin Barber wrote from Barnawatha in 1841: ‘there are three distinct tribes in this neighbourhood, the Hume or Uradgerry [Wiradjuri], the Weiro [Waywurru] or Ovens, and the Unangan [Pangerang], or Lower Hume…’ [6b] It is also worth noting that in the geographical sensibilities of the day ‘Lower Hume’ generally meant downstream from Albury.

Visit of February 1841: By the end of 1840, Robinson was organising to have some Aboriginal men from North East Victoria released from gaol in Melbourne; and after talking with each, he takes down their details. The first man he organises to be released is Pallanganmiddang man, Min.nup (Merriman), on 28 December 1840. [5] In taking the details of the various men being released, Robinson finds that several of these men describe Bontharambo (just out of Wangaratta) as their ‘native country’. For instance, on 10 December 1840, he records ‘Jag.ger.rog.er, conferred name Harlequin, belonging to the Pal.len.go.illum section of the Wavaroo tribe, country between the Broken River [Benalla] and Hume [Murray River], … locality at Pan.der.ram.bo.go [Bontharambo], Docker’s Plains’. On 2 January 1841 Robinson spoke with Wine.ger.rine (aka. Parngurite, conferred name Lare.re) who ‘belongs to the tribe of Wavoroo, section 1. Pal.len.go.mittum, 2. Pal.len.go.mit.tite, native locality Pan.der.ram.bo.go. On the 3 February 1841 Robinson organises for three men to be released from gaol, including ‘Mul.lo.nin.ner, alias Joe, Pal.len.gen.mit.ty, country Panderambo; stating further that he ‘is married, wife’s name Kone.ner.ro.ke country Panderambo. Joe is about 18 years.’

Robinson escorts three of these men back to North East Victoria. When they reach 15 Mile Creek, on 8 February 1841, Mul.lo.nin.ner tells Robinson ‘the country at 15 Mile Creek belongs to Pallengo.il.lum to Hone.ne.ap and Mo.me.gin.ner, two blacks who belong to the 15 Mile Creek at the place where the drays stop.’ (Fifteen Mile Creek is the former name for Glenrowan.) It is worth noting that Mul.lo.nin.ner (Joe), is well placed to relate this information, as he is married to Kone.ner.ro.ke, who is a sister to Min.nup (Merriman), and that Hone.ne.ap is one of Meriman’s ‘three fathers’ (in Aboriginal kinship systems, Merriman’s paternal uncles would also be considered ‘fathers’). In other words, Joe is Merriman’s brother-in-law and is Hone.ne.ap’s son-in-law.

By Tuesday 9 February 1841, the party has made it to Joseph Docker’s Bontharambo station, where Robinson meets with a large gathering of at least 150 Aboriginal people including ‘Pingerines… Worilum, Pallengoillum, Yarranillum, Butherbulluc.’ He later adds that he held communication with parts of four nations, viz:

  1. Urungung [ie: Wiradjuri name for Pangerang (refer to Robinson, 25.41840)]
  2. Waradgery [ie: Wiradjuri]
  3. Dorngorong [ie: Taungurung]
  4. Waveroo

The number of Aboriginal people present at Bontharambo on this occasion, of different broader groups and local groups, demonstrates that the mere presence of these various people together at Bontharambo did not confer ownership of that country: in other words, there were plenty of ‘visitors’. This should surprise no one, when one considers that Joseph Docker was sympathetic to Aboriginal people, and his station Bontharambo was a safe harbour in a landscape awash with frontier violence. However, it is only Pallanganmiddang people who tell Robinson that Bonthrambo is their native locality. Moreover, Robinson notes on 11 February 1841, ‘The Pingerines are going away to their own country.’ This further indicates the status of the Pangerang as visitors at Bontharambo, like the Wiradjuri and Taungurung.

Visit of September 1844: George Augustus Robinson visited ‘the Hume’ (Albury-Wodonga) in late September 1844, where he once again met Mul.lo.nin.ner (Joe). He found Mul.lo.nin.ner in the company of  large gathering of 250 people, including many people from southern Wiradjuri local groups. Mul.lo.nin.ner immediately recognised Robinson, and over the course of two days furnished him with information, including a vocabulary of Pallanganmiddang language.

On 30 September 1844, Robinson noted: ‘Pal.ler.an.mit.ter: belong to Nar.rar, called Little River where Mr Huon’s station; language spoken is different to the Way.rad.jerre.’ (Wiradjuri). The ‘Mr Huon’ referred to here is Aime Huon who held a station on the ‘Little River’ (now known as the Kiewa River), which was named after its location ‘Merimarenbung’ [ie Mount Murramurrangbong]. Robinson took down the names of 22 Pallanganmiddang people at this gathering, and the same day he also took down a vocabulary from Mul.lo.nin.ner (Joe), which is prefaced by the statement ‘Pal.loo.ang.mitter, Nac.in.don.dy or Nack.cer.an.dy, speak language Min.u.bud.dong.’ [ie: Pallanganmiddang at Yackandandah speak Min.u.bud.dong.] The following day Robinson recorded a second vocabulary list with Joe, which is described more simply as as ‘Pal.ler.an.mitter language‘.

Through the 1840s and 1850s, and in some cases right up to the 1870s, identifiable individuals from the Pallanganmiddang show up in many stories and reports in locations from Wodonga to Mount Murramurrangbong, Tangambalanga, Yackandandah, Barwidgee, Beechworth, Stanley, Whorouly, Milawa, Oxley, Tarrawingee and Wangaratta. The evidence of their movement through their country is literally a historical confetti of stories and connections (too much to relate here), but these ‘adventures’ virtually never extend beyond the geographical extent originally outlined by the Aboriginal informants of Robinson and Thomas in the 1840s, and by William Barak in the latter 19th century.

However, one thing is clear: the newspaper reports of the Aboriginal people who visit Beechworth in 1858 and 1858 describe this group as led by Merriman and his father, ‘King Billy’ of Barwidgee, and the article clearly states that this  group make a point of visiting Beechworth as a part of their country: ‘They pay periodical visits to every part of their district, always reaching Beechworth about the time when the races come off’. [7] From all the evidence, we know that King Billy and his son Merriman, are Pallanganmiddang people.

You can read about King Billy and his clan in the post ‘Were Aboriginal people in Beechworth in the 1850s? (Following a new lead)’.

Pallanganmiddang language

In the mid-1990s, linguists Julie Reid and Barry Blake, identified on the basis of vocabularies collected in the 19th century (including those collected by George Augustus Robinson), that the Pallanganmiddang spoke a distinctive language, which is markedly different from Wiradjuri to the north and was also not a language belonging to the ‘Kulin cultural bloc’ (such as Taungurung to the south). On the basis of what we know, the language shares 25% of its vocabulary in common with Bpangerang/Yorta Yorta, and 21% in common with Dhudhuroa.  In the words of Blake and Reid, ‘It seems likely that Pallanganmiddang represents a language quite distinct from those of its neighbours.’ [8] This language is a cultural difference which sets Pallanganmiddang apart from its neighbours.

Linguistically, the two vocabulary lists that Mul.lo.nin.ner (Joe) gave Robinson in 1844 are the same language, even though only one list is prefaced by the information that Pallanganmiddang speak ‘Min.u.bud.dong’. This suggests that the name of Pallanganmiddang clan language is in fact ‘Min.u.bud.dong’, or at the very least that Min.u.bud.dong is an alternative name for Pallanganmiddang language. For his part, Dr Ian Clark has suggested, ‘that Minubuddong is a Wiradjuri exonym applied to the Pallanganmiddang.’ [9]

The same language term appears in only one other known historical source (appearing as a cognate), recorded when ethnographer R.H. Mathews interviewed Dhudhuroa man Neddy Wheeler, around five decades after Robinson spoke with Mul.lo.nin.ner (Joe). From the information Mathews gathered from Wheeler, he wrote that ‘Minyambuta, a dialect of the Dhudhuroa, was the speech of the tribe occupying the Buffalo, King, Ovens and Broken Rivers and the tributaries of these streams’ [10]. Mathews also records that ‘Minyambuta’ was spoken at Buffalo, Beechworth, Wangaratta, and Bright. [11]

When Mathews recorded ‘Minyambuta’ as a dialect of Dhudhuroa, his interpretation seems to have given rise to the idea that the Dhudhuroa peoples’ territory extended from their core country in the Mitta Mitta Valley to as far as Wangaratta (and this is actually illustrated as such on some published maps). However, modern linguists now suggest that ‘Pallanganmiddang’ language, which seems to also be known as ‘Min.u.bud.dong’ language, or by its cognate ‘Minyambuta’ language, was largely a different language to Dhudhuroa. Ian Clark states, ‘If Minyambuta is a variant of Minubuddong, which is probable, then Mathews (1909) was wrong to consider it a Dhudhuroa dialect.’ [12] Certainly, the area in which Neddy Wheeler says Minyambuta was spoken overlaps heavily with many of the locations claimed as Pallanganmiddang country in other sources, which caused Diane Barwick to consider that ‘Minjambuta’ simply referred to Pallanganmiddang. [13] (The exception to this rule does seem to be that Minjambuta was also spoken at Broken River (Benalla), which is country belonging to the Yeerŭn-illŭm local group [of the Taungurung]. However, this anomaly could be accounted for by the fact that the Yeerŭn-illŭm may have resorted to using Minyambuta language to communicate with their Pallanganmiddang neighbours.)

Conclusion

When looking at the primary historical evidence, there are references which clearly place the Pallanganmiddang ‘on country’ from Glenrowan, across to the King Valley, Whorouly, Beechworth, Yackandandah, Mount Murramurrangbong, the lower Kiewa River, Wangaratta and Bontharambo.

In all of the historical primary source materials located in state and national archives — including materials written from direct communication with Aboriginal people — it is notable that the Pallanganmiddang people are the only people who make claims of connection to the country from Wangaratta, up the Ovens Valley, over the Beechworth plateau and across to the lower Kiewa Valley. There is not a single historical reference directly connecting Pangerang to these places as owners of that country as opposed to being visitors, and although modern-day people may differ in their opinions, nor is there a single historical reference from which it can be inferred that Pallanganmiddang are a group within the Pangerang tribe. Moreover, in the historical sources I have not found a single individual who identifies as Pangerang anywhere east of Wodonga and Wangaratta; in other words there are no records of Pangerang people at all east of the line which has become the Hume Freeway. What we do find are references to the Mogullumbidj around Mount Buffalo, and of course the Dhudhuroa (aka Dodoro, or Theddora-mittung, not much further east). There are, however, numerous historical sources which talk about Pangerang in other locations much further west.

Current claims that Pallanganmiddang country is within the Taungurung nation, and also the notion that Pallanganmiddang is a clan of Dhudhuroa, are a far more complex and interesting questions to me, from an ethno-historical point of view, which deserve substantial discussion in their own right.

Post-script: An article written decades after European colonisation in 1887, about a group of Aboriginal ‘missionaries’ travelling the North East from Maloga mission to preach Christianity, reported that one of the group was Aboriginal man named Paddy Swift, who ‘aged 40, belongs to the Nanga tribe of Oxley. ‘”There was, a great crowd of my people there” he says, “but I do not think there are 20 left now.”‘ Accounting for poor journalistic transcription, I still cannot help but find a correlation between ‘Nanga’ and ‘Pallangan’. [14] Equally, ‘Nanga’ could have been a poor transcription of the Wiradjuri word for Pangerang, ‘Unangan’.

Post-script 2: I also note that the name ‘Wangaratta’, which is local history books is said to be ‘Aboriginal for resting place of cormorants’, bares a linguistic relation to the Waywurru word for brolga, birranga. As we do not have the word for ‘cormorants’ in any local vocabulary, it is possible that the word was a category applied to tall waterbirds and applied to both brolgas and cormorants.

References

[1a] Alfred Howitt, notebook hw0436, State Library of Victoria, ‘Notes by Howitt on Omeo ‘tribe’ and letter from Bulmer’, p.3; this explanation is given: ‘Mittŭng = a number, or many [people]’.

[1b] Alfred Howitt, Original field notebook catalogued as XM759, held at the Museum of Victoria, p.6.

[2] William Thomas, William Thomas Papers, 1834-1868, 1902, Mitchell Library MS 214, Box 23, Section 1 (Book A (Microfilm CY 3130), p.65, 68. Transcript courtesy Dr Stephen Morey.
In the same notebook, an informant by the name of Gibberook, who was the son of ‘Netkulluk’, ‘King’ the ‘Yerren Nillum’ (Yeerŭn-illŭm) clan of the Taungurung tribe, offers a list of ‘ten sections’ (clans) and their ‘chiefs’ (clan heads); and in that list he includes more of what are now commonly understood to be Taungurung clans, but excludes Ballinggon-willum — which is interesting, considering Yeerŭn-illŭm and Ballinggon-willum are geographical neighbours.

[3] Here I have used as a guide to Taungurung clans Diane E. Barwick, ‘Mapping the Past: An Atlas of Victorian Clans 1835-1904’. Aboriginal History, Vol. 8, 1984: 100-131.

[4] Ian Clark [ed.], The Journal of George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, 1839-1852, published by Ian Clark, 2014. NB: For all references to Robinson I have provided the journal entry dates rather than a page number. This should enable the read who wishes to check references to pick up any published edition of Robinson’s journal and check the reference.

[5] On the 20 December, Robinson organises for Min.nup (Merriman) to be released from gaol. At the time, he takes down this information: ‘Min.nup says he has three fathers: 1. Lang.wal.lurt, 2. Hon.ne.ap, 3. Sue.wat.ware.rum. He says he has two brothers: 1. Way.be.mur.ram, 2. Taw.row, one sister: Kone.ne.roke. This is important contextual information in terms of demonstrating Merriman’s relationship to country, given that Hon.ne.ap’s country is 15 Mile Creek (Glenrowan).

[6] Marie Hansen Fels, ‘These Singular People — The Ovens Blacks, Supplementary Report,’ 28th July 1997 (unpublished technical report prepared for the Yorta Yorta Native Title Claim), p.8.

[6b] Letter from Benjamin Barber, in ‘Replies to the following Circular Letter on the subject of the Aborigines, addressed to gentlemen residing too remote from Sydney, to expect the favour of their personal attendance upon the Committee, in Select Committee Enquiry into Immigration, NSW Legislative Council, 1841; David Reid in ‘Aboriginal Population 1860, The Argus, Friday 5 October, 1860. p.5.

[7] ‘Fashionable Arrivals’, Ovens and Murray Advertiser, Wednesday 23 February, 1859, p.2

[8] Barry J. Blake and Julie Reid, ‘Pallanganmiddang: a language of the Upper Murray,’ Aboriginal History, 1999, Vol. 23, pp.15-30; this direct quote on p.17.

[9] Ian Clark, ‘Aboriginal languages in North-east Victoria – the status of ‘Waveru’ reconsidered’, Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues, 2011, Vol. 14(4): pp.2-22; this direct quote on p.5.

[10] R. H. Mathews, MS8006, Series 5, File 3, Box 6, National Library of Australia.

[11] R. H. Matthews, MS 8006, Series 3, Item 4, Volume 2 [Marked on notebook ‘6’], National Library Australia.

[12] Clark, ibid, p.7.

[13] ibid.

[14] ‘An Aboriginal Revival’, The Corowa Free Press, Friday 25 February 1887, p 5.

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