Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02Eyre, Edward John
History
Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02
Eyre, Edward John
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Ethnology -- Australia
The number of natives usually frequenting the town of Adelaide averages
perhaps 300, but occasionally there are even as many as 800. These do not
belong to the neighbourhood of the town itself, for the Adelaide tribe
properly so called only embraces about 150 individuals. The others come
in detached parties from almost all parts of the colony. Some from the
neighbourhood of Bonney's Well, or 120 miles south; some from the
Broughton, or 120 miles north; some from the upper part of the Murray, or
nearly 200 miles east. Thus are assembled at one spot sometimes portions
of tribes the most distant from each other, and whose languages, customs
and ceremonies are quite dissimilar. If any proof were wanted to shew the
power of European influence in removing prejudices or effecting a total
revulsion of their former habits and customs, a stronger one could
scarcely be given than this motley assembly of "all nations and
languages." In their primitive state such a meeting could never take
place; the distant tribes would never have dreamt of attempting to pass
through the country of the intermediate ones, nor would the latter have
allowed a passage if it had been attempted.
I have remarked that in Adelaide many of the natives support themselves
by light easy work, or going errands; there are also a dozen, or fourteen
young men employed regularly as porters to storekeepers with whom they
spend two-thirds of their time, and make themselves very useful. At
harvest time many natives assist the settlers. At Encounter Bay during
1843, from 70 to 100 acres of wheat or barley, were reaped by them; at
Adelaide from 50 to 60 acres, and at Lynedoch Valley they aided in
cutting and getting in 200 acres. Other natives have occasionally
employed themselves usefully in a variety of ways, and one party of young
men collected and delivered to a firm in town five tons of mimosa bark up
to December 1843. At the native location during the year 1842, three
families of natives assisted by the school-children, had dug with the
spade the ground, and had planted and reaped more than one acre of maize,
one acre of potatoes, and half an acre of melons, besides preparing
ground for the ensuing year. On the Murray River native shepherds and
stock-keepers have hitherto been employed almost exclusively, and have
been found to answer well. Most of the settlers in that district have one
or more native youths constantly living at their houses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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