Marrithiyal people

The Marrithiyal are an indigenous Australian people whose traditional territory lay 30 to 50 miles south of the Daly River in the Northern Territory. They were sometimes known derogatively as Berringen(Berinken/Brinken), a term used by the Mulluk-Mulluk to refer to 'aliens'/strangers'.^[1][2][3]

Language

Their language Marrithiyal had several dialect forms: Marri Ammu, Marritjevin, Marridan and Marramanindjdji, and at last count (2006) had an estimated 6 surviving speakers, though slightly earlier the figure had been put at 30. Most now speak a variety of Kriol.^[1] The autonym Marrithiyal has been conjectured to be derived from a combination of the words mari (speech) and thiel, meaning paperbark, suggesting the idea that the ethnonym denotes a 'people of the paperbark tea tree swamps',^[4][3] reflecting the fact that their homeland was rich in paper-bark forests. It was considered, by both whites and natives in the area as particularly euphonious, especially compared to the 'rougher' sounding language of the Wagiman further west up river.^[5]

Mythology

In the Marrithiyal version of the Dreamtime story of the rainbow serpent, the serpent, lacking a wife, stole one from a flying fox who had two. The latter retaliated by spearing the rainbow serpent who plunged into the water, while the flying fox soared up to the sky. It is one variation on a story which has many different versions in this area.^[6]

History

Their traditional grounds lay south-west of the Majar hill in Madngella territory (now known as Hermit Hill)^[3] between the Daly and Fitzmaurice Rivers. Like a dozen other tribes, as the white invasion got underway in the 1880s, the remnants either dispersed or crammed into a small strip of alluvial flats, a territory about 20 miles long, extending from the middle to the lower reaches of the Daly, mostly displacing the original tribes of that area which had almost become extinct by the 1930s.^[7] Many Marrithiyal, as the tribe broke up, spread out into a variety of locations, some shifting to the lands of the former Kungarakany sv:Tyaraity, and Wogait peoples, others taking up jobs in Darwin, at the Daly River peanut farms or working as stockmen at the Mt. Litchfield cattle station, or drifting into the Port Keats mission station.^[5]

Great hostility existed between the Marrithiyal-Marringar cluster, bundled together as 'Mooill', and coalition of neighbouring tribes, the Mulluk-Mulluk and Nangiomeri, neither of whom would trade with the other, even though ceremonial occasions would at times require them to mix.^[8]

W. E. H. Stanner, who described them as a 'powerful sub-tribe'^[3] in the 1930s, originally spent some 6 weeks among the Marrithiyal in 1932, finding it somewhat difficult to enter into friendly relations with them, -troubles with the local police over the killing of a prospector accounting for their diffidence- though he eventually managed to gain their confidence and was allowed to be present and observe two complete circumcision ceremonies.^[7] Belyuen Shire

Notes and references

Notes

1. Grimes 2003, p. 415.
2. Tryon 1974, p. 70.
3. Stanner 1938, p. 101.
4. Tindale 2000.
5. Stanner 1938, p. 102.
6. Maddock 1978, p. 6.
7. Frazer 2000, p. 50.
8. Stanner 2011, pp. 19ff,39.

References

• Frazer, James George (2000) [1937]. Totemica: A Supplement to Totemism and Exogamy. Collected Works of James G. Frazer. 7. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-700-71338-7.
• Grimes, Barbara Dix (2003). "Daly Languages". In Frawley, William. International Encyclopedia of Linguistics: AAVE-Esperanto. 1 (2 ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 415–416. ISBN 978-0-195-13977-8.
• Maddock, Kenneth (1978). "Introduction". In Buchler, Ira R.; Maddock, Kenneth. The Rainbow Serpent: A Chromatic Piece. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 1–22. ISBN 978-3-110-80716-5.
• Stanner, W. E. H. (September 1938). "Notes on the Marithiel Language". 9 (1). Oceania: 101–108.
• Tindale, Norman (2000). Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Marithiel (NT). South Australian Museum Archives.
• Stanner, W. E. H. (2011). The Dreaming and Other Essays. Black Inc.,. ISBN 978-1-921-87018-7.
• Tryon, Darrell T. (1974). Daly family languages. Research School of Pacific Studies, ANU. ISBN 978-0-858-83106-3.