Yiwara - Foragers of the Australian Desert
Richard A Gould
Published by Collins London - Sydney   1969
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Chapter 1

Page 3

A Day with the Desert People

December 28, 1966

       The summer heat has reached its full strength, and the
sandhills near Partjar seem to be enveloped in a shimmering
pink haze. The thermometer I am carrying registers 118 degrees
Fahrenheit in the shade. Nothing moves except the flies, yet
the sandhills seem to bob and dance as oven-hot air slides over
them. I can feel the heat penetrating the soles of my tennis shoes,
and drawing a deep breath causes my tongue to dry out like a
potato chip. Clearly it was a mistake to go exploring around at
midday, and I think it best now to follow the advice of Noel
Coward ('Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday
sun') and return to camp. The Aborigines are still snoozing
under whatever shade they can find. A couple of little girls,

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Nyaputja and Manyi, are splashing in the shallow water of the
drowned creekbed. Thcv look like slippery brown eels playing
in the mud, but there is no doubt that they have found the coolest
place around. This is a good time to sit down, catch up on my
note-taking, and await further developments.

Partjar is a veritable oasis in the remote sandhill country.
It consists of a series of billabongs or standing pools of water in
an otherwise dry creekbed that winds through and out of the
Clutterbuck Hills in the heart of the Gibson Desert about 150
miles northwest of the Warburton Ranges. The billabongs here
hold water for most of the year. Even when the water on the
surface evaporates, water can still be reached by digging into
the soft mud at the bottom of the creekbed. In the summer and
during times of drought individual families of Aborigines fall
back on Partjar as a dependable watering place and a base from
which to hunt and forage. The Clutterbuck Hills lie almost on a
line between the Rawlinson Range and the Alfred and Marie
Range, so the explorer Ernest Giles must have passed close to
this place on his final push to the west from Circus Water in
1874. How much misery he would have been spared had he
known about this series of waterholes.

Living in the desert with a nomadic family group of thirteen
Nyatunyatjara people has given me a fine opportunity to observe
many of the things I came here to study; tool—making, hunting
and butchering of game, social relationships, and other activities
pertinent to my research. My personal reasons for being here,
however, go beyond these research objectives. I know now that
what I really wanted was to experience the tempo and detail of
the hunting and foraging way of life. Societies in which people
live entirely by hunting and foraging are rare today, and the
few that remain — for example, the Bushmen of the Kalahari Des-
ert in South Africa, the Forest Pygmies of the Congo, and the des-
ert Aborigines of Australia — are being subjected to contact with
Europeans that will soon change them. Human history was tied
up with this kind of economy from the time of Australopithecus
and the fossil hominids of Olduvai Gorge in East Africa over a
million and a half years ago until the beginnings of agriculture
within the last nine or ten thousand years. With the spread of agri-

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culture, only a few societies continued to live by hunting and
foraging, and these mainly in climates inhospitable to farming.
Some, such as the Arctic Eskimo, the Paiute lxnliaiis of western
North America, and a few Yahgan and Alacaluf lndians on the
coast of Tierra del Fuego, managed to cling to their traditional
economy until the end of the nineteenth century and into the early
twentieth. But with current trends in world history, hunting and
gathering as a full-time means of livelihood seems doomed to
disappear from the world during the later decades of the twen-
tieth century.

Thus the few anthropologists who are currently studying
living hunter-gatherers will be among the last people on earth
actually to observe this way of life first hand. These few years,
seen in terms of the whole range of human history, comprise an
extraordinary moment in time. lt is still possible for people with
a nuclear technology to catch a final glimpse of this traditional
mode of life. There is so much to learn and feel before the time
is irrevocably past. This is the reason that I came to the Gibson
Desert, and that some of my colleagues are in the tropical forests
of the Congo and the desert scrublands of the Kalahari. For us,
living and sharing experiences with these nomadic peoples is
exhilarating but carries with it an inescapable feeling of loss, as
if we were watching the last redwood or the last bison disappear.
This is how it feels to be an anthropologist living with the
Aborigines in the Gibson Desert of Australia on December 28,
1966.

Foraging and Hunting

Action at the camp begins with the first faint glow of sun-
rise. It will still be dark for another half hour, but while the air
is cool and there is no wind the birds do most of their singing,
and there is conversation and joking in camp. Children are given
wooden bowls and sent to fetch water. They have done this so
often in the last month that there is now a narrow little trail
running from the camp to the waterhole. When they return
everyone has a drink and takes a few bites from the seedcakes

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that the women prepared yesterday. The flies are not very active
yet, so this is the most comfortable part of the day and a good
time to make plans.

The senior member of the group is Mitapuyi, a man about
forty-five years old. There are three adult women: Nyurapaya,
Mitapuyi's wife; Tjanangu, a widow; Mitapuyi's younger sister;
and Katapi, wife of Walanya, the other adult male in the group
and Mitapuyi's brother-in-law (l*); as well as a girl about fifteen
years old, Tjukapati. Mitapuyi's eldest and as yet unmarried
daughter. The children include Yuma (aged about ten), only son
of Mitapuyi and Nyurapaya, and Nyaputja, their younger
daughter (about six); Manyi, Tjanangu's only daughter (about
twelve); and Katapi's four children by her first husband, now
deceased: Tanara (daughter, about thirteen), Tana (son, about
eleven), Nuni (son, about eight), and Ngampakatju  (son, about
four). These individuals, all related, comprise a group somewhat
larger and including more different kinds of relatives than the
average American family, fairly typical of the small family aggre-
gates of Aborigines which set up camps at more or less permanent
waterholes and forage together during dry seasons.

The talk about the activities for the day goes on for a
long time. From time to time a person takes a drink of water or
a bit of food or retires to micturate. The women and girls gen-
erally go off a few yards into the bush for this function, but the
men often urinate right where they sit, in camp. The men have
decided to hunt emus, so the discussion centers around what the
women will do. Nyurapaya has decided that her bark sandals are
worn out and need to be replaced. During the day the sand be-
comes too hot to walk around on comfortably barefoot, so these
sandals (called palykanpa) get lots of use. Sandals are made from
the green bark of taliwanti, a plant which grows in the sandhills.
Nyurapaya knows where to find some of these plants, but the
place lies in a different direction from the area where the women
have lately been looking for edible plants. Should they take a
chance that they will come across some edible seeds or fruit on
the way to the taliwanti-place? Or should they stick with a sure
thing and manage with their worn-out sandals for another day?

Nyurapaya wants new sandals, but she is shy and hates to

Notes

1*  Walanya is the only member of this group to have lived for very
    long at the Warburton Ranges Mission. His name is the native
    rendering of Wallace (the suffix -nya denotes a proper name; in
    all other cases I have simplified by omitting the suffix). Walanya
    is Nyurapaya's elder brother, who Mitapuyi addresses as makunta.
    But the real 'glue' which keeps these two families together
    is the close affection which Nyurapaya and Katapi have for each
    other. They are inseparable and camp and forage together when-
    ever they can.
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assert herself in discussions, and Tjanangu feels the same way.
Katapi, on the other hand, is both intelligent and forceful in ex-
pressing her views. She thinks it would be better to finish collect-
ing seeds at their established place and wait a few days for the
sandals. She is cautious and would rather make full use of the
resources at hand than go off to a new and untried area. Nyura—
paya and Tjanangu have made their wishes known and are re-
luctant to press the matter further. In situations like this, Katapi’s
views are usually accepted, and this time is no exception. Nyura-
paya sighs and wiggles a finger through one of the holes in the
more worn of her two sandals. She sees the sense in what Katapi
says and will go along, but she would still like new sandals.

These sandals are important to me, however, since they have
been reported only twice before from any Aboriginal group in
Australia? I am determined not to let this opportunity slip by,
since I very much want to see how the sandals are made. I tell
the women that I will give them some plugs of chewing tobacco
in exchange for their old sandals and any extra new ones they
might make. Ordinarily the desert Aborigines collect supplies of
wild tobacco (mingkulpa or tjuntiwari — both species of true Ni-
cotiana) which they sun—dry and chew, often mixed with ashes,
but lately neither kind has been available near Partjar. Thus my
offer is attractive, and discussion begins anew. As usual, it is
Katapi who solves the problem and makes the decision. She re-
members a sandy flat beyond the taliwanti-place where she thinks
they may find some ripe ngaru (fruit of the shrub Solanum ere-
morphilum). Her opinion is that the other women should proceed
to the taliwanti place while she goes on ahead to look for ngaru.
If she is successful, she will send up a smoke signal, and the oth-
ers can follow. Otherwise, she will rejoin them. Her view is
immediately accepted by the others, and they decide to start at
once, since they will have a long walk across many sandhills.

Mitapuyi and Walanya decide to proceed in the opposite
direction, into the Clutterbuck Hills, to a spot along the creek-
bed where they have set up a brush blind. They will wait there
for emus. Since they plan to hunt from concealment (the pre-
ferred method for hunting kangaroos and emus in the desert
country north of the Warburton Ranges), they decide to let the

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women take the dogs. The group has six dingoes, all scrawny-
looking but treated with affection by their owners. The dogs are
not trained in any way and would only interfere with the hunt-
ers and frighten away the game with their barking. The two
men pick up their spears and spearthrowers and head south to-
ward the gap in the hills where the hunting blind lies. Mitapuyi
has killed five emus in this area in the last three months — an
exceptionally good record — and today he hopes to spear another
of these big birds.

Meanwhile the women gather up digging-sticks and four
large wooden bowls. These fine deep bowls, called ngunma, are
intended to carry enough drinking water for the trip out. One
bowl even has a spinifex-resin spout fashioned at one end to make
it easier to drink from. Each bowl is filled with water, and a
twisted piece of grass is placed in the water to reduce the slosh-
ing. Each woman has a little doughnut—shaped loop of human
hair-string which she places on her head to cushion and steady
the load, and with this in place, the filled bowls are hoisted up
and put in position. After a bit of hip—and-shoulder wriggling
the loads are set, and the women start off, with the children and
dogs. They head northward, directly toward the sandhills. Just
as they are leaving camp, Katapi rushes back to get a lighted
firestick, a piece of smoldering mulga wood which she carries
with her. Campfires are left burning, and odd pieces of seedcake
and other food are placed in a wooden bowl up in a tree. In
addition to the firestick and the load on her head, Katapi carries
her little son Ngamapakatju on one hip, steadying him with her
free arm. By six o’clock the camp is empty.

One nice thing about getting away from camp is there are
fewer flies about. Offal tends to accumulate around a campsite,
providing the main fare for the dogs. Animal bones, after they
have been shattered for marrow, are tossed out at random and
accumulate literally a 'bone’s throw' from the living areas. Scraps
of food, feces, and other litter also accumulate nearby, and be-
fore long the area swarms with flies. Though remarkably healthy
in most other respects, the nomadic Aborigines suffer from boils
and eye ailments, all occasioned by the flies and dust. Intestinal
problems can also arise this way. For the anthropologist living

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in or alongside an Aboriginal camp these factors constitute an
ever—present occupational hazard. Nyurapaya and her little
daughter Nyaputja are both suffering from painful eye infections,
and Katapi has a large boil on one foot. The quest for food must
go on, however, so such painful ailments are generally borne
with an outward display of good cheer. Only Nyaputja com-
plains, but the others admit she is still a child and has not yet
learned discipline. My stores of simple remedies like aspirin and
ointments are probably the most welcome aspect of my presence
here.

Mitapuyi and Walanya do not have far to go today. The
circular brush blind (manngu) is only a little over a mile from
camp, in a shallow rocky glen next to the creekbed. The blind
is about six feet in diameter with sides about thirty inches high,
and it lies on the bank three feet above the floor of the creek-
bed. Choosing a dry spot in the gravelly creekbed the hunters
dig a small hole, continuing their digging until the hole fills with
water seeping in from just below the surface. The small soakhole
lies only about twenty feet from the blind.

Here the two men lie quietly, hoping that the emus will not
find some other route by which to approach the big billabongs
farther downstream. They have seen fresh tracks in the creekbed,
indicating that the big birds have passed this way recently. A
small mulga tree shades the blind, which is fortunate, since the
morning heat builds up rapidly. Both men chew plugs of tobacco
that they have stored behind their ears. The tobacco acts as a
mild narcotic, and it also helps moisten their mouths against the
hot dry air.

The hours creep by as the men wait motionless. It takes
intense discipline to keep from fidgeting in a situation like this,
particularly with the flies all around. Around eleven o’clock their
vigil is rewarded by a low booming note from just around an
upstream bend. This is a sure sign that an emu is approaching,
and both men quietly engage their spears to the spearthrowers.
As Mitapuyi lies poised with his spearthrower, the emu appears
about a hundred feet away, walking slowly and looking from
side to side. It approaches the water slowly, stopping and cau-
tiously looking before moving closer. By now the excitement in

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the blind is almost too much to bear, and, finally, with the bird
about thirty feet away, Mitapuyi rises smoothly to his feet and
lifts his spearthrower. Although Walanya is ready beside him,
both men know there will be a chance for only one shot. As the
spear is thrown, there is a loud snap. The force of Mitapuyi's
throw has caused the spearshaft to break, and the broken spear
misses. Now the alerted emu wastes no time in dashing away.

The fault lay with the new spear Mitapuyi was using. The
shaft was made from a mulga branch collected only a short time
ago. Mulga generally is poor wood for making spears, especially
when collected during a dry season. It tends to be brittle and
can snap unexpectedly, as this shaft just did. Mitapuyi and
Walanya decide to make some better spears at the earliest oppor-
tunity. They try to laugh the whole thing off, but there is no
doubt that they are disappointed.

Realizing that no more emus are likely to come now, the
two men start the walk back to camp. Along the way, Walanya
picks up the fresh tracks of kurkati, a kind of goanna not often
seen at this place. The two men speedily follow out the trail


Sketch of Emu hunting at Partjar in the Clutterbuck Hills.

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as it winds and twists between clumps of spinifex, reaching the
hole after about ten minutes of tracking. By peering into the hole
they can see what direction the lizard has taken inside the bur-
row. Walanya stamps on the ground about three feet from the
burrow, to crush the lizard's tunnel and trap him close to the
entrance. Meanwhile, Mitapuyi grabs a stick from the ground
nearby and uses it to dig into the burrow. Kurkati is always easy
to catch. This one was only about a foot underground, and
Mitapuyi grabs it by the tail and pulls it out within a minute of
starting to dig. The lizard is quickly killed with a blow on its
head with the stick, and Mitapuyi tucks it into his hair-string
belt to carry it back to camp. This is a small lizard, weighing
only three pounds, but in other parts of the desert these lizards
can grow much larger. This small catch has redeemed the hunt-
ing trip, and Mitapuyi is extremely pleased. The men arrive back
in camp a little before noon.

The women have much farther to go. They walk erect, with
an easy grace that is difficult to describe because it is so unlike
the way Americans and Europeans move. Their movements
are flowing, and they seem hardly to exert themselves at all.
Yet for all my struggling I can barely keep up with them.
I notice they do not dig the soles of their feet into the ground as
they walk, the way I do, but place their feet down fairly flat.
Only Katapi digs in her heel, and I can see she is favoring her
sore foot. There is a lot of talk and laughter along the way, some
of it directed at me. No doubt they find my slow and jerky
movements in the sand quite comical. The children are having
a grand time, racing ahead or off to the side, chasing tiny lizards
that dart out from under the spinifex. Little Ngampakatju is
running alongside now, racing after lizards with the others. De-
spite his small size, he has no trouble keeping up. The dogs, too,
go racing after these tiny lizards, devouring them whole when-
ever they catch them. The children catch a few, which they give
to the dogs.

We have come a long way. So far the ground has been sandy
but perfectly level. The Clutterbuck Hills are now faintly visible
as a thin horizontal stripe of pale purple on the southern horizon.
Just as we approach the first sandhill there is a shout from off

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Sketch of The 'mountain devil' lizard (ngiyari), formidable looking but harmless

to one side, and Nuni runs up, clutching a small lizard he has
caught. This is ngiyari, a fantastically fierce—looking little animal
covered with sharp spines and brightly colored in a mottled pat-
tern of reddish—brown, yellow, and black. Because of its appear-
ance, white Australians call it the 'mountain devil', though in
fact it is altogether harmless. Nuni is totally delighted with his
new plaything and places it on his head. The animal quickly
burrows into his long hair and settles down while Nuni runs off
after more lizards.

I am not a good judge of distances, but it feels as if we
have walked about five or six miles. A shrill, falsetto shout, “Puyi!”
from Nyurapaya indicates that she has found taliwanti plants
on top of a large sandhill. There is nothing spectacular about
these plants. They are fairly straight—stemmed, with a pale whit-
ish—green color to the bark and leaves, and stand only about two
or three feet high. The women pull off the leaves and remove
long strips of bark. VVhile this collecting goes on, Katapi con-
tinues to the north, disappearing rapidly over the next sandhill,
on her way to look for ngaru. She is still carrying her lighted
firestick.

The women take only as much bark as they plan to use,
leaving many taliwanti plants in the area untouched. After about
twenty minutes of collecting they stop and drink from one of the
wooden bowls. When the bowl is about two—thirds empty, they
wad the bark together into bundles and place it in the bowl,
then put the bowl in the shade of a small bush. This keeps the
bark moist and supple. Then we all sit down together under a

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ridiculously small tree, taking advantage of what little shade
there is to be had. Nuni gives his new pet to Ngampakatju, and
the two children play with it for a while, letting it run back and
forth between their legs. They seem like small children at play
anywhere in the world. Suddenly Nuni seizes the live lizard
and tears off a leg. Ngampakatju grabs it and does the same,
and for a few moments the two children giggle with delight as
they tear the animal to pieces. Their mothers and the other
children find this hilarious. I smile weakly but admit to myself
that I will probably never become accustomed to such sudden
manifestations of cruelty among these otherwise gentle people.
There is nothing unusual about small children anywhere treating
animals in this way, but it is disconcerting to see adults take such
delight in it, too.

'Puyu nyaratja [Smoke over there, in the distance]' We
have all been looking to the north, but it is Nuni who sees the
smoke first. It appears as a translucent wisp of blue-gray just above
the tops of the sandhills. Soon it rises higher, but by this time
we are all on our way again, following Katapi’s tracks in the sand.

A situation like this explains some popular misunderstand-
ings about Aboriginal smoke signals. I have heard individuals
describe complex and detailed messages that they have seen
transmitted in this way, and they sometimes expressed surprise
or awe at the amount of information a simple puff of smoke
could convey. Of course, what usually happens is just what hap-
pened today - the sender and receiver agree beforehand on what
the signal will mean. If an outsider were to appear now and ask
one of the women what the smoke meant, he would probably
be told something like: 'That’s Katapi. She says she has found
some ripe ngaru, and we should come and gather it.' This would
naturally impress an observer who had not been present when
the meaning of the signal was agreed on.

The sandhills here are laced with the tracks of small animals,
and the children draw me off incessantly to point out the
tracks and tell me what animal made them. Sometimes one can
have too much of a good thing, and this is my plight right now.
I cannot stop to take notes, and I have left my handbook of
snakes and lizards in camp, so I cannot make identifications, yet

Page 14

I am interested in what the children have to say. They are proud
of their knowledge. Before long Nyurapaya and Tjanangu, not
to be outdone, also start showing me tracks and telling me names.
By the time we meet Katapi again I feel as if I have been figura-
tively drowned in a deluge of names for every animal that crawls
or hops across the sandhills in the Gibson Desert.

Katapi has done very well indeed. Not only has she located
a fine patch of ripe ngaru, but she has also found some bushes
containing dried kampurarpa fruit. When they are ripe, the fruits
of both kampurarpa and ngaru look like diminutive green toma-
toes. Ngaru generally has a more tart flavor, but both are staples
for the desert people. They ripen at opposite times of year: ngaru
around December-January and kampurarpa around July-August.
However, under dry conditions, kampurarpa fruits do not rot but
dry out in the hot sun until they acquire the appearance of large
raisins hanging on the bush. This is how they look now, and in
this desiccated state they are edible and highly prized.

Before the heavy work of collecting gets under way, every-
one takes a long drink, emptying all the wooden bowls as well
as the two—gallon waterbag I have brought with me. Then the
three women and Tjukapati fan out into the bushes to collect
the fruit. Ngaru is simply picked ripe from the bush, but for the
dry kampurarpa it is easier to shake the bush until the fruit drops
onto the ground beneath, then gently pull the fruit together into
a pile and scoop it into a bowl. As the wooden bowls are filled,
the sides are built up with bunches of grass and sticks, almost
doubling the capacity of each vessel. During this time the chil-
dren continue their play, chasing lizards and now and then pick-
ing some fruit, either in play or helping their mothers. Little
Ngampakatju is particularly keen on this, returning time after
time with armloads of ngaru, even after his mothers bowl is
completely full. Katapi acts delighted, giving him encouragement
to collect more, even though she will have to leave most of it
behind.

Nyurapaya brings out a small stick which she has been carry-
ing in her hair. Katapi does the same. The sticks are about six
inches long, flat, sharp, and shiny from use. They are called pa-
ngara, and they are used with a single deft wrist motion to split
the husk of each ngaru fruit and remove the seeds. Only the thin

Page 15

outer husk of ngaru is eaten. The children eat some while wait-
ing for the women to finish collecting. The three big bowls are
completely filled in less than an hour, with a total of between
thirty—five and forty pounds of fruit.

The journey back to camp begins immediately. Now the
children are less playful, for the sun is hotter and they are tired.
The women are tired, too, and talk much less on the return trip.
But they continue to move rapidly and smoothly across the sand
and do not once stop to rest. Ngampakatju wants his mother to
carry him, but this she cannot do because of the large and shaky
load on her head. He must learn to walk with the rest of the
children. Back by the tree where we sat earlier, Tjukapati re-
trieves the bowl full of taliwanti bark and then races to catch up
with the rest of the group. At first I do not understand the need
for haste, but Katapi enlightens me by explaining; 'Piriya kuli
pitja—pungkula—witjama [The hot wind is coming with force-
keep moving quickly].' Speaking in this way implies real urgency,
and even now I can see a few spinifex tassels start to wave as
the first breeze hits them. I have already experienced the fierce
drying heat of the midday wind off the sandhills and know what
she means. No one says very much now, for all are intent on
quickly getting back to camp where there is a bit of shade and
shelter from the wind. We arrive soon after noon, with the wind at
our backs but in time to avoid its worst effects, and everyone is
glad to take a long drink of water and lie in the shade for a
while. The men, who have been back nearly an hour, are roast-
ing the goanna in the coals of a small fire. Mitapuyi talks ex-
citedly about the emu that got away.

We are all tired and even irritable after the long hot trek.
Ngampakatju feeds for a while from Katapi's breast. Aborigine
children are indulged to an extreme degree, and sometimes con-
tinue to suckle until they are four or five years old. Physical
punishment for a child is almost unheard of. But today Nga-
mpakatju goes too far. After nursing he races over to where the
other children are playing and goes into a tantrum. He is ignored
until he starts throwing sand in everyone’s eyes. At this point
Katapi takes the almost unprecedented action of cuffing Nga-
mpakatju across the face. She then sits him down beside her, where
she can keep an eye on him. Everyone is glad that she has done

Page 16

this, for Aborigine adults generally hate to discipline children,
and will avoid this unpleasant task whenever possible.

As on most days, the hunt has been poor, but the collecting
has been successful. Over fifty percent of the diet of these people
is regularly made up of vegetable foods drawn mainly from a list of
at least eight staples, like ngaru and kampurarpa, which ripen and
become available at different times of year and in different places.
In addition, there are other plant foods, such as the yarnguli
berry (Santalum lanceolatum) and wama, sugar from the sweet
and succulent yellow flower of the shrub (Grevillea eriostachya,
which supplement and add variety to the basic fare. In the sand-
hill country meat is generally hard to get. The recent successes in
emu hunting are not likely to be repeated for several years, and
even in unusually good years large game such as kangaroo and
emu constitutes only a small part of the overall diet. Small game
is more important as a source of protein, and heading the list are
lizards - goannas and the common blue—tongue (lungata) - as
well as some edible grubs and, since Europeans reached Aus-
tralia, rabbits and feral cats. Lizards are so important to these
desert Aborigines that one Australian popular writer has referred
to the people as 'lizard eaters'.

Mitapuyi and Walanya allow the goanna to roast until the
coals have cooled. This basic procedure is followed in cooking
all meat, regardless of size, though for larger game such as kan-
garoo, euro ( an animal similar to the kangaroo), and emu a
shallow trench is dug in the ground, the animal is placed inside
on its back, and the hot coals are heaped over it. The coals gen-
erally take forty to fifty minutes to cool. This means that small
game like goanna tends to be well—done, but larger animals remain
exceedingly rare - almost raw by European standards. After being
roasted, the animal, regardless of size, is divided and shared.
There are complicated rules governing the sharing of meat and
other food among various classes of relatives. The basic rule is
that each animal is divided into a fixed number of named por-
tions which are offered to the various classes of the hunter’s kin
present at the division. There is no way of storing meat, so it
must be shared as widely as possible and eaten soon before it rots.
Certain kinds of kin, such as fathers—in-law and brothers-in-law,

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Sketch - How to divide a kangaroo into shares. The dotted lines indicate
         the pieces into which the animal is divided immediately after it
         is killed.

have first choice from among the portions, followed then by other
classes of kin, like elder and younger brothers, and, last of all,
by the hunter himself. These shares in turn are divided by each
sharer among his own parents, wives, and children.

At first glance this system of sharing seems unfair to the
hunter, who after all got the meat in the first place. Looked at
through the eyes of the Aborigines, however, this arrangement
actually doubles the rewards to the hunter by giving him both
social prestige as a good kinsman and meat, when, according to
the same set of rules, he takes his share from someone else’s
catch. When the goanna is cooked, Mitapuyi pulls it from the fire
and breaks it into two halves; kultu (foresection, including head,
forelegs, and about half of the body) and karilypa ( hindquarters,
including the rest of the body, hindlegs, and tail). These he lays
on the ground, and Walanya, by virtue of his in—law relationship
to Mitapuyi, selects the hindquarters portion. lt is interesting to
watch these two men in situations where they are sharing food
or goods. Walanya has selected the hindquarters, the portion
which general opinion regards as the better of the two. He has
the right to do this, and his temperament is such that he nearly

Page 18

always asserts his rights when the opportunity arises. He tends
almost to be 'touchy' about his rights and claims, and, speaking
subjectively, this trait perhaps makes him a less appealing per-
sonality than Mitapuyi, who is always looking for ways to en-
hance his reputation as a generous kinsman and a good provider.
However, Walanya never pushes his claims so far as to make
him liable to accusations of being a wati manyu-manyu (a greedy
man) - a really serious insult.

The two men then do something I have never seen before.
Mitapuyi gets a large, more or less flat cobble from the creek-
bed, along with a small one just the right size to hold in one
hand. They take their respective shares of the goanna and each
in turn lays his share on the large cobble. Finally, using the hand-
held stone as a pounder, they mash their shares into pulpy
masses, with bone, meat, and skin all shredded together. Only
the innards (except for the intestines, which are thrown away)
are eaten separately, by Mitapuyi. This is always the hunter’s
due, and sometimes it is all he gets for his share. This kind of
goanna, unlike ngintaka, another species inhabiting the region,
has a cartilaginous skeleton which can be mashed in this way
and eaten along with the meat. Each man hands out a portion of
shredded meat and bone to every member of his family. On this
occasion, the individual portions are very small, barely a mouth-
ful in fact, but nothing is wasted.

 All fleshy foods are called kuka by these people, while vege-
able and nonfleshy foods are classed as mirka. Kuka is always
preferred over mirka, but on most days, as with today, mirka is
actually more important in the total diet. Since it is the women
who collect and prepare most of the mirka, they are thus the
mainstay of the economy. For all their talk about this or that kan-
garoo they once killed, or the pros and cons of a particular spot
for hunting, the men contribute relatively little to the subsistence
of the group.

One consequence of the preponderance of vegetable over
meat foods is a tendency toward an unbalanced diet. There is
usually enough to eat, but generally the emphasis is on particular
staples, one or two at a time. Thus while the people are strong
and basically quite healthy, they sometimes do show signs of

Page 19

deficiencies. This is particularly the case with the children. All
the children in this group have strikingly swollen bellies. I can-
not offer an expert diagnosis of their condition, but in other
parts of the world this symptom can indicate protein deficien-
cies in the diet. After observing the relatively low protein intake
of this group, I am inclined to think this may be the case here,
though, alternatively, the condition may be merely swelling caused
by the large amount of roughage eaten by children. Whatever the
causes, the condition is so common that all desert Aborigines re-
gard it as a normal part of childhood. The condition is called
nungkumunu (unfilled), and it often leaves stretch—scars which
remain throughout adult life. People sometimes proudly point out
their scars to me as evidence of the rigors of their childhood.

By now the sun has passed its zenith, and it is the hottest
part of the day. The wind is blowing hard, sending up local-
ized whirlwinds (called willy—willys by many Australians and
kupi—kupi by the desert people), like the 'dust-devils' of Ameri-
can deserts. It is a time to conserve one’s strength, to take a nap
or just lie in the shade. At times like this the small shade—shelters
(wiltja) here provide more protection from the sun than do the
desert trees. There are three of these shelters, Walanya and his
family use one, Mitapuyi and his family another, and Tjanangu
shares the third with Manyi. These shelters, five or six feet in
diameter and constructed in a roughly semicircular plan, take
very little time to build. One man can make one in a couple of
hours. Branches of mulga are set into dug holes, with the brushy
ends upward. The tops of the branches arch over to meet, mak-
ing what white Australians sometimes call a 'humpy'. The frame-
work of boughs is given an outer covering of grass, and, as a final
step, the interior floor is scooped out to a depth of three or four
inches. Simple as the shelters are, the winter camp is an even
less complicated affair. During cold weather, all that is needed
is a brush windbreak placed around hearths where the people
sleep.

About 4:30 the wind suddenly falls off, and the day begins
to get cooler. On some days, if the collecting has not been suc-
cessful, the women go out again at this time to look for food.

Page 20

But today they decide to stay in camp and prepare the fruits they
have collected. Each woman has a stone hand-grinder and a flat
rock grinding slab for preparing seeds and berries, and the loads
of ngaru and kampurarpa are placed on these in piles. Katapi
goes to work on the kampurarpa, while Nyurapaya, Tjanangu,
and Tjukapati process ngaru.

The desiccated kampurarpa fruits are placed on the grinding
slab and a small amount of water is poured over them. Then
Katapi takes the hand grinder and, with a powerful thrusting
motion, proceeds to mash the fruit into a paste. The paste is dark
reddish—brown in color and is filled with seeds and grit. While it
is still moist, she packs the paste together into a ball which grows
larger and larger as she grinds and adds more fruits. The com-
pleted balls of paste are about ten inches in diameter, and the
outer surface congeals and hardens quickly in the dry heat.
Prepared in this way, the paste will keep almost indefinitely. It is
put into wooden bowls to be kept until wanted.

Some of the ngaru fruit is eaten fresh, but most of it is
cleaned and the husks placed in the coals of a small fire. As an
alternative to this kind of parching, Tjukapati shows me how
ngaru can be sun—dried, by placing the husks on a stick which
makes it look like pieces of shish kebab on a skewer. Prepared
either way, the ngaru dry to about the consistency of corn flakes.
Parched or sun—dried ngaru is eaten after it has been dipped in
water and allowed to soften and swell. As a true dehydrated
food, it is lightweight and storable and for these reasons is some-
times placed in tree-caches out in the bush for hunters who may
have to walk long distances away from camp in search of game.
In camp, however, it is usually mixed with water, ground into a
paste, and packed into balls in the same manner as kampurarpa
fruit, it is considered tastier this way. While it is common for
Aborigine women to prepare wild vegetable foods by grinding,
baking, parching, and in other ways, they cannot be said to have
recipes of any kind.

The grinding is hard work and occupies the women almost
until dark. There is no fixed mealtime. When food is ready, it is
generally shared and eaten, and now the children come and
devour handfuls of kampurarpa and ngaru paste. Meanwhile, the

Page 21

men have retired in the bush to a spot about a quarter—mile from
camp. Here there is a small mulga tree which serves as a cache
for sacred objects. Women and children are not permitted near
this cache, and to warn them off there are sticks placed horizon-
tally in the branches of the trees and several rows of upright
rock slabs nearby. Such warning signs are called ngulu (fear,
danger); it is thought that sight of or contact with sacred objects
can bring instant physical illness or insanity to a woman or an
uninitiated male.

Mitapuyi's Magic

Mitapuyi, in addition to his talents as hunter and kinsman,
has a reputation as a powerful sorcerer (mapantjara). Among
the desert Aborigines, a sorcerer may direct his magic toward
either beneficial or harmful purposes, as the situation demands.
Each sorcerer has a 'kit' or bundle of small objects mapanpa)
which he regards as having potent magical powers. These ob—
jects may include natural items like bits of pearl shell, quartz
crystals, or tektites (round or dumbbell-shaped glassy objects
thought by scientists to be of extraterrestrial origin), or man-
made items like old eyeglass lenses acquired somehow from
white men. These objects are widely used in curing diseases and
in driving away night spirits (mamu), both beneficial forms of
magic regularly conducted by sorcerers like Mitapuyi. However,
on this occasion, it is clear that Mitapuyi intends his magic to be
harmful, and I fear that too many direct questions about his in-
tentions will cause him to exclude me from his activities.

He approaches the mulga tree and takes down a flat, double—
pointed board about thirty inches long and three inches wide,
carved from a slab of mulga wood, which had been stored in a
kind of shelf of boughs and twigs. On both sides of this board
there is fine carving; concentric circles with connecting lines on
one side and a series of intricate interlocking and rectangular
hatched designs on the other side. The craftsmanship is ex-
tremely good, and the carvings are about three—quarters com-

Page 22

pleted. Mitapuyi must have been working on this object for
weeks, yet this is the first time I have seen it. I realize now that
on at least some occasions when he and Walanya said they had
gone hunting they had been carving this object instead, The
others know nothing about it.

The carved board is called yirilmari. It looks like any of a
number of different kinds of sacred boards which I have seen in
the course of preparations for various ceremonies. It, too, I am
told, is a sacred board in the same sense as those I have seen al-
ready, but it has an important extra use, and that is what con-
cerns Mitapuyi and Walanya now. They are not anticipating any
ceremonies. Instead, they plan to use this carved board as a
pointing instrument, for magically projecting sickness and death
over a long distance to a victim they have selected. Some an-
thropologists and popular writers have called this kind of activity
'pointing the bone', and, indeed, the desert Aborigines often do
use for such purposes carved, pointed bones, as well as large
pieces of pointed pearlshell or pointed instruments of steatite or
some other stone which can be carved in this way.

Most of these instruments are considered so potent that the
owner of one purposely avoids pointing it at anyone but his in-
tended victim. Accidental pointing can be dangerous, even to
one’s relatives and friends. Since sorcery of this kind invites retalia-
tion, the sorcerer generally keeps his preparation secret. Ob-
viously Mitapuyi and Walanya have discussed whether or not
to let me see even this much, and I realize that they must trust
in my promise not to tell any other Aborigines I meet about their
present activities. Although they will not answer questions about
the identity of the intended victim or the reason this dire magic
is being directed at him, they do not mind talking about sorcery
in general or about the way this board works. The sorcerer who
operates the magical weapon sings a short song as he points it
in the direction of the victim’s camp. The malignant power from
the weapon flies through the air and enters the victim through
one of his body openings. Ideally, pointing is done at close range,
while the victim is alone and can be seen, for example at night
while he is asleep or when he goes into the bush to defecate.

Page 23

Sketch - The two sides of Mitapuyi's lethal yirilmari board
         (approximately one-fourth actual size)

Page 24

But it is said to work over long distances, too. The victim will
soon sicken and may even die.

Mitapuyi is still carving the board, using a stone-tipped en-
graving tool called pitjuru-pitjuru. The wooden handle of this
tool is about fifteen inches long, with a spinifex-resin haft at
one end for the stone tip and another blob of resin at the other
end as a thumb rest. The pitjuru-pitjuru is used only for incising
magical and sacred designs, otherwise it too is kept concealed.
While Mitapuyi does the carving, using sharp jabbing motions
or heavy pressure toward himself to incise the decorative pat-
terns on the surface of the yirilmari, Walanya steadies it for him.
The stone tip of the engraving tool is quickly dulled by this hard
use, and every two or three minutes Mitapuyi must resharpen
it with his teeth. The technique of biting to sharpen a hafted
stone flake is widespread among the Aborigines of the Gibson
Desert but is not reported from anywhere else in the world to-
day. It will be several days at least before the board is finished,
and, given the secrecy surrounding such operations, I doubt
that I shall be allowed to watch the actual pointing and 'sing-
ing' when they take place.

Certain clues, however, lead me to suspect who the victim
may be and why he merits such punishment. Several months
ago, when the families were living at the Warburton Ranges
Mission, a Ngatatjara man who has lived around white settle-
ments for a number of years took Katapi’s daughter, Tanara, into
the bush for a few days. Sex experience comes early to Aborigine
youngsters, and I suspect she went willingly, but at that time
she was betrothed to another man. If such sexual episodes are
conducted discreetly, they do not attract much attention, but this
one was far too flagrant to be ignored. Tanara’s relatives were
furious but found that for various reasons they could do little
directly. Though feelings ran high at the time - the affair nearly
precipitated a spear fight, the man went unpunished and now
lives near the Warburton Ranges Mission. Katapi was particu-
larly upset. Since Tanara is only Walanya's step-daughter, and
since this couple does not appear to have any particularly close
bond of affection such as exists between Mitapuyi and Nyura-
paya, I suspect that Katapi may have had to talk Walanya into

Page 25

doing something to redress the grievance over Tanara. I further
suspect that it was his decision to use sorcery and to call on
Mitapuyi's abilities to this end.

Mitapuyi and his family had been encountered by an oil-
exploration party at Tika-tika, a waterhole about forty miles
from Partjar, in April 1965 and brought to the Warburton Ranges
Mission. Katapi, her first husband, and their children were
brought in by a Government patrol in September 1965, after
being contacted in the same general area in April. For both
families, this was the first direct contact with whites. They did
not remain long in civilization, however. The death of Katapi’s
husband was an unsettling experience, which was followed,
after Katapi's remarriage, by Tanara’s involvement. In the con-
flicts that followed the latter event, it became apparent that
there was little support for the newcomers. Also, the families
were finding it hard to get enough food at the Mission. So in
September 1966 the whole group left Warburton and walked
back up to the country around Partjar and Tika—tika. At the Mis-
sion they had had few dealings with whites, since much of their
time had been spent foraging in the desert country about forty
miles to the north. By the time I joined them in the desert at
Partjar, they had completely readapted to their traditional econ-
omy.

Now, in the seclusion of the sandhill country, Mitapuyi
and Walanya appear to have decided to avenge by sorcery the
injustices they encountered at the Mission. When I look at the
exquisitely carved designs on the yirilmari being fashioned by
Mitapuyi, I find it hard to believe that these two men consider
this board a weapon as lethal as a gun. This attitude, inciden-
tally, explains why desert Aborigines who have been given their
first rifles sometimes fail to take ammunition with them. When
they see an animal they raise the rifle and call out, 'Pa! Pa!'.
The weapon seems to them to be another kind of magical point-
ing instrument. When they had seen whites using rifles they
heard the report and saw the animal fall but they had explained
this in terms of the magic they already understood. A few fail-
ures usually suffice to show them that something more is needed,
and soon they learn about bullets.

Page 26

Evening

Just before dark Mitapuyi and Walanya put the board back
in its tree-cache and return to camp. During all this time the
women have been grinding ngaru and kampurarpa. These tasks
are nearly finished now, and Nyurapaya is impatient to make
a new pair of sandals for herself. The taliwanti bark has been
soaking in a wooden bowl ever since it was collected this morning,
and it is now flexible enough to work with. Making a large loop
by tying several strips of the bark together, Nyurapaya sits down
inside the loop and anchors one end around her big toe and the
other end behind her back. Then she draws the section in front
of her together with a crosspiece of bark strip laced back and
forth, until she has formed a sole pad about four inches wide and
ten inches long. Finally, she cuts the loop which anchored it be-
hind her, leaving two free strands, each about fifteen inches long,
to serve as laces. When the sandals are worn, these laces are
brought up from behind the heel through the long toe—loop, back
around the ankle, and through the toe—loop again on the other
side, where they are knotted under. It takes Nyurapaya only
about half an hour to fashion a new pair of sandals. She is pleased
to have new footwear and also with the tobacco I have given her
for her old sandals.

The other women have been gathering some firewood and
now build up the fires. It remains hot at night, the temperature
hovering around IOO degrees, so the fires cannot be for warmth,
and there is no more meat to be cooked. I am on the point of
asking about this when one of the dogs, for no apparent reason,
starts barking. Mitapuyi mutters, 'Mamu pini nyaratja tjinguru
(There are lots of night spirits out there perhaps]', and puts an-
other piece of wood on his fire. I remember now having been told
once that only dogs and sorcercrs can see mamu and that fires will
frighten them away. There are conflicting accounts of what a
mamu can do, but in general there is agreement that they are
spirits of the dead which hover in the darkness, sometimes making

Sketch - Making bark sandals for summer footwear.

a whistling noise, waiting to seize anyone out alone at night. They
are said to be cannibalistic. One of the most frequently voiced
reasons for keeping dogs is the warning they give of mamu. Be-
sides mamu, any person abroad at night is assumed to have evil
intentions - perhaps to be intent on sorcery. Only the children
are much worried by the thought of a mamu lurking about; for

Page 28

the adults,the dogs, the fires, and Mitapuyi's abilities as a sorcerer
impart a strong feeling of security.

Conversation continues until about 7:30, then, one by one,
children and adults start to drop off to sleep. Like women every-
where, Nyurapaya, Katapi, and Tjanangu keep on talking among
themselves, long after everyone else is silent. Eventually, though,
even their conversation stops. In the quiet, the only movements
to be seen are flashes of brilliant meteors across the clear night
sky.

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