Kaurna
The Kaurna people are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kaurna culture and language were almost completely destroyed within a few decades of the British colonisation of South Australia in 1836. However, extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both language and culture. The phrase Kaurna meyunna means "Kaurna people".
Etymology
The early settlers of South Australia referred to the various indigenous tribes of the Adelaide Plains and Fleurieu Peninsula as "Rapid Bay tribe", "the Encounter Bay tribe", "the Adelaide tribe", the Kouwandilla tribe, "the Wirra tribe", "the Noarlunga tribe" and the Willunga tribe.The extended family groups of the Adelaide Plains, who spoke dialects of a common language, were named according to locality, such as Kawanda Meyunna, Wirra Meyunna, Pietta Meyunna, Wito Meyunna, Tandanya, etc. – but they had no common name for themselves. The name Kaurna was not recorded until 1879, used by Alfred William Howitt in 1904, but not widely used until popularised by Norman B. Tindale in the 1920s. Most likely, it is an exonym introduced from the Ramindjeri or Ngarrindjeri word kornar meaning "men" or "people".
Kaurna meyunna, meaning Kaurna people, is often used in greetings and Welcome to Country or Acknowledgement of Country ceremonies.
Language
belongs to the Thura-Yura branch of the Pama–Nyungan languages. The first word lists taken down of the Kaurna language date to 1826. A knowledge of Kaurna language was keenly sought by many of the early settlers. William Williams and James Cronk were the first settlers to gain a working knowledge of the language, and to publish a Kaurna wordlist, which they did in 1840. When George Gawler, South Australia's third Governor, arrived in October 1838, he gave a speech to the local Indigenous population through a translator, William Wyatt, assisted by Williams and Cronk. Gawler actively encouraged the settlers to learn Kaurna, and advocated using the Kaurna names for geographic landmarks.In October 1838 two German missionaries, Christian Teichelmann and Clamor Schürmann, arrived on the same ship as Gawler in 1838, and immediately set about learning and documenting the language. In December 1839, they opened a school at Piltawodli where the children were taught to read and write in Kaurna. Schurmann and Teichelmann translated the Ten Commandments and a number of German hymns into Kaurna, with Schürmann attempting to 'Christianize' and 'civilize' the people. Although they never achieved their goal of translating the entire Bible, their recorded vocabulary of over 2,000 words was the largest wordlist registered by that time, and pivotal in the modern revival of the language.
Territory
Kaurna territory extended from Cape Jervis at the bottom of the Fleurieu Peninsula to Port Wakefield on the eastern shore of Gulf St Vincent, and as far north as Crystal Brook in the Mid North. Tindale claimed clans were found living in the vicinity of Snowtown, Blyth, Hoyleton, Hamley Bridge, Clarendon, Gawler and Myponga. The stringy bark forests over the back of the Mount Lofty Ranges have been claimed as a traditional boundary between Kaurna and Peramangk people. Tunkalilla Beach, east of Cape Jervis, is the traditional boundary with the Ramindjeri.This is the most widely cited alignment of Kaurna territorial boundaries. However, according to Ronald and Catherine Berndt the neighbouring Ramindjeri tribe asserts a historical territory including the whole southern portion of the Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island, extending as far north as Noarlunga or even the River Torrens. This overlaps with a significant portion of the territory claimed by both the Kaurna and the neighbouring Ngarrindjeri to the east. However, linguistic evidence suggests that the Aboriginal people encountered by Colonel Light at Rapid Bay in 1836 were Kaurna speakers. The Berndts' ethnographic study, which was conducted in the 1930s, identified six Ngarrindjeri clans occupying the coast from Cape Jervis to a few kilometres south of Adelaide. The Berndts posited that the clans may have expanded along trade routes as the Kaurna were dispossessed by colonists.
A main Kaurna presence was in Tarndanyangga near the River Torrens and the creeks that flowed into it, an area that became the site of the Adelaide city centre. Kaurna people also resided in the suburb of Burnside, and an early settler of the village of Beaumont described the local people thus:
At every creek and gully you would see their wurlies and their fires at night... often as many as 500 to 600 would be camped in various places... some behind the Botanic Gardens on the banks of the river; some toward the Ranges; some on the Waterfall Gully.
Dispossession
Although Governors Hindmarsh and Gawler 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.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.
Population
1790s–1860s
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. Initially, contacts began with the arrival of sealers and whalers in the 1790s. Sealers established themselves on Kangaroo Island as early as 1806, and raided the mainland for Kaurna women, both for the sexual opportunities and the workforce they could supply in skinning the sealers' prey. Wary of Europeans from their experience with sealers, the Kaurna generally stayed aloof when the first colonists arrived. 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.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. According to an entry in the South Australian Register, the Kaurna population numbered around 650. They had suffered a serious drop in numbers in the early 1830s 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. This devastated their lives in every way. An outbreak of typhoid, due to pollution by Europeans of the River Torrens, led to many deaths and a rapid population decline, though accurate figures were not recorded. 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. 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.
The Colonisation Commissioners had promised to protect the Aboriginal people and their property as well as making provision for their subsistence, education and advancement, 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 and Kadlitpinna helped the police and new settlers, also sharing their language, culture and beliefs with the missionaries. An early settler in Marryatville, George Brunskill, reported that the "local Blacks" were harmless, did not steal, and returned borrowed items promptly. 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.
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.
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. Teichelmann tried to establish an Aboriginal mission settlement at Happy Valley, about south of Adelaide, but he lacked the means to develop the property or make farming a viable option for the Kaurna. 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.
According to Moorhouse, "almost whole tribes" had disappeared by 1846, and by the 1850s, there were few remaining Kaurna in the Adelaide area. In 1850 the children at the Native School were transferred to the Poonindie Native Training Institution near Port Lincoln, on the Eyre Peninsula, over away. Moorhouse resigned as Protector in 1856, and in 1857 the position was abolished.
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.