Pangerang
The Pangerang or Bangerang are the indigenous Australians who traditionally occupied much of what is now north-eastern Victoria stretching along the Murray River to Echuca and into the areas of the southern Riverina in New South Wales. The Pangerang spoke a Gunai language.
Country
Pangerang lands covered some 2,600 sq. miles, running rthrough the lower Goulburn River valley and extending westwards to the Murray River. It covered areas east and west of Shepparton, taking in also Wangaratta, Benalla, and Kyabram. The southern reaches extend as far as Toolamba and Violet Town.[1]
Social structure
The Bangerang collective of tribes, or nation, also known as the Yorta Yorta, consists of 8 hordes, according to Norman Tindale, though others have been included in the list.[lower-alpha 1]
- Wongatpan
- Towroonban
- Angootheriban
- Pikkolatpan
- Ngarrimowro
- Boongatpan
- Toolinyagan
- Kailtheban
- Moitheriban
- Wollithiga
We know somewhat more about the fish-loving Wongatpan and the opossum-hunting Towroonban simply because they happen to have been the tribes inhabiting the area where the ethnographer Edward Micklethwaite Curr took over his pastoral run.[2]
Alternative names
- Panggarang, Pangorang, Pangurang, Pine-gorine, Pine-go-rine, Pinegerine, Pinegorong
- Bangerang, Banjgaranj
- Pallaganmiddah
- Jabalajabala (from the word jabala meaning no), a name applied to western Pangerang hordes)
- Yaballa, Yabula-yabula
- Waningotbun (horde at Kotupna)
- Maragan (perhaps Maraban, horde name)
- Owanguttha (horde name)
- Yurt (exonym used by northerners and the Ngurelban, from jurta, meaning no)
- Yoorta
- Moiraduban (horde name)
- Moitheriban[1]
History
Many of the Pangerang were killed in the Gippsland massacres.
Endnotes
- ↑ "There were eight well-defined hordes the names of which generally terminated in [-pan] or [-ban]. Curr and Mathews both show that Pangerang hordes extended a little way downriver from Echuca on both banks; these western hordes were called Jabalaljabala by downriver tribes. Three of Curr's Pangerang hordes are separated as the Kwatkwat. The hordes shown by Curr north of the Murray River belong to other tribes."[1]
Citations
- 1 2 3 Tindale 1974.
- ↑ Furphy 2013, p. 37.
Sources
- Barwick, Diane E. (1984). McBryde, Isabel, ed. Mapping the past: an atlas of Victorian clans 1835–1904. 8. Aboriginal History. pp. 100–131.
- Furphy, Samuel (2013). Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History. Australian National University. ISBN 978-1-922-14471-3.
- Smyth, Robert Brough (1878). The Aborigines of Victoria: with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania (PDF). 1. Melbourne: J. Ferres, gov't printer.
- Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Pangerang (VIC)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6.
- West, Raymond (1962). Those Were the Days: A Story of Shepparton, Victoria, and to Some Extent, Its District. Waterwheel Press.