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Kaurareg
Kaurareg (alt. Kauraraiga, plural Kauraraigalai, Kauraregale) is the name for one of the Indigenous Australian and Papuan groups collectively known as Torres Strait Islander peoples, although some identify as Aboriginal Australians. They are the traditional owners of Thursday Island (Waiben) as well as a number of Torres Strait Islands.
The Kaurareg are lower Western Islanders, based on the Muralag group. In common with the other peoples of the Torres Strait Island, they commanded impressive sailing outrigger canoe technology, traded throughout the Straits, fishing and trading with other Torres Strait Island groups. Similarly, they also regularly visited the Australian mainland of Cape York Peninsula, and retained ceremonial, marriage and trading alliances with several Aboriginal groups there. However they have been displaced many times since colonisation in the late 1800s. Subject to reprisals after being blamed for an incident in which a Western schooner and its crew were destroyed in 1869, their numbers rapidly diminished with the onset of white colonisation and administration. After World War II, descendants of the Kaurareg began to return to their traditional islands, and lay claim to native title over several of them.
The Kaurareg speak a dialect of Kalaw Lagaw Ya, an isolate in the Pama–Nyungan family.
The Kaurareg lie in the lower Western island group among the 5 basic ethno-culturally distinct groups that constituted the traditional world of the Torres Strait Islanders, the others being the Saibailgal, Dœwanalgal and Bœigulgal (Top West islanders), the Maluigal (Mid-West islanders), Kulkalgal (Central Islanders) and Meriam Le (Eastern Islanders). Though internecine conflict was chronic in the region, it did not disrupt the dynamic interlocking family, clan and trading system that linked all in a far-flung exchange system, whose goods extended beyond the islands creating a flow of goods between New Guinea and Cape York Peninsula. The Kaurareg and the Mua traded bu (trumpet shells), alup (bailer shells) and wap (turtle and dugong harpoon shafts) for Papuan canoe hulls, cassowary bone-tipped arrows and bamboo for various purposes, such as carrying water and making knives for beheading enemies (upi).
The Kaurareg had close links with the tribes of northern Cape York, which was home to a number of Aboriginal groups. These were the Gudang whose territory extended from Cape York to Fly Point; the Gumakudin whose land was to the southwest of Cape York; the Unduyamo who were in the northern part of Newcastle Bay, and the Yadhaigana whose country went from Jackey Jackey Creek to Escape River. A.C.Haddon, surveying the field reports of the ethnography to date, esp. the narratives collected by Gunnar Landtman, classified the Kaurareg as descendants of the ancient Hiamu people of the island of Daru off the southern Papuan coast. These Hiamu in turn, according to folk history, had come from Iama in the Bourke Isles. The Hiamu, it was said, were repeatedly worsted in encounters with Kiwai invaders, and abandoned Daru and moved to Muralag.
The Kaurareg people were extensively documented before their decimation and the destruction of their traditional life, by O. W. Brierly, an artist who took part in an Admiralty survey of the York Peninsula by HMS Rattlesnake. He estimated the number of Kaurareg on Muralag (Prince of Wales Island) alone as around 100, though they were also spread over another 10 islands and islets. In particular he took many notes based on interviews with Barbara Thompson, a castaway who, the lone survivor of a shipwreck off Ngurupai (Horn Island) in 1844, was held captive by the Kaurareg, who treated her as the markai ("ancestral spirit" ) of an elder (Peaqui)'s deceased daughter (Giom) for 5 years until Owen Stanley's expedition Deliverance Beach where Barbara Thompson was rescued by sailors from Rattlesnake on 16 October 1849. They were also the object of extensive research undertaken by Alfred Cort Haddon in 1888, and again in 1898 when he led the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait.
Muralag had been noted as a source of fresh water since the days of early British expeditions. In 1791, Captain E. Edwards and the crew of HMS Pandora arrived in four boats on the island, seeking fresh water after the Pandora was wrecked on a reef.
In mid-April 1869 a schooner, the Sperwer, while trading and trawling for trepang off Muralag, was attacked and its captain, James Gascoyne, and his crew of two whites and five Malays were killed. The incident occurred at Wednesday Spit between Wednesday Island and Hammond Island, an area where, it was later reported, the Indigenous peoples "had constantly maintained friendly intercourse" with Europeans.
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Kaurareg
Kaurareg (alt. Kauraraiga, plural Kauraraigalai, Kauraregale) is the name for one of the Indigenous Australian and Papuan groups collectively known as Torres Strait Islander peoples, although some identify as Aboriginal Australians. They are the traditional owners of Thursday Island (Waiben) as well as a number of Torres Strait Islands.
The Kaurareg are lower Western Islanders, based on the Muralag group. In common with the other peoples of the Torres Strait Island, they commanded impressive sailing outrigger canoe technology, traded throughout the Straits, fishing and trading with other Torres Strait Island groups. Similarly, they also regularly visited the Australian mainland of Cape York Peninsula, and retained ceremonial, marriage and trading alliances with several Aboriginal groups there. However they have been displaced many times since colonisation in the late 1800s. Subject to reprisals after being blamed for an incident in which a Western schooner and its crew were destroyed in 1869, their numbers rapidly diminished with the onset of white colonisation and administration. After World War II, descendants of the Kaurareg began to return to their traditional islands, and lay claim to native title over several of them.
The Kaurareg speak a dialect of Kalaw Lagaw Ya, an isolate in the Pama–Nyungan family.
The Kaurareg lie in the lower Western island group among the 5 basic ethno-culturally distinct groups that constituted the traditional world of the Torres Strait Islanders, the others being the Saibailgal, Dœwanalgal and Bœigulgal (Top West islanders), the Maluigal (Mid-West islanders), Kulkalgal (Central Islanders) and Meriam Le (Eastern Islanders). Though internecine conflict was chronic in the region, it did not disrupt the dynamic interlocking family, clan and trading system that linked all in a far-flung exchange system, whose goods extended beyond the islands creating a flow of goods between New Guinea and Cape York Peninsula. The Kaurareg and the Mua traded bu (trumpet shells), alup (bailer shells) and wap (turtle and dugong harpoon shafts) for Papuan canoe hulls, cassowary bone-tipped arrows and bamboo for various purposes, such as carrying water and making knives for beheading enemies (upi).
The Kaurareg had close links with the tribes of northern Cape York, which was home to a number of Aboriginal groups. These were the Gudang whose territory extended from Cape York to Fly Point; the Gumakudin whose land was to the southwest of Cape York; the Unduyamo who were in the northern part of Newcastle Bay, and the Yadhaigana whose country went from Jackey Jackey Creek to Escape River. A.C.Haddon, surveying the field reports of the ethnography to date, esp. the narratives collected by Gunnar Landtman, classified the Kaurareg as descendants of the ancient Hiamu people of the island of Daru off the southern Papuan coast. These Hiamu in turn, according to folk history, had come from Iama in the Bourke Isles. The Hiamu, it was said, were repeatedly worsted in encounters with Kiwai invaders, and abandoned Daru and moved to Muralag.
The Kaurareg people were extensively documented before their decimation and the destruction of their traditional life, by O. W. Brierly, an artist who took part in an Admiralty survey of the York Peninsula by HMS Rattlesnake. He estimated the number of Kaurareg on Muralag (Prince of Wales Island) alone as around 100, though they were also spread over another 10 islands and islets. In particular he took many notes based on interviews with Barbara Thompson, a castaway who, the lone survivor of a shipwreck off Ngurupai (Horn Island) in 1844, was held captive by the Kaurareg, who treated her as the markai ("ancestral spirit" ) of an elder (Peaqui)'s deceased daughter (Giom) for 5 years until Owen Stanley's expedition Deliverance Beach where Barbara Thompson was rescued by sailors from Rattlesnake on 16 October 1849. They were also the object of extensive research undertaken by Alfred Cort Haddon in 1888, and again in 1898 when he led the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Strait.
Muralag had been noted as a source of fresh water since the days of early British expeditions. In 1791, Captain E. Edwards and the crew of HMS Pandora arrived in four boats on the island, seeking fresh water after the Pandora was wrecked on a reef.
In mid-April 1869 a schooner, the Sperwer, while trading and trawling for trepang off Muralag, was attacked and its captain, James Gascoyne, and his crew of two whites and five Malays were killed. The incident occurred at Wednesday Spit between Wednesday Island and Hammond Island, an area where, it was later reported, the Indigenous peoples "had constantly maintained friendly intercourse" with Europeans.
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