Culture in Translation The anthropological legacy of R. H. Mathews Culture in Translation The anthropological legacy of R. H. Mathews Edited by Martin Thomas Translations from the French by Mathilde de Hauteclocque and from the German by Christine Winter Published by ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Incorporated Aboriginal History Monograph 15 National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Mathews, R. H. (Robert Hamilton), 1841-1918. Culture in translation : the anthropological legacy of R. H. Mathews. Bibliography. ISBN 9781921313240 (pbk.) ISBN 9781921313257 (online) 1. Mathews, R. H. (Robert Hamilton), 1841-1918. 2. Aboriginal Australians - Social life and customs. 3. Aboriginal Australians - Languages. 4. Ethnology - Australia. I. Thomas, Martin Edward. II. Title. (Series : Aboriginal history monograph ; no.15). 305.800994 Aboriginal History is administered by an Editorial Board which is responsible for all unsigned material. Views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily shared by Board members. The Committee of Management and the Editorial Board Peter Read (Chair), Rob Paton (Treasurer/Public Officer), Ingereth Macfarlane (Secretary/ Managing Editor), Richard Baker, Gordon Briscoe, Ann Curthoys, Brian Egloff, Geoff Gray, Niel Gunson, Christine Hansen, Luise Hercus, David Johnston, Steven Kinnane, Harold Koch, Isabel McBryde, Ann McGrath, Frances Peters-Little, Kaye Price, Deborah Bird Rose, Peter Radoll, Tiffany Shellam Editor Kitty Eggerking Contacting Aboriginal History All correspondence should be addressed to Aboriginal History, Box 2837 GPO Canberra, 2601, Australia. 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Apart for any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this publication may be reproduced by any process whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. This edition © 2007 ANU E Press and Aboriginal History Inc Contents Acknowledgements vii Preface ix Note on Text xiii Names of Aboriginal Groups and Languages xv Maps xix Abbreviations xxi Introducing R. H. Mathews ‘Birrarak is the name given to me by the natives’ Martin Thomas 3 Part 1: Rock Art and Daily Life Introduction Martin Thomas 43 Contributions to the Ethnography of the Australians R. H. Mathews 51 Rock Carvings and Paintings by the Australian Aborigines R. H. Mathews 75 Plan of some Drawings carved or painted on Rock by the Natives of New South Wales, Australia R. H. Mathews 81 Part 2: Kinship and Marriage Introduction Martin Thomas 89 Social Organisation of Some Australian Tribes R. H. Mathews 99 Remarks on the Natives of Australia R. H. Mathews 109 The Natives of Australia R. H. Mathews 117 Part 3: Mythology Introduction Martin Thomas 125 Some Mythology of the Gundungurra Tribe, New South Wales R. H. Mathews 133 A Giant in a Cave—An Australian Legend R. H. Mathews 139 Australian Folk-Tales R. H. Mathews 143 The Wareengarry and Karambal R. H. Mathews 147 The Hereafter R. H. Mathews 149 v Culture in Translation Part 4: Language Introduction Martin Thomas 155 The Wailwan Language R. H. Mathews 167 Language of the Kurnu Tribe, New South Wales R. H. Mathews 179 Part 5: Ceremony Introduction Martin Thomas 189 The Mŭltyerra Initiation Ceremony R. H. Mathews 199 Initiation Ceremony of the Birdhawal Tribe R. H. Mathews 207 The Bundandaba Ceremony of Initiation in Queensland R. H. Mathews 217 Part 6: Correspondence Introduction Martin Thomas 225 Letters to E. S. Hartland R. H. Mathews 231 Letters to R. H. Mathews Moritz von Leonhardi 245 Letter to Moritz von Leonhardi R. H. Mathews 255 RHM Bibliography 257 vi Acknowledgements The work for this book commenced during an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Technology, Sydney, funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC). It continued when I was granted a Sesqui Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney. I thank both universities and the ARC for their generous support of the project. In 2002 I was supported by the National Library of Australia (NLA) in Canberra, home of the R. H. Mathews Papers, which granted me an honorary Harold White Fellowship in 2002. I acknowledge the collective support of the NLA staff and offer particular thanks to Margy Burn, Sylvia Carr, Mary Gosling, Graeme Powell and Susan O'Neill. Many of the graphics reproduced in the book come courtesy of the NLA. From the outset, Aboriginal History Inc. showed tremendous enthusiasm for the project. I thank all members of the editorial board and offer special thanks to Peter Read and Ingereth Macfarlane for keeping it moving, to Luise Hercus and Harold Koch for their attention to linguistic detail, and to Isabel McBryde who gave so generously in a multitude of ways. Isabel's entry on Mathews in the Australian Dictionary of Biography was a starting point for me, as it has been for so many others. Her constant affirmation of Mathews' importance was one of the factors that kept me going. The book could not have happened without the support at home of Naomi Parry and our son Aaron. I thank you both. Friends and colleagues helped in a multitude of ways. Special thanks to Val Attenbrow, Badger Bates, Richard Barwick, Tamsin Donaldson, David Kaus, Ian Keen, Anna Kenny, John Mulvaney, Brad Steadman and John Strehlow. I owe a unique debt to the descendants of R. H. MathewsÐto Susan Upton, her husband Ron, and to Jane Mathews. Their support and friendship have been some of the many privileges of carrying out this work. Among other institutions, I thank Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, Aberystwyth (the National Library of Wales), for allowing me to reproduce letters from R. H. Mathews to E. S. Hartland. The Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs allowed publication of the letters from Moritz von Leonhardi. For access to manuscript resources, thanks to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra; the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; the Mitchell Library, Sydney; the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford; the Royal Anthropological Society, London; the Royal Society of New South Wales, Sydney; and the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne. My greatest debt is to Mathilde de Hauteclocque and Christine Winter for their wonderful translations, and for making the hard work enjoyable. Our efforts have been enhanced by the keen eye of Kitty Eggerking who was up and vii Culture in Translation running as soon as she arrived as an editor for Aboriginal History. I am grateful for the attentiveness, good humour and professionalism with which she steered the book through the production process. Thanks also to the team at ANU E Press. Finally, I acknowledge the `founders of the feast', though they are not here to share it. Still, it is only appropriate to recognise the energy and enterprise of R. H. Mathews and the many Aboriginal people with whom he worked. I hope that this volume is an apposite tribute to their collaboration. M. T. viii Preface Almost 90 years on from his death, this is the first book-length collection of the writings of Robert Hamilton Mathews. It has been a long wait for the Australian-born surveyor who began his career as an anthropologist at the age of 52 with the 1893 publication of a brief paper on New South Wales rock art.1 Apart from a few short booklets, Mathews' book of 1905, Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South Wales and Victoria, was his only work of anthropology to be published as a freestanding volume.2 A reprint of a long article published the previous year,3 it was a modest tome in that age of doorstopper monographsÐ`little more than a pamphlet' according to Mathews' friend, the British folklorist E. S. Hartland.4 There was certainly an expectation that a writer so prolific as Mathews would disseminate his work in a substantial book. As Arnold van Gennep, the Parisian anthropologist, pointed out to him, `your publications are for the most part overlooked ¼ because they are scattered amongst a mass of periodicals and it is a very difficult matter to have them all at one time in hand'. Van Gennep recommended that Mathews immediately arrange for their `publication in 2 or 3 volumes'5 Ðadvice endorsed by Hartland who was enlisted to work with Mathews' ornithologist son Gregory, then living in England, to place a manuscript with a London publisher (see `Correspondence', this volume). But these efforts were unsuccessful and R. H. Mathews died in 1918 without ever publishing his magnum opus. His formidable success as an author of journal articles, and his failure as an author of books, is one of the many paradoxes surrounding this quixotic and extremely private man. The publications reproduced in this volume are evidence that he enjoyed quite a measure of international success. In total, his 171 works of anthropology run to more than 2,200 published pages. Even this output, substantial as it is, does not convey the full scale of Mathews' ethnographic labour. As scholars of his work have come to realise, further invaluable material survives in the collection of R.