TheNarungga people, also speltNarangga, are a group ofAboriginal Australians whose traditional lands are located throughoutYorke Peninsula,South Australia.[a] Their traditional language, one of theYura-Thura grouping, isNarungga.
InNorman Tindale's estimation the Narungga held some 2,500 square miles (6,500 km2) of tribal land on the Yorke Peninsula, running north as far asPort Broughton. Their eastern limits were around theHummock Range. The following places all lay within Narungga tribal territory -Bute,Wallaroo,Ardrossan,Marion Bay, andCape Spencer.[1] Their borders with theKaurna lay at the head ofGulf St Vincent.[citation needed]
The Narungga people's language isNarungga, which in the 21st century is being revived under variouslanguage revival projects.[2]
The Narungga are known to have been composed of at least fourgroups, according toNorman Tindale, one being Wallaroo.[1]
Later sources say that the Narungga comprised fourclans who shared the Yorke Peninsula (which was known as Guuranda to them): Kurnara in the north, Dilpa in the south, Wari in the west and Windarra in the east.[3]
The Narungga were anomadic people who practisedfire-stick farming to flush out wildlife and control vegetation. Their diet also included seafood; their expertise at fishing was much admired by early European settlers and a variety of fish species were often traded for tobacco and other goods.
Close to a decade after theBritish colonisation of South Australia and the establishment ofAdelaide in 1836 or earlier. Settlers began moving into Yorke Peninsula, though native memory states that, before the beginning of occupation (1847), their area was visited occasionally by sealers. At this time, it was estimated that the Narungga numbered approximately 500. Within a decade (1856), a white resident stated that their numbers had been halved. By 1880, the same observer stated that they had been reduced to less than 100. The introduction ofscarlet fever andmeasles in the 1870s also devastated the tribe.[4]
The British concepts of property ownership were incompatible with the Narungga's nomadic lifestyle, resulting in the gradual displacement of the Indigenous population. In 1868, thePoint Pearce Aboriginal Mission was established by theMoravian missionary Julius Kühn.[5] After ten years, the mission was largely self-sufficient, though Kühn's early success in securing the confidence of the Narungga by using his medical knowledge suffered a notable blow when 16 residents died ofwhooping cough andcroup over several months in the winter of 1872.[6] Many of the buildings remain today.
Norman Tindale undertook a linguistic and cultural salvage interview with a woman, Louisa Eglinton, whom he deemed to be the sole survivor of the southern Yorke Peninsula people.[7][8]
The following is a description of a Narungga technique for catchingsnapper.
A good-sized fish being roasted, and tied up in a bundle of rushes, isfastened round the neck of a strong swimmer, so that it hangs down his back. With this he swims out to sea a mile or more, and then returns to the sandy beach, the roasted fish still hanging behind him. When near the shore, the swimmer attaches the fish to a spear stuck in the sand, where the water is about three feet deep. In the meantime the men have got ready their long nets, and the shoal of fish, as soon as it arrives on the scent of this drag, is surrounded and taken, Mr. Fowler says that he saw an enormous quantity of schnapper secured in this way on one occasion. It is a mode of fishing I have not heard of before.[9]