Madngela Explained

The Madngella, otherwise known as the Matngala or Hermit Hill tribe, are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, Australia.

Language

The Madngella spoke Matngele, one of the Eastern Daly languages, now extinct.

Country

The Madngella lived traditionally in the middle and lower reaches of the Daly River nearby to the Mulluk-Mulluk people. Norman Tindale assigned to them some 100mi2 of tribal land around Hermit Hill, and the area west of the Daly River, placing them to the southeast of the Yunggor people. The Pongaponga lay to their north.

Social system

In the merbok system of ceremonial exchange, the Madngella used the words in a way that indicated the coastal provenance of the articles (ninymer) exchanged, north-easterly and south-westerly. Medrdokfrom the former direction was calledpork padaka, as opposed to the south-westerly merbok, called nim berinken, where berinken is a generic term used of tribes living south-west of the Madngella.

Circumcision

A technique used in native medicine by the Madngella to heal infections to the penis after ritual circumcision had been performed was described by the Norwegian ethnographer Knut Dahl.

History

The Madngella tribe had experienced intense culture shock in the wake of white settlement, whose effects over 50 years, according to who studied them in the early 1930s, had been to disintegrate many of their attachments to the traditional way of life.

Jesuit missionaries, after several endeavours to set up a station in the general area of the Daly River, eventually managed to establish a viable community at Hermit Hill.

Alternative names

• Madngella
• Muttangulla
• Matngelli
• Hermit Hill tribe

Notes

Citations

Sources

• Web site: AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia . . .
• Treatment after circumcision in the Hermit Hill tribe, Daly River, Northern Territory . Dahl . Knut . Knut Dahl . . 1895 . 19 . 122–123 .
• Book: Dahl, Knut . In Savage Australia: An Account of a Hunting and Collecting Expedition to Arnhem Land and Dampier Land . Knut Dahl . 1926 . P. Allen & Sons . London . 72–98 .
• Book: Dixon, Robert M. W. . Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development . Robert M. W. Dixon . 2002 . 1 . . 978-0-521-47378-1 .
• PhD thesis . Marrithiyel, a language of the Daly River region of Australia's Northern Territory . Green . Ian . . September 1989 .
• Anthropological notes on the aboriginal tribes of the Daly River, North Australia . MacKillop . Donald . Mary MacKillop . . 1893 . 17 . 254–264 .
• Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River, North Australia. A Preliminary Paper . Stanner . W. E. H. . William Edward Hanley Stanner . . 4 . 2 . 156–175 . December 1933 . 10.1002/j.1834-4461.1933.tb00098.x . 40327457 .
• Ceremonial Economics of the Mulluk Mulluk and Madngella Tribes of the Daly River, North Australia. A Preliminary paper (continued) . Stanner . W. E. H. . William Edward Hanley Stanner . . 4 . 4 . 458–471 . June 1934 . 10.1002/j.1834-4461.1934.tb00122.x . 27976164 .
• Book: Tindale, Norman Barnett . Madngela (NT) . Norman Tindale . Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names . 1974 . . http://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindaletribes/madngela.htm . 20 March 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200320020206/http://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindaletribes/madngela.htm . 978-0-708-10741-6 .