Gudang

The Gudang or Djagaraga are an aboriginal Australian tribe, traditionally located in the coastal area from Cape York to Fly point, including also Pabaju (Albany Island), in the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. In the early period of white settlement they were known as the Somerset tribe, after the settlement of Somerset established on their lands in 1863.

• The natives at Cape York call themselves Gudaŋ. Westward of that tribe are the Kokiliga; south-west of the Gudaŋ are the Ondaima; and due south, are the Yaldaigan, who have almost exterminated the Gudaŋ.
  • Charles C. Greenway, et al., "Australian Languages and Traditions", The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 7 (1878), p. 266

H. N. Moseley, Notes By a Naturalist: An Account of Observations made during The Voyage of H.M.S. “Challenger” Round the World in the Years 1872–1876 (London: John Murray, 1892), Chap. xiv

Note: the Challenger reached Somerset, Cape York, the northernmost point of Australia, on the evening of 1 September 1874

• In all my excursions I was accompanied by Blacks. An encampment of natives lay at about half a mile from the shore; the camp was a small one, and composed of the remnants of three tribes. There were 21 natives in this camp when I visited it early one morning in search of a guide, before daybreak, before the Blacks were awake. Of these 21, about six were adult males, one of whom was employed at the water police station during the day time; there were four boys of from ten to fourteen years, two young girls, two old women, two middle-aged women, and the remainder were young women.
  One of the old women was the mother of Longway, who acted as my guide, and who had a son about ten years old. The Blacks were mostly of the Gudang tribe, a vocabulary of the language of which is given in the Appendix to MacGillivray’s “Voyage of the ‘Rattlesnake.’” The natives were in a lower condition than I had expected. Their camp consisted of an irregularly oval space concealed in the bushes, at some distance from one of the paths through the forest. In the centre were low heaps of wood ashes with fire-sticks smouldering on them. All around was a shallow groove or depression, caused partly by the constant lying and sitting of the Blacks in it, partly by the gradual accumulation of ashes inside, and the casting of these and other refuse immediately outside it. On the outer side of this groove or form large leaves of a Fan Palm were here and there stuck up at an angle so as to form a shelter, under which the Blacks huddled together at night to sleep.
  A camp of this shape with a slight mound inside, and a bank outside, formed involuntarily by primitive man, may have given the first idea of the mound, the ditch, and rampart. The large amount of wood-ashes accumulated in such a camp, accounts for their occurrence in such large quantities in kitchen-middens, where camping must have been in the same style. A good many shells brought from the shore lay here and there about the camp.
  There were besides in the neighbourhood remains of shelters of the common Australian form, long huts made of bushy branches set at an angle to meet one another above, and partially covered with palm-leaves and grass; these the Blacks used occasionally.
  In the daytime the young women and the men were usually away searching for food, but two miserable old women, reduced nearly to skeletons, but with protuberant stomachs, with sores on their bodies and no clothing but a narrow bit of dirty mat, were always to be seen sitting huddled up in the camp. These hags looked up at a visitor with an apparently meaningless stare, but only to see if any tobacco or biscuit were going to be given them; they exhibited no curiosity, but only scratched themselves now and then with a pointed stick.
  The younger women had all of them a piece of some European stuff round their loins. Some of the men had tattered shirts, but one, who acted as my guide, was invariably absolutely without clothing, as was his son, who always accompanied him. The only property to be seen about the camp were a few baskets of plaited grass, in the making of which the old women were sometimes engaged, and which were used by the gins for collecting food in. Two large Cymbium shells, with the core smashed out, had been used also to hold food or water, but were now replaced for the latter purpose by square gin bottles, of which there were plenty lying about the camp, brought from the settlement.
  • Camp of the Blacks

• The most prized possession of these Blacks is, however, the bamboo pipe, of which there were several in the camp. The bamboos are procured by barter from the Murray islanders, who visit Cape York from time to time, and the tobacco' is smoked in them by the blacks in nearly the same curious manner as that in vogue amongst the Dalryraple Islanders. No doubt the Australians have learnt to smoke from the Murray Islanders.
  The tobacco-pipe is a large joint of bamboo, as much as two feet in length and three inches in diameter. There is a small round hole on the side at one end and a larger hole in the extremity of the other end. A small cone of green leaf is inserted into the smaller round hole and filled with tobacco.{{pb}]which is lighted at the top as usual. A man, or oftener a woman, opening her mouth wide covers the cone and lighted tobacco with it and applies her lips to the bamboo all round it, thus having the leaf cone and burning tobacco entirely within her mouth. She then blows and forces the smoke into the cavity of the bamboo, keeping her hand over the hole at the other end, and closing the aperture as soon as the bamboo is full.
  The leaf cone is then withdrawn and the pipe handed to the smoker, who, putting his hand over the bottom hole to keep in the smoke, sucks at the hole in which the leaf was inserted, and uses his hand as a valve meanwhile to allow the requisite air to enter at the other end. The pipe being empty the leaf is replaced and the process repeated. The smoke is thus inhaled quite cold. The pipes are ornamented by the Blacks with rude drawings.
  The bamboo pipes of Dalrymple Island are described as having bowls made of smaller bamboo tubes instead of the leaf cone. There are many such in museums. Possibly the leaf is only a makeshift. The Dalrymple Islanders, however, sucked the bamboo full of smoke from the large hole at the end instead of blowing.
  It is remarkable that the Southern Papuans should have invented this peculiar method of smoking for themselves, since there can be little doubt that they derived the idea of smoking from the Malays, probably through the Northern and Western Papuans. There seems no doubt that the habit of smoking, as well as the tobacco plant, were first introduced into Java by the Portuguese, and the habit and plant no doubt spread thence to New Guinea. The Papuans at Humboldt Bay smoke their tobacco in the form of cigarettes.
  • Curious Mode of Smoking

• No other property than that mentioned was to be seen about the camp of the Gudangs, but on our asking for them. Longway produced some small spears and a throwing stick, which were hidden in the bush close by; and a second lot of spears was produced afterwards from a similar hiding-place. The Blacks keep what property they have thus hidden away, just as a dog hides his bone, and not in the camp ; hence it is impossible to find out what they really have. I saw no knife or tomahawk. No doubt the practice of thus hiding things away from the camp has arisen from constant fear of surprise from hostile tribes.
  The Blacks feed on shell fish and on snails (a very large Helix), and on snakes and grubs and such things, which are nunted for by the women, who go out into the woods in a gang every day for the purpose of collecting food, and also dig wild yam roots with a pointed stick hardened in the fire. They have not got the perforated stone to weight their digging-stick, and are thus behind the Bushmen of the Cape in this matter. A staple article of food with these Blacks is afforded by the large seeds of a Climbing Bean (Entada scandens), and their only stone implements are a round flat-topped stone and another long conical one, suitable to be grasped in the hands. This is used as a pestle with which to pound these beans on the fiat stone. Both stones are merely selected, and not shaped in any way.
  These Blacks seem never to have had any stone tomahawks, and their spear-heads are of bone. They seem not to hunt the Wallabies or climb after the Opossums, as do the more southern Blacks, but to live almost entirely on creeping things and roots, and on fish, which they spear with four-pronged spears. Staff-Surgeon Crosbie of the “Challenger” saw Longway and his boy smashing up logs of drift-wood and pulling out Teredos and eating them one by one as they reached them.
  • Habits and Diet

• I tested Longway and also several of the Blacks together at before them, but could not get them to count in their language above three—piama, labaima, damma. They used the word nurra also, apparently for all higher numbers. It was curious to see their procedure when I put a heap of five or six objects before them. They separated them into groups of two, or two and one, and pointing to the heaps successively said, “labaima, labaima, piama,” “two,” “ two,” “ one.” Though another of my guides had been long with the Whites he had little idea of counting. After he had picked up two dozen birds for me and seen them packed away, I asked him how many there were in the tin: he said Six. I wish I had paid more attention to the language of these Gudangs. No doubt amongst such people language changes with remarkable rapidity, especially where, as here, tribes are mixed, and some of the words at least seem to have changed since MacGillivray’s time.
  The Blacks are wonderfully forgetful, and seem never to carry an idea long in their heads. One day when Longway was out with me he kept constantly repeating to himself “two shilling,” a sum I had promised him if I shot a Rifle-bird, and he constantly reminded me of it, evidently with his thoughts full of the idea. After the day was over, and we were near home, he suddenly left me and disappeared: he had been taken with a sudden desire to smoke his bamboo, and had gone by a short cut to the camp. When I found him there he seemed astonished, and to have forgotten about his day’s pay altogether.
  The Blacks spend what little money they get in biscuit at the store. And they know that for a florin they ought to get more biscuit than for a shilling, but that is all. Food is their greatest desire. Their use of English is most amusing, especially that of the word “fellow.” “This feller gin, this feller gin, this feller boy,” said Longway, when I asked whether some young Blacks crouched by the fire were boys or girls. They apply the term also to all kinds of inanimate objects. There are several graves of Blacks near Somerset. I asked Longway what became of the Black fellows when they died; he said “Flyaway,” and that they became White men.
  • Incapacity for Counting

• About 35 miles from Somerset is a tribe of fierce and more powerful Blacks, of which the Gudangs are in great terror. When I wanted some plants which were a little way up a tree. Longway was not at all inclined to climb, but let a sailor who was with me do it. Longway’s boy said he could not climb.
  As I have said, Longway was always completely naked. He not only had no clothing of any description, but no ornament of any kind whatsoever, and he was not even tattooed. Further, he never carried, when he walked with me, any kind of weapon, not even a stick. His boy, who was always with him, was in the same absolutely natural condition. It was some time before I got quite accustomed to Longway’s absolute nakedness, but after I had been about with him for a bit, the thing seemed quite familiar and natural, and I noticed it no more.
  On one of our excursions. Longway begged me to shoot him some paroquets to eat. I shot half a dozen at a shot. I should not have done so if I had known the result. Longway insisted on stopping and eating them there and then. I was obliged to wait. Longway and his boy lighted a fire of grass and sticks, tore a couple of clutches of feathers off each of the birds, and threw them on the fire for the rest of the feathers to singe partly off. Before they were well warm through, they pulled the birds out and tore them to pieces, and ate them all bleeding, devouring a good deal of the entrails.
  On one occasion, when I wished to start very early on a shooting expedition, in order to come upon the birds about daybreak, which is always the best time for finding them in the tropics, I went to the camp of the Blacks to fetch Longway, just as it was beginning to dawn. The Blacks were not by any means so easily roused as I had expected ; I found them all asleep, and had to shout at them, but then they all started up scared, as if expecting an attack. I had great difficulty in persuading Longway to go with me at that early hour, and he complained of the cold for some hours. I think the Blacks usually lie in camp till the sun has been up some little time, and the air has been warmed.
  With regard to expression, I noticed that the Gudangs used the same gesture of refusal or dissent as the Api men, namely, the shrugging of one shoulder, with the head bent over to the same side. Their facial expressions were, as far as I saw them, normal, I mean like those of Europeans.
  Altogether, these Blacks are, I suppose, nearly as low as any savages. They have no clothes (some have bits of European ones now), no canoes, no hatchets, no boomerangs, no chiefs. Their graves, described in the “Voyage of the ‘Fly,’” are remarkable in their form. They are long low mounds of sand, with a wooden post set up at each of the corners. There is far more trouble taken with them than would be expected.
  • Miscellaneous

• Cape York is a sort of emporium of savage weapons and ornaments. Pearl shell-gathering vessels (“Pearl-shellers” as they are called) come to Somerset with crews which they have picked up at all the islands in the neighbourhood, from New Guinea, and from all over the Pacific, and they bring weapons and ornaments from all these places with them. Moreover, the Murray Islanders visit the port in their canoes, and bring bows and arrows, drums, and such things for barter.
  The water police stationed at Somerset deal in these curiosities, buying them up and selling them to passengers in the passing steamers, or to other visitors. Hence all kinds of savage weapons have found their way into English collections, with the label “ Cape York,” and the Northern Australians have got credit for having learnt the use of the bow-and-arrow. I believe that no Australian natives use the bow at all.
  Weapons from very remote places, find their way to Cape York, and thus no doubt the first specimens of Admiralty Island javelins reached English museums. Accurate determination of locality is of course essential to the interest of savage weapons. Staff-Surgeon Maclean, of the “ Challenger,” had a large New Guinea drum of the Crocodile form thrust upon his acceptance, as a fee for visiting a patient on board one of the “Pearl-shellers”; he gave it to me.
  • Savage Weapons

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Gudang