Anna Kenny - Aranda's Pepa

The Aranda’s Pepa
An Introduction to Carl Strehlow’s Masterpiece

Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907-1920)
The Aranda’s Pepa
An Introduction to Carl Strehlow’s Masterpiece
Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907-1920)
Anna Kenny
Published by ANU Press
The Australian National University
Acton ACT 2601, Australia
Email: anupress@anu.edu.au
This title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Kenny, Anna, author.
Title: The Aranda’s Pepa : an introduction to Carl

Strehlow’s masterpiece, Die Aranda-und Loritja-
Stamme in Zentral-Australien
(1907-1920) / Anna Kenny. 
ISBN: 9781921536762 (paperback) 9781921536779 (ebook)
Subjects: Aranda (Australian people)--Social life and customs.  

Kukatja (Australian people)--Social life and customs.
Aranda (Australian people)--Kinship. 
Kukatja (Australian people)--Kinship. 
Aranda (Australian people)--Religion. 
Kukatja (Australian people)--Religion. 
Other Authors/Contributors: 
Strehlow, C. (Carl), 1871-1922.
Aranda-und Loritja-Stamme 
in Zentral-Australien. 
Dewey Number: 305.89915  
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by ANU Press
Cover image: Carl Strehlow’s map, 1910 and Carl Strehlow’s ‘Aussendungsphoto’, 1892.
Archiv/Mission Eine Welt, Neuendettelsau.
Printed by Griffin Press
This edition © 2013 ANU Press

Contents
Plates, Diagrams and Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Map of central Australia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Orthography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Primary Sources and Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part I
I. Carl Strehlow and the Aranda and Loritja of Central Australia. . . 15
II. A Certain Inheritance: Nineteenth Century German
Anthropology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
III. From Missionary to Frontier Scholar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
IV. The Making of a Masterpiece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Part II
V. Geist through Myth: Revealing an Aboriginal Ontology. . . . . 135
VI. The ‘Marriage Order’ and Social Classification . . . . . . . . . . 169
VII. Territorial Organisation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
VIII. Positioning Carl Strehlow in Australian Anthropology
and Intellectual History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Appendix A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Appendix B. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Appendix C . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Sign 316. pepa (book, letter): With index finger one makes quick movements on the
palm of the left hand, as if one were writing.1
Carl Strehlow, 1915
1 See Section ‘Sign language’ (Strehlow 1915: 70).

vii
Plates, Diagrams and Maps
1. Map of central Australia. xi
2. Map of Route of the Lutheran missionaries to Hermannsburg, 16
adapted from Leske 1977.
3. Carl Strehlow’s map, 1910. 18
4. Image of central Australia. 19
5. T.G.H. Strehlow’s map, 1971. 22
6. Carl Strehlow’s ‘Aussendungsphoto’, 1892. 24
7. Frieda Strehlow and her first child Friedrich, 1897. 27
8. Aranda girls with Frieda at Hermannsburg in the 1890s. 28
9. Loatjira, Pmala, Tjalkabota and Talku, 1906/7. 29
10. Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt, 1943. 37
11. Page 1224 of Carl Strehlow’s handwritten manuscript, Volume 3, Leben. 38
12. Last photograph of the complete Strehlow family, 1910/11. 48
13. Frieda and Carl Strehlow, 1895. 80
14. Map of postal routes between Germany and Australia. 104
15. R. and C. Berndt’s early myth classification. 140
16. Alarinja and Kwatjarinja of the Aranda. 173
17. Aranda ‘Marriage Rules’. 174
18. Arandic Skin Chart. 174
19. Genealogy of Ipitarintja and Laramanaka. 185
20. Hesekiel Malbunka’s family tree drawn by T.G.H. Strehlow. 190
ix
1. Map of central Australia.
Source: Clivie Hilliker, The Australian National University.
xi
Acknowledgments
Work on this book, which has been developed from my thesis, was made possible
by a postdoctoral fellowship funded by an ARC Linkage grant (LP110200803)
between The Australian National University, the Central Land Council and the
Strehlow Research Centre titled, ‘Rescuing Carl Strehlow’s indigenous cultural
heritage legacy: the neglected German tradition of Arandic ethnography’.
Foremost I am indebted to my Aranda friends in central Australia who have been
generous, lenient and patient with me over the years we have known each other,
while living in central Australia and working on many native title claims since
early 1994. At ANU I am deeply indebted to Professor Nicolas Peterson who has
been my teacher and mentor for nearly 20 years. I am also very thankful for the
support given to this project by David Ross and Brian Connelly from the Central
Land Council and Michael Cawthorn from the Strehlow Research Centre.
I wish to thank Professor Emeritus Diane Austin-Broos, my PhD supervisor,
without whose guidance and critical comments some ideas would not have
emerged. Under her supervision my understanding of intellectual histories that
have impacted on anthropology’s development greatly expanded and opened up
various new ways to approach aspects of intellectual history in Australia. I am
deeply indebted to her. I am also indebted to Dr Lee Sackett, Dr John Morton,
Professor Fred Myers and Professor Andre Gingrich who have encouraged my
work.
I am particularly thankful for the assistance given to me by the staff of the
Strehlow Research Centre, Graeme Shaughnessy, Scott Mitchell, Penny Joy and
Adam Macfie in Alice Springs, and by Lyall Kupke of the Lutheran Archives in
Adelaide. Thanks are also due to the librarian at the Central Land Council, Amy
O’Donoghue.
I would also like to thank Dr Miklos Szalay, Garry Stoll, Dr Maurice Schild,
Dr Gavan Breen, Dr John Henderson, Dr Jenny Green, Dr Walter Veit, Craig
Elliott, Helen Wilmot, Chris Nobbs, Geoff Hunt and my brother Urs Kenny who
have provided comments and constructive criticism on various manuscripts. A
special thanks to Peter Latz for pointing out some important details about the
perception of Western Aranda people of Carl Strehlow’s persona; to Professor
Karl Heinz Kohl who welcomed me at the University of Frankfurt; to John
Strehlow for our initial conversations about his grandfather; and to Peter von
Leonhardi for inviting me to Gross Karben to see where his great-uncle Moritz
von Leonhardi edited Carl Strehlow’s masterpiece.
xiii
The Aranda’s Pepa
I am especially grateful to my very good friend Julia Munster who has always
been supportive and provided helpful comments and advice. Lastly, and most
of all, I thank my loving family, Shane and Roisin Mulcahy, for their constant
support and critical comments.
xiv
Preface
I first encountered Carl Strehlow’s work over 25 years ago whilst studying
ethnology, Germanistic (German studies) and linguistics in Zürich. At the time
Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien did not strike a chord in
me, although I was keenly interested in Aboriginal cultures and particularly
interested in language per se. My interest in oral literatures was sparked by
my father. In my childhood he had read to me every available collection of
mythology ranging from Swiss legends, to Greek myths and Tibetan fairy-tales.
Carl Strehlow’s work did not seem unusual among other collections of Mythen,
Sagen und Märchen (myths, legends and fairy-tales) found in a German context,
although it seemed rather cryptic due to the lack of a glossary that explained
Aranda and Loritja terms used in the translations of the indigenous texts.
The collection presupposed an enormous amount of knowledge and language
proficiency which I did not have at the time. It was soon returned to the library
shelf.
Many years later, having worked with Aboriginal people on land and native
title claims as well as on mining related issues in central Australia, I again
encountered Carl Strehlow’s ethnographic work during research into Western
Aranda culture and country. The nature of my work provided me the opportunity
to travel with Central Australian indigenous people over their traditional lands,
and in time I became attuned to mythology associated with landscape and the
mastery of Carl Strehlow’s work, compiled in the first decade of the last century,
revealed itself. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien and his
unpublished materials described the sophistication of Aboriginal cultures that
other Australian works of the time lacked.
Not only had he written the base for a successful ‘claim book’, which is a legal
anthropological report, and compiled family trees of the people who own the
country featured in these narratives, he had also compiled as Marcel Mauss
expressed it ‘un précieux recueil de 1500 vers aranda qui forme une sorte de Rig
Veda australien’ (Mauss 1913: 103).
xv
Orthography
In this book I have used mainly the original orthography of Carl Strehlow
which includes well known spellings of polysemic key terms such as ‘altjira’
and ‘tjurunga’ and the language labels ‘Aranda’ and ‘Loritja’. I have only
used contemporary spellings of Aranda and Loritja words in citations from
contemporary publications and reports (including my own previous work) that
use spelling systems developed by the Institute for Aboriginal Development
(‘IAD’). In the IAD system the language name ‘Aranda’ is spelled ‘Arrernte’, for
example. Spellings from the published works of early writers such as Spencer
and Gillen, Howitt, Roth, Róheim and Pink have been retained and their usage
is referenced.
Generally, the spelling of Aboriginal words, including names of individuals,
languages (Luritja, Pertame, Eastern Arrernte, Central Arrernte, etc.), groups
of people, subsections, sites, countries (estates) and dreamings that are in use
today follow the IAD spelling systems unless they are established place names,
personal names of people who have long passed away or no longer in use.
Currently a new system is developing for the Arandic language used at and
around Ntaria (Hermannsburg) and may replace the current IAD system. The
people belonging to these Western Arandic areas prefer to spell their language
name ‘Arrarnta’ or ‘Aranda’. Thus, I have included in Appendix A pronunciation
guides for both systems and where available I have included recent spellings of
words used at Ntaria in the glossary in Appendix B.
xvii
Primary Sources and Translations
The main body of my primary research material is held at the Strehlow Research
Centre in Alice Springs, Central Australia. Other primary sources are held in
capital cities of Australia, Germany and England.
English quotations from Carl Strehlow’s magnum opus Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien are extracted from the unpublished Oberscheidt
translation (1991), all other quotations from Carl Strehlow’s unpublished
manuscripts and letters are based on my translations if not otherwise indicated.
xix
Introduction
Around the turn of the twentieth century three outstanding researchers were
investigating societies of central Australia. The writings of Baldwin Spencer,
Professor of Biology at the University of Melbourne, Frank Gillen, Post and
Telegraph Stationmaster in Alice Springs, and the Lutheran missionary Carl
Strehlow at Hermannsburg contain unique documentation of Australian
indigenous cultures as they may have been pre-contact. Yet, while Spencer’s and
Gillen’s work and achievements are a celebrated part of Australian intellectual
history, Carl Strehlow’s contribution to our knowledge and understanding
of Aranda and Loritja language, oral literature and culture remains almost
unknown.
Spencer and Gillen became central figures in international anthropology. British,
German, French and American social scientists, such as Frazer, Malinowski or
Durkheim, used The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899) and The Northern
Tribes of Central Australia (1904) to illustrate their theories and acknowledged
these works as major contributions to the discipline. In contrast, Carl Strehlow,
although known in Germany and cited by N.W. Thomas, Durkheim and Lévi-
Strauss, has been consigned to obscurity in Australia and elsewhere. His magnum
opus Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907–1920), a
masterpiece of classical Australian anthropology written at Hermannsburg in
central Australia, is nearly unrecognised in English-speaking anthropological
circles, although it always seems to have been a sort of omnipresent shadow
that ghosted the better known Anglophone ethnography of central Australia.1
Even though this work has been in the public domain for nearly 100 years, and
two unpublished translations exist, one by Charles Chewings and the other by
Hans Oberscheidt (1991), it has not been republished, which is astonishing,
considering the ongoing general interest in Australian indigenous cultures in
Australia and overseas.
Carl Strehlow’s work is often inaccurately attributed to his youngest son,
Theodor George Heinrich Strehlow, who also conducted extensive research in
central Australia. The latter’s research, however, received its initial impetus
from his father’s outstanding work. T.G.H. Strehlow was strongly influenced by
his father and is unlikely to have been able to achieve what he did without his
father’s material.
1 John Morton, pers. comm., 13.11.2012.

1
The Aranda’s Pepa
The significance of Carl Strehlow’s Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-

Australien was recognised by some of his contemporaries. The reviews were
favourable. By the time the second volume of the work was published in 1908,
N.W. Thomas noted:
Strehlow writes with full knowledge of the language, and we cannot but
feel the enormous advantage which this knowledge gives him over all
other enquirers. Further memoirs are to appear, and they will be eagerly
awaited, for the two already published are masterly. (Thomas 1909: 127)
Andrew Lang wrote in Man that ‘No one should henceforth write on Mr.
Strehlow’s tribes who has not mastered his valuable volumes’ (Lang 1909a: 28).
Lang suggested that the work should be translated into English, but World War
I intervened and the leading figures of the British anthropological establishment
had reservations about the German Lutheran who had spent over half his life
in central Australia (Mulvaney and Calaby 1985: 124, 195, 379, 391; Veit 1991,
2004). Another attempt was made in the late 1930s by Charles Chewings, who
had translated Carl Strehlow’s monograph, and Adelaide Professor of Classics
and English literature, J.A. FitzHerbert.2 However, the publication of the
translation was again eclipsed by war.
Other reasons for the ‘disappearance’ of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in
Zentral-Australien in Australia and elsewhere are anti-mission sentiment past
and present, the impact of Nazism on anthropology in Germany, Australian
hostility towards the German Lutherans of central Australia in the first half
of the twentieth century, and finally the antagonistic debate between T.G.H.
Strehlow and the Australian anthropological establishment in the 1960s and
1970s. Strehlow junior’s unique relations with Aranda people, his idiosyncratic
interpretation of that relationship, and his intellectual style all made him
marginal to academic anthropology. His peripheral status seemed to transfer
back to his father’s work.3
Carl Strehlow’s ethnographic oeuvre as well as Spencer’s and Gillen’s were
written at a time when the discipline of anthropology was still ‘transitional’.
They preceded the development of modern field anthropology as the empirical
study of cultures and social systems that underpin particular peoples (Morphy
2001: 41–43). Carl Strehlow and Spencer and Gillen were turn of the century
empiricists, who collected data out in the field and referred it to mentors in
Europe. These were the ‘armchair anthropologists’ of the discipline’s mythic
history. Strehlow collaborated with Baron Moritz von Leonhardi, a German
2 FitzHerbert Papers (Barr Smith Special Collection) and Tindale Collection Acc. No. 1539 (South Australian
Museum Archives).
3 Also T.G.H. Strehlow’s tragic ‘Stern Case’ in 1978 contributed to the marginalisation of his and his father’s
work and gave the name Strehlow a negative tinge. See Kaiser (2004: 66–75).
2
Introduction
intellectual with interests in philosophy and anthropology. In England,

Spencer’s interlocutor was James Frazer although Spencer’s dominant influence
came from the natural sciences.
Baldwin Spencer was a biology professor in the Darwinian mould (Mulvaney
2001: 20), a representative of the evolutionary thinking in the British Isles. He
believed that the Arunta [Aranda] belonged to a lower form of human beings
(Spencer and Gillen 1927: vii). Morphy writes that Spencer and Gillen were
‘both strongly influenced by Darwinian evolutionary theory’ (Morphy 2001:
30) and ‘concerned to affirm the position of Aborigines at the lower end of
the hierarchy of the evolution of society’ (Morphy 2012: 551). Jones (2005: 17)
remarks that ‘Spencer was constrained by the natural historical framework
and the evolutionist approach’ in which ‘rudimentary customs and beliefs’
among the Aranda were identified ‘just as he had located primitive forms in the
Australian biota’ during the Horn Expedition. He quotes Spencer and Gillen as
follows:
… it seems that in the evolution of the social organisation and customs
of a savage tribe, such features as those which we are now discussing are
clearly comparable to the well known rudimentary organs, which are
often of great importance in understanding the phylogeny of the animal
in which at some time of its development they are present … we may
recognise in them an abbreviated record of a stage passed through in the
development of the customs of the tribe amongst which they are found.
(Spencer and Gillen 1899: 105)
Their views influenced attitudes and policies towards indigenous people in
Australia and elsewhere during the twentieth century and even today are
manifest in policy making. In the nineteenth century, evolutionism was a common
presumption of anthropology in the British colonial world and influenced, in
some degree, the foci in ethnography. Baldwin Spencer’s particular interest
in biology gave his work an added evolutionary emphasis. The ethnographic
material collected by Gillen and published in The Native Tribes of Central
Australia (1899), The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904) and The Arunta
(1927) is still valuable as a reference for scholarly research. In this case, the broad
ranging empirical work of the collaboration outlasted Spencer’s Darwinian
backdrop. If anything, the latter is regarded now as a period anachronism.
Still, Spencer never abandoned his view that they were ‘Stone Age’ people. He
maintained this position as late as 1927 in The Arunta (Spencer 1927: vii) as did
Frazer until he died. The majority of the British establishment saw the original
central Australians as representatives of an early and inferior stage of human
development.
3
The Aranda’s Pepa
This view was embodied in museum collections. Terminology derived from

the natural sciences was applied to Aboriginal artefacts as well as people. For
example, in 1907 the South Australian Museum’s director Edward Stirling
called all the artefacts of Reuther’s Diyari collection, ‘specimens’ (Jones 1996:
384). In his expedition diary of Wednesday, 11 February 1917, another director
of the South Australian Museum Edward Waite described Nellie, an Aboriginal
woman, as the finest specimen he had yet seen:
Had a hurried breakfast and then walked to the Black’s camp and took
photos of 4 youngsters and some gins, the latter objecting to undress,
or rather I had not time enough to humour them. I then went across
to another camp and found 3 gins. They all soon posed for me in the
altogether. Returned to our own camp and the manager of the station
(Battams) introduced the belle of the tribe (Nellie) to give me a sitting,
she is a finer specimen than I have yet seen.4
In contrast, on the same issue Carl Strehlow commented: ‘And these people
with such mental capacities should form the “missing link”? Never.’5 Like his
editor and mentor, von Leonhardi, Strehlow’s views were shaped by German
humanistic thinking. As a consequence, his monograph Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien is significantly different from other Australian
anthropological work of the period. Guided by von Leonhardi’s interrogations
and his own sense derived from empirical observation and a Lutheran training,
Carl’s work reflected the aims of this tradition, ‘centred on efforts to document
the plurality and historical specificity of cultures’ (Penny and Bunzl 2003:
1). Its central concern was language and the mythic corpus that was seen to
be culture’s main manifestation. Unlike the British anthropological tradition,
which dominated Australian discourse, German anthropology was largely based
on a humanistic agenda, and as a result it was anti-evolutionist, anti-racist and
anti-colonial. The permanent general secretary of the German Anthropological
Society, for example, took advantage of his position between 1878 and 1908 ‘to
drum into his colleagues, at the annual assemblies, the unity of mankind and
the equality of feelings and mental life of all humanity’ (Massin 1996: 87).
The two most influential figures in nineteenth century German anthropology,
Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) and Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), rejected socio-
cultural evolutionism. Bastian was particularly opposed to social Darwinism
(Petermann 2004: 535), warning explicitly against over simplification and
generalisation, and did not believe in a straight line of stages of progression
for one particular culture or for that matter for the whole of mankind. Bastian’s
4 E.R. Waite Diary No. 63, 7.10.1916 to 30.6.1917. The Diaries of Edgar Ravenswood Waite are held at the
South Australian Museum Archives.
5 Carl Strehlow, The Register, 7.12.1921.
4
Introduction
anthropology was governed by methodological convictions rather than an

overarching theory. He drew on induction and empirical observation to avoid the
classification of data according to predetermined categories, regarding schemes
of classification as work in progress rather than definite models (Penny 2003:
93). Also Rudolf Virchow, the leading physical anthropologist and pathologist
at the time in Germany, maintained that no one race or people was superior to
another (Evans 2003: 200). With most of his other colleagues he professed the
unity of humankind.
One of the main reasons for this humanistic and pluralistic position was that
Germany (like other politically less significant European countries) was not an
imperial or colonial power until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.6
It was therefore not committed to an ideology of racial superiority ‘that is
virtually a political necessity for colonial powers’ (Adams 1998: 264; Gingrich
2005: 68). The intellectual roots of nineteenth century German anthropology
reached back to philosophers who emphasised the ideas of particularism
opposing progressivism and deduction. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803),
the founder of German historical particularism, exerted a major influence on the
development of anthropological thinking, as he was interested in the differences
of cultures from age to age, and from one people to another (Adams 1998: 271).
He rejected the concept of race (Mühlmann 1968: 62) as well as the French
dogma of the uniform development of civilisation. Instead Herder recognised
unique sets of values transmitted through history and maintained that
outlooks and civilisations had to be viewed from within; in terms of their own
development and purpose (Berlin 1976: 174). Thus, humanity was made up of a
great diversity, language being one of its main manifestations. Herder’s concepts
of Volk, a cultural group or entity, and Volksgeist,7 the individual expression
of the being of a group of people, which sets it apart from others, provided
the basis for this particularism. They were to become central tenets of German
nineteenth century anthropological thought. The Volksgeist of a people, he
believed, was embodied in their language and their literature, which included
the oral traditions of indigenous peoples. Therefore language became crucial in
German anthropological research. It became the pre-condition of authoritative
ethnography. It is this tradition that led to a concept of cultures in the plural.
To achieve their Herderian goal, (i.e. to cover the various manifestations of
cultures as completely as possible), German anthropologists were committed
to inductive science and an empirical methodology. They stressed the need to
gather as much information as possible before attempting to generate theories
6 Before Germany’s unification in 1871 under Bismarck, it was made up of a large number of autocratic
principalities.
7 The German word Geist is very difficult to translate. Literally Geist means ‘spirit’ or ‘ghost’, however,
in this context it means something like ‘the essence of a people’ or ‘the mind/intellect/genius and spirit of a
people’.
5
The Aranda’s Pepa
about human difference (Penny and Bunzl 2003: 15). These aims made German
nineteenth century anthropology a bustling enterprise. German anthropologists
had networks of collectors, officials, missionaries and scientists throughout the
world gathering information and examples of material culture. They launched
some of the largest anthropological expeditions, sent researchers all around the
globe, and were an influential presence at international conferences engaging
in debates about human history, culture, environment and race. They founded
the best equipped anthropological museums (Berlin, Leipzig, Hamburg and
Munich) and a number of internationally recognised periodicals devoted to
the discipline. The humanism of German anthropology with its pluralistic
outlook and its anti-evolutionist position lasted nearly to the eve of World War
I. This German humanism generated a number of humanist traditions as well as
diverging streams of thought. It was ultimately contested and so marginalised
that Franz Boas decided to leave Germany in the late nineteenth century
exporting the German anthropological tradition to the United States.8 Its fate
in a post-Imperial and Nazi Europe was replicated in Australia: to become a
‘nontradition of good anthropology … forgotten, repressed, and noticed only
after tremendous time lags’ (Gingrich 2005: 103).
Two routes to Empiricism

Carl Strehlow’s route to empirical anthropology was traced through German
philology, the German Romantic Movement, Humboldtian cosmography,
history and comparative geography. Baldwin Spencer’s, on the other hand,
came through Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer and other evolutionists. This
route was also shaped by the role of biology in the late nineteenth century.
The excitement with which advances in biology were received meant that the
discipline’s procedures became a model for others, and a model for empirical
science generally. Later, this method would be known as ‘the organic’ model for
social sciences. The idea was that societies, like natural species, exhibit organic
structure. Such a view influenced Radcliffe-Brown to term anthropology ‘a
natural science of society’ (Barnard 2000: 62–63, 70–71).
The ethnographic classics of these very different field-researchers illustrate
two distinctive pathways to empirical studies in social-cultural anthropology.
One leads through natural science as method using the taxonomic process of
collecting, describing and identifying specimens. The other uses mainly the
study of language, its semantics, syntax and semiology to specify a social life
and its oral traditions. I will trace the path to empiricism that Carl Strehlow
8 The antihumanism of anthropology of imperial Germany has been elsewhere well covered see for example
Massin (1996), Zimmerman (2001), Gingrich (2005: 111–136) and Monteath (2013); its racism forshadowed the
developments in Nazi Germany.
6
Introduction
and his editor Baron Moritz von Leonhardi followed. On this pathway language
featured prominently as methodology and ultimately as evidence that Aranda
and Loritja people were not by virtue of their material culture inferior human
beings.
Carl Strehlow’s Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien is the
richest and densest ethnographic text written on Western Aranda and Loritja
cultures of central Australia at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is
the first Australian work that comprehensively records the oral literature of
Australian Aboriginal people in their own languages. The German tradition
that grew out of Herder’s seminal thoughts on language, the particularity of
the ‘other’ and his humanism, which profoundly influenced German and North
American anthropology, is also present in Carl Strehlow’s work. It is not that
Strehlow cites the scholars of German historical and philosophical thought. He
does not. Like Boas, however, his work follows a distinctive form that privileges
language and particularism. Moreover, his interests and emphasis reflect a
pattern typical of the German tradition. Beyond diffuse influences, his teachers
of Lutheran hermeneutics and von Leonhardi’s probing questions secured him
on this course. Like Spencer, Strehlow reflects his society and time.
Because his monograph was written in the German nineteenth century
humanistic style, which was strictly descriptive, ethnographic and resistant to
grand theory, nearly 100 years after its publication, Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien remains an invaluable resource for Aranda and
Loritja people. In documenting the complexity and richness of central Australian
cultures, this classic allows regional comparisons, and an opportunity to chart
change and continuity across a century. These issues are particularly significant
in the contemporary setting of state-sponsored recognition of land and native
title rights for indigenous Australians. Strehlow’s masterpiece, among other
things, bolsters the evidence for the continuation of traditional laws and customs
in relation to Aboriginal land ownership and has been used as evidence in land
right claims, native title claims and the protection of large tracts of country from
mineral exploration in central Australia.
Considering Carl Strehlow’s opus from the vantage point of the twenty-first
century tells us something about both Strehlow and his German tradition,
and the nature of modern professional anthropology. Importantly, this latter
development routinised fieldwork and with the beginnings of a global modernity
also began to shrink its significance. Strehlow’s lifetime ‘in the field’ provided
a unique opportunity for his empirical work but also necessitated a mentor
to guide him through the demands of scholarly production. Like Spencer’s
relationship with Frazer, and Gillen’s with Spencer, the relation between von
Leonhardi and Strehlow is a specific intellectual mode.
7
The Aranda’s Pepa
Central concern and overview of the book

The main aim of this book is to make a contribution to overcoming the
longstanding omission of the role of the German humanistic tradition,
represented by Carl Strehlow, in Australian anthropology and intellectual
history. The German missionary Carl Strehlow had a deep ethnographic interest
in Aboriginal Australian songs, cosmology and social life which he documented
in his seven volume work, Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien
(1907–1920) at the beginning of the twentieth century. This immensely rich
corpus, based on a lifetime on the central Australian frontier, is barely known
in the English-speaking world and is the last major classic ethnographic corpus
on central Australian cultures that is to be discovered and evaluated in the
English speaking world. I address with this book a long neglected research
problem of the histories of Australian anthropology and intellectual history that
have been almost purely Anglophone in their orientation so that untranslated
work has been ignored. It is the first step towards an account of how this other
anthropological tradition informed Carl Strehlow’s work and highlights the key
elements of his ethnography and brilliant scholarship.
Part One of this book (Chapters I to IV) positions Carl Strehlow’s anthropological
opus in its intellectual milieux: the German anthropological tradition of the
nineteenth century and the Lutheran missionary background. His work falls in
a German tradition of anthropological specification pursued through language
which bears a strong resemblance to Franz Boas’ approach. In this style of work
language is a recurring theme because early German anthropologists believed it
was the key to both a people’s thought and sentiment. This language-based form
of anthropology took hold in North America through Boas and his students, such
as Edward Sapir, a crucial representative of early twentieth century linguistic
anthropology, and Ruth Benedict who wrote on patterns of culture.
Chapter I begins with a general outline of Carl Strehlow’s life and work in central
Australia, a brief contact history of the Aranda and Loritja and an overview
of the contents of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien. Carl
Strehlow was interested, as it seems, in all aspects of religious and secular life,
with special attention to song and myth. In this chapter I introduce ‘altjira’, a
key Aranda term. This concept and its polysemy will be gradually explained,
as it appears throughout the book. My discussion demonstrates how the term’s
meaning has changed in the course of 100 years.
Chapter II introduces the German anthropological tradition of the nineteenth
century which is based on late eighteenth century German philosophy and in
turn shaped a style of ethnography. The roots of this tradition are mainly to
be found in Johann Gottfried Herder’s concepts of Volksgeist, Humanität and
8
Introduction
language that together provide the bases for a form of cultural particularism.
The inherent cultural pluralism and particularism of German anthropology
contrasts with biologically-based theories of human difference and evolutionary
sequencing of nineteenth century Anglo-American and French schools. To
position Carl Strehlow within a framework of late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century anthropology, I discuss briefly Franz Boas and Fritz Graebner,
two important representatives of German anthropology. Strehlow’s masterpiece
Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien is a typical example of
German particularism and can be called Boasian.
In Chapter III I discuss the major influences on Carl Strehlow as a frontier
scholar other than the German anthropological tradition. To understand his
scholarship it is necessary to look at his missionary background which reveals
some characteristics shared with the German anthropological tradition. The
Lutheran language tradition in conjunction with the theological work of
Warneck, Löhe and Deinzer, had a significant bearing on the manner in which
Strehlow approached both his missionary and ethnographic work. Finally,
von Leonhardi was indisputably Strehlow’s major influence, as their heady
intellectual partnership opened the questioning world of science to the pastor
in the Australian desert.
Chapter IV is devoted to the letter exchange and dialogue between Strehlow and
von Leonhardi and how this intellectual friendship between two diametrically
opposed people, the missionary and the armchair anthropologist, produced
a complementary partnership and a major ethnographic work. It is doubtful
that Strehlow’s classic monograph Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-
Australien would have been published without his mentor and editor who helped
shape his ethnographic insights. It is noteworthy that this, like Spencer and
Gillen’s work, was collaboration. Where Spencer brought an evolutionary frame
to Gillen’s observation, von Leonhardi brought rigorous particularism to Carl
Strehlow’s Christian humanism. If Strehlow was in a sense ‘pre-anthropological’,
then it was von Leonhardi’s incessant questioning and probing, as he responded
to a scholarly community that shaped Strehlow’s work into an opus that would
connect with other anthropology.
These three influences, the German philosophical-cum-anthropological tradition,
missionary hermeneutics and cosmopolitan scholarship shaped Strehlow’s major
work. The meeting point for these three was an intense engagement with the
particulars of human experience. Herder and his successors, such as the von
Humboldts, the Neuendettelsau seminary and von Leonhardi, each required
real engagements with the meaning that ‘others’ might give to their lives. Both
through training and through personal propensity, Carl Strehlow responded to
these demands. He wrote within a tradition that acknowledged that all cultures
are equal, notwithstanding their different moral values, and have individual
9
The Aranda’s Pepa
features that cannot be rendered in terms of generalised stages of development.

This position, though, did not prevent him from making remarks about certain
customs he perceived as barbaric – for example, institutionalised homosexuality.
Part Two of this book (Chapters V to VIII) discusses the content and limitations
of his masterpiece and how to position him in a history of anthropology. It
shows the way in which Carl Strehlow, like Spencer and Gillen, represents a
transitional phase in modern anthropology. An effective fieldworker, a committed
empiricist, he nonetheless brought with him implicit models from Europe that
did not fit indigenous Australian cultures. Still, his European preconceptions
and assumptions allowed him to begin systematic data collection in a way that
was rare for the period and remains of immense value. This data exemplifies
many ‘take-off points’ for central developments in the modern field of twentieth
century anthropology. I have chosen three areas of his work that demonstrate this
paradox: his studies of myths, social classification and territorial organisation.
The treatment of myth and kin build towards the understanding of land tenure
because the former constitute the nature of traditional ownership.
Chapter V examines Carl Strehlow’s focal interests, mythology and cosmology,
which he recorded for both Aranda and Loritja groups. His linear and free
translations of myth are innovative and provide some of the earliest insight into
the true sophistication of Aboriginal cultures. Strehlow’s explicit framework of
Grimmian Mythen, Sagen und Märchen (myths, legends and fairy-tales) reflects
his transitional status as a modern ethnographer. There are no traces of the
more conventional approaches to myth of twentieth century anthropology.
Among these one might list metaphoric or symbolic accounts that treat myth
as integral to a particular culture specified by its master symbols and genres
of metaphor. One would also include the twentieth century’s three major
comparative approaches: functionalism, structuralism and psychoanalysis that
in their different ways address particular aspects of cognition taken to underlie
all myth.
In Chapter VI, I discuss Carl Strehlow’s studies on social classification, which
he examined through ‘marriage’, the subsection system, kinship terminology,
and family trees. Carl Strehlow had only a limited sense of comparative social
analysis: subsections were mainly identified with ‘marriage rule’, and kinship
with family trees. His ethnographic groundwork provides a point of departure
to pursue an analysis of kinship systems. It gives a comprehensive overview of
the subsection system and kinship terms that are still used today by Aranda
and Loritja. His lists of relatives by generation and their totems, for example,
provided the basis for his son’s extraordinary genealogical exercise in data
collection.
10
Introduction
I examine in Chapter VII issues of land tenure and traditional ownership. Carl
Strehlow did not study territorial organisation, which would become important
in Australia in the mid-twentieth century. Nonetheless he provides significant
information on the system at a particular time, one which resonates with current
trends in Aranda and Loritja land tenure. His material informs modern views on
these subjects and has been used in land and native title claims.
In Chapter VIII I discuss how Carl Strehlow might be positioned in Australian
anthropology, how this might bear on the work of his son, T.G.H. Strehlow,
and on more general issues of intellectual history in Australian anthropology.
I discuss how I suggest that this history may be approached. My brief account
of contemporaneous literature makes a beginning for other scholars who might,
for instance, wish to compare and contrast Strehlow’s and Spencer and Gillen’s
work with the numerous travellers tales that began Australian ethnography. My
short address to current work in the history of Australian anthropology and
ideas that is not well explored locates an area of scholarship in which much
more could be done.
11
Part I
I. Carl Strehlow and the Aranda and
Loritja of Central Australia
On the 23 December 1871 in a little village called Fredersdorf in Northern
Germany, Carl Friedrich Theodore Strehlow was born as the seventh child of
the village school teacher (Liebermeister 1998: 16). Carl grew up in modest
circumstances that offered few opportunities. In the Germany of the late
nineteenth century, clerical institutions were the only source of education for
the talented poor. The Lutheran Seminary at Neuendettelsau where Carl trained
offered a rich and intense intellectual grounding for the bright and gifted
student. As Carl Strehlow was finding a calling that would take him to the
remotest place on earth – as Europeans imagined it – the world in which he
would spend 30 years was being uprooted.
At the time, the Overland Telegraph Line was making its way north traversing
traditional Aboriginal countries in central Australia. In just a very few years,
this initiative was followed by the Lutheran missionaries, A.H. Kempe and
W.F. Schwarz. In 1877, they built a small mission settlement at Ntaria, a sacred
site associated with the ratapa dreaming.1 The missionaries called this mission
‘Hermannsburg’ in recognition of the seminary that had trained them. Their
journey from Bethany in South Australia to the centre of Australia had lasted
nearly 18 months because they had been travelling with an entourage consisting
of 37 horses, 20 cattle and nearly 2000 sheep (Leske 1977, 1996; Scherer 1963;
Harms 2003). Not long after their arrival Kempe and Schwarz were joined by
Louis and Charlotte Schulze (nee Gutmann), and their future wives Dorethea
(nee Queckenstedt) and Dorethea (nee Schulz), who were the first European
women to settle in central Australia.
One year after the missionaries’ arrival in 1878 a group of Western Aranda
men led by Nameia2 returned from a long revenge expedition into the southern
territories of the Matuntara and must have observed with great surprise and
indignation ‘the first structures erected at Hermannsburg’ that ‘greeted their
eye’ (Strehlow 1970: 125). These were not the only wary or hostile eyes trained
on the missionaries. By 1879 the mission lease was surrounded by squatters who
were backed by local police (Hartwig 1965; Donovan 1988: 60, 87). Both groups
tended to disparage the missionaries.
1 See Carl Strehlow (1907: 80–81; 1908: 72 f.3; 1911: 122–124) and T.G.H. Strehlow (1971: 758).
2 Nameia was murdered in 1889 at constable William Willshire’s police camp on the Finke River. It seems the
murderers were never identified with certainty (Nettelbeck and Foster 2007: 71–73). See also T.G.H. Strehlow’s
Journey to Horseshoe Bend (1969).
15
The Aranda’s Pepa
2. Map of route of the Lutheran missionaries to Hermannsburg.
Source: Clivie Hilliker, The Australian National University. Adapted from Leske 1977.
At Ntaria, the newcomers immediately built pens for their livestock. They also
began their crusade to evangelise the indigenous people who chose to stay
temporarily at the new settlement. This proximity allowed the Lutherans to
begin their study of language and culture. The missionaries called these people
Aldolinga meaning ‘from the west’. However, the progress in spreading the
gospel among the ‘Aldolinga’ was slow and life on the frontier incredibly harsh
due to droughts, isolation, disease and the aggression of other white settlers. By
1891 the little mission was abandoned, the missionaries had been defeated by
the challenges and the loss of their families (Austin-Broos 1994: 132).
16
I. Carl Strehlow and the Aranda and Loritja of Central Australia
The Aranda and Kukatja-Loritja peoples

Carl Strehlow’s ethnographic data relates mainly to two distinct groups whom he
broadly labelled Aranda and Loritja in the title of his publication, although these
names can also be used for other neighbouring groups. One was an Arandic group
and the other was a Western Desert group that did not display all the typical features
of a Western Desert culture due to social and environmental circumstances.
Carl Strehlow refers often to the Western, North-Western, Eastern and Southern
Aranda in his writings, but he does not define exactly where their territories
lie; and on his map (1910) he shows language and dialect distribution rather
than territories belonging to particular groups. He placed the western Arandic
language, Aranda Ulbma, on the upper Finke River, roughly between the
MacDonnell and James Ranges (including Hermannsburg Mission), the Aranda
Roara between the eastern part of the MacDonnell Ranges and James Ranges
including Alice Springs, the Aranda Lada from approximately Henbury along
the Finke River and the Aranda Tanka between Charlotte Waters and Oodnadatta
along the lower Finke River. His son, T.G.H. Strehlow (1971: xx), wrote that Carl
Strehlow’s information came mainly from the north-western and Hermannsburg
sectors of the Western Aranda area.
The Arandic group whose culture Carl Strehlow documented in great detail
identify themselves today as Western Aranda or Arrarnta. They call themselves
sometimes ‘Tyurretyerenye’, meaning ‘belonging to Tyurretye’, and refer
to their Arandic dialect as Western or ‘Tyurretye Arrernte’ (Kenny 2010: 6).
Their ancestors lived in an area bounded roughly in the north by the Western
MacDonnell Ranges (Strehlow 1907: 32, 42; T.G.H. Strehlow 1971: 670, note
19)3 that separates them from the Anmatyerr and Northern Aranda peoples. In
the south, their country stretches along the Finke River past the James Range,
to the countries of Southern Aranda and Matuntara peoples. To the west, it
extends to the Derwent River and to the east it abuts the territory of today’s
Central Arrernte people (see also T.G.H. Strehlow 1947: 59).
3 Tjoritja (Tyurretye) was not only the name for the MacDonnell Ranges, but also for Alice Springs which
lies in the MacDonnell Ranges. Carl Strehlow also wrote that ‘Lately, Alice Springs has been called Kapmanta;
kap is an abbreviation of kaputa = head, and manta = dense. Kapmanta literally means: dense head. What it
refers to are the roofs close together (roof = head of the house) because here the natives had first seen roofs of
corrugated iron’ (Strehlow 1907: 42).
17
The Aranda’s Pepa
3. Carl Strehlow’s map, 1910.
Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs.
18
For the Aranda, first contact with the newcomers occurred in the early 1860s
when John McDouall Stuart was trying to find his way to the northern coast
of the continent via the inland (Strehlow 1967: 7–8). Owen Springs was central
Australia’s first pastoral station, and the indigenous people who resided between
that station and Ntaria would certainly have encountered the cattlemen and
other explorers who passed that way in the early 1870s (Austin-Broos 1994:
131). Ernest Giles, for example, seems to have recorded the first Western Aranda
word, ‘Larapinta’, the name of the Finke River, on the 28 August 1872:
Soon after we had unpacked and let go our horses, we were accosted by
a native on the opposite side of the creek. Our little dog became furious:
then two natives appeared. We made an attempt at a long conversation,
but signally failed, for neither of us knew many of the words the other
was saying. The only bit of information I obtained was their name for
the river – as they kept continually pointing to it and repeating the
word Larapinta. (Giles [1889] 1995: 8)
The country of the Western Aranda is of a rare beauty, painted by Albert Namatjira
(1902–1959), and other artists of the watercolour school of Hermannsburg, who
still capture in their art the river systems, magnificent gum trees, gorges, rocky
valleys and the creeks that emanate from the aged ranges. The area is one of the
best-watered parts of central Australia. This automatically resulted in conflict
between the indigenous people and the new settlers.
4. Image of central Australia.
Source: Shane Mulcahy, Desert Vision.

19
The Aranda’s Pepa
The majority of cattle runs in this region were established between 1876
and 1884, bringing thousands of cattle and horses onto the traditional lands.
Naturally the local people reacted, as their waterholes were being destroyed
and contaminated by these new animals. A kind of partisan war broke out. The
cattle killings were answered by shootings. As the scarce desert resources were
fouled by stock, droughts set in and the aggression towards the indigenous
population increased, Aranda people drifted to the Hermannsburg Mission that
offered easy rations and some safety (see also Morton 1992: 52). Life on the
mission was fraught with difficulties for the Aranda. They were crowded into a
small area that many of them once would have visited only occasionally, if at all.
By the time Carl Strehlow arrived at the mission the Aranda had been largely
pacified, although there remained pockets of resistance that annoyed the local
police as well as Strehlow. The cattle spearing affected the mission by dragging
Strehlow into court to address ‘partisans’ who lived on the mission lease, or
mission cattle speared by these or other groups.4
The people living to the immediate west of the Western Aranda called themselves
Kukatja or Loritja at the turn of the twentieth century. Today they call themselves
Luritja or Kukatja-Luritja when referring to their ancestry and history.5 The
Kukatja may have heard of the newcomers from their eastern and southern
neighbours. We cannot know, but at the very latest they would have encountered
Europeans when the exploring parties of Ernest Giles in 1872, and William Christie
Gosse in 1873, pushed into the Centre and traversed parts of their territory.
The country of the Kukatja-Loritja lies to the west of the Derwent River
which marks broadly the language border between them and the Aranda. This
language boundary sometimes determines how people perceive their country
and often describe the border area as ‘mix-up’ country, referring to the fact that
a number of places have both Loritja and Aranda names and that there is no
clear cut border between them. Róheim (1974: 126) called these people ‘Lurittya
Merino’, and noted that they were seen as ‘half Aranda’. People who belong to
this border area are still today fluent speakers of both Aranda and Loritja and
share ancestors as well as traditional laws and customs (Kenny 2010).
Carl Strehlow remarked that the people whom the Aranda called ‘Loritja’,
referred to themselves as ‘Kukatja’ (Strehlow 1907: 57, Anmerkung 9). According
to T.G.H. Strehlow ‘Loritja’ was the Aranda name applied to all Western speech
groups (Strehlow 1947: 177–178). The people themselves refused this designation
and used instead ‘Kukatja, Pintubi, Ngalia, Ilpara, Andekerinja, etc’. According
to Tindale, the name ‘Luritja’ had a negative connotation with the result that
4 Carl Strehlow’s letters to his superior Kaibel held at the Lutheran Archives, Adelaide often describe the
court dealings and cattle killings which he grudgingly had to tend to. See Vallee (2006) and Nettelbeck and
Foster (2007) on frontier conflict in this region.
5 There is a distinct group of people living at Balgo in Western Australia who are also called Kukatja.
20
Kukatja people asked him to call them ‘Kukatja’ rather than ‘Luritja’ (1974:
229). In his monumental Aboriginal Tribes of Australia he used Kukatja and
placed them ‘west of the Gosses Range and Palm Valley on the south of the
MacDonnell Ranges; south west to Lake Amadeus, George Gill Range, Cleland
Hills (Merandji), Inindi near Mount Forbes, and Thomas Reservoir (Alala): on
upper Palmer, Walker, and Rundall creeks’ (Tindale 1974: 229).
Over the course of time Luritja has become a linguistic and cultural self-label
despite its foreign origin for a number of peoples. By the 1960s people preferred
to refer to themselves as ‘Luritja’ and today ‘Luritja’ remains a broad term that
can be used interchangeably with other Western Desert labels (Smith 2005: 73).
‘Kukatja’ and ‘Mayutjarra’, for example, are recognised by middle aged and elderly
speakers as being equivalent to the new label, ‘Luritja’ (Holcombe 1998: 217).
Additional confusion surrounding the language and group label ‘Luritja’ is
a result of migration towards the south by Ngaliya Warlpiri, Pintupi, Jumu
or Mayutjarra and Kukatja peoples (see Holcombe 1998: 217). Some of these
groups refer to themselves as ‘Luritja’. The movements of ‘Luritja’ groups have
been mainly caused by the disruptions of the past 100 years which included
epidemics and environmental stress such as drought and starvation. According
to Tindale, for example, a group called ‘Jumu’ or ‘Mayutjarra’ was decimated by
an epidemic in the 1930s. Following their extinction Pintupi and Ngalia Warlpiri
people moved into their vacated country (Tindale 1974: 138, 227–228). Smith
writes that the Kukatja were on the move to the east and south by the late 1880s
(Smith 2005: 1). This chain migration of desert people into the settled districts
took several generations to run its course.
During Carl Strehlow’s time, Kukatja-Loritja people belonging to the area
immediately to the west of Aranda territory moved south-eastwards towards
the Hermannsburg Mission (see Leske 1977: 26–27; Smith 2005). When the
explorer Winnecke passed through the general area in 1894, he still encountered
‘sandhill tribes’ living west of Hermannsburg (Winnecke 1897: 37), who were
presumably Kukatja. Their eastward migration intensified with the onset of
a major decade-long drought in 1895 (Smith 2005: 29) and throughout the
1920s, the Kukatja people moved through the frontier to resume contact with
relatives at the mission and on the outlying pastoral properties (Smith 2005:
51; Holcombe 1998: 26). The missionaries were aware of ‘a vigorous tribe just
west of Hermannsburg’ with a large population,6 and in the late 1920s, plans for
Aranda evangelists were made to take their message to these groups.
6 Lutheran Herald, 26.10.1921: 114.

21
22
The Aranda’s Pepa
5. T.G.H. Strehlow’s map, 1971.

The location of the ‘Kukatja’ area today is understood as being along the western
edge of Western Aranda territory.7 T.G.H. Strehlow has maintained that Kukatja
land stretched from the western border of Western Aranda westwards to Mt
Liebig and Putati spring (1970: 110). Heffernan describes a current perception
of the territory that was owned by Kukatja:
The Kukatja (as distinct from the people of the same title living at Balgo
in Western Australia) lived in the country west of Glen Helen Station
(Ungkungka) along the tail of the Western MacDonnell ranges through
to Mt Liebig, south to Gosses Bluff, the Gardiner Range and then out
to Mt Peculiar and Mt Udor. The country includes such prominent
communities as Papunya, Haasts Bluff, Umpangara and Mt Liebig.
(Heffernan and Heffernan 2005: 4)
Pre-contact, Kukatja-Loritja culture was strongly influenced by Western Aranda
traditional laws and customs and vice versa (Strehlow 1947). When white
settlement destabilised desert life, they moved into the Hermannsburg Mission
and the Aranda influence on Kukatja ways would have become more intense.
Heffernan and Heffernan write about the Kukatja:
Because these people lived on the fringe of Arrernte country, they
moved into Hermannsburg very early on (for reasons that were
important to them at the time – easy food is one most frequently given).
A good number of their descendants today live in outstations west of
Hermannsburg, and in the Papunya region. They instinctively refer to
themselves today as Arrernte or Luritja and only as Kukatja on the basis
of ancestry. (Heffernan and Heffernan 2005: 4–5)
Today the cultures of Western Aranda and Kukatja-Luritja people have many
features in common. This is not surprising, given their close relationships that
involve joint ceremonies, intermarriage and an overlapping land tenure system
(Strehlow 1908, 1913; T.G.H. Strehlow 1947, 1965, 1970; Kenny 2010) as well as
a shared environmental space – the well-watered range system. In more recent
times, commonalities have been re-enforced not only at Ntaria but also at other
settlements including Haasts Bluff, Mt Liebig and Papunya.
Carl Strehlow’s life and work in Australia

Carl Strehlow arrived in Australia in 1892, not long after graduating from the
Neuendettelsauer seminary in southern Germany. His first posting was the
7 Stirling had noted in 1894 that ‘the territory of the Luritchas marches on the western boundary of Aruntas, and
comprises the country about Erldunda, Tempe Downs, Gill’s Range, Mereenie Bluff and Glen Helen’ (Stirling 1896: 11).
23
The Aranda’s Pepa
Bethesda Mission at Lake Eyre in South Australia. The moment he arrived at

the mission, he showed interest in the language of the local people. Within
six months he spoke Diyari (Schild 2004a: 55) and by the end of 1894, with
J.G. Reuther, he had translated the New Testament into Diyari. It was called
Testamenta marra, published in 1897.
In October 1894 at the age of 22 he was transferred from Bethesda to Hermannsburg
in remote central Australia. He arrived at the abandoned mission station with two
fellow missionaries, Reuther and Linke. His first impressions of the Hermannsburg
Mission were not favourable because the small congregation had dispersed:
I was disappointed … It was very hurtful to see the jewels of a mission
station, the little church and school, fallen into disrepair … There was
not one Christian to welcome us like at Bethesda. Only a few naked
heathens looked at us in amusement when we arrived.8
6. Carl Strehlow’s ‘Aussendungsphoto’, 1892.

Source: Archiv/Mission Eine Welt, Neuendettelsau.
8 Carl Strehlow, Kirchlichen Mitteilungen, No. 3, 1895: 19.

24
He stayed for nearly three decades at this place. He ran it as a mission and a cattle
and sheep station, providing pastoral care for more than 100 Aboriginal people
who became Christians, as well as a large number of their relatives who lived on
the fringes of the mission. At the same time he was keeping aggressive pastoralists
at bay and dealing with a range of social issues that had been caused by the forcing
together of different Aboriginal groups. Some Western Aranda and Kukatja at
Hermannsburg, for example, had been enemies for a long time (Strehlow 1947: 62).
These local arrangements were extraordinary. Hermannsburg was the largest
settlement in central Australia, bigger than Alice Springs. The people living at
the mission were not a group that traditionally would have lived there together
for extended periods. The mission created a completely new setting for the
indigenous population who were hunters and gatherers. They must have tried
to accommodate this situation by activating, reconciling and adapting every
imaginable tie to country and kin. It is likely that tensions emerged between the
actual local group of Ntaria and other mission inhabitants from neighbouring or
far-flung countries. The situation therefore would not have favoured traditional
territorial organisation.
Administrative work for both church and state were also a part of Carl Strehlow’s
duties. He became the postmaster, Justice of the Peace and contributed to the
school by developing curricula, translating hymns to the music of Bach, and
preparing lessons in Aranda. His work at Hermannsburg would bring him into
conflict with pastoralists, the police, governments, the British anthropological
establishment and even his own church.
The young man was soon left to his own devices by Reuther and Linke who
returned south. Despite the desolate conditions of the mission, Strehlow started
rebuilding it with great enthusiasm, not least motivated by the prospect that his
young fiancée Friedericke Johanna Henriette Keysser would be arriving within
the year. Their courtship is documented in endearing epistles that travelled
between central Australia and Germany. The complete correspondence9 has
survived and gives a unique insight into their relationship (Brandauer and Veber
2009: 113–127). From Hermannsburg, Carl wrote to Frieda about every detail
that she would encounter. Her future home, the surrounding landscape and the
palm garden behind the house – which he considered the ‘most beautiful place
in the whole of the Northern Territory’10 – were familiar to her when she arrived
at the mission. He wrote:
My dearest loved Frieda! … Now you may want to know more about
Hermannsburg, where, so God will, we shall find our home. The area
around the station is prettier than around Bethesda. Transpose yourself
9 Held at the Strehlow Research Centre (SRC) in Alice Springs.

10 Carl Strehlow to Frieda Keysser, 10.10.1894.
25
The Aranda’s Pepa
in your imagination to Hermannsburg standing beside me and looking

out of the window. Not far to the north you see a long, high range,
with some mountains in its foreground, that is the MacDonnell Range.
When you move to the next window with me, looking to the south,
you can overlook our gardens that are quite big. You can see the date
palms, the peppertrees and some pomegranate trees in bloom now, the
red blooms are wonderful. … There is also a gazebo in which we will be
sitting comfortably and chatting intimately in the cool evenings. Beyond
the garden lies the Finke River, but no water is flowing in it, only
some gumtrees are growing in it. Behind the Finke rise steep and high
mountains, which are only sparsely vegetated with grass and flowers.11
The young couple had only met once in a three-day encounter during Easter
1892 (Brandauer and Veber 2009: 114), just before Carl had left for his Australian
calling. It was love at first sight. Three years would pass until they met again
after a long and protracted battle with her guardians. Her letters to him shared
his passion and enthusiasm. About their first meeting she writes:
When you looked at me with those blue eyes, I knew, that you loved
me. When you had left that day, I just wanted to cry and cry, but I was
not permitted to let anyone know… But now you are mine after a long
battle. If it were only my decision, I would come sooner to you.12
Frieda was looking forward to her new life and adventure in Australia, which
her imagination clothed in a romantic haze. In her letters she discussed with
her future husband her dowry which included measured curtains for their
home. Travelling from Germany, Frieda, 19 years of age, joined Carl in 1895.
The voyage to the Centre in the early summer was an ordeal. The heat, the flies
and discomfort of the travel were unbearable. In addition she suffered from
excruciating toothaches. Her luggage with the curtains for the house arrived
months later leaving her without the essentials for her new life.
Despite the inconveniences, Frieda embraced her role as a missionary’s wife. She
started to learn Aranda, teach the women household skills intended to improve
health and elevate living standards, and had six children at the Hermannsburg
Mission. Her first child Friedrich was born in 1897, her only daughter Martha
in 1899, Rudolf in 1900, Karl in 1902, Hermann in 1905 and her youngest son
Theodore, who would later become one of the most controversial figures in
Australian anthropology, in 1908. Together Carl and Frieda made Hermannsburg
a refuge for the local people and fought for their physical and mental survival.
By 1912 the efforts of the Strehlows were obvious. Carl was able to report:
11 Carl Strehlow to Frieda Keysser, 12 .11.1894.

12 Frieda Keysser to Carl Strehlow, 22.7.1894.
26
1. that the number of deaths during the past years has steadily gone
down; and therefore 2. the state of health of the blacks on our station
has improved and as far as the inhabitants of our station are concerned,
3. the Aranda are not yet thinking of dying out (!). (Strehlow 1913:
Preface)
7. Frieda Strehlow and her first child Friedrich, 1897.
Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs (SRC 7762).
27
The Aranda’s Pepa
Frieda was one of the very few European women to know the unforgiving
life of the desert frontier, becoming by default one of central Australia’s first
female ethnographers, predating Daisy Bates and Olive Pink. She was not to
know that her married life would include work on her husband’s ethnographic
masterpiece.
8. Aranda girls with Frieda at Hermannsburg in the 1890s.
Carl Strehlow started work on language and translation immediately. His

fluency in Diyari and the bible translation facilitated his acquisition of the local
languages, Aranda and Loritja. His previous experience is likely to have helped
him grasp the intellectual concepts of the Aranda and Loritja at Hermannsburg.
He was also able to draw on language materials compiled by his predecessor
missionaries, Kempe and Schulze. He became fluent in Aranda within months
and preached in the vernacular. In 1896 only two years after his arrival on
Aranda territory, Strehlow’s Aranda was so good that Gillen, who had been
living among Arandic peoples since 1875, used his services as a translator for
his anthropological research in Hermannsburg (Mulvaney, Morphy and Petch
[1997] 2001: 118–119). In 1899 Strehlow supplied some information on Aranda
kinship terms and subsection systems to Otto Siebert and Howitt.13
In 1904 Carl Strehlow published an Aranda Service Book, Galtjindintjamea-
Pepa Aranda Wolambarinjaka which included 100 German hymns translated
into Aranda and some of them set to Bach’s church music. This work was
partially based on that of his predecessor Kempe and the assistance of Aranda
13 Otto Siebert to A.W. Howitt, 22.4.1899 (Howitt Collection at Melbourne Museum).
28
men like Moses Tjalkabota who seemed to have embraced Lutheran teachings
(Tjalkabota 2002: 237–300). On the other hand, Tjalkabota was one of the main
informants for Strehlow’s ethnographic oeuvre and had been initiated. At the
end of 1904, Strehlow’s future editor, von Leonhardi, who had some queries on
religion, offered to publish anything that Carl might write. Although Strehlow
had already collected some material on mythology14 and collated an extensive
wordlist of Aranda, Loritja, Diyari and German, his ethnographic research
only started seriously in 1905 after von Leonhardi expressed his interest in a
publication (Kenny 2005).
9. Loatjira, Pmala, Tjalkabota and Talku, 1906/7.
14 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 30.7.1907.

29
The Aranda’s Pepa
The building blocks were now in place: language fluency, a stable domestic
life, growing ease with the people, increasingly engaged informants, a European
contact promising publication and, most importantly, intellectual engagement.
Carl Strehlow spent the following five years collecting ethnographic data from
senior men at Hermannsburg and sending plant, animal and insect specimens
as well as material culture15 to Germany. The specimens were widely distributed
by his editor to museums and reputable scientists in Germany for research,
classification and display.
Carl Strehlow collected his material mainly from senior men who were not
Christians or still immersed in their traditions. From what we know about
ownership of dreaming stories and country, he could only have gained his
information from the appropriate owners of a certain age group. Four of his
main informants, Loatjira, Pmala (Tmala), Moses (Tjalkabota) and Talku, are
mentioned by him and his son (Strehlow 1971: xx–xxii).
Loatjira (c.1846–1924)16 was Carl Strehlow’s main informant on Western Aranda
culture. He was the most important contributor to Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien. He was the inkata (ceremonial chief)17 of Ntaria,
‘the grand old man of Hermannsburg’, and an important ngankara (healer,
doctor), who ‘had possessed full knowledge of the dreaded death charms’ and
had taken part as a young man in avenging parties (Strehlow 1970: 116). He
was not resident at the mission and resisted conversion. According to T.G.H.
Strehlow, Loatjira was the main upholder of Aranda religion who ‘remained
strongly opposed to Christianity throughout the lifetime of my father, and in
fact came to Hermannsburg very rarely after the completion of my father’s
book’.18 Loatjira chose to live outside Hermannsburg near Ellery Creek, which
was on the eastern boundary of the mission-lease, and only came permanently
into Hermannsburg after Strehlow’s death. Carl wrote that ‘the old heathen
Loatjira’ had learnt the commandments despite of his old age and blindness,
but left the station with his wife due to a death.19 That day in 1913, 20 people
left the mission in accordance with mourning customs. There must have been
lots of coming and going due to the deaths that occurred at Hermannsburg. It is
not known if Loatjira returned to the mission before Carl’s death.
H.A. Heinrich noted that Loatjira was among a number of persons who had
received pre-baptismal instruction from Reverend Strehlow. He was baptised in
1923 and christened Abraham. T.G.H. Strehlow reports that he died a broken
15 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 2.6.1906. Strehlow sent von Leonhardi a letter on the 8.4.1906, in which
he seems to have offered for the first time to send ethnographic objects to Germany.
16 According to T.G.H. Strehlow (1971: 753).
17 T.G.H. Strehlow’s gloss for ‘inkata [ingkarte]’.
18 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Handbook of Central Australian Genealogies (1969: 125) and Strehlow (1970: xxi).
19 Carl Strehlow, Kirchen- und Missions-Zeitung, No. 5, 1914: 34.
30
man on 4 October 1924 from Spanish influenza (Strehlow 1970: 116; 1971: xxi,
xxxviii, 262–263, 599, 650). In White Flour, White Power, Rowse (1998: 82) cites
Lohe (1977: 37) who does not quote his sources:
Quite significantly was the baptism of the old blind Aranda chief and
sorcerer, Loatgira (Loatjira), who only three years before has called
Christianity ‘rubbish’. Already in 1913 as reported above, he had joined
Strehlow’s class of instruction, but this was disrupted when he left
Hermannsburg in 1914, returning only in the early 1920s. With longing
joy he announced his desire to be baptised. In answer to the question
‘why’, he said: I believe that Jesus is my Saviour. Tjurunga (the sacred
objects of the Aranda and the ceremonies connected therewith) is of the
devil and a lie. I desire with all my heart to become a Christian. I believe
that Jesus is able to save even me… (Lohe 1977: 37 cited in Rowse 1998: 82)
I doubt that Loatjira really converted. He wanted to die on his own country.
One of the main features of Aranda belief is ‘becoming country’, going into the
country and becoming part of it – all songs end with the ancestors growing
tired and longing for their home and returning to their place of origin. Loatjira
wanted to die at Ntaria. It was on his father’s and father’s father’s country as well
as in the vicinity of his conception site where his spirit-child (called ‘ratapa’
in Carl Strehlow’s work) had come from and where his ‘iningukua’, his spirit-
double, usually dwelt.20
Not much is known about Pmala (Tmala), the second person on the photograph
of Strehlow’s main informants. Pmala (c.1860–1923) was a Western Aranda man
with his conception site at Ndata belonging to the euro dreaming, north-west
of Glen Helen Gorge (Strehlow 1971: xxi, 599, 760). Pmala married Annie Toa in
1890. He was baptised ‘Silas’ on the 16 April 1900 by Carl Strehlow. According
to T.G.H. Strehlow Silas often chopped firewood for the Strehlow home, and
normally brought down on his head the large bread-setting dish with the fat
and innards from the killing pen. He died on the 24 June 1923 suddenly of heart
failure. He had been blind from youth.21 He appears on one of Carl Strehlow’s
genealogies as Ulakararinja (Carl Strehlow 1913). He is known to his descendants
as Silas Mpetyane.
Moses Tjalkabota (c.1873–1950) is the best-known contributor to Strehlow’s
oeuvre. He became a famous evangelist in central Australia, despite his
blindness, and thus was well documented by the Finke River Mission. He had
been baptised on the 26 December 1890 by A.H. Kempe when he was about 12
or 13, but had been nevertheless initiated. He was married on the 25 January
20 Loatjira’s conception site was Mbultjigata near Ntarea (Ntaria), belonging to rameia (yellow goanna) dreaming
(T.G.H. Strehlow 1971: 753). According to Carl Strehlow loatjira is a synonym for rameia (1907: 80 fn. 3).
21 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Handbook of Central Australian Genealogies (1969: 125, 157, 211).
31
The Aranda’s Pepa
1903 to Sofie and had 12 children, only one of whom survived. Interestingly,
Moses also had his sons initiated, despite being a staunch Christian. According
to his autobiography, he was among the first to shake Carl’s hand at his arrival
in 1894 and taught Carl Aranda (Tjalkabota 2002: 272).
The fourth man in the picture is Talku (c.1867–1941), Carl Strehlow’s main
Loritja informant on myth and song (1908, 1911). While he was able to collect a
substantial amount of kinship terminology (1913) from him, he was not able to
complete Talku’s family tree. He remarked:
Unfortunately, I could not gather sufficient data to complete [the family
tree], for my informant, Talku, who also supplied most of the Loritja
myths and cult songs, has once more left our station, and his other tribal
companions residing here have married local women and have therefore
already been included in the family trees of the Aranda.
The man sitting at the end of the row on the right is Talku. He used to
make it his task in life to spear the cattle belonging to the whites. An
attempted escape during his arrest resulted in him being shot through
the abdomen. He was then brought to the Mission station and remained
there until he ran away one day to enjoy his golden freedom. (Strehlow
1913: 85, and note 2)
Talku was also an important informant for his son, T.G.H. Strehlow (1970: 137;
1971: xxi, 768), who knew him as Wapiti, Talku’s name in old age. ‘Wapiti’
means yam. T.G.H. Strehlow made some biographical notes on Talku, aka
Wapiti, as well:
Talku, like Loatjira, was not a resident of Hermannsburg. He was the
ceremonial chief of the Kukatja yam centre of Merini. Born about 1867,
he organised raids upon cattle belonging to Tempe Downs Station at the
beginning of the century. A police party surprised these raiders one day
south of Ltalatuma, and fired upon them when they sought to evade
capture. Talku was hit by a bullet from a police tracker’s rifle which
passed through his body and emerged again without apparently injuring
any vital organs. His upper thigh bone was, however, shattered. He was
carried on the backs of his friends across the ranges to Hermannsburg,
a distance of some twenty-five miles. His tough constitution and
unconquerable courage carried him through this ordeal. After being
nursed back to health at Hermannsburg, he showed his gratitude to my
father by providing him with detailed information on Loritja totemic
rites, sacred songs, and social organization. And then he disappeared again
one day into the free wild life of his own country. (Strehlow 1971: xxi)
32
Talku must have left the station at the very latest in 1909. By 1929 he was back
at the mission. On his research trip to Hermannsburg, Norman Tindale made a
data sheet of Wapiti which also confirms his identity. He died at about the age
of 70 on the 14 January 1941.
Other informants of Carl Strehlow seem to have included Hezekiel’s father, a
western quoll man, and Nathaniel Rauwiraka, a main man of Ellery Creek.
Carl Strehlow’s methodology was rigorous. He sat with his informants who sang
and dictated word by word their songs and myths and described ceremonies and
performances. Their dictation allowed verbatim recording of songs along with
their accounts of the choreography and meaning of the sacred ceremonies and
artefacts used in them. Strehlow’s records were not an eyewitness description
of performances. His language proficiency allowed detailed, accurate recording
of the descriptions, explanations and interpretations that Aranda and Loritja
people themselves provided for their ceremonies and cultures.
He seems to have spent as much if not more time between 1905 and 1909 on his
ethnographic project than on his missionary duties. The Lutheran hierarchy
criticised Strehlow for the amount of time and energy he devoted to his research
and writing. As far as his superiors in the Barossa Valley were concerned, he
was wasting his time. We can only imagine what kind of impression he made on
the Aranda. Certainly it seemed to elicit respect. Strehlow’s Aranda informants
may have read in their engagements with him a form of exchange they were
not unfamiliar with. Here perhaps was a man bent on building a portfolio of
knowledge concerning both his own law and the Aranda’s (see also Austin-
Broos 2004: 61). Of course, the emplacement of Christian knowledge would
have been an issue, especially for Loatjira and other custodians for Ntaria. Carl
Strehlow had become a form of inkata (ceremonial chief) regarding Christian
law and ceremony. In the course of his stay, Carl became the inkata of Altjira
(Aranda word used for Christian God; this word was also used around the turn
of the century for beings significant in indigenous religion). For the Aranda it
appears not to have been difficult to extend these meanings. Strehlow junior
also suggests that his father was seen as a form of inkata.22
In the last few months of 1909, before leaving central Australia for Germany, Carl
Strehlow was working on the conclusion of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in
Zentral-Australien, which was concerned with material culture and language
including sign language. By the time he left Hermannsburg in mid-1910 also his
dictionary was completed.
22 The meaning of inkata [ingkarte] has changed significantly over the past century. Today it is used for
Lutheran pastor. It is likely that the shift started to occur during Carl Strehlow’s period, because he seems to
have been their first white inkata.
33
The Aranda’s Pepa
The trip was intended as a well-deserved break for Carl and Frieda, and to
secure an education for the eldest five of their children who had, by all accounts,
adopted the ways of the bush. During his stay in Germany his editor von
Leonhardi died. After von Leonhardi’s death, staff members of the Frankfurt
museum, B. Hagen and F.C.H. Sarg, took on the arduous and time-consuming
work to complete the publication of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-
Australien. Von Leonhardi’s anthropological library and Strehlow’s unpublished
material had been bequeathed to the museum. Sarg prepared five family trees
out of 20 that Carl Strehlow had sent von Leonhardi for publication and
completed the editing of the fifth volume on social life, which had been proof-
read by Marcel Mauss (Strehlow 1913: Preface). Mauss was also going to help
with the publication of the sixth volume, but he dropped out at the beginning
of World War I, keeping some of Strehlow’s material in Paris. Mauss had been on
friendly terms with von Leonhardi, whom he had visited in Gross Karben, and
had taken great interest in Strehlow’s work. After von Leonhardi’s death, Mauss
travelled to Frankfurt specifically to find out what was going to happen with
the remaining manuscripts and offered to correspond with Strehlow in place of
von Leonhardi.23
It is not quite clear who finalised the editing of the sixth volume (Strehlow
1915) as Sarg and the museum had fallen out with each other24 and further
communication with Carl Strehlow or Marcel Mauss was not possible due to
World War I. Hagen was involved and possibly Dr Ernst Vatter, a young and
talented geographer.25
After Hagen’s death, the seventh and final volume on material culture was
published by Ernst Vatter in 1920, just after World War I. He added an index
and wrote in his preface that further research may follow by Carl Strehlow, as
his work had raised new questions and aspects, which were of great scientific
interest. He expressed the optimistic and enthusiastic hope that Carl would
continue his ethnographic investigations, because:
This comprehensive, indeed in many ways singular, observation and
report concerning the Aranda and Loritja constitutes a challenge to
further study and scientific preoccupation. The publication of the
concluding part from Strehlow’s pen will finally open the door to further
debate. The Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt intends to devote one
of its forthcoming publications to a continuing scientific study of
23 F.C.H. Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 20.9.1912 and 18.11.1912.

24 B. Hagen to Carl Strehlow, 10.9.1913.
25 Vatter wrote a book on Australian totemism (1925) and a classic German monograph called Ata Kiwan
(1932) which pre-empted post-modern ethnography (Kohl 2001: 498). He had to leave Germany in the late
1930s as his wife was Jewish and became a poultry farmer in Chile.
34
Strehlow’s vast material, enriched and enlarged by further inquiries

from him, and to make up for lost opportunities due to the war. (Vatter
in Strehlow 1920: Preface)
However, Carl Strehlow did not pursue any further ethnographic research. After
an extended stay in Germany and placing his five eldest children with relatives
and friends, he returned in 1912 to central Australia, with his wife Frieda and
only with their youngest son Theodor. Instead, he started the first translation of
the New Testament into Aranda with Moses Tjalkabota, Nathaniel Rauwirarka
and Jacobus in 1913.26
Carl Strehlow’s magnum opus

Carl Strehlow’s magnum opus Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-
Australien was published in Germany between 1907–1920 in seven instalments
by the Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt. It is a very dense and difficult text
that presupposes knowledge of the existing literature on indigenous Australians
and some ideological standpoints common at the turn of the century. Although
the exact transcriptions of indigenous myths and songs in Aranda and Loritja
are accompanied by German interlinear and free translations, his unpublished
Aranda-German-Loritja dictionary is required to study his work in its full
richness.
First and foremost, Strehlow’s ethnography documents the mythology and
cosmology of the Aranda and Loritja, which occupies volumes one to four. In
his letters he employs various terms including religiösen Anschauungen (religious
views), Religionen (religions),27 religiösen Ideen und Traditionen (religious ideas
and traditions) and Religion der Schwarzen (religion of the blacks) to refer
to this corpus.28 He uses these terms in the style of his time with a range of
interconnected references. There is little evidence that he saw religion as a
functionally integrated phenomenon of cosmology and ritual practice geared to
particular ends. Nonetheless, he and his editor were asking the right questions,
such as:
The Aljeringa half animal, half human [like the Mura-mura of the
Dieri] lived before the present human beings and left a large number
of ceremonies behind which are still performed. Spencer and Gillen’s
accounts give no indication of the purpose of these ceremonies; is it a
kind of cult?29
26 Lutheran Herald, 16.2.1925: 54; Carl Strehlow’s letter to the Mission Friends, 9.1.1920 (Albrecht Collection
Acc. No. AA662, South Australian Museum Archives). He writes that he worked on it between 1913 and 1919.
27 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 2.6.1906 (SH-SP-2-1).
28 Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, 1906 (SH-SP-6-1).
29 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 9.9.1905. 35
The Aranda’s Pepa
Given the times, it is significant that Strehlow and his editor understood
these indigenous beliefs as ‘religion’ whereas Spencer and Gillen did not and
Spencer’s mentor Sir James Frazer perceived the same system as ‘magic’. For
Frazer, magic was a ‘false science’. In this he followed E.B. Tylor who argued
that magic belongs ‘to the lowest known stages of civilization, and the lower
races’, practice based on a false ‘Association of Ideas’ and the ‘antithesis of
religion’ (see Lawrence 1987: 22–24).
Carl Strehlow’s myth collection focuses on the ancestral beings, called in
Aranda ‘altjirangamitjina’ and in Loritja ‘tukutita’, who created the central
Australian landscape and its laws, and play a crucial role in ceremonial life.
The stories concerning these mythological ancestral beings are referred to in
today’s literature as ‘dreamings’. It has often been claimed that Carl Strehlow’s
view of Aranda and Loritja cosmology was flawed, because he was a missionary
and ascribed indigenous high gods to them. Despite his data on the supreme or
high beings, Altjira and Tukura, he maintained that ancestral beings were the
main protagonists in the sacred life of the Aranda and Loritja. As subsequent
discussion will reveal, the positioning of high gods in different cosmologies can
vary considerably. The subtlety of this ethnographic issue was not grasped by
Spencer, or by later anthropologists in Australia (but see Hiatt 1996).
His remaining three volumes (1913, 1915, 1920) describe aspects of social life
and material culture. Initially, Strehlow had written a piece called ‘Land und
Leute’ (land and people) that had been intended as an introduction to his work
on myth and song.30 However, in the course of his correspondence with von
Leonhardi, aspects of ‘social life’, i.e. social classification and organisation,
became an additional area of interest, especially as they studied relevant English
and Australian anthropological works and engaged with contemporary debates
and hypotheses. Marriage classes and kinship terminology31 were topics raised
regularly in their correspondence. Von Leonhardi believed that the views of
Australian researchers on kindhip topics were still hypothetical.32
All volumes of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien also
contain data relating to language and material culture. The word lists and
comments that Strehlow included in his published work were a supplement to
the major dictionary and an Aranda grammar that he had compiled. Additionally
he collected data on the natural environment, often seen from an Aranda and

31 Strehlow’s collection of kinship terms, for example, is still current and a take-off point for modern kin-
studies. Further detail in his unpublished dictionary (1909) exceeds the supplements of what was published
in Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien.
32 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 2.6.1906.
36
Loritja perspective, and specimens that were classified in Germany by leading

scientists of the time. In sum, the project of these two committed scholars came
close to being cosmographic.
The original manuscripts

Unlike Strehlow’s scientific letters to his editor that have only survived in draft
form and shorthand, the original handwritten manuscripts of Die Aranda-
und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien have survived. The only previously
known manuscripts, destroyed in World War II, were duplicates provided to
von Leonhardi. Strehlow had copied his original manuscripts meticulously for
his editor, sending it in segments to Germany for publication. The bombing of
the Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt buried 47 people sheltering in the vaults.
It also destroyed much of Strehlow’s research collection and correspondence.
10. Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt, 1943.
Source: Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main.
The original manuscripts consist of three volumes called Sagen, Cultus and
Leben and run to 1224 pages. Sagen (myths/legends) contains the Aranda and
Loritja myth collections. In Cultus (cults) Carl Strehlow collated many sacred
songs connected to myths that were sung during ceremonies and describes
the choreography and paraphernalia of these rites and ceremonies. Leben (life)
describes aspects of social life.
37
The Aranda’s Pepa
11. Page 1224 of Carl Strehlow’s handwritten manuscript, Volume 3, Leben.
These manuscripts had been in the possession of Carl’s son, T.G.H. Strehlow. They
seem to have sat most of his life on his desk alongside his father’s unpublished
dictionary. The manuscripts were among the items confiscated from the house
of K. Strehlow, T.G.H. Strehlow’s second wife, in the 1990s. Their existence
was known only to a handful of people. Notes found with these manuscripts
and FitzHerbert’s letters of the 1930s held at the Strehlow Research Centre and
the Special Collection of the Barr Smith library indicate that T.G.H. Strehlow
had owned them since the 1930s. In the light of these original manuscripts it is
clear that von Leonhardi kept largely to his protégée’s original, which refutes
Spencer’s allegations that an educated editor had changed Carl Strehlow’s
work.33 The original is even richer than the published version. Were there ever a
republication of the German text, possibly the original manuscript with critical
annotations should be considered.
33 Spencer to Frazer, 10.3.1908 (Marett and Penniman 1932: 110).

38
Aranda myths
Carl Strehlow’s first publication of 1907 is a collection of Aranda myths labelled
Mythen, Sagen und Märchen (myths, legends and fairy-tales) and arranged into
seven sections. A preface by von Leonhardi contextualises them and their main
protagonists, the ancestors:
In primordial times the “totem gods” (altjirangamitjina) walked this
earth and eventually entered the earth, where they are still thought to
be living. Their bodies changed into rocks, trees, shrubs or tjurunga
made of stone or wood. (Strehlow 1907: Preface)
Following von Leonhardi’s short preface, Carl Strehlow’s brief account of Altjira,
a high god, follows in Section I. Altjira is thought to be ‘ngambakala’ (eternal)
having emu feet, many wives, sons and daughters. They live in the sky which is
imagined as an eternal land with permanent water, trees, flora and fauna. Altjira
and his family live much like the Aranda, they hunt and gather (1907: 1–2).
Here Carl Strehlow makes an important remark on the meaning of the word
‘altjira’, which pre-empts Róheim and T.G.H. Strehlow:
The etymology of the word Altjira has not yet been found. The natives
associate the word now with the concept of the non-created. Asked
about the meaning of the word, the natives repeatedly assured me that
Altjira refers to someone who has no beginning, who did not issue from
another (erina itha arbmamakala = no one created him). Spencer and
Gillen’s claim (Northern Tribes of Central Australia p. 745) that “the
word alcheri means dream” is incorrect. Altjirerama means “to dream”,
and it is derived from altjira (god) and rama (to see), in other words,
“to see god”. The same holds true for the Loritja language. Tukura
nangani = “to dream”, from turkura (god) and nangani (to see). It will
be demonstrated later that altjira and tukura in this context do not refer
to the highest God in the sky but merely to a totem god which the native
believes to have seen in a dream.34 (Strehlow 1907: 2)
After introducing Altjira, Section II, ‘Die Urzeit (Primordial Time)’, delivers a
general account of the conditions on earth, or more precisely of the territory of
the Aranda, in primordial times (Strehlow 1907: 2–8). The earth is described as an
eternal presence in which undeveloped humans, who were already divided into
moieties, called ‘alarinja’ and ‘kwatjarinja’ (of the earth and water respectively),
and an eight-class (subsection) system. Here the anthropomorphic ancestors
called ‘altjirangamitjina’ are introduced, emerging in their primeval state from
34 My emphasis.
39
The Aranda’s Pepa
their underground dwellings (Strehlow 1907: 3). The ancestors wandered over
the as yet formless land, shaping the landscape as it is still seen today, performing
and transforming themselves, establishing the world’s structure.
Section III deals with Putiaputia und andere Lehrer der Aranda (Putiaputia and
other teachers of the Aranda) who came from the north and taught the Aranda
about certain institutions such as initiation (Strehlow 1907: 9–11). The ‘erintja’
(evil beings), and ‘rubaruba’ and ‘wurinja’ (bad winds) are mentioned in Section
IV (1907: 11–15) and Die Toteninsel (The Island of the Dead) (Strehlow 1907:
15–16) is the subject of Section V.
Section VI, the largest, is called Sagen über die Totem-Vorfahren (Myths about
the Totem Ancestors) (Strehlow 1907: 16–101). It contains 64 narratives of the
individual mythical beings, the altjirangamitjina, who populated and created
the Aranda landscape and its particular places. They are associated with celestial
bodies (sun, moon, evening star, Pleiades), animals, plants and other natural
phenomena (including fire and rain). These narratives are roughly arranged in
three groups: ‘dead objects’, animals and plants, and female ancestors.
The myths on the celestial bodies tell about the mythical beings associated with
the sun, the moon, Tmálbambaralénana (The Evening Star),35 Kuralja (Pleiades),
and are followed by a water dreaming story linked with the site Kaporilja. The
second group concerns the majority of ancestors who are associated with the
plant and animal world of the central Australian landscape. He wrote that ‘most
of their myths are local myths, that belong to particular places’36 and specific
ancestors or ‘totem gods are associated with certain places where they have lived
and generated their totem animals’ (Strehlow 1907: 4). The Aranda myths are
concerned with the actions, travels, places, petrifying, going into the landscape,
place names, the proper way to do things, interaction with other beings from
other places and even from other language backgrounds, as there are place
names, words and even songs in languages other than Aranda. Nearly all of
these stories end with the ancestors turning into tjurunga or metamorphosing
into natural features.
The third group of stories in Section VI are about female ancestors who are
usually called alknarintja meaning ‘eyes look away’. These narratives tell of
women who reject advances of men. They too are connected to particular places
on Aranda country and ceremonies. The last Section VII contains four narratives
classified as fairy-tales.
35 Tmálbambaralénana means Evening Star. A contemporary spelling can not be found, because the
etymology is not certain, although Carl Strehlow indicated that tmalba means ‘flame’.
36 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, probably 8.4.1906 (SH-SP-1-1).
40
Loritja myths
Strehlow’s collection of Loritja myths is not as extensive as his Aranda collection.
While it is organised in a similar fashion, only one myth is reproduced in Loritja,
called ‘Papa tua, Knulja ntjara (the dogs)’ (Strehlow 1908: 12–16), as well as
in Aranda. In the fourth volume we are informed that its ceremony is part of
Loritja as well as Aranda initiation (Strehlow 1911: 15). Von Leonhardi appended
six additional Loritja prose texts (Strehlow 1911: 59–75) to this volume, which
Strehlow had recorded during research on Loritja song.
Section I of this volume is called Tukura, after the highest being of the Loritja.
Like the account of Altjira, it is rather short. Here I quote the entire passage on
Tukura to illustrate how the so called ‘high gods’ feature only in passing in this
work:
The Loritja call the supreme being Tukura. Linked with Tukura is the
concept of the Non-created One, the eternal. I am unable to provide
an etymological derivation of the word. One envisages Tukura as
a man with a beautiful red skin, long flowing hair and a long beard.
The Western Loritja believe that he has emu feet – like the Altjira of
the Aranda – but the Southern Loritja accredit him with human feet.
Tukura has only one wife, by the name of Inéari (A: tnéera meaning
the beautiful), and one child which always remains a child. The latter
is called Arátapi (A: ratapa; i.e. offspring). The Western and Southern
Loritja agree that Inéari has human feet. Tukura’s residence is the sky
ilkari (A: alkira). The Milky Way, called merawari, i.e. wide creek, or
tukalba, i.e. winding creek, by the Loritja, is lined with gum trees
(itára), mulga trees (kurku) and other trees and shrubs. In their branches
live parrots and pigeons, while kangaroos (mallu), emus (kalaia) and
wild cats (kuninka) roam through Tukura’s realm. While Tukura amuses
himself in his hunting ground, his wife and son are out gathering edible
roots called wapiti (A: latjia) and tasty bulbs (neri), as well as grass seeds
which grow there in abundance. Tukura sleeps at night, but during the
day he conducts ceremonies to which he calls the young men (nitaii)
living nearby. The stars (tjiltjana) are the campfires of Tukura. As is the
case with the Aranda, the women and children also know of Tukura’s
existence. The Loritja imagine the sky, which has existed from eternity
(kututu), to be a vault-like firmament, resting on “legs of stone”. One
fears that some day the vaulted sky could collapse and kill everybody.
(Strehlow 1908: 1–2)
The following pages on Loritja myths relate to the scene at the beginning of time
when the tukutita, the eternal-uncreated ones, emerged out of the earth that,
like the sky, had always been in existence (Strehlow 1908: 2–5).
41
The Aranda’s Pepa
Section III concerns Die bösen Wesen (The evil Beings) and Section IV, Die Toten-
Insel (The Island of the Dead) (1908: 5–7). Again the largest Section V, Sagen
über die Totem-Vorfahren, is ‘about the Totem Ancestors’ (Strehlow 1908: 8–48).
It includes 42 narratives about the earth-dwelling ancestors, the tukutita, who
are associated with celestial bodies (moon, sun, morning star, Pleiades), and
the animal and plant world. The stories of how the travels of the tukutita and
the events surrounding them create the landscape and constitute society are
prominent in this volume as well.
In his discussion of Loritja myth, Strehlow began to note differences between
the Aranda and Loritja (Kukatja) mythologies. The Loritja concept of what it
was like at the beginning, that in primordial times the earth ‘was not covered by
the sea’ but was always dry, contrasts with ‘the views of the Aranda’ (Strehlow
1908: 2). This account of ‘primordial times’ outline a number of differences
between the Aranda and Loritja:
There is a marked difference between the Aranda and Loritja legends.
According to the tradition of the Aranda, most of the meandering
altjirangamitjina were changed into tjurunga-woods or stones and only
a few became trees or rocks. According to the tradition of the Loritja,
however, the reverse is true. The bodies of the tukutita were mostly
changed into rocks and trees. Naturally, this results in the lessening of
the religious meaning and importance of the tjurunga. Among the Dieri
living in the South-East, all the bodies of the Murra-murra are changed
into rocks, trees, etc. and the tjurunga do not occur at all. (Strehlow
1908: 3–4)
He also began cross-referencing Loritja myths with each other and with Aranda
myths published in volume one, because story lines connected or intersected
with each other at particular places and identical songs and terms appeared in
two different myths indicating borrowing. Sometimes the Loritja ancestors, the
tukutita, interacted with the Aranda ancestor, the altjirangamitjina. The myth
of a Loritja wallaby man (Strehlow 1908: 28), for example, is cross-referenced
with the Aranda possum myth (Strehlow 1907: 62, Anmerkung 15), because
at a place called Tunguma the wallaby ancestor joins some possum ancestors
for a ceremony and go together into the ground there creating a water-source.
Or a Loritja myth on emus (Strehlow 1908: 18–20) is cross-referenced to the
Aranda one on emus (Strehlow 1907: 42–45), because at the end of both myths
the emus coming from Aranda and Loritja country end their travels at a place
called Kalaia-tarbana, meaning in Loritja ‘the emu go in’.
Another emu myth of the Loritja (Strehlow 1908: 32) is also connected to an
Aranda myth (Strehlow 1907: 44, Anmerkung 6), because the site Apauuru,
north-west of Hermannsburg, features in both narratives. This Loritja dreaming
42
story has a number of interesting ‘foreign features’ incorporated into its

narrative. It begins in Loritja country and travels east. At Iloara, a salt lake on the
southern edge of Anmatyerr country, the emu’s wife hurts her foot and cannot
follow her husband. He sings a threat song which inserts Loritja words into an
Ilpara (believed to be today’s Warlpiri) song, additionally mentioning Kulurlba,
a famous Aranda native cat ancestor, who had thrown a boomerang at his
disobedient wife. This treatment of myths went as much towards particularism
as refined diffusionism.
In sum, Loritja myths like Aranda myths tell about the ancestors’ epic journeys
over country visiting places and metamorphosing or going into the landscape.
These narratives end with the mythic beings turning into natural features,
tjurunga or kuntanka stones and rocks.37 The last two narratives in Carl
Strehlow’s Loritja myth collection are designated as fairy-tales.
The second part of volume two deals with the totemic concepts of the Aranda
and Loritja (Strehlow 1908: 51–70) and tjurunga (Strehlow 1908: 71–83).
Strehlow explains that the belief systems of the Aranda and Loritja were very
similar, but that the difference lay in the fact that the myths were ‘local myths’
and each connected to particular places in the landscape.
Cultus: Songs and ceremonies

The manuscript Cultus was published in two instalments in 1910 and 1911,
called Die Totemischen Kulte der Aranda und Loritja Stämme. It contains songs
connected to myths he had recorded in prose as well as sacred ceremonies. Carl
Strehlow documented 59 Aranda ceremonies and their associated songs and 21
Loritja ceremonies which included some relating to female ancestors acted out
by men. He found that two types of ceremony were performed:
The Aranda and Loritja today still regularly hold the cult rituals
according to the instruction of their altjirangamitjina. However, there
is one significant difference. In primordial times one ceremony was
intended to serve two purposes, now two distinct performances are
held, each with its own name, and each serving a specific purpose.
When the young men undergo the various initiation rites, a series of
ceremonies are performed for them which are identical to the real cult
rituals, except for certain very special and characteristic details, but
do not serve the purpose of increasing and enhancing the growth of
the respective totem. Their only aim is to show those who are about
to become men or have become men how these ceremonies should be
37 Like tjurunga, kuntanka is polisemic. Kuntanka describes to a lesser degree a sacred object, but rather
particular features of a landscape that represent dreaming beings or parts of them.
43
The Aranda’s Pepa
performed. In view of their purpose these ceremonies are therefore known

as intitjiuma (L. tintinpungañi) i.e. to initiate into something, to show how
something is done. However, when the same ceremonies are performed
at the particular totem place which an altjirangamitjina called home in
primordial times, or where he had spent some time, and if their purpose is
to care for the increase and growth of the totem, then this performance is
called mbatjalkatiuma (L. kutintjingañi), i.e. to bring about, make fertile,
improve the conditions of. (Strehlow 1910: 1–2)
Carl Strehlow also wrote ‘that in primordial times the altjirangamitjina travelled
about with their novices and that they performed certain ceremonies at their
“eternal camps” as well as at other locations during their journeys’ (Strehlow
1910: 1). These accounts of songs and ceremonies are accompanied by drawings,
descriptions of who performs what, at which places in the Aranda landscape it
is performed, how it is performed, what ceremonial artefacts are used and their
purposes. The letters between Strehlow and von Leonhardi discuss and analyse
these ‘cults’ in detail whereas the publication is a descriptive and empirical
account.
Leben: Social life

The remaining volumes, based on Strehlow’s manuscript called Leben, are not
as well structured and presented as his previous publications, because they
were not edited by von Leonhardi. After von Leonhardi’s death, staff members
of the Frankfurt museum, B. Hagen, F.C.H. Sarg and E. Vatter, completed the
publication of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien. Volumes
five and six describe a number of important facets of Aranda and Loritja life
around 1900, some of which are still practised. These volumes cover subjects
such as birth, name giving, games, initiation ceremonies, the marriage system,
kinship terminology, marriage customs (Strehlow 1913), the political and legal
system, death, burial, blood revenge, illnesses, magic, terms for numbers
and time, secret language registers of men (Strehlow 1915) and sign language
(Strehlow 1915: 54–78).
These instalments include Carl Strehlow’s kinship data. It appeared in the
fifth volume in 1913, called The Social Life of the Aranda and Loritja Tribes.
Compared to his four volumes on myth, his kinship material appears deceptively
slim. However, he managed to condense into 26 pages an incredible amount of
empirical data. He published substantial accounts on the section and subsection
systems of people living at Hermannsburg at the time, extensive lists of kinship
terms (Strehlow 1913: 62–89), five extensive family trees and a list of all names
occurring in the family trees with their linguistic and technical explanations
(Strehlow 1920: 15-39).
44
The chapter ‘Birth, Smoking and Name-Giving’ in Carl Strehlow’s fifth volume
is almost certainly based on information collected by his wife, Frieda Strehlow
(Strehlow 1913: 1–5). The relevant part in the handwritten manuscripts is
in Frieda’s hand; it is the only passage in these manuscripts written by her.
She may only have copied her husband’s notes. However, the topic relates to
birth and women’s ritual. It is unlikely to be mere chance that this part of the
manuscript is in her hand. Only with great difficulty and coercion would Carl
Strehlow have been able to obtain this kind of data from women. It could of
course be second hand information from Aranda and Loritja men, but this
seems unlikely. Another indication of Frieda’s involvement in the production of
Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien is a remark by Sarg, one
of Strehlow’s later editors. He asked Carl to indicate which data his wife had
collected, because in his view it was very important to be able to say that ‘this
I observed’ or ‘the observation was made by my wife’.38 However, World War I
intervened and communication with Australia broke down.
Both Frieda and Carl had an excellent understanding of indigenous kinship
systems. Carl Strehlow had been classified as a Purula (Aranda subsection
associated with Ntaria, Hermannsburg and surrounding area) and his children
therefore as Kamara.39 He used his knowledge of indigenous kinship, which
determines conduct and obligations towards particular kin, when engaged
with his congregation.40 It is likely that some of the genealogical material was
obtained by Frieda, if the current situation can be taken as indicative. During
field research in the past 20 years, I have generally found that the majority of
central Australian Aboriginal men have a hard time reproducing a significant
list of lateral relatives in their own and proximate generations. Aboriginal
women tend to be more able to provide a kin universe.41 A reference to Frank
Gillen’s method of data collection also provides some insight. Ernest Cowle,
a policeman in the 1890s in central Australia, remarked once to Spencer on
Gillen’s genealogical work with one of Cowle’s Aboriginal prisoners:
Gillen got at him in his den and unfolded a papyrus as long as himself
and started to trace his descent through endless aunts, and great
great grandfather’s mothers he fainted away completely! … even a
Sub-Protector has no right to invent tortures, surpassing those of the
Inquisition in general fiendishness… (Mulvaney, Petch and Morphy
2000: 91)
38 Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 18.11.1912.

39 According to T.G.H. Strehlow ([1950] 1997: 47), he was classified as a Kamara (Kemarre) by reason of his
conception site Ntarea (Ntaria). It is just as likely that T.G.H. Strehlow simply received the right subsection
through his father’s classification which was probably Purula (Perrurle). (Garry Stoll thought that Ted was a
Kemarre (pers. comm.).)
40 Strehlow’s letters to Kaibel (1899–1909) held at the Lutheran Archives, Adelaide (LAA).
41 Gillen was probably also asking about people with tabooed names which is likely to have caused some distress.
45
The Aranda’s Pepa
Frieda may also have contributed to Carl’s myth collection. The whirlwind which
brings bad spirit-children, or the myths relating to female ancestors, may have
been inserted by her. Her letters are often about her work with Aranda women,
her close engagement with them in everyday life and indigenous beliefs. She
mentions in her letters to family and friends, for example, the infanticide of
twins and beliefs about spirit children.42
Material culture
Images, descriptions and interpretations of material culture are interspersed
throughout Strehlow’s work to illustrate and enhance the text. Only the last
volume (Strehlow 1920: 8–14) contains a few pages on material culture although
the data on his collection could have filled an entire volume.43 He had sent
artefacts and objects of varying quality to his editor in Germany. Interestingly
many of these items were commissioned, not originals. Strehlow remarked, for
instance, about stone knives: ‘I regret, that I cannot send you better stone-
knives. These ones are not at all well worked; only steel knives are in use now.’44
On his own initiative, Carl Strehlow had started in 1906 to send indigenous
artefacts and tjurunga to von Leonhardi as well as samples of flora and fauna.
He initially sent material culture to his editor to illustrate his written data and
that ‘maybe better drawings could be made’ because ‘I am a bad drawer’,45 but
it soon became a separate project. Strehlow may have been inspired by Spencer
and Gillen’s plates in their publications and by Siebert and Reuther,46 who had
been collecting material culture for their own research on the peoples of the
Lake Eyre basin, as well as by Eylemann (1908) who had been in Hermannsburg
collecting artefacts and ethnographic data.
Carl Strehlow’s collection included well over 1000 sacred objects and mundane
artefacts. He sent hundreds of tjurunga,47 a large number of ceremonial objects,48
carrying dishes, boomerangs,49 spears, spear throwers, clubs, shields, hair
42 Other letters by women from Hermannsburg make interesting remarks on the life of Aranda women.
Maria Bogner for example talks about a women’s ceremony one night in the creek in 1896.
43 F.C.H. Sarg (1911) and Vatter (1915) used his collection for their publications.
44 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, probably on 3.12.1906 (SH-SP-8-1).
46 Siebert had collected objects by 1904, which the new Völkermuseum of Frankfurt (called Museum
der Weltkulturen today) exhibited in the same year at its opening (Nobbs 2006: 12). Reuther collected
approximately 1300 artefacts including ceremonial objects, nearly 400 toas and a large collection of ethno-
botanical specimens (Nobbs 2005) between 1903 and 1906. Reuther’s collection was purchased by the South
Australian Museum in 1907 for £400 (Nobbs 2005: 42).
47 Carl Strehlow wrote to von Leonhardi that ‘there are nearly no Tj. left in most stonecaves in the vicinity’,
probably 10.12.1907 (SH-SP-15-1).
49 F.C.H. Sarg (1911) described in ‘Die Australischen Bumerangs im Städtischen Völkermuseum’ some of
Strehlow’s boomerangs.
46
strings, stone knives and axes, digging sticks, chains made of native beans,
and many other items that he documented in his unpublished dictionary. His
collection also included some hybrids: ‘As a curiosity without scientific value
I include tied up rabbit tails that the blacks have started to make since the
rabbit plague has reached the interior of Australia’.50 His editor in Germany
greeted Strehlow’s collection with great enthusiasm and became his agent for
the distribution of these objects.51 In fact, von Leonhardi seems to have become
nearly addicted to these consignments. Much of Strehlow’s collection did not
survive the bombing of Frankfurt in World War II.
Strehlow used his collection to illustrate and explain aspects of traditional
Aboriginal daily life and sacred ceremonies. He described each artefact’s form
and function, but does not seem to have recorded the names of the indigenous
artisans or suppliers. Information on how the artefacts were made and where
they were used and traded among the different groups, make interesting reading:
Because the natives have no concept of money, they engage in lively
trade. Important living places along the borders of befriended tribes are
also important trading places, unbunba. At Ingodna on the lower Finke,
for example, the Aranda-Tanka barter with the Aranda-Lada and the
Aranda-Ulbma; and at Utnádata on the southern border of the Aranda
Tanka, they conduct their trade with the Arábana.
The Southern Loritja, as well as the Southern Aranda, bartered with the
Aranda-Ulbma here at Hermannsburg. On the other hand, the trading
place for the Aranda Ulbma and the Western Loritja is at Apanuru,
situated on Loritja territory. The Aranda-Ulbma also trade with the
Aranda-Roara at Alice Springs, with the Ilpara at Ilóara in the north,
and with the Katitja and Imatjera at Tnimakwatja in the north.
The Aranda trade the following items with other tribes: shields, spears,
spearthrowers, small boomerangs ulbarinja lubara, strings ulera,
nose-bones lalkara, pitch nobma, stone knives karitja, trays made of
para wood, etc. With the northern tribes, however, they trade trays
made from ininta, headstrings kanta, necklaces gulatja, breaststrings
tmakurka, neck decorations matara, shells takula and sticks wolta;
while from the south-eastern tribes they receive the large boomerangs
and pubic coverings. (Strehlow 1920: 13)

51 Bastian’s salvage anthropology had trigged an international run on the world’s existing indigenous
material culture. The German and international collecting frenzy before everything was lost forever seems
to have reached every corner of the globe. Strehlow also saw it as a source for some extra income for his ever
financially suffering congregation.
47
The Aranda’s Pepa
After the death of his editor, Strehlow continued to collect for the Cologne52
and Frankfurt museums,53 and to distribute artefacts, when he returned from
Germany on the 5 April 1912 with his wife and youngest son Ted to central
Australia. However, once the Great War (1914–1918) overshadowed international
relations, it became impossible to export Aboriginal material culture.
12. Last photograph of the complete Strehlow family, 1910/11.
Source: Archiv/Mission Eine Welt, Neuendettelsau.
When World War I broke out Strehlow suffered greatly for leaving his children
in Europe. He had left them in Germany, so they would be properly educated.
He was not to see them again. This guilt and loss may have driven him to
increase his efforts for the people at Hermannsburg and the bible translation
into Aranda; completed in 1919. Although an Australian citizen, he was
hounded by the South Australian Government to register as an alien. With the
support of Sergeant Robert Stott who was known as the ‘Uncrowned King of
Central Australia’ Carl Strehlow was able to continue his and Frieda’s work.
However, the mission was permanently threatened by financial ruin. In 1917
Hermannsburg lost its 300 pounds per year government subsidies, largely due to
anti-German prejudice, which flourished during the Great War (Rowse 1998: 84).
52 Letters between Carl Strehlow and Fritz Graebner between 1912 and 1913, held at the city archives in Cologne.
53 Correspondence between Strehlow and his second editor Sarg. Letters at the Strehlow Research Centre
(SRC) in Alice Springs.
48
With war’s end and word that his children had survived, Strehlow attempted
to get a replacement so he could leave for Germany to see his children. As he
waited at Hermannsburg for his superiors in the Barossa Valley to organise
his replacement, he made a last effort on his still unpublished dictionary of
over 6000 Aranda and Loritja words that included thousands of derivations.54
Finalising his linguistic work appears to have been the ultimate proof that
indigenous languages can express the gamut of human cognition, including the
bible’s revelations. However, 30 years of effort had taken their toll on Strehlow.
The desert, the battles with state and church bureaucracy and pastoralists as
well as his limited success with conversion, had weakened his body and spirit.
Mid 1922 Strehlow was struck down by a mysterious illness which he himself
diagnosed from his medical books as dropsy, and for the first time he did not
take the service on Sunday. His youngest son wrote in his childhood diary about
this service:
I played the organ because Mum and Dad stayed at home. … The
congregation remained completely silent during the first liturgy, so Herr
Heinrich started singing the responses himself fairly in the wrong tune,
until some men took over and ended the verse in a strangely off melody.55
All attempts to treat him locally proved fruitless and his ‘Journey to Horseshoe
Bend’ began. As he was taken away his Aranda friends sang Kaarrerrai
worlamparinyai, a hymn he had translated for them to the music of Bach. The
journey down the bend was agonising and his youngest son, who accompanied
him on this last journey, was to write that ‘Horseshoe Bend is a place whose
shadows I can never escape’.56 Carl Strehlow died on the 20 October 1922. Some
years after his death the Lutheran Herald reported:
Not long after the death of the late Rev. Strehlow, it was indeed
perceptible how a spiritual awakening stirred not only our natives at
Hermannsburg, but all Aranda people. All seemed to feel and realise,
that by devoting his whole life to it, even laying down his life in the
service, there must be something great and true in what Rev. Strehlow
taught, to thus enable him to unselfishly work for them, in contrast to
most other white folks they knew.57
On the 4 November 1923, one year after Strehlow’s death, something like a
mass-baptism seems to have occurred at Hermannsburg (Strehlow 1969–70:
178–180). Moses Tjalkabota and H.A. Heinrich had continued Strehlow’s pre-
54 The Register, 1921; C. Strehlow’s dictionary 1900–1909.

55 T.G.H. Strehlow’s childhood Diary III, 30.7.1922. Translated by Lisa Wendtlandt.
56 T.G.H. Strehlow Diary (1960: 155) quoted in Cawthorn and Malbunka (2005: 72).
57 Lutheran Herald, 1926: 75.
49
The Aranda’s Pepa
baptismal instructions that resulted in the baptism of 26 adults and 14 children

on that day. Carl Strehlow had baptised only 46 adults at Hermannsburg in
nearly three decades.58 As already mentioned among these converts was Carl
Strehlow’s main informant Loatjira who had been christened Abraham that day,
and died shortly after his ‘conversion’. There are no reliable records of Carl
Strehlow and Loatjira’s state of minds towards the end of their lives. Both men
had been devoted to their faiths, but were troubled. They had both reached the
edge of knowing and doubted. Loatjira had obviously wavered in his faith, and,
according to T.G.H. Strehlow (1969: 174–179), so had Carl.
58 Carl Strehlow, Kirchen- und Missionszeitung, 9.1.1920.

50
II. A Certain Inheritance: Nineteenth
Century German Anthropology
In the context of Spencer and Gillen’s work, and also that of Howitt (1904) for
example, two questions should be posed of Carl Strehlow’s text. First, how might
one explain his lack of engagement with anthropological debates on the origins
and evolution of indigenous Australians? Second, what explains Strehlow’s
quite particular focus on myth and song among the Aranda and Loritja when
the work of his contemporaries tends to move, in a British vein, from origins, to
social organisation, to rite?
Strehlow, it might be argued, had little contact with his British-Australian
contemporaries. Neither Spencer nor Gillen rated the Lutheran Strehlow highly
as a colleague or consultant. Gillen’s interaction with Strehlow as a scholar
was minimal. Spencer’s dismissal of Strehlow’s scholarship was advertised
widely which Strehlow junior answered in his own masterwork, Songs of
Central Australia (1971: xv, xvi, xx–xxxviii). In addition, Frazer’s long list of
consultants around Australia makes it clear that he chose Spencer as his Aranda
source, not Strehlow. Perhaps then, Strehlow’s text was simply the product of an
isolated missionary, distant from professional or mainstream scholarship. Again,
as a missionary bent on the task of conversion, possibly he was required to
maintain a Christian humanism. Concern with the history or evolutionary stage
of the lower human ranks could not sit happily with proselytising.
Strehlow was a missionary rather than an academic. However, he received
his Christian education within the context of nineteenth century German
humanism. Although the Lutherans sustained their own distinctive tradition
of scholarship and missionary work, they were also part of a broader German
intellectual milieu deeply influenced by historical particularism. The modern
culture concept, and its repudiation of rationalist theories of universal human
development, had its origins in this setting. In fact for Herder, himself a
Lutheran pastor, the plenitude of human culture was also the plenitude of God’s
creation (see Darcy 1987). The two approaches dovetailed into one consistent
humanistic approach. From this viewpoint, the central concerns of Strehlow’s
magnum opus were not accidental. His correspondence with von Leonhardi
contains no suggestion that starting with oral literature was strange. To the
contrary, it was natural simply because Strehlow and von Leonhardi shared an
intellectual orientation that affirmed the status of language and literature, or
oral text, as the key to a culture.
This chapter considers the emergence of nineteenth century German
anthropology and its passage to the United States in the hands of Franz Boas.
51
The Aranda’s Pepa
Boas and Strehlow shared similar intellectual interests and a similar scholarly
style. Following this account, I describe Strehlow’s own education and the
intellectual milieu of the German Lutheran seminary; and unpack the detail
of Strehlow’s correspondence with von Leonhardi. In their letters, a shared
concern with language and empirical observations is evident. These are the
three major influences on Strehlow, some quite direct and others more diffuse,
that shaped the production of a unique Australian work. However, while this
work was unique for its time in British-influenced Australia, it readily finds a
place in the tradition of German historical particularism and its foundational
role in modern (American) cultural anthropology.
Johann Gottfried Herder’s concept of Volksgeist

During the nineteenth century, a German tradition of anthropology1 emerged
that paid great attention to specific cultural configurations. According to this
tradition, humanity was comprised of distinct cultures (Kulturen) and peoples
(Völker) which were the products of individual histories and environmental
milieux. This plenitude or plurality of human culture reflected, most immediately
evident in particular languages, the universal creativity of groups and at the
same time the unity of humankind.
The ‘birth’ of German anthropology may be seen in the light of the standoff
or tension between two prominent intellectuals of the eighteenth century,
Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder (Zammito 2002; Gingrich 2005:
65). Kant was a classic representative of the Enlightenment whereas Herder
marked the beginning of the Counter Enlightenment in Germany, a movement
called Romanticism. Although Kant was the first to use the word anthropology
in his work for a new ‘science of man’, it was ultimately Herder who determined
the course of German anthropology. Kant’s relativism played a role only
insofar as his idea of understanding phenomena on their own terms entered
anthropological thought. Consistent with this view, people should be studied
not to prove or disprove a theory, but rather because a scholar ‘[finds] them
interesting’ (Adams 1998: 296). In this sense Kant contributed to the cultural
relativism and particularism of German anthropology (Adams 1998: 276–277).
At the same time, Kant had the dubious honour of promoting the concept
of race in intellectual life (Zammito 2002; Petermann 2004: 320). When Kant
turned from general reflections on human thought and a ‘cosmopolitan law’
for all peoples to accounts of people and place, scholarship was pushed aside
1 The meaning of this term was not well defined at the time. It encompassed what is known as ethnology
and ethnography as well as aspects of other disciplines like physical anthropology to which it tended to cross
over. In the late eighteenth century it was simply understood as ’the science of man’ which was very broad
and not well defined.
52
II. A Certain Inheritance: Nineteenth Century German Anthropology
by other presumptions. As Harvey remarks, ‘Kant’s Geography is nothing short

of an intellectual and political embarrassment’ (Harvey 2001: 275). He cites the
following passage, among others, from the Geography:
In hot countries men mature more quickly in every respect but they
do not attain the perfection of the temperate zones. Humanity achieves
its greatest perfection with the white race. The yellow Indians have
somewhat less talent. The negroes are much inferior… (Harvey 2001: 275)
Herder, who rejected Kant’s notion of race, provided instead crucial concepts that
would determine the study of cultures. Many of Herder’s pioneering concepts
including both Zeitgeist and Volksgeist entered intellectual and anthropological
discourse, without users being aware of their Herderian origins (Barnard 2003:
5, 108). Already in 1828, Goethe,2 both foe and friend to Herder, observed that
a number of Herderian ideas had become seminal; absorbed into the mainstream
of philosophical and, ultimately, anthropological thought (Marchand 1982: 20).
Among many other disciplines, Johann Gottfried Herder’s (1744–1803) complex
oeuvre influenced the development of German anthropology in a lasting and
profound way. His concept of Volk, a cultural group or entity, and Volksgeist,
the essence of a cultural group that sets it apart from other groups, were the
basis of his particularism, which was to become a central principle of nineteenth
century German anthropology. He recognised that each culture possessed a moral
and intellectual framework that determined its possibilities and its individual
development. For Herder, language was the defining element of a cultural group
and its identity, as it was in language that a people’s Volksgeist is expressed (see
Barnard 1969: 32).
For Herder there were no people without a culture (Barnard 1969: 24–25; Barnard
2003: 134). In his Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784–91), he
used the concept in the plural deliberately (Petermann 2004: 309). He professed
to a humanity made up of a multiplicity and therefore rejected the notion of
enlightenment as a pervasive developmental stage. Herder’s idea that culture
was a universal phenomenon was novel at a time when cultured and uncultured
peoples were distinguished from each other. In contrast, he maintained that
wherever people live together as a group over a period of time there is a culture
(Barnard 2003: 134–135). In short, the universal human property he recognised
was difference: the propensity of groups to specify themselves through culture.
The principles of the French Enlightenment, in which the universality of
human reason across space and time, the subjection of uniform human nature
to unchanging natural laws, the steady progress of civilisation through history
2 Goethe wrote in his memoirs Dichtung und Wahrheit that one of the most significant occurrences in his life
was his acquaintance with Herder whom he had met by chance in the Gasthof zum Geist (Goethe 1998: 430).
53
The Aranda’s Pepa
toward an enlightened state of reason and the laws that governed these codes,
were questioned by the Counter Enlightenment (Berlin 1980: 1–25). By rejecting
the French dogma of the uniform development of civilisation, Herder argued for
the uniqueness of values transmitted throughout history:
Herder sharply differs from the central thought of the French
Enlightenment, and that not only in respects that all his commentators
have noted. What is usually stressed is, in the first place, his relativism,
his admiration of every authentic culture for being what it is, his
insistence that outlooks and civilisations must be understood from
within, in terms of their own stages of developments, purposes and
outlooks; and in the second place his sharp repudiation of that central
strain in Cartesian rationalism which regards only what is universal,
eternal, unalterable, governed by rigorously logical relationships – only
the subject matter of mathematics, logic, physics and the other natural
sciences – as true knowledge. (Berlin 1976: 174)
Herder laid the foundations for German historical particularism, because
he was interested in historical difference and in the differences between
contemporaneous groups in different places (Adams 1998: 271). In his view,
every cultural group was the product of its circumstances and could not be
measured by the values of another group. He made it amply clear in his Letters
for the Advancement of Humanity (1793–97) that European culture was not to be
considered superior to any other:
Least of all must we think of European culture as a universal standard of
human values … Only a real misanthrope could regard European culture
as the universal condition of our species. The culture of man is not the
culture of the European; it manifests itself according to place and time
in every people. (Herder cited in Barnard 1969: 24)
Herder attempted to free the assessment of the ‘other’ from imposed value
systems and categories. He urged historical study of a culture and analysis of
its own internal relations (Barnard 2003: 137). He projected a history of peoples
of the globe in terms of their self-defining values and cultures (Fink 1993:
56). In 1774 he wrote: ‘Each man, each nation, each period, has its centre of
happiness within itself, just as every sphere has its centre of gravity’ (Herder
cited in Barnard 1969: 35). Thus, each human group could be understood only
as a particular historical configuration. Each one of these in its individuality
contributes to humanity as a whole and through language the intricacies of
cultures could be understood. Herder wrote that to enter into the spirit of a
people, to understand and share its thoughts or deeds:
54
… do not limit your response to a word, but penetrate deeply into this
century, this region, this entire history, plunge yourself into it all and feel
it all inside yourself – then only will you be in a position to understand;
then only will you give up the idea of comparing everything, in general
or in particular, with yourself. For it would be manifest stupidity to
consider yourself to be the quintessence of all times and all peoples.
(Herder 1969a: 182)
Herder’s humanistic ideal, his Humanität (humanity), is one in which diverse
cultures exist side by side (Berlin 1980: 11) and also together exhibit the essence
of humanness involved in the potential for creativity and specificity. His
concept of humanity was a unifying principle through which to formulate his
understanding of human existence in the infinite variety of its configurations
(Knoll 1982: 9). It was his universalist principle of Humanität that enabled him
to fit his pluralist concept of humankind into his view that all humans were
equal and had the same origin (homogenetic). He believed that the diversity of
peoples had only developed in the course of time, rejecting all claims that man
evolved from animal forms (Nisbet 1992: 10–11). From this unity of humanity
he concluded that there are no superior cultures and condemned, for instance,
colonialism and slavery.
He rejected the concept of race (Mühlmann 1968: 62) and stated that the term
‘race’ was not fit to be used in relation to humans, as it referred to a posited
difference in origins that he repudiated (Barnard 1969: 41). Herder believed
in homogenesis and thus saw humanity as a unity. In his Ideen zur Philosophie
der Geschichte der Menschheit (Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind)
(1784–91) he wrote that ‘in spite of the vast realm of change and diversity, all
mankind is one and the same species upon earth’ (Herder 1969b: 283). Herder’s
view on humanity encompassed the plurality of mankind which made humanity
up as a whole. He concluded:
In short, there are neither four or five races, nor exclusive varieties, on
this earth. Complexions run into each other; forms follow the genetic
character; and in toto they are, in the final analysis, but different shades
of the same great picture which extends through all ages and all parts
of the earth. Their study, therefore, properly forms no part of biology
or systematic natural history but belongs rather to the anthropological
history of man. (Herder 1969b: 284)
This passage was considered by Kant as truly indicative of Herder’s intellectual
shortcomings (Barnard 2003: 65).
In 1772, Herder published an epoch-making essay on the origin of language
called Über den Ursprung der Sprache (On the Origin of Language). This essay
55
The Aranda’s Pepa
had a tremendous influence on his contemporaries. It would also influence the

development of anthropological and linguistic thinking (in hindsight marking
the beginning of a modern philosophy of language). Although this essay already
contained what would become one of Herder’s most original contributions, his
concept of pluralism evolving out of his thoughts on language (as languages
are an expression of humanity’s variability and multiplicity), his initial concern
was different. His main intention was to counter Süssmilch’s assumption that
language was a direct gift from God and to deny ‘Condillac’s and Rousseau’s
theories which traced the emergence of human speech to animalistic origins’
(Barnard 1969: 17). The Lutheran pastor Herder3 did away with the view that
language has a divine origin. Instead he introduced the idea of slow and gradual
development of language ‘from rude beginnings’ (Sapir 1907: 110). Language
for Herder was an organic product grown in time, determined by the history of
each individual group. Every language was therefore unique, like its speakers.
Each language expressed a particular culture in space and time.
Herder argued that language originated and developed from within the
individual; that it was not the imitation of nature’s sounds or a given act by
God. His key concept in accounting for the development of language was
‘reflection’ – in which individuals arrive at awareness and recognition of the
self. Through language the individual becomes at once aware of his selfhood
and of his cultural identity (Barnard 1969: 7; see also Fink 1993: 54–55).
In Herder’s view, language lies at the basis of being because there is no
coherent thought without words. He believed that a people did not have an
idea or concept for which there was not a word. Ideas are constituted through
language (Frank 1982: 16). There is no thinking outside languages and human
beings are historical because there is no language in the abstract detached from
human beings. There are only historical languages placed in the real world,
with specific characteristics which mutate through time (Burns 2002: 61). This
view would be repeated by Boas’ student, Edward Sapir. He expressed the view
that ‘thought is impossible without language, that thought is language’ (Darnell
1990: 99) and thereby echoed Vico, Herder, the Humboldts and other German
thinking on language.
For Herder the human condition was ever changing, constantly developing and
altering in response to diverse historical needs and circumstances. The most
important element for Herder in this dynamic process of human historical
transformation was language (Whitton 1988: 151). Herder recognised that
whether language had been used to write history or not, it constituted a history
of a given culture at a given time and place with all its idiosyncrasies. He
perceived language as perpetually engaged in the process of generating a new
3 Herder held the highest position in the Lutheran Church at the court of Weimar.
56
self out of the old self (Frank 1982: 18). In Herder we find already the notion
of language’s constant change or flux.4 Herder used the metaphor of organic
growth to explain the permanent evolving of the nature of language (Marchand
1982: 26). He used ‘organic’ in the sense that that which is being transformed
is assimilated and applied (Whitton 1988: 153). Through the historical
transformation of a language, traditional concepts and beliefs are continually
synthesised with those of new generations (Whitton 1988: 152).
The empirical investigation of language was for Herder the basis for
understanding cultural life, because a people’s innermost essence was inherent
in their language and literature, including the oral literatures of indigenous
peoples (Zammito 2002: 155, 159). The language, mythology and folksong of
a people were particularly important because they were the highest form of
expression and revealed the essence of a people, the Volksgeist – today the term
Geist is more usual. Thus, indigenous text ranked high on the agenda of German
nineteenth century anthropology. Language embodied a people and reflected
their Geist. A group’s Geist was manifest in language. Language defined human
beings, making them human. For this reason, as Whitton observes:
As an attribute specific to human beings, language is seen by Herder as
the central expression of a uniquely human, reflective consciousness.
In developing language, individuals give shape to their inner conscious
nature, formulating their ideas and preconceptions through reflections
on their experience of the external world. (Whitton 1988: 151)
Herder believed that no greater misfortune could befall a people than to be
robbed of their language. With language loss came the loss of their spirit.
Herder’s unique particularism which at the same time embraced universalism
infused the new nineteenth century science of man. Herder’s insights were
carried forward by others including the von Humboldts, Waitz, Bastian and
Boas. Ultimately they would lead to the plural modern culture concept, and to
forms of ethnographic method that privileged language and the text, including
indigenous oral literature.
Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) pursued Herder’s thoughts on human
cultural diversity and on the relation between language and culture (Barnard
2000: 48; Petermann 2004: 281). From 1791, he began to design and propagate a
plan for a comparative anthropology (Mühlmann 1968: 65). In this anthropology,
4 Sapir called it ‘drift’.

57
The Aranda’s Pepa
he intended to deploy the methods of natural science, history and philosophy.

The three approaches would converge (Reill 1994: 355). More specifically,
Wilhelm’s interest lay in combining linguistic research and philosophy in an
empirical anthropological project (Trabant 1994: 210, 219–229).
His comparative approach in anthropology was built on two foundations: a
view that humanity shared a common nature and that this nature was expressed
in individual national characters. This range of nation-characters encompassed
the entire human species. Documenting these characters was the empirical
task of anthropology (Bunzl 1996: 22). Each national character was embodied
in a totality of traditions: customs, religion, language and art. These outward
manifestations revealed the degree of development in each group or nation.
Since these achievements were specific to each national entity, they could not
be compared to an external standard. Each deserved an unconditional respect.
However, in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s view, some nations had realised their
potential to a greater degree than others. Not surprisingly Wilhelm’s view was
that European nations were among the more developed (Bunzl 1996: 22).
Wilhelm von Humboldt also elaborated and refined Herder’s thoughts on
language. For Humboldt language was the defining element of human life (Bunzl
1996: 29), and the embodiment of each people’s soul (Burns 2002: 61). It was
through language that a people expressed their worldview (Weltanschauung)
and Geist. In his view, language is the single most important factor that
determines human culture – both human beings’ capacity for culture and their
specific Geist. He focused on the different linguistic forms of diverse languages
and the relation between language and cognitive structure (Losonsky 1999: ix).
He chose language as his focus because in language national character expresses
itself most fully. His idea of a comparative linguistic method for the empirical
study of diverse languages was to lead to central developments in the study of
culture (Bunzl 1996: 29).
At least in part this was due to the fact that he saw clearly that language was
both a unifying element of humanity, and also a point of differentiation. He
acknowledged the ability of the human mind to acquire different languages,
enabling any individual to acquire numerous worldviews (Weltanschauungen).
Wilhelm believed that different languages embody different types of
psychological structures. These structures in turn shaped different views of the
world (Bunzl 1996: 34). He regarded all languages as functionally equivalent, as
no language had yet been found that was functionally or formally incomplete
(Humboldt [1820] 1994: 12). Each and every language in his view was equally
capable of expressing any conceivable idea; an opinion that he shared with
both Jesuit and Lutheran scholars at the time. Thus, for Humboldt it followed
that language is universal to humankind. The urge to speak, to use sound, to
designate objects and connect thoughts is the subject of certain general laws that
58
are universal. In this sense, all human beings have the same language though
their initial capacities are developed historically in diverse ways (Losonsky
1999: xii, xx; Foertsch 2001: 112–113).
Wilhelm von Humboldt believed that the study of the origins of language could
only be ‘the object of futile speculation’ (Bunzl 1996: 34). His empiricism led
him to emphasise that comparative linguistics offered no answers to questions
beyond the realm of immediate experience. He rejected explicitly the notion
that any known language offered a glimpse into the far past or origins of human
communication. No language had been found that lacked grammar or that
was so recent as not to be the product of the activities of many generations of
speakers. In the spirit of Herder he refused to propose a uniform law for the
development of languages.
Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Wilhelm’s younger brother, was one of
the most influential figures of his time in the field of natural science. In his
Kosmos he tried to embrace ‘all individual phenomena in their totality’. His
inclusion of human interpretation in his cosmography though, led him to make
an explicit contrast between positivist approaches and his own. He emphasised
an empirical approach to a natural world that included cultural phenomena
(Bunzl 1996: 39). He believed that both the unity of humanity and the specificity
of individual cultures had to be studied empirically. He hoped to reveal ‘the law
of cosmic harmony’ by reducing the multiplicity of forms in the natural world
to some general laws of variation (Koepping 1983: 70, 77).
Like his brother, Alexander was furiously opposed to deduction and
classification established without empirical observations. Alexander von
Humboldt demanded the thorough description of the physical reality of nature
as the primary objective of his cosmography (Bunzl 1996: 38). In this task, he
included ethnography as a strictly descriptive exercise. The beginning of German
ethnography may possibly be traced to the ‘prodigious travels and explorations
of Alexander von Humboldt between 1799–1829’ (Adams 1998: 290) and the
Humboldts’ joint demands for empirical study of cultural phenomena.
Another crucial figure in the formation of nineteenth century German
anthropology was Theodore Waitz (1821–1864), a philologist who maintained
that humanity was homogenetic by virtue of the fact that all human beings
had similar cultural and moral propensities (Petermann 2004: 429). He sought
to integrate both the linguistic and natural science orientations that came from
the Humboldts in an all-embracing project. Waitz produced an influential
six volume work called Anthropologie der Naturvölker (1859–1872), parts
of it appeared in English translation as Introduction to Anthropology (1863).
His study was a response to the polygenist ideas advanced by various mid-
nineteenth century writers. To prove homogenesis he confronted evidence
59
The Aranda’s Pepa
provided by physical anthropology with his own ethnological interpretations

of culture. Amassing the data available on physical traits among all the world’s
peoples, ‘Waitz demonstrated the constant blurring of purported lines of racial
demarcation, asserting that this precluded the existence of truly distinct types –
an argument that Alexander von Humboldt had previously made in his Kosmos’
(Bunzl 1996: 45). Waitz echoed Herder’s view in Ideas for a Philosophy of the
History of Mankind and would be echoed in turn by Boas in the first few decades
of the twentieth century.
This psychic unity of humankind proclaimed by Waitz was fundamentally
different from the French Enlightenment’s universal rationality. Following
Herder and the Humboldts, Waitz saw cognitive processes as diverse and
always the product or result of particular histories. These forms differed in
time and space and could not be reduced simply to a standard repertoire of
rational reflection. At the same time, Waitz rejected any innate racial hierarchy
in cultural achievement (Bunzl 1996: 46). He was a forerunner of Franz Boas’s
humanist relativism. Waitz criticised the racist and supremacist worldview of
his French contemporary Arthur de Gobineau (a founding father of twentieth-
century racism). He was ‘the author to establish the monogenetic theory of a
unified descent of races in German anthropology, a position on which Rudolph
Virchow, Bastian and Boas would be able to build soon thereafter’ (Gingrich
2005: 80).
However, Waitz was not without bias towards his own cultural group (Petermann
2004: 429). He assumed that people he identified as Caucasians had attained the
highest form of culture, other peoples could also attain this given the right
context. According to Streck (2001: 508), his achievement lies in his idea that
all humans are encultured and thereby have the same potential to learn and
develop.
During this period German philologists of the Romantic Movement, such as
Schlegel and Bopp, were studying non-European languages and developing
a great admiration for these other languages and cultures. They accompanied
these studies with comparable ones focused on Europe’s folklore (Gingrich 2005:
77). In this process German philologists began to develop a sense of German
linguistic identity (Smith 1991: 61). At the same time, and under the influence
of Herder, the Grimm brothers were pursuing systematic studies of folklore
by collecting folktales and ‘recovering’ the essence of German culture, its
Volksgeist. With these activities grew the view that the essence of a cultural
group could be discerned in its mythology, folk tales and song. This interest
in the traditional cultures of Europe was transferred to the so-called primitive
peoples. Comparative mythology seemed to help trace the diversity in human
unity. Myth and ritual as well as song became central to German anthropology.
60
Prior to these developments, the concept of culture and in particular the

traditional philological concept of culture had been reserved for European
societies;5 for places where Bildung, the cultivation of a people, was clearly
apparent in a written literature. For some time, classicists had been drawn to the
study of ‘primitives’ for the contrasts that could be drawn between these groups
and the Greeks and Romans, the ‘cultured people’ (Whitman 1984: 216). Now
this traditional German philology exerted some influence on a nascent German
anthropology with its own new interest in primitive life. The classicists were
allies in a response to vulgar materialism that tried to apply natural scientific
method to all fields of knowledge, and reduce all phenomena, including the
cultural, to a single material substrate (Whitman 1984: 215–216). Barnard
remarks that ‘the development of theoretical ideas in linguistics has throughout
the history of that discipline foreshadowed the development of related ideas in
social and cultural anthropology’ (Barnard 2000: 48).
By the late 1850s when Bastian returned from his first long trip (1850–1858)
around the world he found that cultural scientists had opened up a new
academic territory, the study of primitive life, and this was exactly the scope for
Bastian’s new science of man (Whiteman 1984: 224).
Adolf Bastian and Rudolf Virchow: The psychic

and physical unity of man
The two most influential figures of nineteenth century German anthropology
were Adolf Bastian (1826–1905), who established anthropology as an academic
discipline in Germany, and Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), the leading pathologist
and physical anthropologist at the time. Intellectually, they dominated the
main institutional sites and ideological tendencies of German anthropology.
They maintained that no one race or people was superior to any other and
that humanity was based on psychic and physical unity (Evans 2003: 200).
With Waitz, Bastian and Virchow ensured that the emerging discipline of
anthropology in Germany would be based on the presumption of monogenesis
(Streck 2001: 503; Massin 1996: 87).
These representatives of nineteenth century anthropology were opponents of
race theory, the attempt to assert the primacy of a biologically defined ‘race’ in
determining the shape of social and historical process. They publicly opposed
the biological determinism of social Darwinism or evolutionism.6 In 1880, for
5 China, India and other literate societies were often also included.
6 There are different evolutionist positions: not all of them are based on biological determinism and
polygyny. Sociocultural evolutionism, which can be understood as a proto-theory for comparison, has to be
distinguished from Darwinian based evolutionism.
61
The Aranda’s Pepa
example, as the deputy of the Progressive Party in the Reichstag, Virchow

rejected any kind of racism and challenged Bismarck himself, asking him to
explain his position on anti-Semitism (Massin 1996: 89).
Virchow was the most influential and powerful physical anthropologist of
nineteenth century German anthropology. He and the majority of his colleagues
(Ranke, von Luschen, Kollmann) believed in the unity of the human species
and argued that there was no physical evidence that one race was superior to
another. Virchow’s declared empiricism led him to regard Darwin’s biologically-
based evolutionist hypotheses as unproven (Massin 1996: 83). He also criticised
social-cultural theorising based on biological determinism, pioneered by
Herbert Spencer (Stocking 1987: 134–136, 141–142). Virchow made sure that
no race theorist ever published a single line in any of the reputable German
anthropological journals which he controlled directly or indirectly with Bastian
and Ranke (Massin 1996: 93).
Bastian delineated and differentiated the field of anthropology/ethnology from
a range of other disciplines. He held the first academic position in German
anthropology and championed empirical observation (Koepping 1983: 3, 28).
He was the founder of the Royal Museum for Ethnology in Berlin in 1886 and
its director until his death in 1905.7 He was also instrumental in establishing
the Berlin Society for Anthropology, along with its journal, Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie, which became the most prominent German journal in the field
(Adams 1998: 291; Penny 2002: 19).8 To document the diversity of human life,
Bastian spent 25 years recording ethnographic data and collecting material
culture in the Americas, Asia, Australia and Africa as well as in Europe (von den
Steinen 1905: 242). The end result was an oeuvre of unmanageable proportions.
Bastian’s salvage anthropology was driven by the conviction that most other
cultures would vanish in the confrontation with the imperial European powers.
He put great emphasis on the collection of material culture, because in his
view artefacts were the embodiment of ideas and the tangible expression of the
diversity of humanity (Koepping 1983: 107). Material culture, filtered through
European eyes and understanding, was seen as rich in historical significance
and of great empirical value that went beyond the limitations of written
records (Penny 2002: 26). Bastian’s museum project initiated a collection frenzy
that took hold of German anthropologists and ethnographers. Through the
incredible mass of material culture accumulated from overseas, it was believed
that humanity could be represented in museum spaces. These ethnographic
museums were meant to be well-ordered institutions, and were intended to
function as laboratories for the comparative analysis of human artefacts. It was
7 Felix von Luschan succeeded Bastian as the museum’s director in Berlin (Lally 2002: 77).
8 From Bastian and Virchow, Boas learned that intellectual influence had to be combined with institutional power.
62
thought that they would be the foundation of an inductive study of mankind,

leading to fundamental truths about human character and development (Penny
1998: 159). Soon, however, museums were overflowing with material, collections
became disorganised, and personnel unable to realise Bastian’s and others’ initial
goals (Penny 2002).
The institutional achievements and legacy of Bastian are more obvious than
his theoretical and intellectual influence. Although he produced a vast amount
of ethnographic data and many publications, his main theoretical framework
circled around the attempt to explain the unity of mankind (von den Steinen
1905; Ankermann 1926). At the heart of his theoretical approach lay three main
elements: Elementargedanken (‘elementary ideas’ or ‘thoughts’), Völkergedanke
(folk thought or idea) and geographical province (Ankermann 1926: 223, 226;
Koepping 1983; Penny 2002: 22–23). Bastian believed that human nature was
uniform around the globe despite its ostensible diversity. This unity was captured
in elementary forms of thought. These elementary ideas or thoughts, Bastian
argued, were common to all human beings due to the psychic unity of mankind:
‘Elementargedanken were thus hidden behind humanity’s cultural diversity – a
diversity that was historically and geographically contingent. Understanding
the unique context in which each culture took shape, Bastian stressed, was thus
critical for gaining insight into the universal character of human being’ (Penny
2002: 22). However, elementary ideas materialised in the form of unique folk
thoughts (Völkergedanken) among each cultural group. These were the product
of environment and the interactions between a particular people. The third
element of Bastian’s theory was the ‘geographical province’ in which a certain
Völkergedanke was at home. Thus, there are as many Völkergedanken as there are
geographical provinces (Ankermann 1926: 226).
In sum, every Völkergedanke is based on the same elementary thoughts, common
to all people. Each Völkergedanke though is also dependent on an environment
including social practices in concert with what Bastian called a ‘geographical
province’. Previously Herder, and later German diffusionists understood these
factors as historical circumstance and immediate context. It was largely Bastian’s
interest in identifying these particular contexts in time and space that led
Fritz Graebner to credit him with bringing indigenous peoples into history
(Penny 2002: 22), although Gustav Klemm had already attributed history to
non-European peoples in the first part of the nineteenth century (Rödiger 2001;
Gingrich 2005: 79). However, Bastian’s influence was certainly significant.
Bastian’s view of humankind was closely related to Herder’s. His Völkergedanke
approximates Herder’s Volksgeist and Wilhelm von Humboldt’s national character
or Weltanschauung. From Herder, Bastian also inherited the ‘seminal notion’ of
language. These ideas were influential in his formulation of Völkergedanke (folk
idea) or the collective representation(s) of a particular ethnic group (Koepping
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The Aranda’s Pepa
1983: 55). He also underlined the issue of ethnography, of recording cultural

particularity. This served to stress his view that there is no inherent difference
between the thought of primitive and modern men:
The propensity is the same in both cases, and the elements are the same.
The results of these thought processes, in the form of folk ideas or
worldview, are diverse, but the formative and structural principles are
the same. Bastian emphatically denied the superiority of the European
value system or the possibility of measuring one against the other.
(Koepping 1983: 54)
Bastian used the notion of psychic unity to explain some of the ‘extraordinary
similarities’ that cultural groups could display even though geographically
they were distant from each other. Because he believed that cultures evolved
in similar ways due to the nature and workings of the human mind, he argued
that independent invention rather than diffusion or direct cultural contact
should explain similarity. This seemed the preferable path to positing forms
of contact or influence where there was no proven historical record (Adams
1998: 293). Bastian’s emphasis on the psychic unity of mankind or the primacy
of collective consciousness as the moving principle for endogenous growth led
to a controversy between advocates of independent invention and advocates of
diffusion (Koepping 1983: 60). Bastian’s main opponent was Friedrich Ratzel, a
theoretical geographer and diffusionist.
Bastian’s anthropology also stood in contrast with trans-Atlantic and Continental
anthropology influenced by Lewis Henry Morgan, Herbert Spencer and E.B.
Tylor, although he eschewed social evolutionism and as well as progressivism.
In German anthropological circles a more general reaction against social
Darwinism had emerged. Bastian, Waitz and Virchow opposed the biological
presumptions in social Darwinism. These German anthropologists insisted that
the development of a people’s culture was something that should be understood
with reference to their own particular history and environment. Moreover, the
study of these specificities should be historically grounded.
Despite his admiration for Darwin’s travels, Bastian found Ernest Haeckel’s
popularisation of Darwin’s thought especially offensive (Penny 2002: 21;
Streck 2006). Bastian even rejected reflection on the origin of man, maintaining
that were the issue to be tackled, this could only occur following exhaustive
empirical research and the considered use of induction. The prefix ‘Ur-’ was
highly suspect to him (Petermann 2004: 535). Thus, he and most of his colleagues
steered away from Darwinian theorising and distanced themselves from the race
debate (Massin 1996). Bastian hoped, rather, to use extensive empirical research
to the end of formulating uniform principles for the mental creations of mankind
(Koepping 1983: 78). At the same time he warned explicitly of simplification and
64
generalisation resulting from notions of biological determinism in accounts of

socio-cultural evolutionism. He drew on induction and empirical observation to
avoid the classification of data according to predetermined categories, regarding
schemes of classification as works in progress rather than definite models (Penny
2003: 93).
Bastian took human distribution across the earth as a given of natural life
(Ankermann 1926: 226). He did not pursue an explanation of how this
distribution occurred or of its particular features. This would be the task of the
German diffusionist school.
Friedrich Ratzel and Fritz Graebner: German

diffusionism
German diffusionism acquired its impetus from Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), a
German theoretical geographer. He was interested in the relationship between
humans and their immediate environment. In 1882 Ratzel published his major
work, Anthropo-Geographie. It was an attempt to formulate a general theory of
the human geography that Alexander von Humboldt had envisioned, and to
provide a comprehensive account of the world’s various histories of the type
that Bastian had in mind (Müller 1993: 210; Petermann 2004: 538). Ratzel tried
to develop an approach in which the materials collected could be deployed
to explain the multiplicity of humanity in terms of migration and diffusion
across the globe (Barnard 2000: 50). He opposed Bastian’s idea of independent
invention, the explanation of similarities in terms of a psychic unity. Ratzel
was not prepared to place that much weight on a shared human creativity.
Rather, he argued that cultural similarities were due to diffusion through
migration, while differences could be explained with reference to particular
environments. Ratzel was peripheral to the dominant anthropological circle and
sought ways to have an impact on the establishment in Berlin. Therefore he
initially adopted Darwin’s idea of natural selection. It seemed to have at least in
part an environmental reference in its account of the diversity of species (Smith
1991: 141). However, later he abandoned this position due to the biological
determinism and progressivism involved in social Darwinism. Ultimately
he believed that mankind was a homogenetic species influenced by history
(Petermann 2004: 542).
Ratzel proposed that the object of ethnological study should be historical. It
should trace the movements of people and cultural traits across the earth’s
surface. The patterns of these past movements should be linked with similar
phenomena in the present in order to predict the future (Smith 1991: 142). In
this fashion, Ratzel thought, one might begin to understand origins as well
65
The Aranda’s Pepa
(Petermann 2004: 540–541). To study the processes of change in society and

culture, the (early) histories of specific peoples had to be investigated and from
this research historical laws inferred (Smith 1991: 145). In pursuit of his ideas,
Ratzel too emphasised detailed empirical research.
Ratzel’s theory was developed into an elaborate Kulturkreislehre (theory of
culture circles) by German diffusionists who took up his objectives. Initially Leo
Frobenius (1873–1938) extended Ratzel’s ideas (Barnard 2000: 50; Müller 1993:
203–204). It was only in the 1920s, however, that Frobenius became influential
when he returned from his African adventures to formulate his Paideuma-
Theory and to found his institution for Kultur-Morphologie.9
Fritz Graebner (1877–1934) and Pater Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) elaborated
on Frobenius’ initial theory. Frobenius suggested that the diffusion of ideas
occured in successive waves from a few fixed points of special cultural creativity.
This position set itself against social Darwinian views because it built on
Ratzel’s and Bastian’s thought. It used ideas of diffusion and human creativity
in concert. At the turn of the century, the Kulturkreislehre was emerging as
the main anthropological theory in Germany. It found its footing in November
1904 when Graebner and Ankermann presented ground-breaking papers at a
meeting of the Berlin Anthropological Society. Subsequently, the papers were
published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. This meeting is often said to be the
birth place of the Kulturhistorische Methode, although only in the 1910s did the
first major works appear (Hahn 2001: 137).
In the first decade of the twentieth century most theorising on the Kulturkreise
and -schichten (culture circles and -layers) was undertaken in private letters or at
anthropological gatherings. The leading theorists of the new school, Graebner
and Schmidt, were still refining their ideas (Lowie 1937: 177), and others who
would publish later on the subject were developing their methodological
approaches or collecting data and material culture in the field. Only occasionally
short contributions – works in progress – appeared in anthropological journals
such as Globus, Petermann’s Mitteilungen, Anthropos or Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.
Work on migration waves and subsequent cultural ‘layering’ as well as culture
circles took initially as its focus material culture, religion and marriage rules.
Language appeared later in these studies, because comprehensive language
studies barely existed, especially for Australia. Graebner focused on material
culture in Oceania, including Australia; across the world he only compared
cultures that seemed to be closely historically related.
9 On Frobenius see Heinrich 1998 and Petermann 2004.

66
The first brief linguistic contribution on Australian language to support the

Kulturkreislehre was written by Pater W. Schmidt in 1908.10 He had began
his comparative study of Oceanic languages in 1899. His research seemed to
indicate diffusion of language through Oceania that was carried by waves of
migration. Comparative linguistics at the time was accustomed to relating
languages historically and then locating their speakers on time-lines of cultural
development. The comparison and classification of language was believed to
give insight into ethnic origins, migrations and prehistory (Hoenigswald 1974:
348). Interestingly, Schmidt had been in contact with Carl Strehlow’s mentor,
von Leonhardi, but not with Strehlow himself. Based on his linguistic evidence
Schmidt declared, that the Aranda were not ‘primitive’11 and their culture was not
an inferior early form as social Darwinists of the British Isles wanted to see them.
For Schmidt as well as Graebner and Foy,12 the population of Australia was not
homogeneous, but consisted of a number of layers of peoples and cultures who
had migrated and partially amalgamated. Graebner (1905, 1911) speculated
that cultures emerged from different places of origin and spread in phases over
the globe. Graebner was proposing three layers.13 His work was not based on
empirical observation and he did not outline the limitations of his sources.
Paradoxically he advocated meticulous and critical research and empirisim. His
view on Australia was that the oldest layer of culture had come from Tasmania
and then had spread across the entire continent. Von Leonhardi, who was
abreast of all emerging theories in anthropology, communicated to Strehlow
that it was believed that at least two further layers of culture had spread over
this Tasmanite layer and had brought new cultural elements like totemism, the
boomerang and the spear thrower to mainland Australia.14 Schmidt (1908b:
869) suggested that a fourth layer originated in New Guinea that had covered
large parts of Northern Australia including areas where Aranda was spoken.
Schmidt believed that he had found evidence for this fourth layer in his study
of language.
One obvious trait of a culture circle was language or a language group that
helped to distinguish one circle from another, or suggested overlay and
mixing. Language presented itself as a central medium for tracing a people’s
historical development and cultural connections. However, these directions in
anthropological thought were in their infancy (Kluckhohn 1936). The theory
of the emerging Kulturkreislehre was still very hypothetical and most details
10 The first major work on the Kulturkreislehre and linguistics was Pater Schmidt’s Die Gliederung der
Australischen Sprachen published between 1912 and 1918 in his journal Anthropos, which he used scrupulously
as his vehicle during his long academic life.
11 Schmidt (1908b: 866–901).
12 Dr. W. Foy was the director of the Cologne Ethnological Museum and Graebner’s editor.
67
The Aranda’s Pepa
quite unclear at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Where
Australia was concerned, for instance, the source of the two layers and waves
of migration thought to overlay the Tasmanite stratum remained something of a
mystery.15 It was not even clear what particular features or ‘traits’ needed to be
present in a culture circle to define it (Kluckhohn 1936: 138–139). This and other
problems remained unresolved although Schmidt (1911: 1013) wrote in 1911
that his language studies corroborated Graebner’s views on the composition and
distribution of Oceanic culture circles. In general terms, diffusionism described
some apparent patterns rather than presenting a coherent theory (Smith
1991: 151). The approaches of the main theorists of the Kulturkreislehre, like
Ankermann, Graebner, Schmidt, Frobenius, Foy, Thomas and von Leonhardi
were too diverse.
In 1911 Graebner’s classic Methode der Ethnologie was published, as well as
Boas’ seminal works The Mind of Primitive Man and his introduction to the
Handbook of American Indian Languages. These works were milestones in the
history of anthropology. They synthesised important aspects of an historical
and language-based approach to research in the first decade of the twentieth
century. This was also the year in which W.H.R. Rivers declared his conversion
to diffusionism, though his writing was not yet directed towards a critique of
the social evolutionism of his time (Langham 1981: 118–121). Later Rivers would
make the first serious attack on nineteenth century evolutionism in England,
leading rapidly to the emergence of English functionalism (Langness 1975: 51).
Graebner’s diffusionism was based on deduction and suggested a general history
of humankind. Notwithstanding his own recommendations, his work was not
empirically grounded. In his crisp review of Graebner’s work, Boas pointed this
deficency out and stated that concepts of diffusion and cultural transmission
could not be applied to distances that spanned continents (Boas 1940: 295–304).
Shortly after the publication of his book, on the eve of World War I, Graebner set
sail for fieldwork in Australia, but on arrival he was interned in an Australian war
camp (Petermann 2004). Although Graebner would be forgotten after the war in
the rising tide of Nazism,16 his futile trip to Australia into Strehlow’s proximity
draws attention to the intellectual milieu in which Carl Strehlow worked.
Strehlow in the mission and Boas in the academy

An overview of nineteenth century developments in German anthropology
almost immediately allows Carl Strehlow’s magnum opus to fall into place. No
anthropological theorist himself, he was kept to the empirical task by his editor

16 Only surviving in P.W. Schmidt’s work.
68
Baron von Leonhardi’s constant queries, Strehlow’s work makes sense within
the context of his German predecessors and particularly his contemporary,
Boas, who, unlike Strehlow, became a professional in the academy in the United
States.
In the first instance, Strehlow’s respect for Aranda and Loritja people, his certainty
that their intellects equalled his own, was in accord both with his theological
training and with the presumptions of German historical particularism. Although
a clear formulation of a plural culture concept would await the emergence of
Boasian anthropology in the United States, Strehlow showed respect for another
technologically limited culture and carried the nascent assumption of plural
cultures across the globe; the same nascent concept that resided in the work
of Herder, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Bastian. Consistent with this position,
Strehlow simply assumed a homogenetic humankind. Certainly, his theology
promoted the view, also endorsed by Humboldt, that any culture and language
could express any conceivable idea. Although he laboured in his task of
Christian conversion, Strehlow reported high god beliefs among the Aranda
and Loritja. In an ironic way perhaps, and one that Spencer would not have
understood, this aspect of Strehlow’s ethnography reflected his commitment to
plural cultures. Central Australian cultures like European ones were, in his view,
open to the full range of human possibility. Both Herder and Strehlow used a
theory of plenitude to explain a multiplicity of cultures rather than polygenetic
theory. Boas would later begin the task of supplying this theory of plenitude
with a basis in symbolic imagination rather than theology. Contemporaneous
multiplicity would be explained not by spurious biology, or appeals to God’s
creation, but rather in terms of the multiple forms of representation that human
beings can create – mainly through language.
Noting the impact that Herder had on the Grimm brothers, and the central role
of studies in myth and language in an evolving German tradition, Strehlow’s
initial focus is also not surprising. He collected assiduously and carefully
translated numerous examples of Aranda and Loritja myth and song. He tried
to classify this material according to the Grimms’ categories – Mythen, Sagen
und Märchen (myths, legends and fairy-tales). Clearly inadequate to the task
of a modern anthropological interpretation of myth, it nevertheless shows
Strehlow’s engagement with a genre of nineteenth century German thought
that saw the key to a culture in oral text. Almost without reflection perhaps,
Strehlow sought to record phenomena that would provide most ready access to
a Volkgeist (Herder) or a Weltanschauung (Humboldt). The fact that this German
tradition saw language study as a sine qua non of the empirical focus that they
recommended, may possibly explain the role that Strehlow’s Aranda and Loritja
dictionary had in his own research. This extraordinary compilation that grew
to vast proportions only to remain unpublished was perhaps evidence of the
69
The Aranda’s Pepa
missionary’s serious scientific intent. Consistent with both the German and
Lutheran humanistic tradition from which he came, this compilation of language
would be the ultimate and definitive route to central Australian cultures.
Finally, Herder’s view that the greatest misfortune for a people would be to
lose their language also throws interesting light on Strehlow’s German-to-
Western Aranda translations. His initial translation of the bible was an unusual
achievement. Also interesting though, was his Aranda primer written for school
children. Pepa Aragulinja: Aranda Katjirberaka was published posthumously in
1928. It contained the elements of Aranda literacy along with a small collection
of bible stories and Lutheran hymns in Western Aranda.17 Strehlow quite
literally grasped Aranda culture in the act of translation. There could be no
greater testimony to the importance of language study than his pioneering work.
There is little evidence in Strehlow’s work of great engagement with Graebner’s
and Schmidt’s ideas about multiple cultural layering. However, Wilhelm
Schmidt’s exchange of letters with von Leonhardi brought Strehlow into
contact with diffusionist thought. Like Boas, Strehlow was interested in small-
scale regional diffusion. It is possible that he chose to record both Aranda and
Loritja myth noting differences in theme engendered by natural environment
under the influence of the German diffusionists. His observations on geography
also seem to recall Ratzel, and make an interesting link with T.G.H. Strehlow’s
observations on environment and social structure in different regions of arid
Australia (Strehlow 1965). Carl Strehlow certainly had a sense of regional cultures.
It is notable that as W.H.R. Rivers moved through diffusionism and towards
functionalism in his studies of kinship terminology, Strehlow was developing a
sense of culture area studies that had a resonance both with Graebner and Boas.
Strehlow also collected material culture, in which he may have been responding
indirectly to the priorities set by Bastian which seem to have reached every
corner of the globe. Governed by their own tenets of empiricism, there was
undoubtedly a view that in some sense or other the material object carried truth
– something eternally retrievable for further research and also the counterpoint
to a central focus on language.
Strehlow’s major text was in one sense the product of a lonely missionary
scholar in remote Australia. Placed in the intellectual tradition from which both
Strehlow and his mentor came, however, his magnum opus mirrors in a striking
way the anthropological concerns in the Germany of his time.
Thus, another way in which to position Carl Strehlow’s intellectual endeavours is
to juxtapose them with his contemporary, Franz Boas (1858–1942). Boas migrated
from Germany to the United States and would become the founder of North
17 The work was published by the Finke River Mission in Adelaide with the co-operation of Auricht’s
Printing Office, Tanunda, South Australia.
70
American cultural anthropology. Initially he studied physics and geography,

taking his doctorate in 1881 from the Kiel University in Germany. He began to
travel between Germany and the United States, developing a lifelong interest in
west coast Native American groups and especially in the Indian groups of British
Columbia. By 1886, Boas had an appointment in geography at the University of
Berlin and maintained an association with Bastian’s Museum of Ethnology. His
later interests in museums, collecting and in the human unconscious in culture
likely stemmed from this association. Silverman writes that Boas ‘transposed
the notions of Bastian and Rudolph Virchow to his treatment of culture in the
American context’ (Silverman 2005: 260). In 1892, Boas was instrumental in
the founding of Chicago’s famous Field Museum and from there moved on to
the Museum of Natural History in New York (Bohansan and Glazer 1988: 82).
At this time, he also delivered lectures at Columbia University. This would be a
lifelong association; a base from which Boas would train numerous prominent
anthropologists including Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Magaret Mead and
Edward Sapir. Carl Strehlow’s affinities both with a nineteenth century German
tradition, and with the anthropology that Boas would develop are clear.
The following account focuses on three central areas: Boas’ field-based anti-
evolutionism, his focus on language as a key to culture and, finally, his use of
culture-area studies, a refined and empirically focused diffusionism.
Although this discussion juxtaposes Strehlow’s immersion in the field to
Boas’ engagement with the academy, Boas was also an assiduous fieldworker.
The injunctions of Bastian, Graebner and others to a disciplined empiricism
were realised in Boas’ professional practice. As Stocking proposes, Boas was
the person who, in the United States, founded a modern fieldwork discipline.
He was deeply rooted ‘in the intellectual traditions of his homeland’ (Stocking
2001: 26) and transformed ‘a museum and government-based inquiry into an
academic discipline in which “culture” replaced “evolution” as a dominant
paradigm’ (Stocking 2001: 1). Boas’ anthropology was well informed by his
predecessors in the German tradition. The cosmographic approach of Alexander
von Humboldt is evident in his writings as well as Wilhelm von Humboldt’s
language project (Boas 1940: 639–647; Bunzl 1996). He had a good understanding
of Herder, Kant and other classic German thinkers through his education at a
German gymnasium (Liss 1996: 155–184; Cole 1999: 280). Like his colleagues
of the Kulturkreislehre, he did not believe in racial or biological determinism or
linear development of societies in which peoples could be arranged according
to evolutionistic sequences.
During his sojourn in Berlin, Boas also formed a lifelong friendship with
Virchow. From him Boas learned quantitative method and also became an
expert in physical anthropology amassing anthropometric data to prove that
no grounds existed to discriminate against any group of people on the basis
71
The Aranda’s Pepa
of physical difference (Boas 1940; Petermann 2004; Synnott and Howes 1992:
154). In his work he approached the question of races from diverse angles, each
time reaching the conclusion that there was no conclusive evidence regarding
physical traits to establish a diversity of race. Boas found that ‘differences were
not great enough to allow living men to be placed on different evolutionary
stages’ (Stocking 1968: 220).
Empiricism and quantitative method initially determined his approaches to the
new discipline. However, the fieldwork experience itself seems to have been
the crucial one for Boas. According to Lévi-Strauss, he ‘became aware of his
anthropological vocation during the course of his first field work, as a result
of a flash of insight into the originality, uniqueness, and spontaneity of social
life in each human group’. Thus, while Boas sought to apply to the subjective
world the ‘rigorous methodology that he had learned in the natural sciences,
he recognized the infinite variety of historical processes which shapes [the
subjective] in each case’ (Lévi-Strauss 1963: 8). As Boas proceeded in his work,
language and history became increasingly important in his interpretation
of human multiplicity. In the late 1880s, Boas wrote that his method was to
inquire into the peculiarities of single tribes through a thorough comparison
of language, customs, and folklore. His historical analyses were focused on
issues of inheritance and borrowing. In his view, it was crucial to evaluate and
distinguish what was original and what was borrowed in customs and folklore as
well as in language (Stocking 1968: 206). Cultures were the product of numerous
elements coming together from a range of factors in a region. Therefore, they
could never be a simple matter of linear progression from one stage to the next.
Because his work was empirical with a small area focus, Boas was led to the
view that each culture has its own ‘logic’, and its own particularity. Ultimately,
his view was relativistic and a product of the tradition from which he came.
In an interesting comment, that bears on Carl Strehlow’s work as well, Darnell
remarks that ‘Boas’ emphasis on descriptive ethnology in a historical context,
later criticized as atheoretical, was itself part of a consistent methodology
based on an explicit theoretical commitment’ (Darnell 1998: 290). For example,
in his descriptive work on Primitive Art published in 1927, Boas weaves the
repudiation of speculative theory regarding origins into his comments on
style:
I doubt very much that it will ever be possible to give a satisfactory
explanation of the origin of these styles, just as little we can discover
all the psychological and historical conditions that determine the
development of language, social structure, mythology or religion. All
these are so exceedingly complex in their growth that even at best we
can do no more than hope to unravel some of the threads that are woven
72
into the present fabric and determine some of the lines of behaviour that
may help us to realize what is happening in the minds of the people.
(Boas [1927] 1955: 155)
This developing fieldwork method fed into Boas’ rejection of nineteenth
century evolutionism and its notions of sequenced developmental stages. Boas
criticised the premature classification of superficially similar phenomena that
may be the product of quite different regional histories (Stocking 1968: 205).
It was these concerns that produced one of his most famous essays, written in
1896, The Limitations of the Comparative Method in Anthropology (Boas 1940:
270–280). By ‘comparative method’ he meant ‘the specific procedures followed
by the evolutionists’ (Silverman 2005: 261). In this essay he denounced the
evolutionary assumptions that dominated the English-speaking world. By
noting that ostensibly similar phenomena are not always due to the same cause,
Boas was undermining the approach of independent invention and evolutionary
sequencing.18 In this famous article, a nascent sense of the modern culture
concept began to emerge. In criticising ‘the comparative method’ as it was
understood within evolutionism, Boas was pointing not simply to particularism
but also to contextual specification; to the variable meaning or significance of a
thing or practice within varying historical contexts (Sahlins 1976: 67; Bohansen
and Glazer 1988: 84). He argued that the same phenomenon, a mask for example,
does not always have the same meaning and may well have developed out of
very different contexts (Sahlins 1976: 68).
According to Stocking, ‘what was actually at issue was not simply the general
evolution of culture but the extrapolation of evolutionary stages in every area of
cultural life – the presumed sequences of art forms, of marriage forms, of stages
in the development of myth, religion, and so forth’ (1968: 211). Boas focused
on the fundamental historicity of cultural phenomena, and on the ability of
cultures to assimilate and also innovate with newly acquired material. In this he
stood in marked contrast to the evolutionists who tried to arrange all peoples of
the world in stages of a linear development according to predictable laws with a
predictable outcome. Once again, the very different views that Baldwin Spencer
and Carl Strehlow held on Aranda people conform with this divergence. Where
Spencer saw inevitable decline, Strehlow as missionary and nascent historicist,
saw innovation and a future.
Boas’ critique of evolutionism rested on his German historical particularism;
on an appreciation of the historically conditioned plurality of human cultures.
This position also allowed him to engage other ideas concerning notions of
Volksgeist and, most importantly, the centrality of language in culture. Language
18 At the basis of the critique of independent invention were his view of causality and classification (see
Stocking 2001).
73
The Aranda’s Pepa
was central in Boas’ work for a number of reasons. Like other early German
anthropologists, he believed that language was something that belonged to
every human group. There were no inferior languages. He saw language as one
of the routes to unravelling the history of indigenous peoples and traditional
worldviews, because ‘the history of language reflects the history of culture’ (Boas
1940: 631). In the introduction to his Handbook of American Indian Languages
(1911), Boas stated clearly that it was paramount for the student of American
Indian cultures to know the language of the people studied, to be able to grasp
the essence of that particular culture (see also Stocking 2001: 72), although he
acknowledged that ‘the practical difficulties in the way of acquiring languages
are almost insuperable’:
Nevertheless, we must insist that a command of the language is an
indispensable means of obtaining accurate and thorough knowledge,
because much information can be gained by listening to conversations of
the natives and by taking part in their daily life, which, to the observer
who has no command of the language, will remain entirely inaccessible.
(Boas 1911: 60)
In view of these remarks, one cannot but summon the image of Carl Strehlow’s
more than 20 years in ‘the field’. In addition, Boas argued that text collection in
original languages was essential for ethnography and a foundation for further
research. Boas wrote that ‘no translation can possibly be considered as an
adequate substitute for the original’ because:
The form of rhythm, the treatment of the language, the adjustment of
text to music, the imagery, the use of metaphors, and all the numerous
problems involved in any thorough investigation of the style of poetry,
can be interpreted only by the investigator who has equal command of
the ethnographical traits of the tribe and of their language. (Boas 1911: 62)
Language knowledge was the pre-condition for meaningful ethnographical
research, but at the same time language was also in itself an ethnological
phenomenon (Boas 1911: 63). Just as language mirrors a culture, ‘the peculiar
characteristics of languages are clearly reflected in the views and customs of the
peoples of the world’ (Boas 1911: 73).
Boas was particularly interested in folklore, meaning the body of customs and
traditions of a society that were largely stored in mythology, and thereby in
the language and texts of a people. It was this complex that determined culture
rather than biology or race. Language and mythology were possible sources of
data on migrations. They revealed customs which were often hidden or extinct
and provided a way to trace the history of a people. Most important though,
the folklore of a people reflected their Volksgeist or Weltanschauung (Stocking
74
1968: 223). The mythology of a people provided the best material for evaluating
beliefs and practice as well as the ethical and aesthetical values of a culture.
Folklore and mythology were the key to a people’s particularity.
Text or oral literature (myths and tales as well as related traditional laws and
customs) were therefore immensely important to Boas. Developing his argument
against racially-based mental differences, Boas suggested that the minds of
humans shared similar powers of abstraction, inhibition and choice. Their
particular manifestation, however, was shaped by the body of custom and
traditional material that was transmitted from one generation to the next. Much
of this was unconscious, like the hidden complex morphological or grammatical
categories and structures of language. The behaviour of all humans was the
result of a body of habitual behavioural patterns of the particular culture in
which they live (Stocking 1968: 220–222).
Lévi-Strauss wrote that Boas must be given credit for defining more lucidly
than ever before the unconscious nature of cultural phenomena. By comparing
cultural phenomena to language in this regard, Boas anticipated both the
subsequent development of linguistic theory and a future for anthropology. He
showed that the structure of a language remains unknown to the speaker until
the introduction of scientific grammar (Lévi-Strauss 1963: 19). Boas wrote:
It would seem that the essential difference between linguistic phenomena
and other ethnological phenomena is, that the linguistic classifications
never rise to the consciousness, while in other ethnological phenomena,
although the same unconscious origin prevails, these often rise into
consciousness, and thus give rise to secondary reasoning and to
reinterpretation. (Boas 1911: 67)
These were Boas’ primary and secondary rationalisations that pointed to the
taken-for-granted in culture and juxtaposed it to conscious elaborations of
meaning; different dimensions of culture with different degrees of stability (see
also Ogden and Richards 1946).
Boas accepted diffusion but not the grand patterns of Graebner’s approach
(Adams 1998: 294). In Boas’ view, diffusionist accounts were useful only when
applied to small areas where empirical research was possible and allowed
comparison. Only detailed studies of phenomena would be able to shed light on
how cultures evolved through time. The thorough study of local phenomena in
a well-defined, small geographical area would bring the histories of individual
cultures alive. Boas offered a critique of generalising approaches in his essay,
‘Review of Graebner, “Methode der Ethnologie”’ which he included in Race,
75
The Aranda’s Pepa
Language and Culture (Boas 1940: 295–304). He emphatically rejected Graebner’s

method because, ultimately, Graebner fell back on generalised notions of
historical development. Boas concluded:
Thus it seems to me that the methods of Mr Graebner are subject to the
same strictures as those of the other schools, and the “Ferninterpretation”
(remote interpretation), “Kulturkreise” and “Kulturschichten” must be
considered as no less hypothetical that the “Stufenbau” of Breysig or
the sequences of Lamprecht (Boas 1940: 303).
Boas’ views on diffusionism were influenced by his studies of myth. He had
gained a detailed sense of the ways in which culture contact within a region
could result in forms of borrowing that re-shaped myth (Darnell 1998: 279).
Therefore, in Boas’ view, it is never easy to arrive at origins, to discern how
‘foreign material [is] taken up by a people and modified by pre-existing ideas
and customs’ (cited in Stocking 1968: 207). Myths were the result of complex
historical growth combining elements from various sources, thus a product
of diffusion and amalgamation. For Boas, human creativity was expressed in
the imaginative manipulation and reinterpretation of elements provided by a
tradition, or borrowed from proximate others (Stocking 1968: 226).
The Boasian style of analysis therefore stressed territorial contiguity and the
reshaping of traits within a limited historical area over time (Darnell 1998:
188). Comparison was only possible in a small area in which the elements
were comparable. Sometimes recent borrowing could not be distinguished
from a common origin, but neither ‘stages’ of development nor ‘layers’ of
culture had much explanatory value for Boas (see also Darnell 1998: 217). He
thought it very unlikely that whole culture blocs would travel over vast areas
virtually unchanged, which was the prevalent belief of German diffusionists
of the Kulturkreislehre. His diffusionism is sometimes termed, der verfeinerte
Diffusionismus, ‘the refined diffusionism’ (Szalay 1983: 33).
Boas’ position seems consistent with Strehlow’s approach to his research with
Western Aranda and Loritja people. It seems likely that the convergence in style
of these two transitional anthropologists in the German tradition came mainly
through a diffuse humanistic tradition, an interest in history and language, and
in a shared admiration for diligent empiricism. Strehlow, missionary in the field,
and Boas, doyen of the American academy, had a similar style.
Concluding remarks
In summary, nineteenth century German anthropology and ethnology was a
humanistic endeavour that tried to understand different peoples and cultures in
76
their own right without comparing them with others. As a result the theoretical
and ideological orientation of German anthropology was monogenetic, anti-
racist, particularist and historical (viz. focused on area studies and small-scale
diffusion). In the hands of scholars including Boas and Strehlow, this meant
that their ethnographic work was more often than not descriptive and did not
present explicit and developed general theoretical insights. Owing to his place
in the academy, Boas, however, drew out the implications of his position in
considerable detail and also provided his reasons for rejecting other positions.
German nineteenth century anthropologists challenged eighteenth century
progressivism that proposed a linear succession for humanity in time and space
from one stage of development to the next, culminating in enlightenment. They
were also opposed to nineteenth century evolutionistic thought that was based
on biological determinism and which arranged peoples on a scale of different
stages of mental and social development. Social Darwinism was seen as highly
speculative and hypothetical, based on vulgar forms of deduction. German
historical particularism also carried with it an emphasis on empirical research
which encouraged the study of language. Especially with Boas, language
rather than biology became the crucible of human difference. Thus, contrary
to common perception, nineteenth century German anthropology was anti-
racialist and monogenetic nearly to the eve of World War I. The majority of
German anthropologists rejected any kind of human difference based on race
and professed the unity of humankind. This was the diffuse formative milieu
in which both Boas, and Strehlow (guided by von Leonhardi), pursued their
respective works.
Carl Strehlow was conducting his research in the first decade of the twentieth
century, before Boas and Graebner published their seminal works in 1911.
Strehlow concluded his research in 1909 which means that his study of language
and myth was pursued in a ‘pre-modern anthropological’ framework phase
of modern anthropology – at a time when Boas was still trying to detail his
position. Carl Strehlow could not have read Boas’ Handbook of American Indian
Languages, for instance, prior to the publication of his own work. Strehlow
shared with Boas and his circle, the nineteenth century German tradition: a
commitment to empirical research, a strong focus on language and myth and an
interest in small-scale diffusion as well as an aversion to evolutionism involving
biological determinism. This is the intellectual milieu into which Strehlow’s Die
Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien fits. Both Boas and Strehlow
were drawn to language and myth, and produced dense records of field material.
Strehlow’s Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien is descriptive
ethnography that, in Sahlins’ terms, allowed indigenous Australians to ‘speak
for themselves’ (Sahlins 1976: 76). With this in mind, Strehlow was almost
certainly ‘interested in ethnography as an end in itself’ (Adams 1998: 295).
77
The Aranda’s Pepa
Nevertheless, it seems that Strehlow, and his German contemporaries, had a

good sense of the cultural multiplicity that would be the focal interest of a
modern, professional anthropology. The making of a ‘plural culture concept’ is
foreshadowed throughout the German tradition. The plural of the term culture
appears in North America with regularity only in the first generation of Boas’
students around 1910 (Stocking 1968: 203). Boas did not arrive at the point where
he could finally show, despite his massive detailed research on the particularity
of individual cultures, patterns and structures that allowed a society/culture
consistency over time. Boas did not go beyond the plural of culture; patterns
and structures of cultures would be left to his students. Kroeber would develop
a concept of the superorganic, Ruth Benedict would write Patterns of Culture
and Lévi-Strauss would tackle structures of the unconscious, for example. Boas’
programme exceeded a lifetime, like the Humboldts or Bastian, he would not be
able to conclude his project.
Surveying the conceptual genealogy of nineteenth century anthropology, it seems
that Herder’s Volksgeist, Humboldt’s national character and Weltanschauung,
and Bastian’s Völkergedanken are only variations on a theme that echoes Herder’s
concept of Humanität and his idea of cultural diversity and pluralism.
The theology of Carl Strehlow finds a curious precedent in Herder’s thought.
Darcy observed, that Herder had adopted the Platonist concept of the Great
Chain of Being, ‘an imaginary link starting with God and descending through
the angels to man and onto the animal world’ (Darcy 1987: 7). In fact, Darcy
writes:
Herder expanded the chain to include a “chain of cultivation”.
Humankind became a differentiated totality of cultures all equally
attached to the Godhead. The potential in such a philosophical system is
clear: once the links to the Godhead were removed, Herder’s intellectual
system would become simply an apprehension of the multiplicity of
human cultures. (Darcy 1987: 10)
Boas was ensconced in the academy while Strehlow remained in the church.
Both, however, were grounded in the German tradition: a unique combination
of universalism and particularism with the desire for empirical research and the
acceptance of human diversity.
78
III. From Missionary to Frontier Scholar
Carl Strehlow is principally known to us through remarks by his son, T.G.H.
Strehlow, in Journey to Horseshoe Bend (1969) and Songs of Central Australia
(1971), and recently also by his grandson, John Strehlow, in The Tale of Frieda
Keysser (2011). In Journey to Horseshoe Bend, T.G.H. Strehlow records the loyalty
of the Aranda and Loritja people to the ailing man and the apparent disloyalty
of the Finke River Mission board as it responded in a cumbersome way to his
father’s suffering. He also evokes the image of an overwhelming missionary-
father. The son’s ambivalence towards the father is readily apparent in the
former’s corpus. In Songs of Central Australia, T.G.H. Strehlow defends his
father intellectually from the glib but damaging critiques mainly of Baldwin
Spencer. His defence of his father involves revealing the limitations in Spencer
and Gillen’s consultations with their indigenous informants due to their lack of
language competence. Yet, he provides only a sparse sketch of his father either
as missionary or scholar-intellectual which is strangely devoid of emotion,
although he writes in his diary (Strehlow 1960: 155) that ‘Horseshoe Bend is
a place whose shadows I can never escape’ (cited in Cawthorn and Malbunka
2005: 71). The man who peers out with a calm intensity from his best-known
portrait, taken with his wife, Frieda Keysser, in 1895, remains a relative stranger.
Accounts by Phillip Scherer (1994), Walter Veit (1991, 1994, 2004a,b), Benedikt
Liebermeister (1998), Harriett Völker (2001), Paul Albrecht (2002, 2006), Maurice
Schild (2004a), Barry Hill (2002), and, Carl’s grandson, John Strehlow (2004a,b,
2011), provide additional biographical, historical as well as anecdotal detail, and
further aspects that were formative of Carl Strehlow’s scholarly development,
though they also oscillate between the two poles set by the son. These accounts
about Carl Strehlow as a missionary and scholar explain aspects of his potential,
but are still not sufficient to understand how a seemingly stern and at times self-
righteous man could have dealt in the same serious way with two very different
cosmologies and ontologies. In many ways his Lutheran world that he tried to
replicate in central Australia and the indigenous world of that place were and
still are so different, although the two worlds have since converged and produced
a particular kind of Aranda Lutherism and narratives (see Austin-Broos 1994).
Carl Strehlow’s grandson John Strehlow (2011) has written an epic biography
of the first part of his grandmother Frieda Keysser’s life naturally incorporating
a narrative on his grandfather. Trying to reappraise Carl Strehlow’s legacy,
he has largely followed in the vein of his father, T.G.H. Strehlow, defending
and justifying his grandfather against Spencer. Veit (2004b: 92–110) also
chose to write about this opposition. He contrasts Carl Strehlow’s ‘cultural
anthropology’ with Spencer’s ‘social anthropology’. While this opposition
79
The Aranda’s Pepa
indicates correctly that different ideologies motivated the two investigators,

it must be remembered that modern anthropology as ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ did
not exist yet at the beginning of the twentieth century. As already discussed,
different poles generated the tension: one was based on evolutionism and the
other on eighteenth and nineteenth century German philosophy and philology.
However, Veit (2004b) remarks correctly that Carl Strehlow’s work reflects a
tradition that derives from German humanistic thinking.
13. Frieda and Carl Strehlow, 1895.
80
Thus, Veit as well as Schild (2004a) have portrayed Carl Strehlow’s intellectual
background through his mission training at Neuendettelsau, trying to explain
how this education may have made it possible for a missionary to record the
cultures of other peoples in their own right. They write that Neuendettelsau
instilled in Strehlow a humanistic approach towards others and encouraged
language studies. Veit (2004a) indicates also that at the turn of the century
the discussion in Lutheran theological mission circles on how to accommodate
different religions became increasingly explicit.
In the following discussion, I pull the threads together and show how his
missionary and German intellectual heritage had elements in common. It was
not one or the other that made his ethnography possible, but underlying
common premises and the right encouragement from an unexpected source.
Three different experiences shaped the scholar that Carl Strehlow became: his
youthful education at the Neuendettelsau Mission Seminary and the German
Lutheran approach to language as it was reflected in the Australian practice of
Lutheran missionaries; his field encounters with indigenous Australians, the
Diyari, Aranda and Loritja; and finally, his correspondence with Moritz von
Leonhardi, his German editor. Each engagement brought something specific
to his work and mediated the final product in particular ways. Furthermore,
negative encounters, especially attitudes of some Lutheran superiors in
Australia to ethnographic work were countered by others – in this case, his keen
engagement with indigenous peoples and von Leonhardi’s seminal intellectual
influence, support and companionship.
Training at the Neuendettelsau Seminary under

Johannes Deinzer
The education at the Neuendettelsauer Missionsanstalt (Neuendettelsau Mission
Seminary), at the time run by Dr Johannes Deinzer, was formative for Carl
Strehlow’s development and the Menschenbild (‘the view of man’) he took into
the field. The seminary’s mission-theology was based on the views of Wilhelm
Löhe as interpreted by Deinzer. The latter was particularly interested in the
‘outer mission’ and ethics; not the ‘inner mission’ that catered for existing and
lapsed Lutherans but rather the out-reach to those who remained unconverted.
Language was emphasised. Greek, Latin and Hebrew were rigorously taught
at the Neuendettelsau Seminary to prepare the missionaries for their language
tasks. The German Lutheran linguistic tradition, based on Luther’s view that
the gospel was to be preached in vernaculars and translated into the mother
tongues of peoples (Wendt 2001: 8), heavily influenced the seminary’s approach
towards indigenous peoples. It went without saying that the knowledge of
81
The Aranda’s Pepa
indigenous vernaculars was the prerequisite for successful mission work. Thus,
potential missionaries were encouraged, through linguistic work, to learn
about other people’s cultures. The serious study of indigenous languages lead
some missionaries towards an interest in the Weltanschauung and mythology
of a particular people. Neuendettelsau’s style made a major impression on the
enthusiastic teenage Carl.
At the age of 16 in early 1888, Carl Strehlow was one of the youngest students
to be educated and trained at the Neuendettelsau Seminary for mission work.
In 1923, Ziemer remarked in Carl Strehlow’s obituary that Carl had entered
with reluctant paternal consent, because his father did not wish his son, one of
seven children, to be a cleric or have a higher education (Liebermeister 1998:
16). He felt that it was not appropriate for a child of such modest station to
reach beyond the means of a village teacher. Carl Strehlow’s family was not in
the position to finance any kind of further education for any of their children
beyond that offered in the public system – at the time, a meagre training. For
talented young people without any means, the only venue for further education
and amelioration of social status was often the path within the church and even
that left Carl’s father anxious.
The village pastor of Strehlow’s birthplace Fredersdorf Carl Seidel recognised
the outstanding talents and potential of the child and sparked his interest in
myth and song. With great dedication and effort, Seidel prepared his protégée
for entry into a seminary. After Strehlow had been refused at the Leipzig
Seminary, due to his young age, Seidel wrote to the Neuendettelsau Mission
Seminary. He proposed that it would be ‘generally beneficial for the whole
development of the child to be removed from the narrow circumstances in
Fredersdorf’ and promised to try to raise as much money as he could to pay
Carl’s school fees (Liebermeister 1998: 17–18). As late as 1899, seven years after
he had left Neuendettelsau, Carl Strehlow voluntarily tried to pay off some of
his outstanding fees from his modest missionary income in central Australia, ‘so
other impecunious students may benefit from this’.1
Seidel taught Strehlow the basics of classical languages, mathematics, geography,
world history and correct German syntax and orthography. Carl needed these
in order to compete with other applicants who mainly came from Gymnasiums,
academically demanding secondary schools, which provided their students
with a classical education (Pilhofer 1967: 29). When Carl Strehlow joined the
seminary, he was also familiar with the Romantics. His early teacher and mentor,
Carl Seidel, was interested in the work of the Grimm brothers and folklore
generally (John Strehlow 2004a) and had an understanding of the importance
1 Carl Strehlow to Inspector Deinzer of the Neuendettelsau Seminary, 20.1.1899 (Neuendettelsauer

Missionswerk).
82
and meaning of mythology, in which he saw moral teaching embedded.2 These

influences and the German philological tradition which emphasised the classics
and comparative language studies in educated German circles gave some
bearings to his inclination towards language.
The selection process at Neuendettelsau was rigorous (Koller 1924; Pilhofer
1967). The criteria for successful applicants included a high level of secondary
education, as well as a strong personality and excellent health. The intense
course lasted three years with a very demanding and dense curriculum. The
expectations and the pressure were immense, both imposed by the seminary
as well as by the students themselves. Nervous breakdowns, it seems, were not
unusual (Pilhofer 1967: 29).
The classical orientation of the Neuendettelsau curriculum gave their students
a solid basis to recognise structures of foreign languages, which facilitated
the writing of grammars and dictionaries – essential for the translation of the
Holy Scripture,3 and mission preaching and schooling. Clearly language studies
were encouraged if not expected from the graduates once they proceeded to
their postings. In addition to classical languages, correct German style and
orthography was taught along with basic English. It was assumed that the
latter would quickly improve once graduates took up posts in America and
Australia. German essay and speech writing were also taught.4 Another subject
that held a prominent position was music, in the tradition of Luther’s own deep
engagement. Finally, even physical education was integral to an individual’s
training.
Ethnographic approaches or methodology do not appear to have been part of the
curriculum; anthropological study came mainly through language study. There
do not seem to be any texts that were used at the Neuendettelsau Seminary that
explicitly encouraged students to learn about the cultures of the peoples they
were to live with. In 1929 Carl Strehlow’s brother-in-law, Christian Keysser,5
finally introduced anthropological subjects into the curriculum (Pilhofer 1967:
32) and explicitly articulated the mission approach to ethnography (Veit 1994;
Liebermeister 1998: 127) when he became a teacher at Neuendettelsau after
returning from his posting in New Guinea.
The focus on language prepared Carl Strehlow well for his calling. Not all
institutions that trained missionaries had Neuendettelsau’s classical orientation.
In the field, missionaries from other seminaries often rued their inadequate
2 Carl Seidel to Carl Strehlow, 12.9.1908 (SH 1908-2-1).

3 House tradition of the Neuendettelsau seminary was to use the Greek source for translation (Dr Hauenstein
of the Neuendettelsauer Missionswerk, Neuendettelsau, pers. comm., August 2005).
4 This can be gleaned from the handwritten chronicles held at Neuendettelsau’s archives.
5 Christian Keysser published a number of ethnographic works.
83
The Aranda’s Pepa
linguistic training. In 1877 Kempe and Schulze, the first missionaries at Ntaria,
for instance, felt their lack of knowledge of Latin and language learning skills
and tools. However, they still managed to learn and write Aranda (Kneebone
2001: 149).
Neuendettelsau had its own style of mission theology which was based on
Wilhelm Löhe’s view of the innere und äussere Mission (inner and outer mission).
This particular approach did not have a mission to indigenous peoples as its pre-
eminent goal.6 The inner mission, according to Löhe, was to hold the Lutheran
congregation together through general pastoral care that would keep them from
flagging in their commitment. The outer mission had the task of finding people
to be baptised, which included Germans and indigenous peoples. Once baptism
was accomplished, the outer mission led automatically back into the inner
mission which saw its role not only in collecting sheep, but also in caring for
the congregation. This included education, and holding and sustaining pastoral
assistance (Weber 1996: 353, 360), which were viewed as a responsibility of
the mission. The mission then was an ongoing commitment that stretched well
beyond conversion.
Wilhelm Löhe (1808–1872) seems to have originally founded the seminary
with an emphasis on the inner mission. Missionaries were sent out to take care
of existing Lutherans and their communities in North America where, it was
thought, communities readily lost faith due to the lack of Lutheran clerics. Löhe
was principally concerned with the care of German diaspora communities (Koller
1924; Pilhofer 1967). From North America, disturbing, even shocking reports
had reached Löhe and other Lutheran clerics regarding perfectly good Christian
parents who had up to 11 unbaptised children due to the absence of qualified
clergy. The German migrants were growing up ‘like the Indians’. The dispersion
and spiritual ‘decrepitude’ proved initially to be far greater than anticipated in
America, so that the inner mission amongst Germans took precedence (Weber
1996: 346). However, Löhe could mention Indian and German heathen parents
in the same breath indicating that the agenda was set (Weber 1996: 346). The
broader pastures of North America were soon beckoning. By 1888 ‘the society
for the inner mission’ added ‘outer’ to its name (Schlichting 1998: 5). The
Gesellschaft für die Innere (und Äussere) Mission still exists today and has turned
its attention inwards again.7
For Löhe, the inner and outer mission were parts of the same issue and church
(Weber 1996: 343). Hence, missionaries and pastors received the same education
6 Wilhelm Löhe is seen today as one of the fathers of World Lutherism. He also made significant contributions
to social development and education, at a time when the state was not much engaged in social amelioration
and this was left to the church’s care. See Schild 2004b; Weber 1996: 15; Schlichting 1998: 7; Farnbacher and
Weber 2004.
7 For more information see: <http://www.gesellschaft-fuer-mission.de> (accessed 31.5.2013).
84
at Neuendettelsau. The concepts relating to the inner mission would have been
transferred immediately into the indigenous context where, after the outer
mission had recruited new members, they would quickly become a Lutheran
community with the potential for an inner mission. Therefore, the members of
such a community (the result of the outer mission) were treated like any other
member of a Lutheran community, regardless of their colour or culture.
Löhe’s mission theology was taught to the students of the Neuendettelsau
institution by Friedrich Bauer and later on by the Deinzer brothers, university
graduates, who integrated this theology into their broader academic programme.
Bauer had gained fame by writing an excellent grammar of the German language
which was republished 14 times alone during his life (Pilhofer 1967: 11) and
became the base of the DUDEN, a standard work for correct German syntax
today. Bauer also drafted the two basic manuscripts Entwurf einer christlichen
Dogmatik auf lutherischer Grundlage and Entwurf einer christlichen Ethik auf
lutherischer Grundlage pertaining to theological studies in Lutheran dogmatics
and ethics. The style was much influenced by Löhe, but also included Bauer’s
own views on education as the route to individual freedom and Bedürfnislosigkeit
(lack of needs) (Pilhofer 1967: 18–19). These were regarded as general forms of
ethical value that pertained equally to the inner and the outer mission. Free
will and individual choice were of paramount importance in the education at
Neuendettelsau and a key element in its mission theology. During a six-month
probation period, recruits had to prove that they were absolutely certain of
their calling.
In Carl Strehlow’s mission approach, individual ‘free choice’ was a formative
concept. He perceived the indigenous people at Hermannsburg as individual
human beings who could make free choices regarding their circumstances.
Strehlow only accepted converts when he believed that they were firmly
convinced of their step to conversion, or they were able to convince him of their
sincerity. Conversion and confirmation allowed indigenous people to participate
at Hermannsburg as full members of the Lutheran community. Paradoxically,
Löhe’s doctrine of the inner and outer mission, and Bauer’s emphasis on
freedom (from desire) may have had an unexpected consequence in the lonely
and isolated setting of Hermannsburg in central Australia. Strehlow’s outer
mission became his inner mission, so that the missionary became the inkata
(‘ceremonial chief’ in Aranda) of, in his view, freely baptised Christians. Löhe’s
Lutheran doctrines, with their inward gaze that may have signified a sect more
than a broad church, became for Strehlow the basis for an unusual Christian
community (Kenny 2009a: 104).
Johannes Deinzer’s particular concern led Carl Strehlow in this direction. As
the main teacher and director at Neuendettelsau until 1897, Deinzer expanded
interest in the outer mission to encompass Australia, Papua New Guinea and
85
The Aranda’s Pepa
East Africa. It was under him that the first graduates of Neuendettelsau were
sent to Australia. By 1914 about 40 had gone to Australia, the majority as pastors
for the German immigrants to Australia (Pilhofer 1967: 22; see also Koller (1924)
on Deinzer). Deinzer had another interest that may have influenced Carl: ethics.
He placed a heavy emphasis on ethics in his classes and favoured students who
could follow his intellectual path (Pilhofer 1967: 23). He considered ethics as
more important than dogmatics, because it allowed interpretation according to
(historical) context. Deinzer’s interest in ethics, encouraged among his students,
may have directed their missionary task to human engagement with others; an
interest in the other person as much as in pietistic formulae. It is likely that
Strehlow’s propensity to acknowledge the human dignity of others, including
indigenous Australians, was encouraged by Deinzer’s classes.
Neuendettelsau was less conservative and pietistic than other mission training
institutions such as Hermannsburg in Germany or the Basler Mission in
Switzerland, for instance. It gave its students a broad education in humanities
(relative to their time of course) (Moore 2003: 23). The whole education was
geared towards the development of strong personalities who would be fit
for the demanding tasks and challenges that awaited them at their overseas
postings. The hard training was to equip the students with self-discipline,
endurance and an inner, spiritual (geistige) strength that would carry them
through hardships and environments that would push them to their limits. The
teachers at Neuendettelsau were painfully aware of the realities that the young
people had to face once out in the field (Koller 1924; Pilhofer 1967). At the same
time, community shaped by patriarchal structure was emphasised to give the
individual a context and to provide fraternal support and ultimately helped to
underline the natural shift from outer to inner mission within a newly formed
community. These diverse ideas and influences in intellectual life, theology
and human social ethics all emerged to some degree in the very different and
remote context of Carl Strehlow’s Finke River Mission at Hermannsburg in
central Australia. It gave its community some unusual features of humanistic
engagement (along with the missionisation) hardly known in other Australian
frontier settlements.
Carl Strehlow graduated with a ‘gut plus’ (good plus) in 18918 and was sent to his
first posting in April 1892 (Liebermeister 1998: 19). He had just turned 20 when
he was on his way to Bethesda in remote and arid Australia to join J.G. Reuther
(1861–1914) who had left the Neuendettelsau Seminary four years earlier.
The second major formative factor in Carl Strehlow’s experience was his
engagement with Diyari, Aranda and Loritja people. He learnt firsthand that the
different Aboriginal peoples each had a particular language and mythology. His
8 Zeugniss der Neuendettelsauer Missionsanstalt, 17.4.1892.

86
close relationships with people of completely different cultural backgrounds for

nearly three decades, and his intense efforts in language learning, enabled him
to appreciate, collect and translate the oral literature of the Aranda and Loritja.
Through the thorough knowledge of language and its oral forms, he gained a
deep appreciation and understanding of their worldviews.
Language, ethnography and the Lutheran

tradition in Australia
The milieu that Strehlow entered when he came to Australia would be both a
help and a hindrance when it came to his subsequent anthropological studies.
German missionaries in Australia brought their linguistic tradition with them.
Among the missionaries, it went without saying that it was paramount to learn
the language of the people they were working with and sent to serve. It had
been a crucial part of Luther’s reformation to spread the gospel in German rather
than in Latin or even a German rendition of the Vulgate. Luther preached that
the word of God was to be taught in vernacular and translated into a people’s
mother tongue (Wendt 2001: 8). As a consequence, in the nineteenth century
it was characteristic of German Protestant mission theology and practice to pay
special attention to a people’s language and its implications for idiom and other
dimensions of culture (Schild 2004: 54).
It was clear to German missionaries that it was essential to know a people’s
language to be able to convey and persuade them of Christianity, as conversion
was to be by free will and choice. Already in the late 1830s the missionaries
Teichelmann and Schürmann, who had been trained at the Dresden Mission
Society, started documenting the Kaurna language of South Australia (Leske
1996: 30, 92–94). Within 18 months they produced the only existing grammar
of this language and a dictionary with 2000 words. Their work has allowed the
partial recreation and revitalisation of Kaurna today (Amery 2004: 9–12). At
least sometimes, not surprisingly, a by-product of these studies of indigenous
languages was not only grammars and dictionaries but also collections of myth
and other traditional laws and customs.
In the 1860s with a stream of Protestant missionaries arriving at Bethesda
(Killalpaninna) and Kopperamanna in the Lake Eyre region the Diyari language
and culture received a great deal of attention. One of the first missionaries at
Killalpaninna Mission, Carl Schoknecht, wrote a simple Diyari grammar and
a wordlist (Schoknecht 1997: 16, 80). His successors continued to collect data
on the Diyari language and culture until the mission was closed in 1917. The
Lutheran ethnographers of this region are well-known today. J.G. Reuther
produced a monumental 13-volume manuscript on the Diyari and Otto Siebert
87
The Aranda’s Pepa
collected a great amount of data for A.W. Howitt that was incorporated into
the latter’s classic The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (Howitt 1904). The
first Hermannsburg missionaries, Kempe and Schulze, studied the language and
culture of the people they met at Ntaria on the upper Finke River in order to
develop effective communication for their transmission of the gospel to the local
population. In the course of learning about them they published linguistic as
well as some ethnographic data.
Upon arrival in 1892 at Bethesda Mission near Lake Eyre, Carl Strehlow
immediately started to study the language of the Diyari. According to Otto
Siebert and Reuther’s son, the linguistic achievements at the mission were
Strehlow’s rather than Reuther’s who was ‘lame at languages’. Even for the
Diyari grammar Strehlow is said to have been ‘the mainspring of the work’.9 In
Reuther’s defence, it has to be remarked, that the comment ‘lame at languages’
was made in comparison to Carl Strehlow, who was an outstanding linguist,
as well as a competent musician (Lohe 1965: 5), and to Otto Siebert, who was
particularly interested in languages and ethnography for mission purposes
(Nobbs 2005).
At Hermannsburg, Strehlow became fluent in Aranda and preached in
vernacular within months of his arrival in 1894 (Schild 2004; Eylmann 1908).
In 1896, two years later, Gillen (Mulvaney, Morphy and Petch 2001: 118–119)
remarked in a letter to Spencer that ‘Revd Mr Strehlow’ spoke the language of
the Finke very well and used his services as a translator for his anthropological
research in Hermannsburg. Strehlow published in 1904 a Service Book called
Galtjindintjamea-Pepa Aranda Wolambarinjaka which included 100 German
hymns translated into Aranda. This work was partially based on the work of
his predecessors, in particular Kempe’s catechism.10 After he had completed the
compilation of Aboriginal mythology and cosmology he translated the New
Testament into Aranda between 1913 and 1919.11 Parts of it were published
after his death (Hebart 1938: 317) as Ewangelia Lukaka (1925) and Ewangelia
Taramatara (1928), without mentioning his role as translator.
As soon as Lutheran missionaries at Bethesda and Hermannsburg had managed
to acquire a moderate proficiency in the vernacular, they used indigenous
languages in church services and schools. Lessons were also held in German
and English (Moore 2003: 24). This ready and constant deployment of languages
meant that the missionaries were constantly developing their proficiency moving
9 Tindale interviewed Siebert and Reuther’s son in the 1930s. Tindale Collection Acc. No. 1538, South
Australian Museum.
10 Carl Strehlow’s letters to Kaibel (1899–1909) held at the LAA. Strehlow had been able to draw on
published and unpublished Aranda language material (Schild 2004a; John Strehlow 2004: 83). The SRC and
LAA hold unpublished material by Kempe produced between 1877 and 1891.
11 Carl Strehlow’s letter to the Mission Friends on the 9.1.1920, Albrecht Collection Acc. No. AA662, South
Australian Museum.
88
towards that time when their skills would be sufficiently developed to begin the
translation task. The latter required familiarity with idiom and generally this
came only through immersion and through trial and error.
John Strehlow (2004b: 82) suggests that his grandfather began his anthropological
research not long after his arrival in Australia. In 1893, with the translation
of the New Testament into Diyari, Carl Strehlow spent much time with senior
Aboriginal men evaluating terms and concepts which would be appropriate for
the translation. This early research, though, was not geared towards anthropology,
but towards his linguistic mission task. Early ethnographic research by Carl
Strehlow is documented in letters by Gillen to Spencer in 1896 and by Otto
Siebert who forwarded information and charts on Aranda marriage rules and
subsection systems collected by Carl Strehlow to A.W. Howitt in 1899.12 On the
14 July 1896 Gillen wrote to Spencer that he had ‘Mr Strehlow on the job and
he, having a fair knowledge of the Arunta language, should be able to learn
something shortly’ (Mulvaney, Morphy and Petch 1997: 130). Other loose notes
in Gillen’s notebook of the 1890s, mention Strehlow in connection with research
on particular ceremonies, called Inkura in Carl Strehlow’s work and Engwura in
Spencer and Gillen’s. One of the notes is labelled ‘to Strehlow’, dated ‘26/8/96’
and a remark reads: ‘Have the old men any tradition as to the origin of “Rev C
Strehlow” Engwura did it originate with altjirra Knaribata?’13 This intriguing
note is part of a longer piece, but unfortunately the rest appears to be missing.14
Finally, Strehlow’s personal interest in Aboriginal mythology is evident in
occasional remarks in letters published in the Kirchlichen Mitteilungen.15
Strehlow’s first report on Hermannsburg, written at the end of 1894, for
example, shows his interest in myth. He describes briefly how the palms at
Palm Valley (then called Palm Creek), were created according to the beliefs of
the ‘Aldolinga tribe’. He wrote: ‘According to the old heathen beliefs the gods
from the high north brought the seeds to this place.’16 He would later collect a
detailed story and its associated songs (Strehlow 1907:88–90; 1910: 129–132)
about Mt Rubuntja and the fire ancestors who came from the north to Palm
Valley; this is still a well known myth among Arandic people. It was one of these
in passing observations that drew in 1901 Baron von Leonhardi’s attention to
Strehlow.
12 Otto Siebert to A.W. Howitt, 22.4.1899 (Howitt Collection at Melbourne Museum).
13 Loose pages in Gillen’s Field-diary 1896 (Barr Smith Special Collection).
14 Did Gillen forget to reference a crucial informant on Engwura? And who is this altjirra Knaribata [old
man altjirra]?
15 The Kirchlichen Mitteilungen was a monthly church newspaper about mission work in North America,
Australia and New Guinea that had been publishing since 1868. It also published letters and sometimes even
brief accounts on indigenous languages, beliefs and customs. It was edited by the university-educated mission
inspector Deinzer, the head of the Neuendettelsau Seminary where Carl Strehlow had been educated and
prepared for his calling.
16 Carl Strehlow, Kirchen- und Missions-Zeitung 3, 1895: 20.
89
The Aranda’s Pepa
In Australia, Strehlow had access to Warneck’s Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift17

as well as to the Kirchlichen Mitteilungen, the monthly newsletter of the
Neuendettelsau Seminary and Kirchen- und Missions Zeitung of the evangelic-
Lutheran church of Australia, published in Tanunda South Australia. These
monthly publications were not only parish and community announcements, but
also included numerous ethnographic reports on different countries and their
cultures, including religion, mythology and cosmology. Through this reading,
Strehlow was well aware of other cultures and religious belief systems. In his
letters to Baron von Leonhardi, for example, he makes comparison between
Aranda and West African beliefs18 and Aranda and Chinese ancestral worship.19
Neither, he maintains, are comparable to the Arandic perception of ancestors.
Like other theologians, clerics and missionaries, Dr Gustav Warneck, Professor
at the Halle University, emphasised the importance of learning local languages
for missionaries to transmit God’s word (Wendt 2001: 8; Veit 2004a). He was one
of the main Lutheran scholars of mission studies and well known in German
nineteenth century missionary circles through his prolific writing on relevant
topics. In 1874, he founded the Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, and was its editor
for decades (Lueker 1954: 1120). This journal published ethnographic material
from all over the world as well as theological and other theoretical treatises.
Warneck’s main thoughts on missionising were synthesised in Evangelische
Missionslehre. Ein missionstheoretischer Versuch (1897). His chapter on the
justification of ethnographic work for mission purposes gives some insights into
how and why missionaries could become interested in ethnography (Warneck
1897: 278–304).
The nucleus of Warneck’s thinking was that Christianity had the universal
capacity to adapt to all peoples and thus could assimilate its teachings to all
ethnic, social, cultural and state forms (Warneck 1897: 279). In his view, all
humans in all times, climates and cultures had religion and language (Warneck
1897: 285).20 He maintained that since there were no peoples in the world that
were speechless, there also could be no people that were without religion. This
was evident in the fact that the gospel could be preached in all languages and
all languages were suited for bible translation.
Warneck’s arguments on humanity’s spiritual unity reflected his homogenetic
outlook which stemmed from his reading of the Old and New Testament. He
used current German anthropological literature of the time by eminent scholars
like Waitz, Ratzel and Müller to support his theological views, maintaining that
‘Humanity is a unity, despite of its multitude’ (Warneck 1897: 285) and that

20 Warneck uses the plural: Kulturen (cultures).
90
the unity of mankind was an ethnological fact. His views were consistent with
those of Herder and the Humboldts. He too postulated that humanity’s spiritual
and intellectual unity was particularly manifest in languages which were a
common feature among all humankind. He was of the view that each language is
a masterpiece of Geist (Warneck 1897: 286) and that there were no peoples with
an inferior language and that the word of God (due to its universality) could
be translated into any language and transmitted in any language. For many
missionaries this was a fact because the bible had been translated into all known
languages. Among Jesuit missionaries and scholars, and there were many, this
had been common knowledge for a long time (Foertsch 2001). Protestant clerics
had made a similar experience by translating the bible into a variety of mother-
tongues in Europe and overseas since Luther’s Reformation.
Owing to this universality of a spiritual propensity to Christianity, in Warneck’s
view it was never necessary to destroy a culture in order for its people to become
Christian converts (Warneck 1897: 282). Rather, the object was to learn about
them so Christian thinking could be culturally and linguistically appropriately
conveyed. Although it is not clear that Strehlow was taught Warneck’s principles
on language and religion (or ethnography) at the Neuendettelsau Seminary, Veit
writes that it is reasonable to assume that he was at least familiar with some
of these Warneckian thoughts about the ‘foreign and the familiar’ (Veit 2004a:
146). Strehlow’s approach to language and culture at his two Australian postings
and his anthropological work are consistent with Warneck’s approach.
Carl Strehlow’s keen interest in mythology is thus the result of a number of
factors including his education in the classics at the Neuendettelsau seminary
and earlier by Seidel who also emphasised German folklore. He was probably
from the outset open to the oral literatures and worldviews of the Aboriginal
people he met, because he may have felt that the ancient worlds of the Old
and New Testaments as well as Greek mythology which he knew from language
studies of Greek and Hebrew, had affinities. Such a view seems to appear in a
statement he made towards the end of his life:
The well-constructed language of the Aranda remind one of the old
Greek language; in fact, it has more moods than the last mentioned. It
possesses an indicative, conditional, optative, minative, and imperative,
it has not only the usual tempora, present, imperfect, perfect and
future, but also three aorist forms, aoristus remotus, aoristus remotior,
and a remotissimus; besides, it has dual for all three persons. In the
declination of the noun there are not only a double nominative
(transitive and intransitive) and a genitive, dative, and accusative, as in
other old languages, but also a vocative, ablative, a double locative, an
instrumentative, a causative, &c. The derivations and compounds are
often quite marvellous. Then the great number of words! It is difficult
91
The Aranda’s Pepa
to count them on account of the many derivations and dialectical forms

but, the latter included I estimate, that the Aranda language possess not
less that 6000 words.21
Carl Strehlow was a scholar, with a positive and intimate appreciation of the
ancient biblical and classical worlds which were older and different to his own;
in Australia he came in contact with another different world, which seemed to
him in some ways analogous to these remote worlds. This new world opened itself
up to him through his intensive study of its languages and his personal interest
in myth and song, and allowed him to enter the world of Aboriginal mythology
which gave him a glimpse of the worldviews of the Aranda and Loritja.
Language went hand in hand with culture and its particular intellectual concepts,
it was not a big step to ethnographic and other scientific research (Wendt 2001:
9). Strehlow’s predecessors Kempe and Schulze had already compiled some
ethnographic data published in the 1880s and early 1890s. Schulze had even
communicated with Howitt on aspects of Aboriginal culture – it goes without
saying that this data included ‘marriage rules’ – between 1887 and 1889.22 Thus,
precedence for ethnography as a by-product of language studies in the mission
context existed at Ntaria.
Yet missionary Siebert’s experience shows that on the local Australian scene,
ethnographic pursuits – as opposed to linguistic ones – were viewed with more
ambivalence, if not suspicion, by the Lutheran church. In the course of his
anthropological research, his superiors alleged that he was neglecting his calling
for the sake of this scientific work. In a brilliantly argued letter of 28 March 1900 to
the Lutheran committee at Point Pass, Siebert rejected these allegations. He made
a strong case for the use and application of ethnography in evangelism (Siebert
2005: 46–53). His letter reads like a manifesto for ethnographic research in the
name of God and the mission, and convinced the pietistic Point Pass committee to
concede, albeit grudgingly. They allowed Siebert to pursue his scientific research
as long as it did not interfere with his mission duties (Nobbs 2005: 39).
Strehlow knew about this dispute between Siebert and the Lutheran
committee.23 It may have led him to heightened circumspection regarding his
own research. Strehlow’s letters to friends, family and superiors are devoid of
any indication that he was conducting a major ethnographic research project
between 1901–1909. He only made passing references to his anthropological
endeavours to his brother-in-law, Christian Keysser,24 and to Carl Seidel in this
period. His communications on ethnography were all directed to his editor,

22 Schulze’s letters to Howitt, 1887–1889 (State Library of Victoria, Howitt Papers MF 459, Box 1051/Icc).
23 Bogner to Carl Strehlow, Bethesda, 8.5.1900 (SRC 1900-21-2).
24 Christian Keysser to Carl Strehlow, 4.9.1905 (SRC 1905/26(a)).
92
von Leonhardi.25 This reflects more about Strehlow’s mission board in Adelaide
than it does about his own interests or aspirations. It is likely that he thought
that his ethnographic research would meet the same kind of resistance as did
Siebert’s and later on Reuther’s work with his superiors in the Barossa Valley.
J.M. Bogner26 had written to Strehlow that Siebert had wasted his time trying
to explain his endeavours to their superiors in the Barossa Valley, because ‘they
would not understand it’.27 In 1904, Reuther had send some Diyari myths from
his collection to his superior Kaibel who was not impressed:
If instead of the big piles of legends and fables you have collected, which
are of no use to anyone – who would anyway finance their publication?
– you would send us brief monthly reports, you would be fulfilling your
duty, satisfying us and be doing something useful.28
Carl Strehlow’s circumspection about his anthropological work would prove
justified. Kaibel’s reaction to the first volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme
in Zentral-Australien in 1908 surpassed the one to Reuther’s work:
My heartfelt thanks for sending me your work on the Aranda. It is a
beautiful monument of German diligence. In any case, the material is the
most worthless one can think of which has been brought into written
language. Almost all is chaff with hardly a kernel of moral value here
and there. It certainly needs not a little self-denial on your part to have
recorded those thoughtless legends in which only an ethnographer
could be interested in.29
Left solely to this barren field, the seed of Strehlow’s interest would surely have
withered and died in the isolation of central Australia. Lutherans in Germany
had furnished Strehlow with linguistic skills, social and ethical dispositions
and even a theology that could nurture his budding interest in ethnography.
However, in the Australian milieu, this came with a pietistic parochialism and
anti-intellectualism that could have been his undoing. While his superiors in
the Barossa Valley of South Australia supported linguistic studies that had a
tangible use in spreading the gospel, ethnography was seen as an indulgence
and possibly to a certain degree as blasphemy. This made the contribution and
support of another and different type of mentor and friend absolutely crucial
for Carl Strehlow’s ethnography.
25 However, Seidel’s reaction to the first volume in 1908 suggests that Strehlow may have written about
his research. Seidel organised public talks on Aboriginal culture for Carl when he was in Germany in 1910.
26 J.M. Bogner was a co-missionary of Carl Strehlow between 1895 and 1900 at Hermannsburg. He too was
a graduate from the Neuendettelsau Seminary.
27 Bogner to Carl Strehlow, 8.5.1900 (1900-21-2).
28 Kaibel to Reuther, 18.2.1904 (LAA). Hercus and McCaul (2004: 36) have also translated this passage. I am
not sure if their interpretation of Lügenden as ‘liar legends’, is correct. The spelling of this word may also be
due to Kaibel’s particular German dialect and not a Freudian slip.
29 Kaibel to Carl Strehlow, 6.8.1908 (LAA). Also quoted in Veit (2004b: 95). 93
The Aranda’s Pepa
Baron von Leonhardi’s anthropological influence

Without doubt, Baron Moritz Wilhelm Georg von Leonhardi (1856–1910) was an
important and direct influence on Strehlow’s development as an anthropologist.
He was a man representative of the nineteenth century German anthropological
tradition, and turned Carl’s use of language towards an ethnographic method.
He furthered Strehlow’s anthropological training by posing research tasks,
thereby pursuing empirical research with him.
He was born on the 9 March 1856 in Frankfurt am Main, the son of a wealthy,
aristocratic family of the principality of Hessen. Moritz attended the Darmstadt
Gymnasium (Secondary School) receiving a classic German humanistic
education. He matriculated in 1876 and took up law in Heidelberg (Völker 2001:
176). However, he was soon forced to terminate his law studies due to ill health.
After recovering from illness, he turned his attention to the subjects of natural
science and philosophy. Although he was the Archducal Chamberlain of Hessen
and a member of the Upper House between 1892–1910, Baron von Leonhardi
spent much of his time studying on his country retreat in Gross Karben.
Von Leonhardi was a contemporary of nineteenth century German writers and
thinkers such as Bastian, Virchow, Ratzel, Frobenius, Graebner, Schmidt and
Boas. He was familiar with the current trends of the cultural sciences and had
a close understanding of their main intellectual ancestors like Herder, Kant and
the Humboldt brothers. His letters to Carl Strehlow show an interest in the
Humboldtian ideas of the unity of man and the project of languages, Herder’s
concept of Volksgeist, Bastian’s belief in independent invention due to the
psychic unity of mankind and the emerging diffusionist Kulturkreislehre (theory
of culture circles).
In the last decade of von Leonhardi’s life, anthropology moved into the centre of
his interests. He became a classical armchair anthropologist, corresponding and
debating from his study with a number of well-known scientists in Europe like
A. Lang, N.W. Thomas, P.W. Schmidt, H. Klaatsch, F. von Luschan and numerous
representatives of the natural sciences,30 and reading everything on anthropology
available to him. According to Dr Bernhard Hagen (Strehlow 1911), the director
of the Frankfurt ethnological museum, von Leonhardi had a close to complete
anthropological library, including books not readily available in Germany
(Völker 2001: 178). His library held not only books but also most anthropological
journals published in America, Britain, France and the German-speaking world.
He subscribed to all major journals on anthropology including the Zeitschrift für
Ethnologie; Man, Folklore, American Anthropologist and Anthropos. He was also
30 Von Leonhardi also corresponded with missionaries Reuther and Siebert in Australia (see Völker 2001:
173-218).
94
an occasional contributor to the German weekly journal Globus. His library31

and his letters to Carl Strehlow, document what von Leonhardi had read and
make it possible to gauge what his methodological and theoretical position had
been. A number of comments and comparisons by von Leonhardi on American,
African, Australian and Melanesian indigenous peoples, Asian ‘high cultures’
and theories by Frazer, Lang, Schmidt, Graebner, Foy, Fison, Howitt and Roth,
indicate his broad knowledge of nineteenth century international anthropology.
In several letters to Carl Strehlow he refers to anthropological hypotheses and
debates of the day, which he asks him to test, so they could deflate some of the
current ‘fairy-tales’ such as ‘group marriage of primeval times’32 or ‘a disaster …
like the one of Spencer and Gillen’s reincarnation theory’33 or ‘A sun cult, which
exists without doubt amongst the North American Indians, but does not seem
likely to me in Australia’.34
In line with the Zeitgeist of nineteenth century German anthropology, von
Leonhardi believed that thorough empirical research had to be conducted before
universal laws pertaining to humankind and ideas of origin could be approached
and generated. The evolutionistic position of the English anthropological
establishment seemed highly speculative to him. Although he did not subscribe
to an evolutionary proposition, due to his grounding in a humanistic tradition
which paid tribute to the plurality and particularity of human kind, like most
European cultural scientists, he believed that the indigenous cultures of the
colonised world were doomed.
In this context, religion was one of the most discussed and written about
topics around the turn of the century. Central Australian Aboriginal people,
the Aranda in particular, occupied the centre of this anthropological discourse.
Through Spencer and Gillen’s work they had attained collective celebrity on
the international anthropological stage (Morton 1992). The Horn Expedition
report and The Native Tribes of Central Australia (Spencer and Gillen 1899)
had intrigued and fascinated von Leonhardi like the rest of the anthropological
world. Indigenous Australian religion became particularly worthy of study.
Von Leonhardi perceived the need for further empirical research among the
Aranda. The existing material, in particular on mythology and language, was
not sufficient or adequate to give an idea of the Geist of the Aranda or any
other central Australian people. Still, mid 1908 von Leonhardi complained to
Strehlow about the low standard of available linguistic materials:
31 Baron von Leonhardi’s library survived World War II. It is still in Gross-Karben. However, the
ethnological publications were integrated into the library of the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt which holds
a large amount of early anthropological publications.
95
The Aranda’s Pepa
I did not think that you would be satisfied with Basedow’s work.35 Our
periodicals always accept such work; because – with incredibly few
exceptions – we have no other vocabularies. The vocabularies in the
3-volume work of Curr are not much better and yet we have to work
with them. And that is really depressing. In regard to phonetics, there
are no correctly recorded Australian languages at all in the existing
literature, even Threlkeld, Günther, Meyer are inadequate.36
This German intellectual background and its conditioning determined how
von Leonhardi guided Carl Strehlow’s ethnographic research and formed their
methodological and theoretical approaches. His comments on methodology to
Strehlow reveal his commitment and desire to see indigenous peoples described
in their own right without considering any theories and making hasty inferences.
This intention is clearly reflected in the style of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme
in Zentral-Australien. Carl Strehlow’s monograph is pre-eminently descriptive
and factual rather than theoretical, thus belonging to the tradition of German
ethnography which was interested in source material rather than premature
theoretical insights.
Von Leonhardi’s dedication and persistency kept Strehlow to the task and
provided him with the intellectual support and recognition he needed to sustain
his research into the cultures and oral literatures of the Aranda and Loritja of
central Australia.
When Carl Strehlow began to work with von Leonhardi, the conditions for
successful research were in place: he had lived with the Aranda and Loritja
for over ten years and fluent in their languages. He had also gathered some
ethnographic data with a publication in mind,37 including myths and songs.38 By
April 190639 Strehlow had collected over 50 Aranda myths and investigated the
concept of tjurunga as well as recorded ‘300 Tjurunga’40 songs.41 A few months
later he informed N.W. Thomas that he had 500 songs.42 These numbers are
somewhat ambiguous, because his published collection of Aranda songs amount
to 59 and Loritja songs to about 20. This count may relate to verses rather than
35 Basedow published in 1908 a vocabulary of Arunta in the German journal Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.
36 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 29.8.1908. The vexed question of Western Aranda/Arrernte/Arrarnta
orthography has not been solved to this day (see Kenny and Mitchell 2005: 5; Breen 2005: 93-102).
37 Carl Strehlow to Kaibel, 30.8.1904 (LAA).
40 Tywerrenge (modern spelling), usually means today ‘sacred object’ and is not often spoken about (Breen
2000: 60). The term tjurunga (Carl and T.G.H. Strehlow’s spelling) is a very complex term that can mean songs,
stories, dances, paraphernalia or sacred objects associated with ancestral beings (see Appendix 2). Here it does
not refer to the objects.
42 Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, mid to end of 1906 (SH-SP-6-1). The end of this quote echoes his editor’s
language programme, articulated in 1905.
96
to songs. While his interest in indigenous language and through language in

culture was not unusual for a German missionary in Australia or at any other
overseas posting, his interest in ethnography and in particular in mythology
was reinforced and encouraged by von Leonhardi. On the 9 September 1905
von Leonhardi explicitly articulated what would become their linguistic agenda
which included the collection of indigenous text and made Carl Strehlow’s work
unique for its time in Australia:
Myths in the Aranda language with interlinear translations would be
of great value; and a dictionary and a grammar would provide the key
to them. A dictionary outlining the meaning of words as well as short
explanations of the meaning of individual objects, characters in the
myths etc., is highly valued in science.43
Von Leonhardi’s suggestion is reminiscent of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s view that
there were two steps in language research which needed to be undertaken to be
able to make statements about a people’s culture and language. The first step
was to describe the structure of a language (grammar and dictionary) and then
its use (Gebrauch) (Humboldt 1994: 16), with which he meant oral literary text
(Foertsch 2001: 113). He repeated this view, again in reversed order, after he had
read a transcription of an Aboriginal song by R.H. Mathews (Martin 2007: 127):
We are still lacking good texts in the original language with interlinear
translation; of course the texts would have to have been recorded with
the greatest precision. Such texts, though, would be more pertinent at
the moment than grammars and vocabularies, which the scholar in the
end – if the texts are only somewhat extensive – could derive from them
himself.44
Nevertheless, von Leonhardi repeatedly emphasised the importance of a
publication of a comprehensive grammar and comparative dictionary of Aranda,
Loritja and Diyari. According to Carl Strehlow,45 the dictionary was going to be
part of the publication on Aranda and Loritja cultures, literatures and languages.
The language study had been planned as a separate publication, which von
Leonhardi thought would be the culmination of Strehlow’s ethnographic work:
As the coronation of the total work, you must finally write a language
study of Aranda and Loritja.46

44 Von Leonhardi to R.H. Mathews, 9.6.1908 (Thomas 2007: 247). Translated by C. Winter.
45 Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, mid to end of 1906 (SH-SP-6-1).
97
The Aranda’s Pepa
This language study would be the last piece to unlock the inner thoughts of the
Aranda and Loritja. By the time the first volume of the Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien was published at the end of 1907, Strehlow had
collected over 6000 Aranda and Loritja (Kukatja) words and derivations as well
as hundreds of Diyari words. His dictionary contains extensive references to
kinship terms, ceremonial vocabulary, mythology and material culture, as well
as historical incidents. The ‘coronation’ of his masterpiece never came to be. It
is still an unpublished handwritten manuscript, bound and sewn together by
hand, based on work commenced during the 1890s. It probably represents the
largest and most comprehensive dictionary of indigenous Australian languages
compiled around the turn of the century and possibly to date. It is a unique
documentary record in Australia.
Strehlow’s linguistic and philological communications on language and
indigenous text were very detailed. They ranged from pronunciation47 and
grammatical, etymological to semantic interpretations of key terms like Altjira
– aljeringa reflecting his intimate knowledge of Aranda and Loritja intellectual
life. He also tried to systematically and consistently employ (Breen 2005: 94) an
orthography of the indigenous languages he was documenting at a time when
spelling systems and the study of language were not well developed in Australia
(Moore 2003). He remarked on his system:
When you compare my work with Spencer and Gillen’s, you will see
immediately that our orthographies are completely different, because
the two gentlemen choose the English spelling, I in contrast use the
continental one. It is a pity that Spencer and Gillen did not use the
latter as well, which Mr. Spencer as professor in Melbourne must have
known.48
Initially their approaches to language seemed to differ. Strehlow’s studies of
language and culture were used in applied ways for bible translation, education
and ultimately for conversion. For von Leonhardi ethnography and language
studies had a wider scope. They were primarily to further human knowledge
about the world. Language was not only a research tool, it also had a crucial
philosophical dimension; it showed how other people thought and different
modes of perception. It gave insight into people’s worldviews and their true
spirit and intellect. Language also had an historical dimension in von Leonhardi’s
methodological and theoretical framework, which he discussed with Strehlow.
He was exploring the use of comprehensive descriptions and documentations of
languages to help explain some hypotheses of the infant theory ‘Kulturkreislehre’
of the German-speaking world. Von Leonhardi’s understanding of language in

98
the Kulturkreislehre was informed by close reading of the limited amount of

existing material in the first decade of the century and his correspondence with
P.W. Schmidt. Von Leonhardi makes first explicit mention of the Kulturkreislehre
in relation to language to Strehlow in early 1908. At the time a number of
very basic wordlists and grammars of Aranda, Loritja and Diyari were being
published and Schmidt was studying and comparing Australian languages.
Von Leonhardi viewed language as the embodiment of a people’s mind and
spirit. Language and culture could not be separated. Language was method and
phenomenon. His language project echoed in many ways German linguistic
traditions and often sounded Boasian. Text collection was paramount in Boas’
ethnography; it was part of the methodological foundation. Boas understood
the study of language and its literature as an aid to unravel the history of
indigenous peoples and traditional worldviews. Through language, phenomena
like myths and social institutions as well as material culture that seemed similar,
related or identical, could be established as specific within their own cultural
and linguistic context. Carl Strehlow’s Lutheran tradition and von Leonhardi’s
nineteenth century German anthropological tradition both emphasised the
significance of language for understanding other peoples’ particularity and
saw languages as the embodiment of peoples Geist; this view had been part
of mainstream intellectual life in Germany for over 100 years. A number of
principles of these traditions overlapped. They were based on some of the main
thoughts on language emanating from Herderian and Humboldtian philosophy,
which were explicitly expressed by Bastian, Virchow and their anthropological
circle, and by Boas in North America.
Clearly Strehlow’s ethnographic oeuvre stands in the German fin de siècle
anthropological tradition that was language based and through language, which
implied understanding, tried to document cultures in their own right, avoiding
deduction and preconceived theories. Ultimately language was not only method
for him, but final evidence that the Aranda were part of the universal plurality
of one humanity. After 27 years studying the Aranda language and culture, the
Lutheran pastor Carl Strehlow made this clear in his last published remark in
regard to Aboriginal people on the 7 December 1921 in Adelaide’s newspaper
The Register:
If you see in the present type of the aborigines the missing link,
you require 11 more links from the present type of the aborigine to
the common ancestor of man and ape, because the greatest difference
between an ape and an aborigine is not the bodily structure, but the
wonderfully structured language of the aborigines, and their religious
beliefs.
99
IV. The Making of a Masterpiece
The publication of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien was
the result of the collaboration between Carl Strehlow and his editor and friend,
Moritz von Leonhardi.1 Although his editor understated his contribution in
the making of this masterpiece, his contemporaries N.W. Thomas (1909),
P.W. Schmidt (1908), Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss2 were aware of his
involvement. Durkheim remarked that it would be ‘proper to add to Strehlow’s
name that of von Leonhardi, who played an important role in the publication.
Not only was he responsible for editing Strehlow’s manuscripts, but also, by
judicious questions on more than one point, he led Strehlow to specify some
of his observations’ (Durkheim 1995: 89, fn. 21 quoted in Kreinath 2012: 408).
Von Leonhardi carefully studied Carl Strehlow’s manuscript, compared it with
all other literature available on the subject, compiled long lists of questions,
added references, had Australian animals, insects and plants classified, inserted
their Latin names into the text and, finally, went yet again through the arduous
work of reading the proofs. But most importantly he never tired emphasising
empiricism and displaying scepticism when Strehlow’s field results seemed
inconsistent. The research at Hermannsburg was driven by von Leonhardi’s
never-ending desire for empirical data and the precise questioning of what it
really was that Strehlow encountered daily at his mission station. Armchair-
researching the cultures of central Australian Aboriginal people in Germany,
he had noticed gaps, contradictions and broad generalisations in the existing
material. He wanted to know what the different researchers had exactly observed
in different parts of the continent and why their research yielded different
results. Thus, he was keen on further field investigation to verify or reject the
existing assumptions on Australian indigenous cultures.
Through his editor’s persistent interest in empirical observations, Carl Strehlow
wrote his seven volume monograph in a five year period, an impressive
achievement considering his many other duties and difficulties he faced on
his lonely mission in central Australia. Although he had been side-lined in the
English-speaking anthropological world even before he had written the first
volume of his monograph (Marett and Penniman 1932: 95–97; Veit 1991, 2004b;
John Strehlow 2004b, 2011), in Germany the research was driven forward and
elsewhere read and celebrated (Preuss 1908; van Gennep 1908; Schmidt 1911;
Mauss 1913).
1 Other classics of this era were also collaborations (Jones 2005: 6-25; Nobbs 2005: 26-45).
2 F.C.H. Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 20.9.1912.
101
The Aranda’s Pepa
Sehr geehrter Herr Strehlow!

On the 10 of September 1901, with Spencer and Gillen in mind, Baron Moritz
von Leonhardi was sitting at his desk in his country retreat, writing to Pastor
Carl Strehlow at the central Australian Hermannsburg Mission, who was at this
stage unknown to him. Von Leonhardi had by chance read, during his extensive
research into the religion of the Australian peoples, a letter written by the
missionary in the church newspaper Kirchlichen Mitteilungen of the 15 May of
the same year. He had been struck by a sentence in it, namely ‘Their God is not
at all concerned about human beings, just as they are not with him.’ This remark
induced him to write:
Gross-Karben, d. 10/IX 1901.
Grossherzogthum Hessen.
Esteemed Sir!
In Mission Inspector Deinzer’s Kirchlichen Mitteilungen of the 15 May
of this year I saw a letter by you,3 which described the situation on
your mission and also contained a few remarks relating to the natives
of your station. I read in it: “Their God is not at all concerned about
human beings, just as they are not with him.” This indicates that some
kind of concept of a divine being exists among the natives. As I have
studied for many years the religion of primitive people, I have of course
endeavoured to collect everything I could find on the religious-ethical
views of the Australian peoples. The information on the natives in the
vicinity of your mission – they are called Arunta by researchers; is
this name correct? –, is scanty, although, as you may be aware, in the
past years two large and very important publications on the natives of
your area and its surroundings have been published. I am referring to
Horn’s Scientific Expedition to Central Australia Vol. IV Anthropology
and Gillen and Spencer’s4 Native Tribes of Central Australia.5 Both
publications are densely packed with information, in particular on
initiation ceremonies and mythology of the tribes studied; however, the
material also raises a number of questions. For example, little or nothing
can be gathered on the existence of one or more divine beings or spirits
who created the world and human beings, and taught them the sacred
ceremonies (circumcision, male youth’s and men’s initiation etc.) from
these publications. However, I suspect, in analogy to other tribes of
3 Carl Strehlow’s letter had been written on the 8 January 1901.

4 Von Leonhardi’s order.
5 Report on the work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia Vol. IV (1896); Spencer and Gillen’s
The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899).
102
the continent, that such a concept cannot be completely absent. Your

remark referred to above as well as a statement (“Children are a gift of
Altjira (God)”6) in an older scientific journal by one of your predecessors,
missionary Kempe,7 confirm my inference and leads me to ask you for a
great favour, if you had the energy and time. I would be very thankful
if you could answer a few questions.8
Von Leonhardi was addressing an empirical problem. It seemed to him that there
were gaps in the existing literature caused by lack of attention to particularities.
His queries related mainly to the concepts of Ulthana,9 Twanyirika,10 and ‘two
beings who were Ungambikula (out of nothing, self existing)’ and had come
‘to Earth in the oldest Alcheringa time’ (Spencer and Gillen 1899: 388), but he
also remarked that ‘It goes without saying that I would be very thankful for
any other information about the natives, their lives and intellectual concepts’.11
The letter travelled overland from Gross Karben to Frankfurt and then north to
one of the ports in Germany (Bremerhaven or Hamburg) to embark on a ship to
one of the remotest areas of the known world. About six weeks later the letter
arrived in Port Adelaide, where it was loaded on a train going north to Marree
(Herrgott Springs) and Oodnadatta in remote Australia. At Oodnadatta the
railway ended. Cargo and mail going any further into the inhospitable interior
of this still largely unknown part of the Australian continent was transferred
with much needed food supplies and other essentials onto camel caravans led by
Muslim camel drivers or a mail buggy, which would trek for weeks northwards
through central Australian desert regions.
On the 20 December 1901, Carl Strehlow answered the German aristocrat’s
queries about his little Aranda congregation. Only extracts of Strehlow’s
letter, copied by others, have survived in a number of archives in Australia
and England.12 Strehlow answered and explained the concepts of ‘Twanyirika’
and ‘Ulthana’, and wrote that ‘according to the view of the Aranda there is a
being of the highest order called Altjira or Altjira mara’ and that they did not
know anything about ‘reincarnation’. He also mentioned some other indigenous
beliefs at Hermannsburg which deviated from Spencer and Gillen’s recordings.
However, what really made Strehlow’s work controversial was that he discussed
the semantics of ngambakala (‘surely the Ungambikula of Gillen-Spencer’) and
6 Kempe (1883: 53).

7 Kempe was one of the missionaries who established Hermannsburg in 1877. He wrote in 1883 Zur
Sittenkunde der Centralaustralischen Schwarzen and in 1891 A grammar and vocabulary of the languagespoken
by the Aborigines of the MacDonnell Ranges.
9 Spirit being documented by Gillen (1896: 183).
10 Spirit being documented by Spencer and Gillen (1899: 264, 654).
12 Rowan Private Collection (Melbourne), W.B. Spencer Papers (Melbourne Museum) and E.B. Tylor Papers
(Pitt Rivers Museum).
103
The Aranda’s Pepa
altjira, which did not ‘agree’ with Spencer and Gillen’s concept of Alcheringa,
and explained that they had not understood some key concepts due to the
lack of language skills.13 They maintained, for instance, that Alcheringa meant
‘Dream-times’ (Spencer 1896: 111).14 According to Strehlow, this was a linguistic
misinterpretation of the term (Strehlow 1907: 2).15
14. Map of postal routes between Germany and Australia.
Source: Clivie Hilliker, The Australian National University; adapted from Kleiner Deutscher Kolonialatlas 1904.
Carl Strehlow’s reply reached von Leonhardi sometime in early 1902; and what
he read was pleasing. Strehlow’s comments were sent to none other than Andrew
Lang in England, who had set himself against the whole tendency of Tylorian
anthropology (Stocking 1995: 60; Hiatt 1996: 103). Lang received Strehlow’s
findings on a superior divine being amongst the Aranda in late 1903. They were
a welcome contribution in the controversy surrounding high gods, which Lang
seemed to be losing.
The high god debate that began in the mid 1800s (Swain 1985: 34) was about
the emerging view that evidence of primeval or early forms of monotheism
13 Excerpts of Carl Strehlow letter to von Leonhardi, 20.12.1901 (Rowan collection). Spencer the recipient.
14 See Chapter V.
15 Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 2.6.1906 (SH-SP-2-1).
104
existed in indigenous beliefs. The reports from Australia even threatened to

place ‘the blackfellow on a par with his white supplanters’ (Hiatt 1996: 100).
Although, according to E.B. Tylor, religion was universal to humans, he defined
religion simply as ‘the beliefs in spiritual beings’ (Morris 1987: 100).16 Tylor
and his circle could not accept a high being or monotheism among Aborigines
because it would place them on a higher level in their evolutionistic schema
that moved from animism to monotheism and would have thrown their theory
into disarray. Frazer, whose evolutionistic chain of events did not even allow
religion among Aboriginal people, also opposed people such as Lang, who
postulated the existence of a supreme being amongst indigenous people, which
in Frazerian terms proved that Aborigines had religion. For people like Lang
and Frazer having religion was tantamount to having a high god (Swain 1985:
94, 96). There was a shared assumption embedded in their thought, namely that
having a high god had a uniform significance throughout all religions – which it
clearly did and does not. This made Strehlow’s observations particularly acute.
Thus, Lang showed Strehlow’s notes to Tylor and wondered if Spencer knew
the indigenous language, as Native Tribes of Central Australia did not have
‘philology in it’.17 In letters to Tylor he remarked that ‘I had my suspicions of
Twanyirika’, although Spencer and Gillen ‘are excellent’,18 and that:
I hold it also not only for possible, but in the highest degree for probable,
that the myths and legends of the arunta should by different persons
differently reported. The accounts according to Spencer and Gillen make
quite too much the impression of a universal widespread determined
metaphysical system … I hope certainly further communications on the
Arunta through the German missionary to receive [Lang’s wording].19
Lang could not resist, and sent ‘the original German to Prof Spencer in
Melbourne’.20 Lang’s main motivation in spreading word on Strehlow’s highest
being was to back his thesis that high gods and thus an early form of religion
existed among indigenous Australians that many of his colleagues rejected.
Therefore, there was a difference between Lang and von Leonhardi’s
understanding of the underlying issues. Lang’s assumption of a universal
widespread system (i.e. proving the origin of religion) stood in contrast with
German empiricism and particularism as well as diffusionism that were an
alternative to evolutionistic theory (Swain 1985: 105). Von Leonhardi had simply
been making the point that field observations could contradict theories, and
16 See also Lawrence (1987: 18–34) on Tylor and Frazer.

17 A. Lang to E.B. Tylor, 19.10.1903 in E.B. Tylor Papers, Box 6 (2), Pitt River Museum.
105
The Aranda’s Pepa
deviate or complement other field observations. However, he was well aware

of the ‘controversy’ and is likely to have tried to show that even in English
theorising the Aranda had ‘religion’ and hence might undermine evolutionism.
‘Temper and bias have set in like a flood’

The impact of Carl Strehlow’s first letter dated 20 December 1901 on the British
anthropological establishment and Baldwin Spencer has been discussed a number
of times in contributions by Mulvaney and Calaby (1985), Veit (1991, 2004b)
and John Strehlow (2004, 2011). The exact events and dates of the ensuing
‘controversy’ are still not quite clear. What really transpired between Australia
and England after Strehlow’s letter had been circulated amongst important
members of the anthropological scene is hard to say. However, a number of
letters give a flavour of what might have transpired. Without doubt, Spencer
felt troubled by Strehlow’s research and set out to side-line him.
After Carl Strehlow’s information on a supreme being or a ‘high god’ amongst the
Aranda had been handed around to key players of the British anthropological
establishment, Spencer, who was just about to publish another volume on the
Aborigines of central Australia, wrote angry and to some degree defamatory
letters to Lang and Frazer about Strehlow’s observations.
Spencer wrote to Frazer, who was proof reading his and Gillen’s forthcoming
book The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, on the 9 December 1903, that
he had to write a long letter to Lang in reply to ‘a short paper by a Lutheran
missionary named Strehlow’ that had ‘more utter misleading nonsense packed
into a small space that I recollect having come across before’ and ‘remarks
(hostile in tone to Gillen and myself) are appended by some one’ (Marett and
Penniman 1932: 96). Von Leonhardi seems to have added these remarks, and
they could hardly have been called ‘hostile’. For example, one stated in regard
to ‘Altjiramara’:
Here again one finds the influence of the missionaries or imagines it,
unjustly as I believe. In mode of expression one may trace Christian
influence. “He is the creator of the world & the ruler of mankind” – such
an expression is taken from “the almighty creator of heaven and earth”
of the Apostles’ Creed. But in actual fact there is no need to attribute
anything to Christian influence. As early as 1882 a case was noticed by
Miss. Kempe in his report.21
21 Excerpts of C. Strehlow’s first letter with von Leonhardi comments, Rowan Private Collection (Melbourne).
106
Spencer furiously pointed out that the early missionaries had been teaching
the ‘poor natives that Altjira means “God”’ and that Strehlow had seized upon
this doing the same and now was making the claim that his informants were
telling him that Altjira meant ‘God’. He told Frazer that Strehlow’s linguistic
explanations of the word Altjira and its compounds were naïve and that
‘Strehlow is talking rubbish when he speaks of Twanyirika as the leader of
the ceremonies’. He had to tell ‘Lang that, after spending months watching
the natives preparing for and performing their ceremonies, to meet with this
rubbish from a man who not only has never seen a ceremony, but spends a
good part of his time telling the few natives who frequent the station that all
their ceremonies are wicked, is rather too much of a good thing’ (Marett and
Penniman 1932: 95–97). Lang reported Spencer’s reaction to Strehlow’s notes on
the 13 January 1904 to Tylor:
Dear Tylor,
… Today comes a long tirade of Spencer against Strehlow. Is it proper
to send it to you? If you think so, I will add, typed, my reply, which, at
all events, I may send, and from it you would gather what Spencer said.
It comes to this, Strehlow is a beast of a missionary, not admitted to
ceremonies, and would not go if he got a ticket. But Spencer adds that
he and Gillen have not worked Strehlow’s district at all, so how can they
know what he found there? He does not explain why Gillen in Horn
Expedition (IV 182, I think)22 has “a great being of the heavens”, with
an emu foot, as in Strehlow. Any being with a wife and child, (as Zeus,
Apollo) is borrowed from missionaries.
I understand that Howitt recants his remarks on great beings, but how
the deuce was I to know that, and why, 20 years after date, does he
recant what he published in initiation. He never told me, though I think
I sent him my book.
Spencer thinks Strehlow wants to discredit him, whereas he only
answered inquiries. I sent you what he said. Temper and bias have set
in like a flood, and if Howitt and Gillen disclaim their published words,
how can we trust any body’s reports ... Of course I shall not print a line
on Strehlow just now. I enclose Strehlow, which please return.23
Frazer raised Carl Strehlow once more with Spencer in 1908 after he had read the
first volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (Strehlow
1907): ‘I wish you would tell me what you think of it and of Mr. Strehlow
22 Report on the work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia Vol. IV (1896).
23 A. Lang to E.B. Tylor, 13.1.1904 in E.B. Tylor’s Collection, Box 6 (2), Pitt River Museum. Transcription
held at the SRC.
107
The Aranda’s Pepa
as an anthropologist’ (Marett and Penniman 1932: 106). Spencer replied with

indignation, ‘I don’t know what to do in regard to Strehlow. He is so uneducated
that he can’t write publishable German’ (Marett and Penniman 1932: 109). He
again made similar dismissive remarks on Strehlow’s understanding of ‘Altjira’
and his biases as a missionary that disqualified him as a reliable source (Marett
and Penniman 1932: 110–111).
On the 19 April 1908, Frazer responded to Spencer’s assessment of Strehlow
and also mentioned his ‘new book on Totemism’ in which he was intending ‘to
describe all the principal facts of totemism so far as they are known at present
in geographical or ethnographical order’ beginning with ‘Central and North
Central Australia, drawing my materials, of course, exclusively from you and
Gillen; then I take up south-east Australia, using chiefly Howitt’s facts. … So you
see I am making the “Geographical Survey” pretty full’ (Marett and Penniman
1932: 116). Then he turned to the missionary living in central Australia:
From what you tell me about Strehlow, it seems to me that I cannot safely
use his evidence; so I intend to make no use of it. I wish you would publish
your reason for distrusting his evidence, such as you have stated them to
me, so that I could refer to them. The shakiness of Strehlow’s facts ought
to be known here in Europe. (Marett and Penniman 1932: 116)
Spencer did not publish his views on Strehlow until 1927, well after the
missionary’s death, and incorporated linguistic explanations of some key terms
that are conspicuously reminiscent of Strehlow’s material. Nevertheless, Frazer
ignored Carl Strehlow’s research in his Totemism and Exogamy of 1910 on the
grounds that he was a missionary and therefore, biased. The Director of the
Frankfurt museum, Bernhard Hagen, remarked in von Leonhardi’s obituary
(Strehlow 1911: I): ‘Unfortunately, an intended preface, in which Frazer’s
critique was going to be rejected, remained unfinished.’ While von Leonhardi
had managed to edit the fourth volume of Strehlow’s work (1911) before he died,
he did not get around to writing the preface intended to respond to Frazer’s
allegations that missionary Strehlow’s sources and information were ‘deeply
tainted’ (Frazer 1910: 186–187), and thus, not scientifically reliable sources.
Instead, Pater Wilhelm Schmidt launched an attack on Frazer in his journal
Anthropos (1911: 430–431). He criticised Frazer for dismissing information
provided by missionaries and in particular by Carl Strehlow, who had collected
ethnographic and linguistic material for ‘scientific’ discourse despite of his
Christian mission context. Strehlow mentions, for example, the work of
missionary Spieht among the Eweer in Africa.24 Although Spieht’s article relates
to bible translation, Strehlow extracted the ethnographic data on how the Eweer
personify the celestial elements and how this correlates with Aranda views of

108
Altjira and the sky. Schmidt pointed out that Frazer had used the information
of at least 46 missionaries if not more in Totemism and Exogamy;25 and that
there was no reason to believe missionaries any less than agnostic ‘professionals’
(Marchand 2003: 297). Frazer’s treatment of Carl Strehlow also met with
disapproval from Haddon (Veit 1991: 114) and other Cambridge scholars,26 and
from the French quarter. Marcel Mauss and Émile Durkheim (1913: 101–104)
wrote in L'Année sociologique that Frazer’s and Spencer’s resistance to Strehlow’s
work was not justified.
What was problematic about the high gods amongst central Australians was that
they did not fit into Frazer’s sequencing of evolutionistic events. They were not
a problem per se. The existence of Strehlow’s ‘highest being’ Altjira meant that
the Aranda had ‘religion’ in Frazer’s evolutionistic framework. He rejected this,
because he classified Aranda beliefs as ‘magic’. It stood in opposition to Frazer’s
view that belief systems moved from magic to religion and then to science
(Morris 1987: 104; Hiatt 1996; Frazer 1922). While he had taken Tylor’s idea of
uniform progress in human religious development up, he had reduced Tylor’s
parameters ‘animism, polydaemonism, polytheism and monotheism’ (Tylor
1871). Spencer and Gillen followed Frazer’s lead integrating central Australian
Aboriginal people at the beginning of a simple line of development. Thus, they
were exemplary for the lowest stage on this linear development:
Frazer believed that magic precedes religion in the social evolution of
mankind. In his view the Aranda were proof of this because they were
obviously the most primitive people in existence and their totemic
ceremonies were magical fertility rites. (Peterson 1972: 15)
A final note on high gods

In this context it seems necessary to comment briefly on the ‘high god’ debate
of the turn of the century, because its ongoing discussion in Mulvaney and
Calaby (1985), Veit (1991, 2004), Hill (2002) and John Strehlow (2004b, 2011)
still evokes the impression that Carl Strehlow gave prominence to a high god
amongst the Aranda and Loritja and participated in this controversy, which he
did not.
25 Frazer had not been able to abstain completely from Carl Strehlow’s work, he uses it in his fourth
volume of Totemism and Exogamy (1910: 59) in a footnote. He also relied heavily on information of missionary
Christian Keysser, Carl Strehlow’s brother-in-law, in his The Belief in Immortality. He wrote in his section on
New Guinea: ‘Mr. Ch. Keysser, who has laboured among them for more than eleven years and has given us an
excellent description of their customs and beliefs’ (Frazer 1913: 262).
26 F.C.H. Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 20.9.1912.
109
The Aranda’s Pepa
For the German researchers the debate was not about the existence or non-
existence of a high god that would prove ‘religion’. The Aranda, according to
Strehlow and von Leonhardi, had religion regardless of whether or not they had
a high god. It was about empirical observation. Von Leonhardi had noticed that
the generalisations in Spencer and Gillen’s publications did not seem uniformly
applicable to all Arandic peoples. Clearly Strehlow’s observations suggested
that the Western Aranda at the Hermannsburg Mission had different or at least
additional views and outlooks. And for that matter even Spencer and Gillen
(1904: 498–500) had found a ‘high god’ among the Kaitish (Kaytetye), a northern
Arandic group.27
Von Leonhardi did not believe in high gods in the same way as Pater W. Schmidt,
who was trying to prove that monotheism existed among all peoples in one way
or another. During his long academic life, the Austrian scholar Pater Schmidt was
bent on proving the primeval revelation amongst indigenous people around the
world. The theory in question was his theological diffusionism, which suggested
that hunters and gatherers would ‘remember’ god’s creations in their own belief
system, i.e. the primeval revelation or Ur-monotheism (see Conte 1987). In the
debate about the existence of ‘high gods’ amongst indigenous people Andrew
Lang was seen by the Schmidt school as their British ally (Marchand 2003: 294),
although the reasons why Lang wanted indigenous people to have high gods
was different to the Austrian school’s views. There were serious efforts under
way to instrumentalise empirical data, including Strehlow’s, for underpinning
Schimdt’s theory of ‘primeval revelation’ that would be almost as racist as some
forms of evolutionism. However, Strehlow’s data and views were not suited to
fit Schmidt’s theory of primeval monotheism, which emphasises the merits of
Strehlow’s achievements that have survived the passage of time, while Schmidt’s
attempts at best provoke a tired shrug (Conte 1987: 262). Thus, von Leonhardi
stated to Strehlow that he was ‘not of the opinion that these [high gods] represent
calls from a primeval revelation’28 but rather that high gods or supreme beings
were a common feature of Australian belief systems (see also Ridley 1875: 136;
Howitt 1884: 459; Parker 1905: 6). On the 28 August 1904 von Leonhardi wrote:
Most tribes in the South East of the continent have such a belief: A big/
large with supernatural powers endowed Black lives in the sky now,
previously he also lived on earth. He is immortal, created people and
everything else, taught customs and ceremonies (Kult) (sometimes also
morals); he is good. However, no one is troubled by him, only at the
initiation of young men does he play a role, women and children do
not know about him etc. (Baiame of the Kamilaroi or Munganjaur of the
Kurnai, for example). This concept may also exist amongst the Aranda
27 Kaytetye is an Arandic language spoken to the north of Alice Springs.

110
and according to you, it exists untouched by white people’s beliefs.

Further examination would be at any rate very desirable. Possibly
the old men do still know more about it. For instance, is thunder, the
voice of Altjira mara? Further I would like to point out that Spencer
and Gillen – I am sure you will soon get hold of it yourself – found a
Kaitish myth on a supreme being, but do not comment on it (p. 498).
It is exactly these kinds of myths that I suspect to exist everywhere in
various modifications.29
In my view, von Leonhardi was only provoking the English establishment.
He used the ‘high gods’ to make a point against unwarranted generalisations
and selectiveness of material to justify evolutionistic sequencing in culture
development (see also Swain 1985: 93). He remarked later on to Strehlow:
I share your impression that Howitt is completely under the influence of
Spencer and in many ways it is not a good one; in any case it is biased.
That Howitt does not mention Mura in the sky, although missionary
Reuther certainly told him about it, is not acceptable. He should have
expressed his doubts, as he was not entitled to simply suppress the
matter. The Dieri – and for that matter the Aranda too – in contrast to
the natives of SE Australia, are to be classified at all costs on the lowest
stage of development. Thus, certain views and beliefs are not allowed
to be found! A further reason for classifying the Dieri, Urabanna etc as
representatives of the lowest stage of development is the supposition
that they practice group marriage of primeval times (analogy to the
Piranguru relationship?). Hopefully this fairytale will soon be laid to
rest; even in England, no one less than Mr N.W. Thomas is fighting
against it. For most English and in particular Australian scientists group
marriage of the Dieri is still a dogma.30
N.W. Thomas, who briefly corresponded with Carl Strehlow and participated
as a proponent of the ‘high god’ in the debate, wrote that it was naive to get
the Christian god and indigenous ‘high god’ mixed up, because it was evident
in Strehlow’s description that he had emu feet and many wives that could only
qualify him as an indigenous god. He even made a cynical remark that one could
see if one wanted to elements of Mohammedan beliefs in Altjira’s description
(Thomas 1905a). Ironically this may not have been an absurd idea. After
all, Muslim cameleers had been present in remote Australia since the 1860s,
servicing the mission and the pastoral settlement. They had not only interacted

111
The Aranda’s Pepa
with the new settlers, they had also formed relationships with the indigenous
population (Kenny 2009b). The Aranda at Hermannsburg called them Apagana
or Matawalpala and even had a hand sign for them (Strehlow 1915: 58).
N.W. Thomas made the first published comment in Folklore on Strehlow’s work
and description of Altjira and his many wives:
Immortal virgins, it is true, are hardly a savage conception; but it seems
hardly likely that such an idea would be derived from a Lutheran
missionary; if anything they rather recall the houris of Mohammedanism
than any Christian idea. (Thomas 1905a: 431)
High beings are not unusual in indigenous Australian religion. Independent
reports on the ‘high god’ phenomenon have been present in the anthropological
literature since material on Aboriginal religion has been recorded (Swain 1985).
Hiatt (1996: 100–119) has shown that high being beliefs did exist in Australian
indigenous religion and are not necessarily an import of Christian provenience.
Many peoples have had ‘high gods’ positioned, though, quite differently from
Judeo-Christian or Islamic schemes. They often do not figure as the major creators
or as an ultimate source of a moral order. Indigenous Australian high gods were,
rather, beings with more power and significance who coexisted with the rest of
the ancestral beings, and assumed prominence due to variable circumstances in
particular context and ceremony. Hiatt indicates that Aboriginal beliefs were far
more resilient than many researchers have maintained and remarks in a footnote
that ‘No modern Australianist, to the best of my knowledge, denies change
as a fact of history, but we do affirm the existence of a pre-contact structure
of cult belief and practice strong enough to survive the immediate impact of
colonization’ (Hiatt 1996: 199).
Neither Carl Strehlow nor missionary Reuther, a Lutheran ethnographer at Lake
Eyre and Strehlow’s contemporary, attributed overwhelming importance to a
‘high god’ or a supreme being among Aboriginal people.31 Only the first one and
a half pages of the first volume of Strehlow’s publication Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien contains a brief account of a supreme being called
Altjira or der Unerschaffene/Ewige (the unmade/eternal one) and the remaining
hundreds of pages of the work deals with the mythological ancestral beings,
the altjirangamitjina, in contemporary literature referred to as dreamings or
dreaming beings. Also the second volume on Loritja myths dwells only in the
opening page on the so called ‘high god’ Tukura.
Carl Strehlow’s perception of Aranda, Loritja and Diyari high gods and other
indigenous religious concepts was complex and differentiated. The high gods
31 Reuther maintained that among the Diyari the ancestral beings, called muramura, played a prominent
role in cosmology and not Mura (the high being).
112
he called Altjira, Tukura and Mura were only a part of indigenous cosmology
and indeed they were not the main creators of the world. Strehlow wrote that
‘highest beings’ and the dreaming ancestors co-existed:
The Loritja also know of a highest being in the sky, called Tukura;
which is differentiated from the Tukutita, the totem gods, like the
Altjirangamitjina of the Aranda, they turned into trees and cliffs, or
into Tjurunga. This view seems to be quite common amongst Australian
peoples, the Dieri have a similar tradition. Among the peoples mentioned
the totem gods are differentiated from the highest god. The Dieri call their
highest being Mura and the totem gods or divinities, Muramura; the
Aranda call the highest being Altjira, the Totem Gods Altjirangamitjina
(the eternal unmade ones; Altjira: unmade, ngamitjina: the eternal) or
Inkara, the immortals (the ones who never die). The Loritja call the
highest being Tukura (the unmade one), the Totem Gods, Tukutita (from
Tuku: unmade and tita: the eternal one).32
Although Carl Strehlow found that a ‘high god’ called Altjira, existed in the
cosmology of the Aranda as well as of the Loritja, called Tukura, and Mura
among the Diyari, he maintained that the ancestors, called altjirangamitjina,
tukutita and muramura had overriding importance in indigenous mythology
and were the ones that determined the belief system and the shape of the world.
He understood this supreme being as existing beside the ancestors and not as an
overarching powerful being that brought about a biblical genesis. Indeed, as his
research into indigenous cosmology progressed he qualified and amended the
concept of this supreme being.
Strehlow had doubts about the high god concept, because he had realised that
it had no similarity with the concept of a Christian God and monotheism. He
wrote to his editor that ‘the blacks do not think of their God as an absolutely
sacred, sinless being, not even as the creator of the universe’.33 He nevertheless
published the Altjira and Tukura accounts, because his senior informants
reassured him that this being in the sky existed and they believed in him. In
one of his footnotes some reluctance is discernable:
Although I have to accept as certain that the Aranda and Loritja believe
in the Highest Being in the sky and that they held this belief prior
to their contact with whites, it is nevertheless beyond question that
the traditions pertaining to it are far less important than the myths
concerning the totem ancestors. (Strehlow 1908: 2)

113
The Aranda’s Pepa
It only remains to be mentioned here that at the end of his career, Spencer went
full circle. When he republished his and Gillen’s data in The Arunta (1927: 355–
372), he added an extensive section on ‘the supreme ancestor, overshadowing
all others’ known as Numbakulla, but did not feel the need to correct any
earlier impression he may have given’ (Hiatt 1996: 106). Numbakulla34 was
conspicuously similar to Carl Strehlow’s Altjira as well as to Gillen’s early account
of Ulthana, a powerful being in the sky, in the Horn report Anthropology (Gillen
1896: 183). At the time Carl remarked in a footnote:
In the ‘Report of the Horn Expedition’ IV. p. 183, Gillen states this about
the Arunta [Aranda], “The sky is said to be inhabited by three persons – a
gigantic man with an immense foot shaped like that of the emu, a woman,
and a child who never develops beyond childhood.” Obviously, what he
is referring to is Tukura and his wife and child, and I suspect that Gillen
obtained his story from a Loritja and not an Aranda. (Strehlow 1908: 1)
With this discussion, I hope the high god debate in connection with Carl
Strehlow has been sufficiently conceptualised and for the moment can be laid
to rest. Three factors seem especially pertinent: (i) the relation between pre-
contact indigenous knowledge and that of newcomers, Central Asian as well
as European; (ii) the role of ‘high gods’ in critiques of nineteenth century
evolutionism; and finally, (iii) the challenge that empirical methods face in the
context of competing theories, institutions and nations.35 This said, discussion
of Strehlow’s masterpiece on the earth-dwelling and place-bound ancestral
beings can finally move beyond the first pages of his volumes.
‘Our publication of your manuscript’

Although Strehlow’s first letter of 1901 made a significant impression on its
recipients, the German collaboration began after Spencer and Gillen’s second
book The Northern Tribes of Central Australia had been published in mid 1904.
It triggered, nearly three years later, von Leonhardi’s second letter to Carl
Strehlow because he had again detected inconsistencies, over-systematisations
and generalisations in Spencer and Gillen’s publication. He wrote to Strehlow:
The big mistake of the books by these two researchers, seems to me, is
that they systemise too much and try too hard to show universal views
existing in a large area, where there may be no more than individual
34 See also Spencer and Gillen (1899: 388–390). This being appears later as Ungambikula (Spencer and
Gillen 1927).
35 In this light it is not at all a mystery that Frazer ignored Strehlow. He could not have missed that the
German’s work was outstanding, himself being a classicist and knowing a number of languages including
German.
114
myths, local views and customs etc. and not a coherent, well-ordered
system of mythology and custom. Only by providing individual stories
and customs is it possible to tease out by comparison general aspects,
this however needs to be done in the study.36
The critique of the attempt to systematise and generalise social and religious
frameworks of indigenous peoples lies at the heart of von Leonhardi’s inquiries.
As with the high gods he was not interested in proving any kind of theory
but wanted to know what was really said on the ground and what were the
particularities. Towards the end of his ethnographic research, Strehlow would
also express this view:
I believe that Spencer and Gillen commit the same error in this case
as they have in others, in my opinion they do it often, by generalising
information and observations of individual culture traits and then by
imputing the deduction to the blacks, or perhaps to have it confirmed by
them, something that natives are quite willing to do. (Strehlow 1910: 7–8)
Von Leonhardi was convinced that different Aboriginal groups could not
possibly have such a homogenous culture as Spencer and Gillen were proposing
again in their new book. Thus, at the end of his second letter he offered to
have everything printed that Strehlow would write. Strehlow immediately
accepted the challenge; he had been contemplating a scientific publication on
central Australian indigenous culture,37 and had begun collecting ethnographic
material. He had just published the Aranda service book Galtjindintjamea-Pepa
Aranda Wolambarinjaka, and was in need of a new intellectual challenge. He
sent a copy of this service book to von Leonhardi on the 9 February 190538 as
well as some answers to his queries.39
During this letter exchange a remarkable friendship gradually developed
between two men from diametrically opposed backgrounds. This intellectual
friendship brought von Leonhardi, a wealthy aristocrat with poor health and
an insatiable curiosity, as close as one could ever get in an armchair to a vastly
different place and people’s Geistesleben (spirit and mind) compared to his own.
Beside the detailed ethnography of the Western Aranda and Loritja peoples, von
Leonhardi would receive over the years plants, animals, insects, photographs
and objects from his collaborator in central Australia. In his private hothouse
in Gross Karben he created his own central Australian landscape from seeds
Strehlow had sent him. Von Leonhardi dedicated the last years of his life to Carl
Strehlow’s research and ‘our publication of your manuscript’.40

38 Excerpts of this letter were published in Globus in 1907.
115
The Aranda’s Pepa
Carl Strehlow’s motivation to embark on this time-consuming intellectual

journey is far more difficult to comprehend. A number of reasons spring to
mind for his immediate willingness to collect ‘for science invaluable data’.41
Firstly, the Neuendettelsau Seminary, where he had been prepared for his
mission, encouraged their students to pursue linguistic and to a certain
degree ethnographical studies to understand the peoples with whom they
were involved (Veit 2004a) and to be able to spread God’s Word in vernacular.
Secondly it was a way to contribute knowledge to his homeland, Heimat. The
significance of Heimat should not be underestimated as Strehlow’s motivation
to form an intellectual relationship with von Leonhardi. Heimat as a concept is
both emotionally highly loaded and essential to a German sense of belonging.42
Thirdly, von Leonhardi’s offer was compelling as an outlet for his intellect.
Not only was it an escape from the isolation of Hermannsburg and a link to
the outside world, but the recognition and respect of a very well situated and
educated man must have been enticing. His editor’s interest did not wane once
during their entire correspondence.
Carl Strehlow’s empiricism

Although all observations have some implicit theory, researchers can reduce
their assumptions by striving for awareness of their own limitations. So while all
observation is theory laden to a degree, there are differences in the extent to which
an investigator’s assumptions flow into a work, depending on how constantly
they examine and question their records. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in
Zentral-Australien was understood as source material. The ethnography was
Herderian and Humboldtian, particularistic and linguistic, and through von
Leonhardi’s attempts to explain Graebnerian Kulturkreislehre (diffusionism) with
Boasian ethnographic source material on language and literature and refined
diffusionism, historical. Therefore, von Leonhardi and Strehlow’s aspiration,
simply to observe and record, could never be entirely realised as such, but it
did guard against premature generalisation and systematisation. Their approach
was far from an explicit and systemised theory that late nineteenth century
evolutionism had become. As it was, von Leonhardi would constantly remind
Strehlow and himself, that the current theories were all still ‘problematic’,
‘hypothetical’ and ‘speculative’.43

42 See Applegate (1990) for an extensive treatment of the concept Heimat.
43 This is not to say that types of ‘theory’ involving evolution or world-wide diffusionism has generated no
useful ‘middle-range’ theories in modern anthropology.
116
Von Leonhardi sent many key questions to Strehlow, which gave the research
project at Hermannsburg its general bearings. Religious beliefs were the centre
of his inquiries, thus questions on totemism, ceremonies, ritual paraphernalia,
spirit concepts and individual myths dominated his letters and questionnaires.44
He sent precise questions on ‘Altjira’, ‘Twanyirika’, ‘guruna and ltana’ and of
course wanted to know exactly what the tjurunga concept was all about and
requested lists of totems, and exact descriptions of flora and fauna. Queries on
Altjira, a divine being, and its possible influence were of initial interest, but
soon the earth-dwelling ancestors moved centre stage, as it became clear that
‘the word Altjira would not only be a proper name, but would also be used for
the totem ancestors’.45 This research also raised questions indirectly related to
land tenure because subjects such as mother’s dreaming, the possible collective
symbol of mother filiation through the wonniga and conception sites affiliation
emerged.46 The initial interest in high beings broadened and scepticism was
always close. Even when he was very pleased to hear that Strehlow’s research
was progressing well, and fine results were obtained, he never seemed to be
completely convinced or satisfied:
The discovery of the relationship of each person to the maternal totem
beside the one received through conception, is a very fine result. Thus,
the Aranda can clearly inherit a totem and for that matter from the
maternal side. This result places the totemism of this tribe among other
known totemic relationships and takes it out of its previous isolation.
Possibly, the totem acquired through conception is secondary and came
into existence only in the course of the development of the tribe; or
emerging from the personal totem (called Nagual in America; also shown
to exist in Australia)? I will have to consider the issue further and wait
for your upcoming reports before I form a final opinion. I cannot quite
follow your deduction of tmara altjira from Altja. It seems to me that
here too altjira equals ‘divine being’. The totem is altjira because it is
connected to the ancestors who are worshipped as gods. However, for
the moment this is only an assumption. Linguistically I cannot make a
judgement on whether altjira may be derived from altja.47
The Aranda concepts of soul and spirit, ltana and guruna, and what happens
with these entities caused von Leonhardi lots of ‘headaches’. He struggled over
44 Most questionnaires are missing (Strehlow inserted the answers and sent them back); they are believed
to have been lost in World War II.
46 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, n.d. possibly 6.4.1907 (SH-SP-11-1, SH-SP-12-1).
117
The Aranda’s Pepa
a long period with the ‘ltana and guruna’ concepts and the beliefs connected
with them.48 Answering yet again an inquiry about the soul, Carl Strehlow
wrote:
Personally I agree with you, that the guruna is the ‘Körperseele’ (body’s
soul?) and the ltana could be called the ‘Geist’. However, I do not want
to impose these interpretations of the words on the blacks, because they
surely would simply agree with me. The question is what becomes of
the guruna when the ltana has left the body? Does it stay forever at the
grave? Not according to the natives. They think that the ltana (ghost)
stays at the grave until … And then it goes north, after it has picked-up
its tooth at its tmara altjira which had been knocked out in his youth.
This stuff I got to know about, when I was investigating the custom of
knocking out teeth. I will continue to investigate the relationship of
guruna and ltana.49
It was enormously difficult for the researchers to grasp these concepts that
were new to them. They sometimes tried to find related concepts to be able to
understand and articulate these indigenous ideas adequately. Von Leonhardi
pursued for years the concept of tjurunga and other issues of their research
project. He repeatedly asked Strehlow to reinvestigate subjects surrounding
tjurunga:
The nature of tjurunga is still not quite clear to me. You think, it is not
the seat of the second soul, (called soul box by English ethnographers),
but a second body. Is it possible that a person’s life is in the tjurunga?
This would be similar to a commonly held belief found in German
and Nordic fairy tales. A person’s life is magically connected with a
particular object and has to die, when it is destroyed. However, the
latter does not seem to apply to the tjurunga. Or is it a misfortune for the
Aranda when a person’s tjurunga is stolen or destroyed? Your statements
about the relationship between the tjurunga and the bullroarer meet my
expectations. One idea is dependent upon the other.50
Strehlow matched von Leonhardi’s inquisitiveness and rarely seemed to be
satisfied with his initial impressions. In 1907, for example, he was still sceptical
about his understanding of the underlying concepts of the tjurunga. And when
he finally thought that he had understood it, he only discovered that there was
more to it and his inquires led into new areas:
48 See von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 5.9.1907; Strehlow (1908: 77); Kenny (2004a).
49 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 23.10.1907 (SH-SP-14-1). Carl Strehlow’s data on ltana and guruna
deviates from contemporary perceptions of these concepts (see Kenny 2004a,b).
118
However, this investigation had rather the benefit, that it clarified the
relationship of an individual to his totem ancestor. The totem ancestor
is seen as the guardian, ‘the second I’,…51
The research seemed never ending, results had to be adjusted, reconceptualised
and rearticulated. The investigations went ever deeper as their understanding
broadened and the questions became more relevant and detailed. While von
Leonhardi was impressed by Strehlow’s initial research, he thought that
observations should be continued, as Spencer and Gillen had certainly left some
open questions. He seems to have pushed, in particular, questions relating to
terms and concepts that were obvious to Strehlow or taken for granted by him.
Strehlow may have been immersed in Aranda and Loritja life in such a way,
that some issues not at all obvious to von Leonhardi or any other outsider, were
completely clear to him. In such instances his editor typically sent new queries,
hints and reminders to ‘delve deeper’ into matters:
I assume that you will record the detailed myth of the Rukuta men,
which I consider as very important. What does Rukuta and Tuanjiraka
mean? It appears that the small bull-roarers are the bodies of novices.
Is the bullroarer, given to a certain young man, the body of an Iticua52
of the same totem as the young man? It would be important to establish
this. … And now to tnantantja (nurtunja Sp. and G.). It seems clear
that the kauaua is the feather-plume on the tnantantja. It is, or rather,
it represents the bundle of spears of a particular “totem god”. Is it
therefore not the representation of the “totem god” itself?
As the taking down of this pole seems to be particularly diligently
performed and all the other proceedings associated with this ceremony
(the totem images on the bodies) are different to the ones already
described, it may be justified to ask about the special and particular
meaning of this event.
It always seemed unlikely to me that this could be a sun cult, however,
Foy stays with it and has based a whole theory on it. That’s how theories
come into being!53
Very pleased to have been able to deflate yet again a theory, as the conclusion
was that the ceremonial object represented objects of ancestors or ancestors, and
was not a sun cult (Strehlow 1910: 23, fn. 2), von Leonhardi rounded his letter
off with ‘By the way what is actually the proper name of the Engwura?’ As the
51 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, possibly 6.4.1907 (SH-SP-11-1). ‘the second I’ is the spirit-double of a
person, called by Carl Strehlow ‘iningukua’ and by his son, ‘atua naltja’.
52 Possibly he meant ‘iningukua’.
119
The Aranda’s Pepa
religious concepts took shape, marriage-order and kin terminology, which was
generally the focus of turn of the century research into classificatory kinship,54
began to emerge in connection with myths, songs and ceremonies, and became
increasingly an important subject of discussion. Carl Strehlow recorded,
for example, that only certain kin could perform in particular ceremonies
held by particular individuals (see Strehlow 1910, 1911). By late 1907, they
regularly discussed the ‘marriage-order’, ‘marriage classes’, descent and how
the subsection system locks into the kinship system.55 During the research into
social classification and marriage order, von Leonhardi again emphasised that
‘What is of real importance is how the natives group the classes; everything else
is marginal in comparison’.56 Right to the end of their research he continued to
point inconsistencies out,57 and usually Strehlow reinvestigated and if necessary
adjusted his conclusions.
With his editor’s ‘Fingerzeiger’58 (indications) Carl Strehlow’s field research
became anthropological, as far as that was possible at a time when in Australia
all researchers who pursued anthropology were from other disciplines. In this
sense they were all amateurs. As Strehlow was conducting fieldwork he was
also reading all Australian anthropological literature he could get hold of which
included Spencer and Gillen, Stirling, Howitt, Taplin, Roth, Kempe, Schulze,
Schmidt, and Mathews.59
Von Leonhardi’s main methodological advice was to consult the old men and
record what they say. He never tired to ask, implore and repeat ‘to reinvestigate
with the old men’,60 ‘In general old magicians would be the best informants’61 and
to emphasise to ignore theories. Even in his second last letter to Carl Strehlow
on the 16 November 1909, he repeated to ‘have the old men dictate the texts to
you’.62 Von Leonhardi was not interested in the opinions or interpretations of
European researchers of foreign cultures. He wanted to know about the views of
people of particular cultures, what they say about their customs and if they make
conscious reflections on their traditions. He had a particular aversion to theories
that isolated cultural elements pressing them into preconceived categories, such
as Foy’s sun cult projected on to the Inkura ceremony63 due to analogies found
in a North American ceremony that ‘are quite striking’64 (see above).
54 See Chapter VI.

55 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 5.9.1907; Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi (SH-SP-12-1, SH-SP-13-1,
SH-SP-14-1).
59 References to these works can be found in Carl Strehlow’s letters, von Leonhardi’s letters and footnotes
in Strehlow’s handwritten manuscripts.
63 Inkura in Carl Strehlow’s work and Engwura in Spencer and Gillen.
120 64 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 7.8.1906.
Strehlow’s editor guided the research project in central Australia towards a

form that went beyond philology and mission ethnography; he impressed on
Strehlow the importance of the production of primary source material based
on solid empirical research, sometimes by citing examples of misleading or rash
inferences by armchair anthropologists or even by himself. With von Leonhardi
the work went towards an inductive research project, which had the purpose
to document the languages and cultures of the Aranda and Loritja in their own
right, attempting to avoid Christian and other theoretical biases. Without von
Leonhardi’s guidance Carl Strehlow may very possibly have been drawn to
making unwelcome parallels with Greek mythology or other ancient worlds
known to him.65
In the third volume on Aranda song and ceremony, the German researchers
addressed explicitly the methodology of their ethnographic project and noted
its limitations, especially due to the fact that the missionary did not attend
ceremonies believing it would jeopardise his credibility as a Christian evangelist
(Strehlow 1910). They had a commitment to transparency which they thought
was not apparent in Spencer and Gillen’s publications.66 Thus, Strehlow’s
missionary context had to be made apparent and explained. Von Leonhardi
wrote to him:
I think we will have to make a few comments on how you conducted
your research on the tjurunga songs and performances. What do you
think? We will have to say that you, due to mission work, have never
actually taken part or have been present at performances, i.e. that you
therefore describe the performances only from what the men have told
you about them, but that you wrote down the songs after their recitation,
exactly as the men performed them for you. I believe it is necessary to
make such a statement so it does not appear as if you withheld anything,
which might be of interest for the assessment of the material provided.67
Baron von Leonhardi had discovered through R.H. Mathews that Spencer and
Gillen had set up a depot of food in Alice Springs and invited ‘the natives
promising them all these lovely things if, in return, they would perform
ceremonies’.68 He asked Strehlow if he had heard about this and commented:
It is possible, that these days this is the only way to see ceremonies –
similar approaches have been taken in other countries – but in these
65 His youngest son’s Songs of Central Australia, in contrast, became impregnated with references to
European mythologies. This is likely to have been an influence of his father’s instructions in his childhood and
later reading of his father’s work as well as his literary background. Maybe it was also a reflection of how he,
his father and the German tradition valued other cultures, like their own.
66 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 18.8.1909; von Leonhardi (Strehlow 1910: v-ix).
121
The Aranda’s Pepa
instances researchers have mentioned this fact quite openly and indeed
have a scientific obligation to do so. Spencer and Gillen, however, give
the impression that the performances were being performed as they were
arriving; that is dishonest! The scientific value of such performances on
demand is of course of less value; the use of data and photographs has
to be far more cautious.69
Von Leonhardi was aware that Spencer and Gillen had created an artificial
context for the performance of ceremonies in 1896 and that the photographic
equipment had interfered with the usual process of performing ceremonies in
Alice Springs.70 He in contrast had asked Strehlow nearly two years earlier, before
he had uncovered what he perceived as fraud, to describe the contemporary
circumstances of Aboriginal life in central Australia:
If I may express a further request for the manuscript, it would be a brief
history of the mission work among the Aranda, as well as of the white
settlement of the area. It would be lovely if photographs of the area
(mission station) and of the natives, maybe of your main informants,
could be included in this chapter.71
According to Middendorf (2006: 22–34), Spencer and Gillen’s photographic
representation of their indigenous informants was the one of the Australian
Aborigines as doomed ‘gothic figures’ (Middendorf 2006: 26). While it is likely
that Spencer was trying to create a remote and ancient time in his photography,
it was rather an earlier evolutionistic stage of human development that he was
attempting to evoke, or the ‘alcheringa’ that became Spencer and Gillen’s famous
‘Dreamtime’. Jones (2005: 14–17) remarks that Spencer employed an ahistorical
style in the text of Native Tribes of Central Australia where historical incidents
in Gillen’s original text had been edited out; a similar process occurred with the
published images in which shadows of the photographers (Gillen and Spencer)
were retouched. Kreinath (2012) proposes that the use of photography created
the illusion that an armchair anthropologist could participate at such ritual
events. He makes a careful analysis of Durkheim’s use of Spencer and Gillen’s
images.
Von Leonhardi was not so much bothered by the fact that the Aranda were
not in ‘their natural state’, because he acknowledged it might have been the
only way to see ceremonies,72 but that Spencer and Gillen were trying to make
their presentation seem more authentic by withholding the context. He asked
Strehlow to point this fact out:

122
Somewhere you should also mention the fact that Spencer and Gillen
asked the aboriginals to come together and that without artificial
feeding it would just be impossible for a larger gathering of Aboriginals
to stay together in Central Australia for weeks, or even months. Also the
misconception of Spencer and Gillen’s absolute credibility will need to
be addressed publicly.73
Strehlow’s approach differed from Spencer and Gillen’s and seemed less authentic.
He had never been present at ceremonies, because he believed that it would
have compromised his position as a missionary (Strehlow 1910) and possibly his
authority. However, while he chose not to participate actively at ceremonies, he
inevitably saw and heard them. Ceremonies were performed only a stone’s throw
away from the mission boundary in the dry riverbed of the Finke from where
the chanting must have been occasionally audible at the mission precinct. In
1896, for example, he came upon an emu ceremony.74 Years later, he wrote that
‘Aranda and Loritja today still regularly hold the cult rituals according to the
instruction of their altjirangamitjina’ (Strehlow 1910: 1) around Hermannsburg
(Albrecht 2002: 347). Today, Western Aranda people still perform initiation
ceremonies during the hot months of the year.
Strehlow’s great advantage over the English researchers was his intricate
knowledge of the Aranda and Loritja languages (including the secret-sacred
language registers) as well as Diyari and his long residency at Hermannsburg. This
enabled him to collect myths and songs in vernacular. He took the exact dictations
from his Aboriginal informants and discovered that they were well aware of the
meaning of their myths and songs. In contrast, Spencer and Gillen (1904: xiv)
had contended that they were not understood by their performers. Strehlow
remarked after he had recorded hundreds of verses that they had meaning and
were understood, in particular by the old men, the ‘knaribata’.75 He wrote:
The old Tjurunga-songs, I have already collected over 300, provide
the desired clues on their religious views. I will try to make a literal
translation of them in German and in footnotes I will indicate as far as I
can when the meaning of words deviate from current language use. In
some of the songs there are words from other dialects, which the blacks
are not quite sure about. Thus, I cannot guarantee their correctness.
While the meaning of most words are completely clear, it is sometimes
the translation that is very difficult, as the natives think and express
themselves very differently to a European.76
73 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 26.2.1909. Von Leonhardi’s comment is not accurate. Although large-
scale ceremonies that lasted some months were rare, they did occur. T.G.H. Strehlow (1970: 102) remarked
that while each group had to stage at some point the complete ceremonial cycle, these were rare occasions.
123
The Aranda’s Pepa
Carl Strehlow’s informants dictated and sang word for word their myths and
songs in Aranda and Loritja prose and verse to him in countless sessions. They
described and explained to him the choreography and meaning of the sacred
ceremonies, and the material culture used on these occasions in their own
languages and words. Von Leonhardi emphasised that it was a very wearing
methodological process ‘not only on Strehlow’s part, but also on the part of
the blacks’ (von Leonhardi in Strehlow 1910: iii). Thus, Carl recorded the
descriptions, explanations and interpretations of Aranda and Loritja people of
their own cosmology. It was not an eyewitness description of a monolingual
English observer who saw ‘naked, howling savages’ who were ‘chanting songs
of which they do not know the meaning’ (Spencer and Gillen 1899: xiv). Carl
Strehlow’s method, transcribing over years in indigenous languages the reports
of the actual performers of the events, stood in contrast to eyewitness reports of
people who did not understand the languages of the performers and observed
for only a few weeks.77
Róheim made in his article ‘The Psycho-Analysis of Primitive Cultural Types’
(1932: 19–20) a comparative assessment of Spencer and Gillen’s ethnographic
methodology with that of Carl Strehlow. He called Spencer a ‘behaviourist’ and
said that Strehlow Senior had a ‘lifeless study-method’, because he refused to
attend ceremonial activity. Strehlow Junior appears to have been on Róheim’s
side on this one (Strehlow 1971: xvi). (Needless to mention that Róheim maintains
that his own psychoanalytic method got it just right.) It appears, however,
that despite of Strehlow Senior’s failings, e.g. not attending ceremonies, he
nevertheless brought ‘life’ to ‘culture’ where Spencer and Gillen perhaps did
not. The Aranda and Loritja myth and song collections were after all made from
the direct dictations of their owners.
Problems in the field

Strehlow’s ethnographic research was stretched over a long period of time. He
often carefully revisited subjects he had already discussed a number of times
with his informants so he would not be left with any doubts. Von Leonhardi,
on his part, kept on asking new questions as well as posing old questions over
and over again, to find further details and push Strehlow to delve ever deeper
into the Aranda’s world. The questions on the same subjects changed over time.
The departure points were sometimes abandoned, as they had to adjust to the
77 His son, T.G.H. Strehlow, as well as other researchers critiqued his approach. T.G.H. Strehlow had
decades later the advantage of hindsight, and was able to combine knowledge of language and eyewitness
report in his work.
124
results that the field yielded. Observations raised new questions and he was
constantly reminded to pay great attention to what elements were ‘original’ and
what elements imported. In 1904 his editor had written:
I assume that these beliefs, just like amongst other peoples, are
determined by very uncertain or even contradictory ideas; often a more
recent concept has covered an older one, without completely replacing
the older one. This generates a great confusion of ideas which, however,
does not disturb the peoples themselves in the slightest. Local variations
may also play a role.78
Carl discovered that there were ‘newer’ views and mythological features woven
into the fabrics of myth complexes as well as variations of myths.79 He even
observed that Christian beliefs seemed to have influenced some Aranda beliefs
and concepts;80 Christian teachings of his predecessors had after only 15 years
made an impact.81 In some instances he had to make detailed and persistent
inquiries and argued with his indigenous informants trying to convince them
that Christian beliefs had made their way into their cosmology:
I read in Kempe that God created humanity by dropping a Tju.-Stone
on earth during a visit which some Christians who grew up on the
station confirmed. This is definitely a skewing of biblical82 and heathen
beliefs; for this reason I retreat from this view. In the meantime, after
consulting heathens, who have grown up in heathenism and have been
in influential positions (one of them is a famous Zauber-Doctor),83 I had
to concede that Kempe’s view is wrong.84
Another problem Strehlow faced was that he suspected that his informants
deliberately made their cosmology appear Christian to appease him and his
missionary zeal. He wrote:
Here it means to check and recheck. Towards a missionary the blacks
like to show themselves in a better light and thus give their myths a
Christian tinge. In this regard missionary Kempe was not careful enough;
I thought initially, that I was able to follow his lead on Altjira, as some of
the Christian blacks had confirmed, that Altjira had created everything,
even the totems. However, on further investigation with some heathens
and Christians who have not absorbed Christianity completely, I found

79 Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, 1906 (SH-SP-6-1).
80 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, possibly 8.4.1906 (SH-SP-1-1).
81 Carl Strehlow to L. Kaibel, 30.8.1904 (Lutheran Archives, Adelaide).
82 Although the word is not quite readable, the context makes clear that it is ‘biblical’.
83 This was almost certainly Loatjira.
84 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, possibly 8.4.1906 (SH-SP-1-1).
125
The Aranda’s Pepa
a lot different. A researcher can simply not develop his own view and
then ask a black: is it like this. … The right question is: What did the
old people say about this story?85
He was cautious about what he collected, often remarking, that he was unsure
and needed more time for further investigation, or that he did not want to push
an issue as he may not receive the right answer and ‘they would agree with my
view’.86 For example, he wrote about his efforts to get to the bottom of the high
god concept in Aranda and Loritja belief:
In order to clarify this issue I have put some precise questions to the old
men of both tribes. They emphatically assure me that they themselves
believe in the existence of the Highest Being and that they teach the
young men the concepts related to it as truth. They maintained this
assertion even though I told them that I would rather correct an error
in order to learn the truth than to write down something that was false.
(Strehlow 1908: 2)
What kind of impression did it make on his informants, who appear in his
genealogies with their ‘totem affiliation’, when he was trying to explain to
them that Christian teaching had affected their cosmological beliefs? He may
have compromised his mission and the conversion of the indigenous people
at Hermannsburg with his intense study of their cultures. According to his
own accounts, his overall success rate of Christianisation was modest.87 He
had only baptised 46 adults by 1920.88 He seems to have spent as much time
talking with senior Aranda men about their own beliefs as he was about the
gospel. The recording of the myth, song and language data was extremely time
consuming, as were the interlinear and free translations and annotations,89
and required long consultations and discussions on semantics. Through his
thorough studies of indigenous cultures he developed a deep appreciation of
their human achievements. Many missionaries who had been sent around the
globe developed a relativistic worldview (Veit 1991: 129–130), including the
Protestant pastor and missionary Maurice Leenhardt (1878–1954) who became
the chair after Lucien Lévy-Bruhl at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales (Clifford 1980).90 Jesuits, for instance, sometimes refused to translate their

86 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 23.10.1907 (SH-SP-14-1). See also SH-SP-2-1.
87 It is interesting to note that during a survey Carl Strehlow compiled for the census authorities in 1921
from the grand total of 176 Aboriginal adults at Hermannsburg, 66 were labelled as ‘Lutherans’, the rest
clinging to their own religion. From these 29 were men and 37 women (Strehlow’s Handbook of Central
Australian Genealogies 1969-70: 119-150). It would be his successor Albrecht who would have a breakthrough.
88 Kirchen und Missionszeitung, 9.1.1920.
89 Carl Strehlow, Hermannsburg, 19.9.1906 (SH-SP-3-1).
90 Maurice Leenhardt had studied for decades myth, kin and language on New Caledonia, similar to Carl
in Australia. Leenhardt became a relativist by the end of his ethnographic studies. His career ended very
differently to Strehlow’s; he became a professor at a secular institution.
126
Christian materials back into the original languages, as too many unpredictable
surprises could have emerged (Foertsch 2001: 93–94). Carl Strehlow’s behaviour
must have appeared to the very least ambiguous to his informants.
The Aranda’s pepa

So what was the motivation of the senior Aboriginal men to go to so much trouble
and effort to tell Strehlow their stories in such detail and to spend countless
hours teaching and explaining to him their myths, songs and ceremonies? It
has been suggested that it may have been a religious exchange (Gent 2001: 463;
John Strehlow 2011) and the men felt that they had to preserve this knowledge
for the future because there were no young worthy men to give it to (T.G.H.
Strehlow 1971; Völker 2001). Although these reasons may have been part of
their motivation, none of these seem forceful enough to have facilitated this
extraordinary transmission of indigenous knowledge to a single non-Aboriginal
person. It is, for example, nearly impossible to imagine what Loatjira’s motivation
could possibly have been to tell Carl Strehlow, who, as an inkata (ceremonial
chief), had taken his dreaming place Ntaria over.
While this transmission was linked to exchange there was another crucial factor
that made it possible. Austin-Broos (2003b) makes an important observation
which may explain why the senior men worked so hard with Carl Strehlow.
She discusses ‘pepa’, a new Aranda word, used for everything connected to
Christian belief and which assumed a related meaning to tjurunga:
This rendering of God’s law as a form of Western Arrernte [Aranda]
law was known as pepe [pepa], the Arrernte word for “paper” and one
that is deployed with a range of references similar to the Arrernte term
tywerrenge, used for the sacred boards or stones that carry men’s ritual
designs. Just as the latter refers not simply to the boards or stones but all
paraphernalia and practices involved in Western Arrernte rite, so pepe
refers to the bible but also to the Lutheran liturgy generally – to all the
books, buildings, calls to prayer and services that are part of Lutheran
practice. This similar naming of different laws is indicative of the way
in which the Arrernte became Christian by rendering Christianity in an
Arrernte way. (Austin-Broos 2003b: 312)
It seems that Carl Strehlow’s senior informants ‘hoped that this form of
inscription might be more enduring than their revered tywerrenge [tjurunga],
which were abused by settlers and some of their own, and then de-legitimised
by missionaries’ (Austin Broos 2003b: 314) and were making a new type of
tjurunga called pepa with him. By transferring their cosmology into this
new medium, which the bible used, they may have hoped to give their own
127
The Aranda’s Pepa
beliefs new power. Aranda people were literate in their own language by the
1890s. They wrote letters, postcards and short essays. Literacy took hold at
Hermannsburg and its people had an understanding what the medium of the
written word could achieve (Kral 2000).91 They laboured with the missionaries
over the translation of biblical myth and must have been at least to some degree
aware of the power of codification.
A remarkable incident occurred in the 1890s that may have demonstrated the
power of ‘pepa’ in the Lake Eyre region and is likely to have been known at
Hermannsburg, because a fair amount of traffic occurred between the two
Lutheran inland missions. Pastor Reuther had barged into a meeting and
started to argue in Diyari with an Aboriginal man who finally asked him if he
was armed. Reuther had kept one arm in his pocket and slowly withdrew his
hand and produced not a firearm, but a pocket bible. With the suspense of the
situation he managed to sit everyone down in front of him and read a text from
the bible (Stevens 1994: 125).
While the use of the new word ‘pepa’ was probably at the beginning of the
century metaphorical – its semantic connotations and syntactical use fluid –
in the course of the twentieth century its meaning seems to have solidified,
relating to Christian ‘tjurunga’. Nevertheless, the agency of the Aranda in the
making of this masterpiece should not be underestimated.
Towards refined diffusionism

Carl Strehlow’s Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien is
practically devoid of theory. This is mainly due to von Leonhardi’s constant
probing and scepticism. He had never ceased to emphasise to Strehlow the need
to avoid preconceived ideas, to ignore theories and to describe as faithfully
as possible the old men’s information. This did not stop them, however, from
privately discussing theoretical approaches to their new data that they largely
managed to keep out of the publication itself.
Strehlow’s myth collection seemed to be a perfect case study to test diffusion and
borrowing of myth elements and language, because some of his material related
to the territorial and linguistic boundary area of the Aranda and Loritja peoples.
His work detailed differences (i.e. language affiliation) as well as communalities in
spiritual beliefs and social structure between these cultures. Von Leonhardi was
very keen to establish links or their lack thereof between them, based on language
and myth comparison,92 which seemed to show evidence of small-scale diffusion.
91 See Kral (2000) generally on Arrernte literacy between 1879 and the present.
128 92 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 12.2.1909.
Von Leonhardi’s approach to diffusionism was a combination of Boasian ‘refined

diffusionism’ and Graebner’s Kuturkreislehre, a theory on general large-scale
diffusion across continents. He was testing with this Boasian small-scale approach
Greabner’s desk-top theory and suggested diffusion and the incorporation of
borrowed elements into local myths. His approach indicates that he is likely to
have read Boas in American Anthropologist and other journals he subscribed to.
In a footnote, for example, he made a comment on particular elements of the
Loritja myth ‘The rainman and the rainbow’:
Many motives … of this very strange myth remind of the Jonas-
myth, which is dispersed over the whole world. This wandering tale
(Wandermärchen) is also known in Melanesia, Polynesia, on the islands
of the Torres Straits and has been recorded in North Queensland by W.E.
Roth in a particular variation. L. Frobenius (Zeitalter des Sonnengottes 1
pag. 16) claims to see this myth also in New South Wales and Tasmania,
which seems to me rather doubtful. In this case, if one wants to admit a
connection at all, one has to assume that this wandering myth has fused
with a genuinely Central Australian rain totem myth and the view of the
dangerous water-snake, which is distributed Australia-wide. (Strehlow
1908: 10)
Although his analysis was carefully formulated and tentative, von Leonhardi
seemed to consider this myth to be the result of diffusion and borrowing in a
Boasian vain. At the same time he may also have been playing with a Frazerian
approach to myth, and hinting at a universal, human mythical theme or even
independent invention. Strehlow’s editor had a tendency to test all theories and
methods of interpretation on the material he had available.
Language was also understood to give clues about cultural change and history.
Like Pater W. Schmidt, who wrote extensively about Oceanic and Australian
languages to bolster his version of diffusionism (Kulturkreislehre), von Leonhardi
was interested in linguistics. The comparison of vocabulary, he speculated,
would possibly indicate from where the central Australian Aboriginal peoples
had come from:
Thank you for completing the word-glossary. I expected a greater
correlation between Loritja and Dieri. Thus, Loritja belongs to the
Western Australian languages. The isolation of the Aranda vocabulary
[and surely also their grammar] – or more precisely – their isolation in
regard to other Australian languages and link to the northern tribes and
possibly to New Guinea languages and cultures, which we assumed,
shows up quite clearly.93

129
The Aranda’s Pepa
To be able to make further supporting statements on this issue he needed

further empirical evidence. He asked Strehlow for additional Loritja texts so
they could be compared with the Aranda texts, because ‘It would be of great
importance to establish if the Loritja and Aranda languages are distinct in
structure and vocabulary’.94 Von Leonhardi wanted to know if there were any
correlations between the language and culture of the Centre and the South Coast
of Australia. He understood some of the linguistic material as possible proof or
evidence that the Aranda had come from the north (New Guinea) and that the
Loritja seemed to belong to an earlier cultural layer of people from the south due
to their affiliation to Western Desert languages. This approach was reminiscent
of an early view held by Boas in 1888:
The analysis of dialect enables us to follow the history of words and
of concepts through long periods of time and over distant areas. The
introduction of new inventions and migration into distant countries are
often indicated by the appearance of new words the origins of which
may be ascertained. (Boas 1940: 631)
As Boas developed his understanding of cultures, he limited this possibility
to small-scale diffusion, because diffusion could only be empirically observed
in small areas, which were not necessarily applicable to other areas where the
same phenomenon appeared but caused by other events. Although it seemed
to von Leonhardi that Strehlow’s material showed a certain degree of diffusion
and exchange of cultural elements between two distinct groups, he remained
sceptical because he believed that ‘analogies deceive only too often’.95
Von Leonhardi further speculated that very ancient elements of culture may
have been preserved on the southern coasts of Australia where apparently
no boomerangs, shields, marriage classes and no real totemism existed and it
‘would be the very oldest population of Australia, probably the Tasmanian one,
which may have been pushed by migration waves with a slightly higher culture
and differing language to the south and south east and possibly to the south
west coast where they seem to have survived’. However, he concluded, ‘this is
all still very problematic’.96
Along with evolutionism, diffusionism would be abandoned and never became
an unquestioned paradigm. Diffusionism had been used to critique evolutionism
but was soon supplanted by functionalism (Swain 1985: 101–105). It had not
been possible to define individual culture circles precisely. Particularities and
language border areas made it impossible to make conclusive judgements on
the cultural and linguistic make-up or denominators of a ‘culture’ area. In the

130
border area of Kukatja-Loritja and Aranda, for instance, the Kukatja belong
linguistically to the Western Desert peoples, but their traditional laws and
customs in relation to their land tenure system, connects them clearly to their
Arandic neighbours to their east. T.G.H. Strehlow (1965: 143; 1970: 99–100,
109–110) wrote some years later that although these groups spoke different
languages, due to communalities in their religious beliefs and close kin ties, they
shared ‘a local group system’. He wrote that the Kukatja, often called Western
Loritja by his father, were not a typical Western Desert group and that the
cultural boundary occurred further to the west, where the landscape became
more arid, and, thus the land tenure model fluid.
The exact description of language and transcription of original indigenous text
had various uses. It was believed to give insight into peoples’ worldviews and
their true spirits, and possible clues to the history of migration. Indeed, the
collection of indigenous literature was one of von Leonhardi’s earliest requests
from his Australian colleague,97 and without doubt the linguistic publication, a
comparative grammar and dictionary of Aranda and Loritja would have followed
had it not been for von Leonhardi’s premature death.
Von Leonhardi’s health was failing by the end of 1909, when he wrote his last
letters to Strehlow in central Australia. He was desperately working on the
third and fourth volume of ‘our publication of your manuscripts’ as well as
on the remaining parts on the social life of the Aranda and Loritja. Although
sometimes unable to work, he still wrote to Strehlow and sent lists of questions,
because Carl Strehlow was about to leave Hermannsburg with his family to visit
Germany and it was not clear if he would return. Von Leonhardi not only asked
for clarification of some issues in the manuscript, he also sent a long wish list of
objects, tools, animals and plants. One desperate question, demand and request
after the other poured out of the ailing scholar. Thus, in the last few months
of 1909 Carl Strehlow was working frantically on the conclusion of his oeuvre.
After five years of intensive research he finished his ethnographic inquiries on
the 24 November 1909 and copied the last pages for von Leonhardi on the 16
February 1910.98
On the 11 December 1909 von Leonhardi sent his last Christmas and New Year’s
wishes. In it he thanked Carl Strehlow for the continuation of the manuscript
and expressed his delight that six additional Loritja myths had been recorded.
It is the last letter to Strehlow in Australia, who was due to leave Hermannsburg

98 Strehlow’s handwritten manuscript has 1224 pages. By December 1909 von Leonhardi had 1104 pages.
It is not clear if in the course of 1910 he received the remaining 120 pages on sign language. Von Leonhardi
mentions in May 1910, that he had received all material for volumes five and six on Aranda and Loritja social
life and material culture (Strehlow 1910: xvii).
131
The Aranda’s Pepa
mid 1910 to visit his homeland. In his luggage to Germany Strehlow took many
of the requested items with him including an emu egg and a kangaroo skin
which were going to be his personal presents for von Leonhardi.99
However, just before Carl Strehlow was to visit Gross Karben his editor’s health
gave way. Baron Moritz von Leonhardi died from a stroke late in October 1910,
only days before Carl Strehlow was to visit him, a meeting he had for years been
hoping for. They never met.
99 From a letter by Auguste or Hugo von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow we know that Carl gave these items to
his siblings (Letter 1910 by Auguste or Hugo von Leonhardi.) Moritz did not marry or have any descendants
(Peter von Leonhardi, grandson of Hugo von Leonhardi, Moritz’s brother, pers. comm., 6.5.2004).
132
Part II
V. Geist through Myth: Revealing an
Aboriginal Ontology
It is a given of contemporary Australian anthropology that at the heart of
Aboriginal ontology lies the person-land-ancestral inter-relationship (Rumsey
2001: 19), and that this system of belief, glossed in English as ‘the dreaming’,
encompasses all dimensions of life (Stanner 2011; Berndt 1970). These elements
of Aboriginal cosmology and ontology are taken for granted. Most land claim
or native title claim reports, for instance, dedicate a chapter or a substantial
section to the dreaming, outlining its main features and key terms, such as
altjira, tnankara (tnengkarre/tnangkarra) or tjurunga (tywerrenge), and their
translations.1 They summarise how the landscape was created and imbued with
meaning by ancestral beings and how, at the same time, this landscape represents
ancestral connections to the land and the mythical beings that created it, as well
as furnishing central narratives, including travelling and local dreaming stories.
Further sections of such reports outline how land described in these myths are
held or owned by certain people or groups of people thereby conferring on
those owners rights, responsibilities and duties.
Today the Western Aranda term tnankara,2 in Luritja tjukurrpa,3 encapsulate
this key concept. It explains how the world came into being and is the source
of traditional laws and customs that provide codes by which people abide.
Western Aranda people translate this term often with the word ‘dreaming’
which is a polysemic expression. Dreaming can mean mythological ancestors,
the travels and actions of the ancestral beings and their deeds, or their marks
and physical representation in the landscape (trees, rocks, etc.). It can be used
to connote spiritual power, religious laws and objects, ritual, design and songs
and ceremonies although there are other indigenous terms that describe these
concepts more accurately. ‘The dreaming’ can also refer to a past era in which
the supernatural ancestral beings created the physical and spiritual world of
people living today.
Yet what we take for granted in rehearsing this Aboriginal ontology is the
product of a long process. It led to an understanding of the dreaming only
after decades of ethnographic writing. Carl Strehlow stood at the beginning
of this process and he came surprisingly close to understanding its unusual
particularity. His approach to Aboriginal mythology still contributes to our
empirical knowledge of the Aranda and Loritja’s engagement with the land and
1 These are Western Aranda terms.

2 In other Arandic languages and dialects altyerre is used for this concept.
3 Tjukurrpa is also used in Pintupi and Pitjantjatjara and Jukurrpa in Warlpiri.
135
The Aranda’s Pepa
its natural species. In this chapter I propose to show how Carl Strehlow’s study
of myth, although characterised by European assumptions and some distance
from approaches of professional anthropology in the mid-twentieth century,
realised a Boasian ideal: to pursue the Geist or logic of a people’s culture through
attention to their myth. To understand what Carl Strehlow achieved through his
empirical approach, I will draw on insights from Lévi-Strauss regarding ‘savage’
thought and ‘primitive classification’. It was his recording of the intimate relation
between nature and social-cultural life among Aranda and Loritja people that
would lay the ground for T.G.H. Strehlow’s work. Although Carl Strehlow’s
corpus of myth lacked a modern sense of symbolism, or comparison beyond its
region, it allowed his son to conceptualise the person-land relationship which
led to a contemporary view of an Aboriginal ontology.
My point is different from the one made by Hiatt who calls Stanner’s approach to
myth ‘ontological’ (Hiatt 1975: 10–13). He described Stanner’s approach in terms
of isolating, through the study of myth and rite, a certain structured (and moral)
order that Stanner describes as ‘good-with-suffering’ or ‘order-with tragedy’. It
is grounded in the social world of kinship, sexuality and rite. Instead, I have
chosen the human specifying view and experience of environment (person-
land and -species relations) that were constituted through Australian hunter-
gatherer life. The focus here relates more closely to Heidegger’s observations on
nature: that far from being a given, the ‘Things of Nature’ are always constituted
through a particular practice of life and in turn confer on that life particular
forms of experience, a particular ‘World’ (see Heidegger 2002: 288–289). For
this reason, Lévi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind rather than his structural analyses of
myth as such is useful here (cf. Hiatt 1975: 12–13). These ideas are more at home
with contemporary phenomenology in Australian anthropology than with the
work to which Hiatt refers. This contemporary writing was foreshadowed by
Strehlow (1947, 1970) and Munn (1970). It is of some interest that, in his 1975
discussion of myth and ontology, Hiatt did not judge either T.G.H. Strehlow’s
magnum opus, Songs of Central Australia (1971) or his essay on the ‘totemic
landscape’ (1970) worthy of direct discussion. The former is cited only for its
view on Róheim, the latter, not at all.
This chapter’s main focus is the substantial record of a cultural logic that Carl
Strehlow produced in his studies of central Australian myth and song. The
value of his work lies here rather than in his framework which I contextualise
briefly at the outset. I then show how a particular sense of Aboriginal ontology
grew as Carl recorded in extraordinary detail an indigenous engagement with
environment, with species and the land itself. T.G.H. Strehlow in turn connected
these data with issues of identity, authority, sentiment and ownership, issues
that were further explored by Róheim, Munn, Peterson, Myers and Morton to
produce a contemporary account of indigenous ontology.
136
V. Geist through Myth: Revealing an Aboriginal Ontology
Frameworks for studying myth: Modernist

approaches and Carl Strehlow’s
Four methods which may be designated as functional, structural, social symbolic
and psychoanalytic help position Carl Strehlow’s early twentieth century study
of myth among Aranda and Loritja people. To a greater or lesser extent, these
approaches allow comparison between the myth-complexes of different cultures,
and also some degree of specification. Comments from Hiatt’s discussion of
approaches to Australian myth will link these four general categories to the
world of Australian ethnography.
Malinowski was the most explicit about a ‘functional’ approach to the analysis
of myths that counted them as charters for ritual and social life. Speaking of
the rites and myths that informed the Kula, he remarked that ‘myth possesses
the normative power’ to fix custom, to sanction modes of behaviour and to give
‘dignity and importance to an institution’. He wrote:
The Kula receives from these ancient stories its stamp of extreme
importance and value. The rules of commercial honour, of generosity
and punctiliousness in all its operations, acquire through this their
binding force. This is what we could call the normative influence of
myth on custom. (Malinowski 1979: 237)
Malinowski comments further that a role of myth is to present in idealised form,
the practices and realised aims of the living. Its message is that ‘the best of
all possible worlds’ is attainable. These ideas are made more real by the fact
that myths and the ancestral heroes that they describe are owned by particular
‘members of a sub-clan, or a local unit’, who ‘can claim a mythical hero as their
direct ancestor, and members of a clan can boast of him as of a clansman’. He
observed:
Indeed, myths, like songs and fairy stories, are “owned” by certain sub-
clans. This does not mean that other people would abstain from telling
them, but members of the sub-clan are supposed to possess the most
intimate knowledge of the mythical events, and to be an authority in
interpreting them. (Malinowski 1979: 238)
Likewise Ronald and Catherine Berndt have maintained that Australian myth
acts as a charter for moral behaviour. Their proposal is that frequently wrong
behaviour is punished in myth or singled out for moral comment by narrators or
an audience in the process of performance (cited in Hiatt 1975: 6). The repertoire
of Aranda myth recorded by both Strehlows, renders this proposal somewhat
implausible. Murders of fathers by their sons and vice versa occur without the
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The Aranda’s Pepa
orderly moral accounting that the Berndts imply. As Hiatt observes, the quite
high incidence of ‘bad examples’ in Australian myth suggests that it acted ‘to
undermine morality as much as to safeguard it’ (Hiatt 1975: 7).
This approach to myth was revolutionised by structuralism. Lévi-Strauss shifted
the focus of the analysis of myth from the domain of explicit rule to the implicit
and rational unconscious. He argued that the myths of a region, and indeed
around the world, should be seen as (logical) transformations of each other. Far
from relating mainly to the contingent present or to an imagined past, myth or
rather its ‘specific pattern’ is timeless; ‘it explains the present and the past as
well as the future’ (Lévi-Strauss 1963: 209).
Among the human minds (‘primitive’ as much as the ‘modern’) around the
globe, Lévi-Strauss sought to demonstrate ‘the invariant human mind coping
with variant environments and trying to reduce them to manageable systems’
(Maranda 1972: 12). Through forms of transformation and inversion, the cognitive
oppositions of the mind work to define the problems of existence and especially
those that devolve on the distinction between nature and culture, including the
getting of fire, the problem of incest and humankind’s distance from the sky.
Lévi-Strauss’s view of myth was closely related to his view of totemism and
received heavy criticism from Australianists (see Hiatt 1969; Peterson 1972).
Even Maddock, who saw some virtue in structuralism, was tempered in his
use of Lévi-Strauss’s ideas when it came to myth (Maddock 1982: 137–138).
Nevertheless, the impact of Lévi-Strauss’s abstract and cognitive approach was
to stimulate other forms of symbolic analysis, grounded in social life, the social
treated as text, or in intra-familial relations interpreted through psychoanalysis
(see for instance Turner 1968: 13–24).
The social symbolic in Australia soon became a particular genre of phenomenology
– the type of account of subject-object transformations that in Munn’s
work spoke equally about belief, semantics, environment and experience.
Influenced by the Africanist, Victor Turner, Munn sought to address a symbolic
experiential world in which ancestors and their descendants were embedded in
the landscape. She wrote:
The purpose of this paper is to push our attempts to understand
transformation beyond the artificial boundaries of “mythology” into
the domain of socialization or, more generally, the problem of the
relationship between the individual and the collectivity as mediated by
the object world. (Munn 1970: 141)
She took as her focus the travels of people and mythic heroes across the land, and
transformations that were not cognitive and abstract but, rather, embodied – as
subjects went into the land, imprinted the land, or else drew objects from their
138
bodies to be transformed as they lodged in the landscape. These intimate and

transforming subject-object relations were foreshadowed by T.G.H. Strehlow
(1947) and in ‘Geography and the Totemic Landscape in Central Australia’ he
wrote:
In a land where the supernatural beings revered and honoured by their
human reincarnations were living, not in the sky, but at clearly marked
sites in the mountains, the springs, the sandhills and the plains, religious
acts had an immediate personal intimacy … The human reincarnations
turned into living symbols during the impersonations of the supernatural
beings at the sacred sites. The visible totemic landscape was considered
to be an integral part of reality of eternity. … each major sacred site was
the geographic fountain of authority for the territory that surrounded
it. (Strehlow 1970: 133–134)
Like Munn, T.G.H. Strehlow emphasised that the makers of this myth-
rite complex were people who travelled across the land. Contemporaneous
with Strehlow junior, and just prior to Munn, Géza Róheim established a
psychoanalytic rendering of these travels (1925, 1945). Guided by Freud’s
Totem and Taboo, Róheim, as Hiatt observes, formulated at least three different
positions, concerned at the outset with an historically or personally encountered
‘primal scene’, the father in coitus with the mother, and later with the ‘separation
anxiety’ for which travel and return to the land become the master symbol.
Hiatt summarises Róheim’s intent:
The central theme of The Eternal Ones of the Dream is that Australian
religion acts both to widen the gap created naturally by parturition
and to compensate the offspring for the loss of his mother. Within
this general scheme, myths play three important functions. First, by
celebrating phallic heroes and libidinising the countryside that they
created and wandered over, myths counteract the deprivation felt by
maturing youths … Second, myths help to effect an eventual transfer
of libido from the mother to the father (or, in social terms, the removal
of the boy from the domestic group into the all-male cult group) by
offering a heroic and supernaturally conceived dual unity of Father and
Son in place of the natural dual unity of mother and son. Finally, myths
keep alive the dream of an eternal union with the mother. (Hiatt 1975: 9)
Both Hiatt (1975) and Morton, in his discussion for instance of the symbolic
significance of the native cat hero (western quoll), ‘a provocative image of
prolific reproduction through loss’ (Morton 1985: 224), provide accounts of the
manner in which indigenous myth and rite re-genders parturition and creates
a solidarity among men. In his treatment of mainly Aranda and Loritja myth,
Morton (1985) integrates these symbolic insights with an analysis of opposition,
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The Aranda’s Pepa
fragmentation and reconstitution between earth and sky marrying Lacan to

Lévi-Strauss. Later, as I show below, he uses this approach not only to libidinise
Munn’s indigenous landscape, but also to place within it active male agents
driven by desire.
In this ontology, Morton would synthesise Freud, Lévi-Strauss and the
Dukheimian tradition foreshadowed by Hiatt (1975) in his discussion of
Stanner and Róheim. These Australianists sought to integrate analyses in ways
advocated by others. One was Robin Fox who argued that the sociological and
psychological in the study of myth and rite can be used to complement each
other without resort to reductionism (Fox 1967b). Similarly, Turner described
Ndembu rite and myth as stretched between two poles, the one referencing social
norms, the other, ‘organic and physiological phenomena’ (Turner 1968: 18).
Turner remarked, ‘it would seem that the needs of the individual biopsychical
organism and the needs of society, in many respects opposed, come to terms
with one another in the master-symbols of Ndembu society’ (Turner 1968: 19).
These various insights on myth drawn from different types of approach, not
always mutually exclusive, were one of modern twentieth century anthropology’s
significant achievements. What made these approaches different from those that
had preceded them is that they were based on direct observation of the manner
in which peoples used myth as genres of knowledge and ritual performance.
The ‘present’ of myth, as Lévi-Strauss described it, was directly apprehended.
However, most myth, including Aboriginal Australian myth refers to a distant
past which led many nineteenth century interpreters to render it either within
the domain of history as legend, or in that of imagination as fable or fairy-tale.
As Hiatt relates, even Ronald and Catherine Berndt in their early formulations
classified Aboriginal myth in terms of types of history either factual or imagined.
Based on their 1958 account, Hiatt constructed the following diagram.
15. R. and C. Berndt’s early myth classification.
Source: Hiatt (1975: 2).
140
Legends and myths that were sacred or secular involved a classification that was
not too distant from Carl Strehlow’s own categories, myths (Mythen), legends
(Sagen) and fairy-tales (Märchen). The important feature of Strehlow’s work
is the juxtaposition of a European perspective on types of oral literature that
clearly pre-dates modern anthropology, and a fieldwork-like empirical record
of people’s accounts of ancestral life and its natural environment. Carl Strehlow
was transitional not simply for the lack of modern theory, but also for the way
in which his empiricism made his approach feasible.
Carl Strehlow’s framework in context

Strehlow’s framework for the study of myth, evident in the structure of his
published myth collections, derived from German intellectual life. It was a
common form of classification in nineteenth century German anthropology and
ethnography, invoking the German Romantic Movement and its orientation
towards folklore and philology. Originally a ethnologist and folklorist (Morton
1988: viii), Róheim too was grounded in similar European traditions and adopted
similar Grimmian terms to classify Aboriginal stories – see for instance Children
of the Desert II (Róheim 1988).
Well-known representatives of this genre, the Grimm brothers, coined the terms
Mythen, Sagen und Märchen (myths, legends and fairy-tales).4 They established
myth as a form of story told in traditional oral societies and distinguished by its
reference to matters of ‘collective, usually sacred, importance’ (Von Hendy 2002:
xiii). The Grimm brothers developed their triple distinction over a generation. A
brief sketch of its generic criteria appears in Jacob Grimm’s preface to the 1844
edition of Deutsche Mythologie:
Looser, less fettered than legend, the Fairy-tale lacks that local habitation,
which hampers legend, but makes it more home-like. The Fairy-tale flies,
the legend walks; the one can draw freely out of the fullness of poetry,
the other has almost the authority of history. … The ancient mythus,
however, combines to some extent the qualities of fairy-tale and legend;
untrammelled in its flight, it can yet settle down to a local home. (Grimm
1883, vol. 3: xv in Von Hendy 2002: 63)
According to the Grimm dictionary, Mythen (myths) are narratives of sacred
events that are held to be true by their tellers, and may have features of both
Sagen and Märchen. The term is usually applied to the myths of ancient Greece
4 The German terms do not correlate exactly with their English translations. The English term legend, for
instance, does not correspond precisely with the German Sage or Legende. Thus, Sagen can be translated as
myths or legends.
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The Aranda’s Pepa
or Rome. Sagen are a genre of stories that are locally rooted in true events;
typically used for Nordic myths. Märchen (fairy-tales) are narratives that are not
bound to a specific landscape, place or true events. Their content can draw from
fiction and imagination. The Grimms saw it also as a ‘sunken myth’ (Schweikle
and Schweikle 1990: 292).5
Strehlow was aware that the brothers Grimm’s three-fold classification Mythen,
Sagen und Märchen did not describe Aranda and Loritja cosmology adequately.
In his handwritten manuscript titled Sagen he used ‘traditions’ to label the
different types of stories he had collected. The two main categories of Aranda
myths were ‘The oldest traditions of the Aranda’ and ‘The specific traditions of
the Aranda’. The second category was split into four sub-categories: ‘Traditions
about celestial bodies and natural phenomena’, ‘Traditions about the most
ancient time’, ‘Traditions about totem-gods, who travelled in animal shape’ and
‘Traditions about totem-gods who travelled usually in human shape’. He also
used the word ‘traditions’ to describe Loritja myths, trying new categories and
headings like ‘The highest being (Tukura)’, ‘The Tukutita, the first people’ and
so forth.
On the title page of Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien,
however, the classification Mythen, Sagen und Märchen appeared. It is not clear
if this was Strehlow’s or von Leonhardi’s decision. Possibly it was an editorial
decision to make the content obvious to potential buyers. Within the publication
the classification was not consistently followed; it is not explicit which narratives
are to be understood as Mythen or Sagen, and only a small number of stories are
clearly labelled, namely those called Märchen. Carl Strehlow made a comment on
the difference between fairy-tales and myths:
The difference between these Märchen and the Sagen is that the latter
may only be told to people who have been accepted by the men as
members of their society, and who accept the veracity of these stories.
The Märchen, however, may be told to women and children. They serve
to divert from the secrets of the men (see the Märchen of Tuanjiraka)
or to instil into the women and children a fear of the pursuits of the
evil beings (bankalanga). Other Märchen, like the one concerning the
arinjamboninja, are simply told for entertainment. (Strehlow 1907: 101)
The last two narratives in Carl Strehlow’s Loritja myth collection are also labelled
as fairy-tales. It is hard to see why he called these narratives fairy-tales, other
than to differentiate them from restricted stories.6 The distinction foreshadows
the Berndts’ effort at distinguishing sacred and secular myth (Hiatt 1975: 1–2).
5 This Grimmian model is still an accepted taxonomy in folklore studies and often taken for granted.
6 Today unrestricted stories are sometimes referred to as ‘children’s stories’. In Strehlow’s view, this might
have made them ‘fairy stories’ as well.
142
Yet both categories draw their content from the happenings in a mythological
past, which blurs the boundaries between the sacred and the mundane – a
typical feature in traditional Aboriginal Australia (Berndt 1970: 216).
The classification of indigenous narratives was an issue for von Leonhardi.
In a response to a critical remark on Strehlow’s categories made by W. Foy,
the director of the museum in Cologne, in the Kölnische Zeitung in 1908,7 he
discussed in a letter to Carl the terminology and classification of indigenous
narratives and proposed that in volume two a justification was required. He
remarked in a preface:
The critic in the Cologne newspaper further regrets the term “Märchen”
used for some of the stories told. He is of the opinion that “they
represent serious concepts of belief, also for men.” I do not wish to
debate the word “Märchen”. It does not stem from me, but from the
author. I completely agree with the meaning it conveys. There is indeed
a great difference between the sacred Sagen, known only to the men, and
these “Märchen”. The stories that are found on p.101–104 of the first
instalment count on the women and children’s fear of ghosts; though
it must be admitted that the men themselves believe in the bankalanga
and their evil deeds. In this way they are not Märchen in the true sense
of the word. (Strehlow 1908: Preface)
Although von Leonhardi did not like Carl Strehlow’s narrative classification, as
well as the terminology used to describe the mythical ancestors, namely ‘gods’
and ‘totem gods’, he did not change them when he edited the manuscripts. He
maintained that the meaning was clear. He seemed to accept that to a degree,
classification and terminology were arbitrary affairs, and that a precise ‘fit’ for
a narrative corpus could not be found. In the same period, in 1906, Arnold van
Gennep commented that European classification of mythological narrative was
not adequate for indigenous mythology and admitted that he used ‘mythes’
and ‘légendes’ interchangeably (Hiatt 1975: 185) and ‘that each of the assumed
classes overlaps the others’ (van Gennep [1906] 1975: 193). In his Songs of Central
Australia (1971), T.G.H. Strehlow resolved the classification issue by defining
how he used ‘song’ and ‘poem’ in the central Australian context. He made it
explicit that they were place bound and pertained to cosmology.
Today the narratives that Strehlow called Mythen, Sagen and Märchen are
generally labelled in English as ‘myths’, some restricted to gender or age.8
7 Kölnische Zeitung, 26.4.1908.

8 Aboriginal people in Central Australia often label today their stories in Aboriginal English: Olden time
stories, bush tucker stories, dreaming stories (‘proper’, ‘true’ story). Within the category of dreaming stories,
Western Aranda people distinguish ‘inside’ and ‘open’ stories. The general public, including children, may
hear outside or open stories, which are often public versions of restricted dreaming stories.
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The Aranda’s Pepa
Many of Strehlow’s myths were male versions of particular stories. All of his
main informants were men and in Aboriginal society this type of knowledge
is gender specific. He does not seem to have made a remark on the existence
or non-existence of women’s-only myth, to which he is unlikely to have had
direct access.9 Nevertheless, there is some suggestion of women’s sacra in his
collection. These narratives may be a public version of women’s myth in the
event told by men (Malbanka 2004: 14) or are a male version of a restricted
women’s dreaming. An example is the Loritja myth of the Pleiades:
The Pleiades are many girls (okarála) who once resided in the west at
Okaralji [place of girls], a place to the north of Gosse’s Range, where
they lived on the fruit of a climbing plant (ngokuta = (A) lankua).
Some time later they ascended to the sky and, after many journeys,
returned to Okaralji, where they once more gathered ngokuta-fruit and
performed the women’s dance (untiñi = (A) ntaperama). During this time
the Pleiades are not visible in the sky. (Strehlow 1908: 9)
Just as he used the categories Mythen, Sagen and Märchen, to organise his data,
which denoted in a German intellectual context particular genres, Carl Strehlow
was also drawn to compare Aranda and Loritja myth with the European corpus:
But as in the Greek mythology, the Supreme God Zeus receded in the
background, and the greatest interest, was bestowed on the semi-gods
just the same thing happened in the religious traditions of the Australian
aborigines. They neglected the Supreme Being, and turned their main
interest to the demigods, half-animals and half-men, and endowed them
with supernatural powers. The Aranda call these demi-gods Altjira-
ngamitjma (the eternal uncreated); the Loritja, Tukutita; the Dieri,
Muramura ... These semi-gods wandered from place to place, instructed
their novices and performed ceremonies by which the Totem animals or
plants were produced.10
The structure of his myth accounts seems to indicate that he tried to present
indigenous mythology as a whole, internally connected, like Greek or Nordic
mythology or like biblical myth. These corpuses unfold in a well-defined
realm in which the protagonists interact and events intertwine. These myth
collections start usually with setting the general scene and describing what was
at the beginning of time and where the protagonists dwelt: Olympia and Hades,
Asgard, Midgart and Jötenheim, or Heaven and Earth.
9 Much detail of mythology and ceremony belonging to Aranda women has vanished in the course of the
last century mainly due to mission life. The basic story lines as well as place names, however, are often still
known, and some song and dance is still held by Aranda women who have close ties to Pertame and Luritja
women. These ceremonies relate to some of the female ancestors as well as to other stories which have a
‘woman’s side’. Other beliefs in spirits have survived in modified forms (see Kenny 2004a,b).
144
Both Aranda and Loritja myth collections begin with general descriptions
of ‘primordial times’; where the ancestral figures would live, travel, interact
and end their journeys. These introductions are summaries of the narratives
Strehlow collected from a number of people which usually begin with particular
ancestors emerging out of the earth or commencing a journey. Read together
they are indeed connected, because the same places and ancestors appear often
in a number of narratives; and the main motives and themes in these myths
are the travels, petrifying, naming, actions, and interacting of ancestors. They
can create the impression that the mythic whole was shared knowledge in
Aboriginal societies.
However, knowledge about myths was and is not evenly distributed. The
transmission of knowledge generally, and in particular about country, was and
is gradual. The entire body of information about a particular site or story is
never conveyed all at one time. Learning about traditional laws and customs
was a long process that could last a lifetime. Dreaming stories involve layers of
knowledge, and the sum of these layers may be transmitted over several decades.
In the case of male initiation, which took place between ten and 30 years of age,
Morton (1987: 110) writes, ‘Throughout the cycle of initiation, perhaps lasting
as long as twenty years, a youth constantly absorb[ed] knowledge and ancestral
powers into his body’. No single Aranda or Loritja person would have known
the entire body of mythology pertaining to Aranda and Loritja countries,
because myths played and still play a very important role in land ownership.
Therefore, considering a myth complex from different ownership positions
gives it a different orientation. Rights and interests in land in central Australia
were and are usually articulated through knowledge of particular dreaming
stories, segments of dreaming tracks, songs, ceremonies, and sacred designs that
describe the country and places created by the ancestors of a landholding group
(Pink 1936; Strehlow 1965; Morton 1997a,b; Kenny 2010).
As a result of presenting Aboriginal mythology like European mythology and
organising the myths in terms of a creation story, and a descent from the heavens
to the earth, the modus operandi of Aranda and Loritja myth was masked.
These European preconceptions made it difficult, even for von Leonhardi, to
address why the Grimm brothers’ classification seemed only partly to fit. At
the same time, and in the spirit of Herder and Boas, these ill-wrought tools of a
transitional anthropology allowed Carl Strehlow to make a start. He embarked
on the collection of raw material, which left his corpus open to subsequent
interpretation because he tried to document the myths in their own right –
notwithstanding his presuppositions. This type of work contrasts with attempts
like Frazer’s monumental The Golden Bough, which looks for universal myth
themes and rules applicable around the world. Owing to Carl’s reluctance to
analyse, it is difficult to evaluate what he derived from his investigations. It
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The Aranda’s Pepa
seems however fair to say that his research led him towards an understanding
of the normative order he saw reflected in Aboriginal religion. In this his views
were both like and unlike the Berndts. In addition, indigenous knowledge of the
natural environment became a matter which he recorded assiduously. Finally, as
his attention turned to the Loritja he also gained a sense of regional fine grain
diffusion and borrowing.
What Strehlow saw: Normative order, natural

history and regional diffusion
In 1906 Strehlow wrote to N.W. Thomas that the tjurunga songs he collected gave
‘valuable clues on the religion of the blacks, because they tell of the wanderings
and the deeds of the ancestors, their totems’11 and to von Leonhardi that these
songs give insight into the Aranda’s ‘religious beliefs’.12 Berndt’s remark that
in Aboriginal Australia ‘Morality and religion are not conceived of as being
separate spheres of experience’ (Berndt 1970: 219) is likely to approximate Carl
Strehlow’s view. Christianity is a moral religion, and in German intellectual
life mythology was understood as reflecting normative aspects of a people’s
culture. This position on issues of the social-moral order in myth may be seen
as a harbinger of the later functionalist view ‘that the narratives constitute a
conservative, socialising force’ and a ‘normative influence … on custom’ (Hiatt
1975: 5; Malinowski 1979: 237). The lives of the ancestors reflect issues of
everyday life and ‘[i]n the majority of situations it is taken for granted that
the majority of people will follow the socio-cultural patterns laid down in the
creative era’ (Berndt 1970: 219).
The myths of the earth-dwelling beings and their activities explain how the
world was created and reflect many aspects of Aranda life. Strehlow believed
that they represented the indigenous understanding of the world and their
perception of how the laws of life came into being. This interest is evident in
the first sections of his myth collections (see for example Strehlow 1907: 8, 9–11)
in which he chose to call some of the ancestral beings ‘teachers’ (‘Lehrer’) who
establish and pass on ‘laws’ (‘Gesetze’). On the 12 September 1908, his life-long
friend and mentor Seidel wrote:

146
It was a great pleasure to receive your book and letter, – thank you very
much – I was particularly pleased about the book. I have not read it yet
cover to cover, but I can glean already now, that the myths contain what
one can call the religion or the teachings of the natives.13
The conundrum of myth as charter – how to regard bad examples – is evident
in Strehlow’s work. The following myth presents an obvious case that a wrong
doing, theft, has major consequences for the perpetrator:
Soon after this, the inhabitants of Mulati went off to avenge the theft.
They travelled via Arambara, Tnolbutankama, Taraia, Jinbaragoltulta,
Ruékana and Ratata to Iwopataka. When the inhabitants of the latter
camp saw the approaching group of avengers, they said to the ngapa-
chief, “You have stolen the latjia, that is why the inhabitants of Mulati
are coming here.” When the group of avengers had come close to the
camp, the inhabitants of Iwopataka said to them, “Here is the man who
stole your latjia. Kill him with your sticks (tnauia).” Although the raven-
man took flight, the latjia men threw their tnauia at his neck and he
fell down dead. Then all the raven-men and latjia-men entered the local
stone cave and everyone, including the gathered latjia-roots and the
thief, became tjurunga. (Strehlow 1907: 76–77)
However, moral statements in Aranda and Loritja myths are usually less explicit.
An example is provided in a mythic trespassing incident concerning the ancestral
native cats, who are important both to the Aranda and Loritja (Strehlow 1907;
1908: 24–26). Loritja native cats, coming from the south, were stopped from
proceeding into Aranda country as they arrived at a place just south of Gilbert
Springs, a main Aranda native cat place, where the chief Malbunka was residing.
Malbunka was angry to see them there and furiously uttered an Aranda spell on
them which inflicted blindness on the Loritja native cats which stopped them
from continuing their journey. Instead they metamorphosed into trees and cliffs.
There are also more mundane and prosaic instructions on how to prepare or
do certain things, such as cooking game and distributing it correctly to kin, in
Strehlow’s myth collections. The following are some common examples on the
subject of cooking:
Lakalia, who had meanwhile come near, lifted big grey kangaroo
Lurknalurkna with ease and laid it on the coals. After it had roasted a
little, he took it from the fire, scraped off the singed fur and with a stone
knife lopped off the legs and the tail, which he kept for himself, while
giving the legs to the young fellows. Then he laid the rest of the meat
back on the coals. When this had roasted sufficiently, he spread tree
13 Carl Seidel to Carl Strehlow, 12.9.1908 (SH 1908-2-1).

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The Aranda’s Pepa
branches on the ground, cut up the meat and laid the individual pieces
on the cushion of branches. While leaving most of the meat for the young
fellows, he took for himself the spine of the kangaroo (toppalenba), the
tail and the fat, and returned to Irtjoata, where he sat down near a stone
cave. (Strehlow 1907: 42)
This typical myth, on how to do things the ‘proper way’, often includes how
particular laws and customs came about. For example, in the beginning, two
‘indatoa’ (handsome men) lived with their blind aunt, Kaiala, at Umbañi, a place
in the far south-west. Every day the men went hunting in a different direction,
killing emus and cooking them in a particular way. They gave their blind aunt
enough meat, but very little fat. Fat is still highly valued in central Australian
Aboriginal societies. One day they accidentally gave her a very fat female emu
and she noticed that they had not done the right thing by her. As punishment
she gave eyesight to all emus. The myth goes:
Every day the two indatoa went hunting in a different direction, killing
many emus with their sticks, digging pits in the ground and roasting
the emus in them. After they had first eaten the entrails, they plucked
(bailkiuka) an emu, broke its legs (lupara mbakaka) and spine (urba
ultakaka), placed the cooked meat on green twigs and consumed it. The
remaining emus they tied together, put a circular cushion made of woven
grass (nama ntjama) on their heads and carried their prey home on it.
They gave Kaiala sufficient meat, but very little fat. One day they were
delayed while hunting and returned home after night had fallen. They
accidentally (balba) gave the goddess a very fat female emu. After she
had eaten the meat, the goddess went away from the camp but returned
very soon because she had poked a twig into her blind eye, causing it to
water a great deal (alknolja = tears). She rubbed the fat into her eyes and
– she regained her sight. When she saw all the fat emus in the camp she
said to the two men, “You have always withheld the fat emus from me,
therefore all the emus will receive their sight from now on.” (Strehlow
1907: 30–31)
Aboriginal people in central Australia today still say that any activity in their
landscape should be carried out in the ‘proper way’ or ‘right way’, implying that
it is done according to the rules set down by their ancestors. These activities
can apply to virtually anything: cooking traditional food, hunting, approaching
a sacred site or performing a ritual or ceremony. As Berndt noted, ‘Aboriginal
religion was, and is, intimately associated with social living, especially in
relation to the natural environment and its economic resources’ (Berndt 1970:
219). His remark echoes Herder’s view that ‘the mythology of every people is an
expression of the particular mode in which they viewed nature’ (Herder cited
in Von Hendy 2002: 20).
148
Carl Strehlow understood myths not only as reflecting normative order, but
also as reflecting an indigenous engagement with environment, a key element of
their ontology. Aranda and Loritja mythology represented for him indigenous
natural history, ‘as the totems of the Aranda belong usually to the animal and
plant world, reflecting their knowledge of the natural world; thus, they contain
the popular natural history of the blacks.’14 He wrote:
The tjurunga-songs in their totality therefore present the blacks, who
grew up without education, with a fine popular study of nature. They
frequently show a transition from the narration of the exploits of the
altjirangamitjina to a description of the totem animals or plants. Even the
actors who perform the cult rituals are mentioned in them. (Strehlow 1910: 5)
With great enthusiasm, he recorded in detail the flora and fauna of central
Australia as perceived by Aranda and Loritja people. While doing so, he
admired their empirical knowledge of species and land. He not only collected
the precise description of species and their behaviour in myth, he also collected
additional practical information on them. In 1906 he started to send animal
and plant specimens to his editor who distributed them to leading German
scientists for classification. Von Leonhardi, who loved to cultivate these exotic
plants in his hothouse at his country retreat in Gross Karben, had as many
classified as he could and inserted these new data in their publications. As
a result, descriptions of animal and plant behaviour abound in the prefaces,
and footnotes throughout the text. To a certain degree their research became
a cosmographic project. Von Leonhardi remarked how often ‘the fine nature
observation of the various bird species’ in the ‘Tjurunga songs’ amazed him.15 In
this way, Strehlow’s data testified to the Aranda and Loritja’s intimate relations
with their natural environment. What his data also show is the manner in which
the life of the species in this environment became the medium for narratives that
concerned human normative order. The mythical ancestors were part as were
flora and fauna of the environment, each of these with their attributes specified
meticulously. A section of an Aranda fish myth exemplifies these features:
During a great flood, which had begun at Tnenjara a tributary of Ellery
Creek situated in the northern part of the McDonnell Ranges, a great
shoal of fish came swimming down the Ellery Creek. All types of fish
were among them. These fish were being pursued by a crayfish (iltjenma)
who kept driving them onward, while a cormorant (nkebara)-totem god
stood at the banks and speared some of the passing fish with a short
spear (inta). He threw them on the banks, roasted them on coals and ate
them. When the fish had swum past him, the cormorant ran ahead of the

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The Aranda’s Pepa
flood and came to the place Tolera. There he threw a big heap of grass
into the water in order to detain the fish. However, he could only catch
the small fish, for the big fish pushed the barrier aside. After he had
devoured the captured fish and spent the night at this place, he again
ran ahead of the flood on the following morning. He positioned himself
at a particularly narrow spot, threw a large amount of grass into the
oncoming water and speared a few fish. (Strehlow 1907: 46–47)
Predators of the fish, and their strategies, are described in equal detail with
the strategies, technologies and practices of humans. The passage of a flood,
its impact on a waterway as well as the detailed features of that waterway that
may help both human and animal ancestors, are all described. Parallels are
drawn between the techniques of a species and ancestor whom fish may avoid
in similar ways. In the myths, human and animal experiences can merge in a
shared space. They interact and respond to a topography in both practical and
moral ways. Along with these extended accounts come a multitude of singular
details and specificity:
A big grey kangaroo, named Lurknalurkna [sinewy one], used to live a
long time ago at Irtjoata, a place to the north-west of the Finke Gorge. It
ate the stems of the porcupine grass (juta wolja) and slept in a cave (intia)
at night. (Strehlow 1907: 40)
Listening to these forms of myth, Carl Strehlow was able to compile a list of
Aranda and Loritja totems containing 442 totems, of which 411 were animal
and plant totems (Strehlow 1908: 61–74); of these 312 were used as food or as
stimulants. Additionally he listed 20 plants and animals that were not totems
for various reasons, remarking that this was not a comprehensive list. In the
following issue on songs and ceremonies, he presented a list that showed which
totems had friendly relationships to each other (Strehlow 1910: xiii–xvii). In
a number of cases, animals are paired with other species that are their food or
shelter. The relationships are usually immediate. The species which have been
filled with significance ‘are seen as exhibiting a certain affinity with man’ (Lévi-
Strauss 1966: 37).
Carl Strehlow’s text conveys an appreciation of this ‘World’ that anticipates
Lévi-Strauss’s enthusiastic account of the concrete logics and classifications of
indigenous people. In The Savage Mind (1966) Lévi-Strauss cited case after case
of early ethnographic accounts of the intimate relations between indigenous
people and their environments including examples from Strehlow senior. On
Hawaii ‘the acute faculties of the native folk’ was noted, as they described ‘with
exactitude the generic characteristics of all species of terrestrial and marine
life and the subtlest variations of natural phenomena such as winds, light and
colour, ruffling the water’. On the Philippines it was observed that the Hanunóo
150
‘classify all forms of the local avifauna into seventy-five categories’, ‘distinguish
about a dozen kinds of snakes’, ‘sixty-odd types of fish’ and ‘more than a dozen
… types of fresh and salt water crustaceans’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 3–5); and about
a people of the Tyukyu archipelago it was observed that:
Even a child can frequently identify the kind of tree from which a
tiny wood fragment has come and, furthermore, the sex of that tree, as
defined by Kbiran notions of plant sex, by observing the appearance
of its wood and bark, its smell, its hardness and similar characteristics.
(Lévi-Strauss 1966: 5)
Lévi-Strauss famously concluded that ‘Examples like these could be drawn from
all parts of the world and one may readily conclude that animals and plants
are not known as a result of their usefulness: they are deemed to be useful or
interesting because they are first of all known’ (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 9). From this
he drew conclusions about the rational propensities of peoples and the logic of
their concreteness. For Strehlow, and his interpretation of Australian religion,
the impact was more specific. This intimacy both with the animal and plant
world as well as with place contextualised the propensity of ‘totem gods’ to
become earth bound either as tjurunga or as natural features in the landscape.
As I discuss below, Strehlow would remark that ‘These totem gods are associated
with certain localities where they had lived and generated their totem animals’
(Strehlow 1907: 4).
Strehlow’s interest in myth as shaping normative order, and reflecting the
species and landscape of an Aboriginal world, was also marked by his interest
in particularity. As he collected terms and myth from two different cultures,
naturally both similarities and differences emerged. His initial impression was
that the belief systems of Arandic groups were similar, although he had observed
differences, obvious in individual myths, which were ‘local-myths that refer to
particular places’.16 He made a related remark again when he started research on
Loritja mythology:
I am now researching and recording the traditions of the Loritja and
have discovered that the views of the Loritja are in their basic structure
similar to the ones of the Aranda, however, the individual myths are
very different.17
The mythologies of the different Arandic groups and Loritja were specific,
despite some basic common features. In his Loritja account of ‘primordial times’,
16 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, possibly on the 6.4.1906 (SH-SP-1-1).

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The Aranda’s Pepa
for example, he points to a number of differences between the groups. Aranda

ancestors tended to change more often into tjurunga, and Loritja ancestors into
natural features, such as rocks and trees (Strehlow 1908: 3–4).
The main marker of difference was language and dialect variation; his comments
on these particularities showed that he had a sense of the changing nature
of cultures.18 He cross-referenced differences, changes and similarities. He
documented the incorporation of myth motives and expressions as well as whole
sentences or verses in foreign languages (such as Warlpiri, Anmatyerr, etc.). His
data collection show that the interaction between different cultural and linguistic
groups resulted in ‘borrowings’. In Loritja myths one finds Arandic words, sites
and dreaming beings as well as Warlpiri words and sentences woven through
the narratives (Strehlow 1908: 32–33). He collected evidence of amalgamation
and assimilation of foreign cultural elements which produced variations.19 He
and his editor were aware that cultures influenced each other and changes took
place. He discovered similar motifs in myths of different cultural and linguistic
groups and evidence of language change in myths that contained expressions
and ‘speech’ not found in the vernacular and were clearly dated (see Strehlow
1910: 6). This was one of the reasons he was ‘intending to write a short grammar
and a dictionary of the local language, so anyone can independently translate
the Tj-songs, and see, in how far the older language deviates from the current
vernacular’.20
Although his comparative work indicated small-scale diffusion, he did not
articulate this point explicitly. He simply remarked on the import of cultural
elements from other regions into his study area, while von Leonhardi appears
to have been testing ‘refined diffusionism’ in a Boasian style. Most of Strehlow’s
examples and comments relate to the Western Aranda-Loritja border area. His
precise recording showed particularities which defied generalisations. At the
same time, it showed similarities that were understood to be diffusion through
close and immediate interaction between peoples of different cultures. His son,
T.G.H. Strehlow, remarked in the 1930s that these communalities were the result
of the ‘constant intercourse between the two tribes’ and that ‘Western [Aranda]
religion has been deeply influenced in many respects by Matuntara and Kukatja
[Loritja] ideas; and Aranda beliefs, in turn, have set their stamp unmistakably
upon Loritja traditions’ (Strehlow 1947: 66). He observed that ‘in Western
Aranda ceremonial chants, a great percentage of the verses are composed in
the Loritja language’. About half of the verses of the native cat dreaming of
the Ltalultuma (Lthalaltweme) landholding group, for instance, were borrowed
from the Loritja songs (Strehlow 1947: 66–67). His father had already observed
18 See Strehlow (1910: 6); Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, mid to end of 1906 (SH-SP-6-1).
19 See, for example, Strehlow (1907: 79, fn. 9).
152
a similar situation and wrote that in the Loritja songs a large amount of Aranda
existed (Strehlow 1910). His son also maintained that shared dreaming tracks,
that link people, had similar features due to ‘diffusion’ or close interaction. The
dreaming of the Dancing Women, for example, traverses a number of countries:
One of the Western Desert mythical tracks that go across the Aranda-
speaking area is delineated in the myth of the Dancing Women of
Amunurknga. This trail begins in the country west of Mount Liebig; and
I have traced it eastward as far as Love’s Creek Station, near Arltunga,
in the Eastern Aranda area; but the trail goes even further. (Strehlow
1965: 128–129)
T.G.H. Strehlow found that these affinities expressed themselves in a number
of ways ‘particularly where the animals and plants form ceremonial totems’
(Strehlow 1947: 66). Based on his father’s material he estimated that about 60
per cent of the terms of dreamings were shared between neighbouring Aranda
and Loritja (Kukatja) peoples. He wrote on Tuesday 12 April 1932:
From my father’s A[randa] dictionary I compiled today as complete a list
of Aranda names of plants and animals as possible together with their
Kukatja equivalents. The result was very interesting:
Total Common terms Separate terms

Names of animals: 300 = 167 (=56%) 133 (44%)
Names of plants: 220 = 147 (=67%) 73 (33%)*
* T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary I (1932: 2).
Premonitions of ontology
The type of mythological material Carl Strehlow collected is the core of
Aboriginal belief systems and what today is referred to as the dreaming in
English. Strehlow’s material contains most elements that allowed – in hindsight
– a concept of the dreaming. It supplies excellent source material and empirical
evidence. He did not have the tools of modern anthropology and linguistics
at his disposal to formulate this concept, and did not experience the intimate
relationship first hand that Aboriginal people have to their land. He did not have
the opportunity to travel with his informants over their country. Nevertheless
his work and data were suggestive of the ‘subject into object’ transformation
(Munn 1970; Morton 1987) and to a certain degree the person-land relationship
in indigenous Australian cultures (Strehlow 1947; Myers [1986] 1991). It would
certainly help his son conceptualise and articulate it.
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The Aranda’s Pepa
The conceptualisation of ‘subject into object’ was latent in his data collection.
Ever recurring motives are the vast travels and the transformations of the
ancestral beings into natural features or tjurunga or kuntanka (objects) in both
Aranda and Loritja myths. He realised that these journeys and transformations,
described in ‘their religious traditions’ and ‘their sacred songs (tjurunga songs)’
recited by the old men during ceremonies, were essential features of Aboriginal
cosmology.21
He remarked that nearly all Aranda songs end with the ancestors returning
to their home (Heimat)22 very tired from their long wanderings, and usually
turned into tjurunga.23 The issues of growing tired, going to sleep or ‘going
in’, and actually becoming part of the land, are implicitly all speaking about a
particular way that landscape and species are linked to ancestors. The ancestors
would ‘altjamaltjerama’, which means ‘become a hidden body, i.e. to assume a
different Gestalt’ (Strehlow 1907: 5), at particular named places or ‘tjurungeraka’
(meaning ‘change into wood or stone’) at the end of their activities:
For not only the whole body of the totem ancestor but also individual
parts of it were tjurungeraka, i.e. changed into wood or stone, e.g. the
fat of a totem snake (apma andara), the kidney of a possum ancestor
(imora topparka), the heart of an emu (ilia tukuta), etc. Indeed, even
some of the sticks belonging to the totem ancestors are regarded as
tjurunga, etc. (Strehlow 1908: 77)
There are countless examples of this process of becoming country, or being
lodged in the country. In a Loritja myth ‘The two brothers Neki and Wapiti
on the mountain Mulati’ (Strehlow 1908: 10) the ancestors Neki and Wapiti
(synonyms for a type of edible root) end the story by turning into two cliffs on
a mountain called Mulati, meaning twins. The events of this myth take place not
far from Merini, a mountain also mentioned in Aranda mythology. In ‘Papa tuta.
Knulja ntjara’ (reproduced in Loritja, Aranda, a German interlinear translation
and a German free translation) the dog ancestors change into tjurunga at Rotna,
a site on Aranda territory. ‘Katuwara’, a short Loritja myth about two eagles
(Strehlow 1908: 20), tells of an excursion of the eagles to a mountain called
in Aranda Eritjakwata (meaning eagle egg/s) and their flights to the north.
Like most ancestors, they petrify at their place of departure, Kalbi (meaning
eagle feather) west of Tempe Downs. At the end of some of the songs he notes
where the ceremony and rites were performed. For example, the Arandic red
21 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 2.6.1906 (SH-SP-2-1). See also Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, mid to
end of 1906 (SH-SP-6-1).
22 The German Heimat carries strong notions of emotional attachment to landscape. Meggitt ([1962] 1986:
67) chose in his DesertPeople the notion of die Heimat to describe ‘the affection that a man feels for his wider
community and its country’.
154
kangaroo ceremony takes place at Ulamba (Strehlow 1910: 10–13) and the large
tawny frogmouth ceremony of the Loritja is held at Kumbuli in the north-west
of Hermannsburg (Strehlow 1911: 19). He wrote that the ‘mbatjalkatiuma’
ceremonies are performed at sites which are in one way or another connected to
the relevant ancestor, because they are believed to be hidden at these places in
rocks or underground and that they emerge when the old men let their blood
flow on these sites during the performance of ceremonies (Strehlow 1910: 8).
The transformations are a main feature of Aboriginal ontology as ancestors
externalise themselves in their environment. Carl Strehlow wrote to von
Leonhardi, not quite sure what to make of the phenomenon of place names and
their creation:
Esteemed Sir!
With this mail I send you again some myths. I have placed red brackets
around the ones that are not worth publishing, because they only
contain names that are important to the blacks and for science they seem
rather of minor value. However, you are completely free to publish an
extract from these as well as from the others I have sent you. The myth
of the ‘fish totem ancestor’, for example, is quite uninteresting, as it
contains many fish totem places, and yet I do not want to miss them
entirely. They show how the natives imagine the creation of the fish
totem places.24
Naming, making and marking of places are important features of the creation
process. Names such as Rubuntja (Mt Hay), Irbmankara (Running Waters),
Aroalirbaka (2 Mile in the Finke) and many others are prominent in all
mythological accounts. He wrote about the ‘altjirangamitjina’ (dreaming
ancestors):
These totem gods are associated with certain localities where they had
lived and generated their totem animals. Such localities are mostly
found in the vicinity of a high mountain, a spring or a gorge where the
totem animals that bear their names usually gather in larger numbers.
For example, there is a lizard totem place near Hermannsburg, at
Manángananga, where there are many lizards. Fish totem places can
be found only in places where there is much water, e.g. in the Ellery
Creek. Some of the totem gods remained in their original habitations;
these are referred to as atua kutata, i.e. the men who always live in one
place. Other altjirangamitjina, however, went on extended journeys and
returned home in the company of several young men. (Strehlow 1907: 4)
24 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, probably mid 1906 (SH–SP-9-1). See Strehlow (1907: 46–48) on fish
dreaming.
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The Aranda’s Pepa
All narratives Carl Strehlow collected belong to particular localities of Aranda

or Loritja territory and take place during a mythological creation era. He wrote
that Aranda myths are local-myths that refer to particular places.25 As early
as 1894 missionary Reuther explained in the Kirchlichen Mitteilungen that the
muramura (dreaming ancestors) had created the land:
There are many Muramura. Each one of them established something
good, and created the earth; however, because there are so many of them,
each made only a part of the land of which he is the patron guardian.26
As a result of his empiricism and maybe an intuitive understanding of the
significance of place for Aranda and Loritja people, Strehlow collected and
recorded hundreds of site names. He had grasped to a certain degree the
importance of naming and metamorphosing, writing that their journeys ended
with the ancestral beings fossilised or petrified into the landscape, from which
spirits rose (Strehlow 1907: 2). He even wrote to his editor that it was unlawful
to change or damage natural features of the landscape.27 But he did not get to the
specific subject-into-object ontology as described by Munn (1970), expanded
by Myers ([1986] 1991) and elaborated by Morton (1987) and Redmond (2001).
Still, he came close:
The totem, the totem ancestor and the totem descendant, i.e. the actor,
appear in the tjurunga-songs as a single entity. Some of the tjurunga-
songs are simply beyond understanding unless one bears in mind the
inseparable unity between the totem, the altjirangamitjina and the
ratapa.28 (Strehlow 1910: 5)
It was T.G.H. Strehlow who would travel on camel back with Aranda men over
their country mapping the exact places of events that had taken place in the
mythological past. T.G.H. Strehlow understood the overwhelming significance
of land as well as the emotional attachment of indigenous people to ancestral
figures in place, as well as to their travels and acts as represented in performance.
‘and it was an eye-opener for me’

Ten years after his father’s last journey to Horseshoe Bend, T.G.H. Strehlow
returned to Hermannsburg on the 5 April 1932. In his baggage he carried his
father’s publication Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien and
25 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, possibly written on the 6.4.1906 (SH-SP-1-1).
26 Reuther (1894: 57) in Kirchlichen Mitteilungen.
28 Among other things ‘ratapa’ means in Carl Strehlow’s work spirit-child that enters a mother to be and
gives a person a soul.
156
unpublished dictionary. He was 23, only one year older than his father had
been when he first arrived at the mission in 1894. Hill (2002) describes Ted’s
feelings and his motives for returning to his birthplace; they were fraught with
ambivalence. Yet he was very keen to learn everything he could about central
Australia. Once he had familiarised himself again with Hermannsburg and its
people, he started studying and checking his father’s data and brushing up his
Aranda with old friends of his father.29 Ted found it difficult to get back into
the language of his childhood, although he had an enormous head start and was
equipped with his father’s myth collection and unpublished dictionary, that
contained thousands of Aranda and Loritja words.
Within a few weeks he was tracking the bush on camel back in the company
of Tom Ljoŋa, an Aranda man, collecting data for his thesis on Aboriginal
language. His fourth trip in November and December of 1932 took him onto
his ‘father’s country’, Tjoritja (Tyurretye) country, the country that features
prominently in Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien. When he
got back to Hermannsburg he wrote that ‘The long-dreaded trip is over at last’
and ‘Now I am home.’30 After this trip – it had been an important one despite
not having collected much linguistic data – he wrote to his supervisor, Professor
J.A. FitzHerbert in Adelaide:
On my last trip I did not find many natives, except at Hamilton Downs
and Napperby: since my July trip one of the Western stations has
closed down, and the numerous natives have all dispersed, mainly to
Hermannsburg. My own camel boy, however, had his original home in
these parts. Accordingly, I had a splendid opportunity of getting an
insight into the former life of this Aranda group – how their wandering
depended on the seasons of the year and the failing or replenishment of
their water supplies. I was shown many ceremonial sites and a sacred
cave (Ulamba) with the last few tjurunga in it; and it was an eye-opener
for me to see how the old legends fit in with the general geography of the
tribal territory.31 It is only after a trip such as this that the old legends –
which are usually told in an extremely terse style, an intimate knowledge
of the locality described on the part of the listeners being presupposed
by the story teller – really begin to live in one’s mind.32
This trip in late 1932 made him realise how intimate the relationship between
person, species and the land is. Hill (2002: 175–176) writes that it is surprising
that he had not realised the close connection of natural environment and
29 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary I (1932: 1–11).

30 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary I (1932: 130).
31 Emphasis added.
32 T.G.H. Strehlow to Professor J.A. FitzHerbert, 5.1.1933 (SRC Correspondence 60/32).
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The Aranda’s Pepa
people, and that it was only taking shape now, despite his language skills and
childhood milieu. However, this is not at all astonishing because the specificity
of an Aboriginal ontology, as we understand it today, had yet to be articulated.33
T.G.H. Strehlow was struggling with many aspects of central Australia. He
was relearning Aranda, acquainting himself with the indigenous and non-
indigenous population of the Centre, acquiring survival skills and grappling
with geography. It was hard going. An entry for Wednesday the 9 November
1932, camped near Ulamba on Tom Ljoŋa’s father’s and father’s father’s country,
illustrates his difficulties, which were met on many other days as well:
A warm day. We spent another morning, tjurunga hunting, and then
had to give it up as all likely places had been exhausted. There is only
one vague chance that the caves may be right at the Western extremity
of Eritjakwata; but its no use messing around any more. For I discovered,
when taking the camels down to the waterhole this afternoon that it will
be quite dry in a day’s time or so after that we’d have to carry the water
down to the camels a long distance. Besides, Tom, instead of getting me
a wallaby, went out in quest of kangaroos; “the wind reared around in
all directions”. And Tom returned late – without anything. He threw his
own remaining bit of euro away as well because it had gone maggoty. He
also informs me tonight that “Baby” is developing a tender left forefoot
on the stones. Old “Ranji” is still limping and only this morning I had to
pull out some more little splinters and spikes from the open sore on his
sole. Such is life, and yes people would “give anything” to have my job
– “it must be so fascinating the insight it gives you into the souls of such
an interesting people”. I climbed the mountain straight North from here
today in desperation, in order to reconnoitre the leg of the country. I
took angles galore, but nothing corresponds with any of the maps I have
– which is a good thing. I got a splendid view right around – all high
peaks of the McDonnell and all the ranges North, and the sandhills and
plains and salt lakes between [only Karinjarra was hidden by another
formation]; but everything was shrouded in haze unfortunately. This
made it impossible to gauge distances, and I am still quite in a muddle as
to which peaks are Mt Chapple, Heughlin, Zeil and Razorback.34 – Well
here’s another moon-light night. I suppose, I’ll have to shift tomorrow
owing to lack of water – no rest for the wicked.35
33 This remark reveals that the impression that Ted evokes in his award wining Journey to Horseshoe Bend
that he was aware of the significance of landscape on his father’s death journey is to a certain degree fiction.
He may have been unconsciously aware of this fact.
34 Later he plotted these sites on a map as Eritjakwata, Emalgna, Ulatarka and Latjima (Strehlow 1971).
158
Two years after this crucial fourth trip,36 he wrote three seminal essays in 1934
that would be published as Aranda Traditions in 1947; they are the beginning of
the arduous work of conceptualising the Aboriginal ontology. Significantly the
first essay starts with a fictional visit of the owners to Ulamba. This description
is based on his visit to Ulamba with Tom Ljoŋa and was much influenced by the
feelings of his ‘camel boy’, a man in his fifties who was disillusioned and deeply
saddened by the loss of his country and the fate of his people. T.G.H. Strehlow
(1947: 30–33) captured what Ulamba meant emotionally to Tom. These feelings
towards country, he also consciously noted when he was checking his father’s
version of Tom’s ‘Atua Arintja from Ulamba’37 with Angus, Jonathan and Moses
in January 1933 back in Hermannsburg:
I first gave the three men my father’s version of the legend, with which
they agreed: according to Moses, Loatjira had been the original narrator.
Angus could not tell, why the cult was ever performed – the erilkngibata
had not given any explanation for it any more. …
Strangely enough, in those fragments of the song which are remembered
by Angus, Jonathan and Moses and also in those which are recorded
in my father’s works, the whole stress is laid not on the horrible
cannibalism of the atua erintja, but on his longing for home, for his own
green Ulamba, and on his sorrow at finding that birds have desecrated
his own cave at Ulamba. It sounds almost like an Aranda version of the
lost son.38
T.G.H. Strehlow was able to formulate the relationship and feelings of Aboriginal
people towards country and what the stories of species-ancestors mean in these
first essays, because he had experienced it first hand. He saw the parallels
between the people’s relationship to land/place and the ancestors ‘Longing for
home’ which is the motif that ‘lead[s] most of the weary ancestors of legend back
to the place whence they originated’ (Strehlow 1947: 32). Nearly 40 years later
he still wrote about feelings connected to country and ‘that in the days of the
totemic ancestors the landscape itself reciprocated these feelings of affection’
(Strehlow 1971: 584). In the course of his long career T.G.H. Strehlow would
gradually articulate explicitly the specific ontology of the Aranda.
36 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary I (1932: 118–130).

37 In his father’s work simply called ‘Atua arintja, der böse Mann’ (Carl Strehlow 1907: 90–92). Ted added
‘from Ulamba’ and nearly 40 years later it appears in his Songs of Central Australia as ‘The Arintja Song of
Ulamba’ (1971: 577–584). Ulamba is also connected to an herre (kangaroo) dreaming (Carl Strehlow 1910:
10–13) where its ceremony is performed.
38 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary I (1932/33: 145–146).
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The Aranda’s Pepa
Conceptualising the dreaming

Unable to travel the Aranda landscape for research, or avail himself of early
models of local organisation, Carl Strehlow would not articulate explicitly his
informants’ intimate relationship to country. Thus, while he had rigorously
documented what his informants told him about their dreaming ancestors
emerging out of the earth, travelling over its surface during the creation period
and metamorphosing into natural features or objects, his son T.G.H. Strehlow
would be able to formulate explicitly what these procreational movements
and transformations meant. He would pull the threads together that would
connect ancestor-person-land with each other. Already in Aranda Traditions
(1947) T.G.H. Strehlow touched on what would lead in the following decades
to an understanding of the essence of Aboriginal religion by himself and other
eminent anthropologists, such as the Berndts, Stanner, Munn and Myers.
T.G.H. Strehlow writes about the significance of ancestral foundational acts
and transformations, the person-land relationship, and also about the libidinal
and procreational aspects of myth and rite that have been extensively discussed
by Róheim, Hiatt and Morton. Finally, this sense of place and sentiment in
Aboriginal culture would lead Hiatt (1969) and Peterson (1972) to reject the
juggernaut of Lévi-Straussian rationalism. Morton (1985) would in turn temper
the latter’s insights with those of Lacan and the emotional struggle against
fragmentation, both in the landscape and within the self.
The foundational acts, the travels and actions of these ancestral figures that
brought the world into being have been discussed numerous times. For central
Australia, T.G.H. Strehlow (1947, 1964, 1971), Munn (1970) and Myers (1976,
[1986] 1991) are the outstanding accounts. They describe the significance of
ancestral singing, marking and naming places, embodying ancestral figures
in performance, and transforming parts of themselves into natural features or
sacred objects. They explain what the metamorphosing into the landscape at
the end of their journeys, where they are still believed to be resting or sleeping
as part of the land, means to Aboriginal people and how the landscape is the
symbol of the truth of this time and its system of order. In 1964 T.G.H. Strehlow
emphasised again:
After emerging from their eternal slumbering places, these supernatural
beings, commonly labelled “totemic ancestors”, moved about on the
surface of the earth. Their actions and their wanderings brought into
being all the physical features of the central Australian landscape.
Mountains, sandhills, swamps, plains, springs, and soakages, all arose
to mark the deeds of the roving totemic ancestors and ancestresses.
(Strehlow [1964] 1978: 16)
160
T.G.H. Strehlow (1947: 25–28) made his first attempts in the 1930s to convey
how Aboriginal people perceive and understand the dreaming (although he
does not use this term). For example, many features of the MacDonnell Ranges
are attributed to the blows of ceremonial poles:
The terrible blows of these smiting poles have left their marks in countless
valleys and chasms and gorges in every portion of the MacDonnell
Ranges and elsewhere. They cleft gaps in otherwise inaccessible bluff
slopes; they fashioned many mountain passes for the feet of wandering
hordes at the beginning of time. (Strehlow 1947: 25)
Sometimes simply by camping at a place and eating, hunting, gathering or
making tools, behaving and acting as their descendants would, the ancestors
gave meaning to the landscape and a code for the people who followed to live
by, because ‘all occupations originated with the totemic ancestors’ (Strehlow
1947: 35). He clearly stated that the dreaming encompasses all aspects of Aranda
life, which was also observed by Munn (1970) among Warlpiri and Pitjantjatjara
and by Myers (1976: 158–160) among the Pintupi who see the tjukurrpa ‘as the
ground of all being’. Other activities of course included the performance of
ritual and ceremonial dances and songs (which Stanner seems to have rated as
more sacred).
The exploits of the ancestral beings were vast and complex. As they created
on their wanderings the land and everything on it – water, animals and plants
– they also populated the land with spirits and thus ‘throughout the Aranda-
speaking area it was believed that the totemic ancestors and ancestresses had
left a trail of “life” behind them’, a constituted world (Strehlow [1964] 1978:
20). Spirits emerged from those parts of the ancestral beings, and the sacred
objects representing them, which they left embedded in the land. Some of these
spirits were child-spirits, who enter a woman and give human-beings their
‘soul’, and thus humans owe their existence to the dreaming (see also Morton
1985: 118). People’s attachments to country are thus indestructible because they
are derived from the ‘life-giving properties’ left behind by the ancestors at the
beginning of time (Strehlow 1947: 88). In this way, they are part of the land and
the ancestors who created the land and the people. T.G.H. Strehlow described
the significance of the landscape for Aboriginal people:
A Central Australian Aboriginal community was thus made up of men and
women for whom the whole landscape in which they lived represented
the work of supernatural beings who had become reincarnated in their
own persons and in those of living and dead forbearers, relatives, and
friends. (Strehlow [1964] 1978: 39)
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The Aranda’s Pepa
Thus, land and things are imbued with notions of person. At the centre of
Munn’s discussion lies the relationship between the subject and the (inanimate or
non-sentient) object world. The objectification of the ancestors in land through
transformation symbolises the relationship that people have to land, because
they originate from the ancestors who are still in their transformation features
of the natural world present in country and objects. Generally, anything created
in any way or left behind by an ancestor is thought to contain something of this
being. Munn (1970: 143) writes that ‘country is the fundamental object system
external to the conscious subject within which consciousness and identity
are anchored.’ Thus, human beings have unbreakable bonds with particular
parts of the country (Munn 1970: 145), because their spirits come from these
transformations in the landscape. People treat the landscape like a relative,
because it also represents their kin (Strehlow 1947; Myers [1986] 1991). Carl
Strehlow, for example, wrote that the species-ancestor associated with a man is
perceived to be his big brother and treated with great respect (Strehlow 1908).
As Munn (1970) remarked the transformations of subject into object involves a
disappearance linked with a new appearance, in most cases parts of the landscape.
It is thus the land that can tell about the noumenal world beyond immediate
perception. Myers ([1986] 1991) writes that for the Pintupi the land reveals
aspects of that past era that bear on the present and can explain phenomena
in the lived experience of the everyday. The living are obliged to sustain this
inheritance because these traditions are the basis for the continuation of life.
Drought and illness may be thought to be a consequence of deviations. T.G.H.
Strehlow wrote:
For in Australia the operation of the concept of the totemic landscape
ensured that such things as the stability of tribal boundaries and of
linguistic groups, the distribution of interlocking and intermarrying
subgroups, and the firm establishment of authority – and hence of the
agencies of social control, and of law and order – were all based on the
geographic environment. (Strehlow 1970: 92)
T.G.H. Strehlow, Munn and Myers’ work on the specificity of Australian
indigenous ontology can be juxtaposed with the way in which both Róheim and
Morton adapt universal themes drawn from psychoanalysis to the specificity
of dreaming myth. In the process, they seek to link central Australian issues
of sentiment and desire to themes that might be judged universal, just as Lévi-
Strauss sought to establish a cognitive unity for humankind that linked his
‘primitive’ naturalists with ‘modern’ minds.
Based on field-research in the late 1920s at Hermannsburg, Róheim championed
the psychoanalytical approach to Aboriginal religion by seeking general human
dream patterns and wish dreams in Aranda myth. His records include not only
162
references to myth but also many dreams and mundane stories recounted by
Aranda people a few years after Carl Strehlow died. Some of these provide matter
of fact corroborating evidence for the details of daily life that Carl recorded
through his study of myth (see Róheim 1974, 1988). However, Róheim’s main
concerns were the celebration of the phallic hero, male transition from child
to adult and, finally, reparation of separation from the mother in a return to
the land (Hiatt 1975: 9). In The Eternal Ones of the Dream, Róheim wrote that
myth represents repressed wish dreams, particularly day-dreams that ‘hide a
real difficulty, and offer a consolation. Instead of the mental picture of struggle
for daily food or wandering on the scorching sand, the myth describes a state
of perpetual erection, a perpetual state of lust’ (Róheim [1945] 1971: 10). This
means ancestral is ‘necessarily’ libidinised, i.e., ‘as if it were a sexual act’ (Róheim
[1945] 1971: 9). Hence, foot, tail and making tracks are all seen as euphemisms
for sexual intents and acts.
In his work post-1985, Morton, like Munn, carried the study of myth into an
analysis of how (male) agents filled with desire created a libidinised landscape
(Morton 1985, 1987). In Singing Subjects and Sacred Objects he develops the
theme of mythic ‘procreation’ events as the substance of ancestral travels (1987:
100–117). Morton focuses on ‘naming’ and ‘marking’ up, complex ancestral
performances that are related ‘to ancestral singing as the creative outpouring
of names’ (Morton 1987: 110) that bring the world into being. He also notes
Munn’s account of how women ‘lose’ boards. Morton argues for a double
transformation:
Thus men, at initiation, take corporal bodies from women and ultimately
transform them into tjurunga bodies, [while] women appear to take
tjurunga bodies from men and turn them into fleshy beings. It is these
analogous, but also opposed, transformations which I believe to lie
behind Munn’s discernment of a correspondence between the ancestral
surrender of tjurunga and the giving up of boys by women at initiation.
(Morton 1987: 115)
He suggests ‘that the notion of alienation from The Dreaming’s depths during
the course of childhood growth may also be general’ (Morton 1987: 116), and
that male children (at least) are taken from mothers to bring them back to the
dreaming, guarantee of the human condition. As Victor Turner remarked, in
this myth and rite the needs of ‘biopsychical’ beings (the boys) might here be
reconciled with ‘the needs of society’ notwithstanding their apparent opposition
(Turner 1968: 19).
Other contemporary views by Myers ([1986] 1991) and Redmond (2001), for
example, take closer account of the Lebenswelt (lifeworld) of Pintupi and
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The Aranda’s Pepa
Ngarinyin people. They describe how land constitutes and reveals the world
by being able to ‘speak’ and ‘explain’ itself, and how people are active in
interpreting these experiences.
Altjira and tnankara

It is clear from the foregoing discussion that many rounds of observation, and
myth interpretation, were required to specify a central Australian ontology. It
was beyond Carl Strehlow’s time and conceptual method to grasp the essence
of an Aboriginal world. Nevertheless, I would like to end this discussion by
returning once more to the word ‘altjira’ and its semantics. The trajectory of the
word’s interpretations shows, in condensed form, the power of Carl Strehlow’s
work on myth.
The term has a certain magnetism, being continuously revisited over time and
stimulating many discussions on its meanings (Spencer and Gillen 1927; Róheim
1945; T.G.H. Strehlow 1971; Morton 1985; Veit 1991; Hill 2002; Austin-Broos
2010; John Strehlow 2011; Green 2012). It was, for example, one of the first
concepts that T.G.H. Strehlow checked with his father’s informants when he
arrived back at the mission after ten years absence, in April 1932.39
Carl Strehlow was aware of the multiple uses and meanings of the term altjira.
The pivotal remark for subsequent debate was published at the beginning of
his masterpiece (Strehlow 1907: 2; see quotation in Chapters I and VII). Yet he
also wrote to his editor about the term after he had completed his collection of
Aranda myths:
You will note in the section on Altjira, that I had to retreat from a number
of points I had made earlier, because it does not hold together after
further investigation. … What I say on page 2 about the derivation/
etymology of “Altjira” = (altja era), is my opinion of course, which I
cannot prove, but is an obvious and logical explanation which seems
very likely. … However, the natives are very definite, that the current
meaning of the word Altjira is the ‘uncreated one’, ‘the not-made one’
who has no beginning. Already Schulze (in Royal society etc. page 242)
wrote 15 years ago that the meaning of altjira is ‘not made’.40
This ambiguity led him to discuss a possible etymology of ‘altjira’. He wrote that
according to his Aranda informants the concept of the ‘non-created’ was central
and that Spencer and Gillen’s (1904: 745) view that the word ‘alcheri means
39 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary I (1932: 2–8); Hill 2002.

164
dream’ was incorrect, because ‘altjirerama’ means ‘to dream’, and it is derived
from altjira (god) and rama (see), in other words, ‘to see god’. Concurrently, he
indicates that altjira and tukura can also refer to any mythical ancestor seen in
a dream. Spencer and Gillen’s explanation and translation of ‘Alcheringa’, as
‘dream times’ (Spencer 1896: 111; Spencer and Gillen 1904: 745), Carl Strehlow
considered as a misunderstanding of the concept:
The Aranda language does not render the word dream with alcheri but
rather with altjirerinja, though this word is rarely used. The normal
expression of the blacks is, “ta altjireraka”=“I have dreamed”. The
word “alcheringa”, which according to Spencer and Gillen is supposed
to mean “dreamtime”, is obviously a corruption of altjirerinja. The
native knows nothing of a “dreamtime” as a designation of a certain
prior in their history. What this expression refers to is the time when the
Altjiranga mitjina traversed this earth. (Strehlow 1907: 2)
With the help of his editor, Strehlow became sensitive to the term’s polysemy.
His editor had realised before Strehlow had that the expression ‘altjira’ had a
wide semantic field and could denote a multiplicity. This was reflected in one
of his early remarks. He expressed surprise that Strehlow would use ‘Altjira’ for
God in his service book, Galtjindintjamea-Pepa Aranda Wolambarinjaka (1904):
Today I finally get around to answer your letter and thank you for
the book in Aranda. Your letter was very interesting; with the text,
however, I unfortunately cannot do much, as long as a grammar and a
dictionary are not available, – the only thing I could discern was that
you translate God with Altjira; intriguing, that you after all think that
this term contains sufficient meaning to convey the biblical concept of
God.41
A few months later he asked Carl Strehlow to further investigate the underlying
concepts of the word ‘Altjira’:
Dream is altjirerinja (obviously Spencer and Gillen’s Alteringa). You
wrote to me that no term exists for the abstract concept of dream. This
needs clarification. I ask you to pay the outmost attention to any words
related to the concept of Altjira; all are very important. Can the word
Altjira also be used as an adjective?42
Von Leonhardi’s reaction to Carl Strehlow’s subsequent discussion of the
semantics of Altjira was enthusiastic and begged for further research. He
commented in August 1906:

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The Aranda’s Pepa
Your explanation of the word altjirerama with the help of the

corresponding term in Loritja appealed very much to me. Thus, the
Loritja’s tukura means ‘god’. Hopefully you will have something to
tell us about Tukura? In that case Spencer and Gillen’s Alcheringa =
Altjira-ringa means “belonging to the gods”, “the divinities”. Therefore
the word Altjira would not only be a proper name, but would also be
used for the totem ancestors? Have I understood you correctly in this
matter? Are the totem ancestors Altjira = gods as well? This is not an
unimportant matter.43
Strehlow continued to investigate ‘the different uses of the word Altjira and
tmara and deba altjira’.44 Gradually, he grasped the term’s polysemy and tried
to conceptualise his new insights. By the time he published, he had noted and
explained that altjira is connected to mother’s conception dreaming and place
(Strehlow 1908: 57; 1910: 2). Von Leonhardi had alerted him to this aspect of the
word by directing his attention to Schulze’s work (1891). Strehlow also found
that ‘altjira’ could mean ‘the totem god who reveals the people’s future in dreams
and inkaiama = to set up’ (Strehlow 1913: 6; see also Strehlow 1907: 2). Thus,
he came to use the word in a number of different contexts. One attempt to solve
the polysemy of ‘altjira’ was to use upper and lower cases, i.e. Altjira and altjira.
Upper case ‘Altjira’ was used for Aranda supreme being or high god; and in the
Christian context of the mission, for ‘God’. In lower case, ‘altjira’ was used in
a vast array of contexts, assuming meanings in indigenous use and standing
in stark contrast to the new meaning the missionaries had tried to impress on
it. Spencer noted the use of Altjira upper and altjira lower case, but could not
understand the intention of this use (Marett and Penniman 1932: 110).
Carl Strehlow also recorded a synonym for Altjira/altjira – tnankara (tnengkarre).
In his entire published work the word tnankara appears only twice (Strehlow
1913: 29; 1915: 48), for a very obvious reason. In his time, tnankara was the
synonym for altjira used in ‘the secret language that is taught to a rukuta, a
novice or young circumcised man’ (Strehlow 1913: 29). Róheim ([1945] 1971:
211) too observed that ‘Another Aranda word for dream, ancestor, and story, is
tnankara. It is not often used, and as far as I could see it means exactly the same
as altjira’.
Róheim typically emphasised altjira’s meaning ‘dream’ which is crucial for a
psychoanalysis based on dreams. In The Eternal Ones of the Dream, Róheim
claims that altjira does not mean god or ancestor as Strehlow maintained, but
that its meaning covers ‘dream, beings seen in a dream and a narrative with a
happy ending’ (Róheim [1945] 1971: 210–211). He believed ‘that Strehlow, from

166
the preoccupation with Altjira (God) in the Aranda bible, managed to miss the
real meaning of the word, which is known to every Aranda both at the mission
and elsewhere’. Róheim also remarked that ‘in the Luritja group of languages
tukurpa is the universal word which, like the Aranda altjira, covers several
meanings of dream, story and also of the oracle game’ (Róheim [1945] 1971: 211).
Therefore he missed, in turn, that Strehlow also proposed that the term refers
in a certain context to ‘a totem god which the native believes to have seen in a
dream’ and that ‘every person is also connected with another particular totem
which is called altjira. This is the totem of his mother. … This altjira appears
to the blacks in dreams and warns them of danger, just as he speaks of them to
friends while they are sleeping’ (Strehlow 1908: 57).
T.G.H. Strehlow discusses the term ‘Altjira’ and his father’s view on it in Songs of
Central Australia (Strehlow 1971: 614–615). He wrote that ‘altjira’ is a rare word
‘whose root meaning appears to be “eternal, uncreated, sprung out of itself”;
and it occurs only in certain traditional phrases and collocations’. Part of T.G.H.
Strehlow’s examination of Altjira/altjira is reminiscent of a note his father wrote
to von Leonhardi:
The word Altjira is a noun. By adding the suffix –erama to a noun a verb
can be made denoting ‘to become’ in Aranda. … Thus, it is grammatically
correct to perceive the verb ‘altjiererama’ as ‘become God’. Rama
however, also means: to see; Altjire-rama = see God (in dreams God
reveals secrets to them). That this is the meaning of altjiererama = dream
follows clearly from the comparison of the Aranda words with the
Loritja (neighbouring tribe of the Aranda, who refer to themselves as
Kukatja) ones; in this language too ‘to dream’ is: tukura nangani; tukura
= god (altjira) and nangani = to see. Therefore to compose grammatically
correct the word ‘dream’ (the natives very rarely do this and do not say:
I had a dream, but I dreamed (altjireraka); thus, ‘dream’ is altjirérinja. So
what does Gillen and Sp. Alcheringa mean?45
It is clear now that altjira covered a very complex issue and that its semantic
field and syntactic range were vast. Without doubt ‘dream’ was part of altjira’s
polysemy (Green 2012: 166, 171–172). The altjira discussion also indicates
that language changes over time. Thus, Strehlow’s corpus of myth allows some
tracing of the history of key concepts and terms. This term has undergone in
the course of the past century some major semantic shifts. Carl Strehlow and
von Leonhardi had observed a wide semantic field for the term altjira and Carl
had discovered a secret synonym of the word – tnankara. In his time, T.G.H.
Strehlow (1971: 614) found that ‘altjira’ was rarely used. Decades earlier Róheim
([1945] 1971: 211) had noted a synonym for altjira ‘tnankara’ that ‘is not often
45 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 2.6.1906 (SH-SP-2-1). Compare with T.G.H. Strehlow (1971: 614–615).
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The Aranda’s Pepa
used’. Today in Western Aranda areas the term altjira is used to denote the
Christian God and tnankara (tnengkarre) for concepts relating to indigenous
spiritual beliefs (Kenny 2003, 2004a, 2010).46
‘Altjira’, and the initial debate about it, distils in one instance the journey of
interpretation through which Carl Strehlow’s corpus of Aranda and Loritja
myth has passed. Transitional or pre-modern in his ethnography, Carl Strehlow’s
scholarly pursuit of cultures, propelled forward by von Leonhardi, opened
doors to contemporary research on indigenous ‘Worlds’. In the process, within
Australia, the study of myth became an account of a unique Aboriginal ontology.
46 Green (1999/2004: n.p.) has observed a similar development for the Anmatyerr words altyerr and
anengkerr, that used to be synonyms.
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VI. The ‘Marriage Order’ and Social
Classification
Strehlow’s editor remarked in 1906 that ‘The views of Spencer and Gillen, as
well as of other Australian researchers, on the meaning of kinship terms, as well
as of the marriage classes, seem still hypothetical.’1 At the turn of the century the
inclination towards evolutionistic theory was prevalent in Australian kinship
studies. Reflected in the work of Fison and Howitt, Roth, and Spencer and
Gillen, it led to a focus on ‘marriage order’ and kinship terminology. Questions
about group marriage, primitive promiscuity, the transition from a four (section)
to an eight (subsection) class system, and the origin of human society, were
central in anthropological debate.
The Lutheran missionary Louis Schulze, who had arrived in Hermannsburg in
the late 1870s, appears to be the first to report on the subsection system in this
region (Schulze 1891: 223–227). However, it was through Spencer and Gillen
that their forms of social classification became a seminal case. In particular, the
eight-class system, today called the ‘subsection-system’, was much discussed.
Radcliffe-Brown even named the system and its attendant kinship ‘Arandic’
after them. Frazer understood these aspects of indigenous Australian culture as
survivals of a past stage in human social development, from a distant past, like
other facets of Aboriginal life.
L.H. Morgan had put the classificatory kinship systems of indigenous societies
on to the anthropological agenda, but his aim was to fit the kinship systems of
the world into an evolutionary chain. Fox remarks:
At least half the anthropological literature on kinship has been largely
concerned with the terms various systems employed in addressing and
referring to kinsfolk and affines. Morgan saw in the study of terminology
the royal road to the understanding of kinship systems. He was the first
to see that the terminology was a method of classification, and that
what it told us was how various systems classified ‘kin’. If we could
understand this, we could understand the system. ‘Understanding’
for Morgan, however, meant understanding the evolution of kinship
systems, and what the terminology held for him was the clue to the past
state of the system. (Fox 1967a: 240)
The study of kinship as social organisation in indigenous society was only
slowly emerging at the turn of the century. W.H.R. Rivers had given it an

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The Aranda’s Pepa
impetus with his genealogical method which proceeded from the ‘concrete to
the abstract’ (Langham 1981; Stocking 1983: 85–89). Rivers’ method involved
collecting genealogies – a genealogical grid – and on it imposing the particular
terms, or social classifications, of a particular people. The grid was constructed
by requesting the personal names of a person’s ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘children’
and the like and then the ‘native’ terms for these relatives were listed. Rivers
recommended multiple sources as a methodological check. The same set of
relatives with their personal names and kin term could be elicited from a range of
linked individuals. Through this method, Rivers ‘rediscovered’ the phenomenon
of kinship ‘classification’ common in Australia whereby parallel cousins, for
instance, are designated by the same term, ‘sister’ and ‘brother’, and by their
children as ‘mother’ and ‘father’, just as reciprocally these children refer to
each other and are referred to as ‘sister’ and ‘brother’. Rivers, however, took a
further step of seeing in the genealogical method a means for studying ‘society’.
The codes for conduct (see Schneider 1968: 29) or social rules attached to these
terms provided a portrait of social order, or ‘social structure’ as Radcliffe-Brown
would term it. According to Fox, ‘Radcliffe-Brown – also turning his back on
evolution, but retaining the interest in terminology, produced a new and elegant
comparative approach to kinship which sought to make generalizations about
kinship systems, comparable to the “laws” of natural science’ (Fox 1967a: 21).
Carl Strehlow’s research lacked a framework that would have led him towards
such a study of social structure. He did not integrate his data into a theory of
how a society ‘functions’ as, afterall, the study of kinship as social organisation
was just emerging. His collection provides, however, a starting point for the
analysis of indigenous kinship systems, because it shows how people name
their kinship universe and the manner in which they use kin terms as terms
of address. What he did not do, in the fashion of Rivers, was superimpose his
recording of kin terms on the genealogies that he collected. Therefore his grasp
of a kinship terminology as classificatory, and its implications for a marriage rule
for instance, remained somewhat tenuous. Neither was he able to superimpose
the Western Aranda’s subsection system over the kinship system in its entirety.
What he did do was to use his genealogical material, or family trees, as frameworks
on which to record data concerning personal attributes of individuals – their
‘totems’ and their skin or subsection names. He also looked at family trees in
tandem, interpreting the multiple relations between affines across a number of
generations. He thereby gave a sense of what it was to address a small-scale
society through kinship and in this task von Leonhardi posed a series of scholarly
questions. I will discuss three different aspects of Strehlow’s data on Aranda
and Loritja kinship and individuals: the subsection system, kin terminology
and genealogies. Although he did not employ his genealogies as Rivers and his
followers would, his use of them had far-reaching implications for Aranda and
Loritja people at Hermannsburg, and for subsequent anthropologists.
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VI. The ‘Marriage Order’ and Social Classification
Carl Strehlow’s data on social classification

Without doubt Carl Strehlow’s main contribution to Australian anthropology
was his myth collections and his language studies. Yet his ethnographic work
includes some useful and important data on social classification. He collected a
vast number of kinship terms that are still in use today. His collection provides
a starting point for the analysis of indigenous kinship systems, because it shows
how people classify their kinship universe and ‘when we want to understand
the kinship rules and behaviour of any people we must ask how they classify
kin and on what basis they make distinctions’ (Fox 1967a: 262).
Through his long residence at Hermannsburg, Carl Strehlow developed a sense
of specifying different forms of Western Aranda and Loritja social relations. He
saw that they had a particular form of social life and moral arrangements. He
documented this in regard to the class system (section and subsection systems)
and by compiling impressive lists of kin terms that showed how Aranda and
Loritja people classified their kin in a kin universe, as well as how these systems
connected with each other.
His kinship data were based on research he had conducted since 1892 with
Diyari, Aranda and Loritja people, and by living and participating in everyday
life of Aboriginal people at Hermannsburg and Bethesda. Letters by Gillen
(1896),2 Siebert (1899)3 and Mathews (1906/7)4 indicate that Carl Strehlow had
systematically collected kinship terms and data on the subsection systems of the
Aranda and Loritja at least since 1896. Strehlow approached social classification
initially through collecting section, subsection and kin terms, and seems only
to have started to collect family trees in 1907 or 1908.5 Von Leonhardi sent some
samples of family trees from Germany showing how they were best recorded
from an individual’s point of view.6 His editor may have known the ‘genealogical
method’, as he read Rivers, and this may have prompted his request. Carl Strehlow
used these genealogies to illustrate how subsection systems categorised people
into groups whose members could or could not be marriage partners.
The following discussion is based on a chapter called The Marriage Order in
volume five (Strehlow 1913: 62–89) which explores not only ‘marriage rules’, but
also the moiety division, section and subsection systems, classificatory kinship
and family trees. At the time it was believed that at the core of indigenous kinship
lay the function of marriage regulation and indeed the section system ‘used to
be called [a] “marriage-class system” and was believed to regulate marriage’
2 F. Gillen to B. Spencer, 14.7.1896 (Mulvaney, Morphy and Petch 2001: 130).

3 O. Siebert to A. Howitt, 22.8.1899 (Melbourne Museum).
4 Carl Strehlow to R.H. Mathews, 1906–1907 (NLA 8006/2/4).
5 On the 18.8.1909 von Leonhardi confirmed in a letter to Carl Strehlow the receipt of 20 family trees.
171
The Aranda’s Pepa
(Fox 1967: 188). However, the section and subsection systems are not the basis
of marriage rules (Dousset 2005: 15) and marriage calculations are not their only
function. These systems are mainly intra- and inter-language group devices to
facilitate interaction and communication – often at ceremonial events. Nor is a
kinship system a marriage system. Rather, such a system contains a marriage
rule. Carl Strehlow did not distinguish clearly between a kinship system, a
marriage rule that complements the kinship system, and a subsection system
which classifies people according to kinship categories but is not a kinship
system or a marriage rule in itself.
The subsection system

Carl Strehlow’s account of the ‘marriage order’ starts with the basic division
that organises Aranda society into two groups: exogamous moieties. These
patrimoieties were called ‘Nákarakia’ (our kindred or people)7 and ‘Etnákarakia’
(those people or that kindred) or ‘Maljanuka’ (my friends) by the Aranda. These
terms were not names for one or the other moiety but were reciprocally used
by both groups (Strehlow 1913: 62). Today Arandic people still refer – from an
egocentric point of view – to such groupings that are maljanuka or malyenweke
and nákarakia or ilakekeye. Malyenweke means ‘them’ or ‘our in-laws’ while
ilakekeye means ‘us’. In one’s own patrimoiety, that is ilakekeye, are one’s actual
and classificatory fathers and their siblings, father’s fathers and son’s children,
and also one’s mother’s mother’s patriline which is part of ilakekeye, ‘us’. In the
opposite moiety, malyenweke, in addition to one’s spouse and brothers-in-law
there are one’s actual and classificatory mothers, mother’s brothers and mother’s
fathers and also one’s father’s mother. Like the Aranda, the Kukatja-Loritja used
particular terms for the members of these groups reciprocally. All relatives of
an ego’s group (own patrimoiety) were called ‘Ngananukarpitina’ meaning ‘all
of us’; and all relatives of the opposite moiety were called ‘Tananukarpitina’
meaning ‘all of them’ (Strehlow 1913: 79). In societies organised in this way one
should always marry someone from the opposite moiety.
Strong kinship ties exist between these two social groups. Some people in the
opposite moiety, for example, play a crucial role in ceremonial matters relating
to land. They create relationships which serve to articulate ownership of land
such that the ‘patrimoiety division broadly correlates with complementary
roles associated with rights and responsibilities associated with country, sites
and ceremonies’ (Green 1998: 11). The most important partners in matters of
land management and ceremony, are usually recruited from the opposite moiety,
and preferably, also from a particular patricouple.
7 See Strehlow (1913: 62, fn. 5) for an elaborate attempt on the possible etymology of these reciprocal terms.
172
The two exogamous groups are further divided into two or four classes, called
sections and subsections today. Carl Strehlow recorded that the Southern Aranda
had a ‘4-class system’ and the Aranda ‘living north of latitude 24 degrees possess
4 marriage classes in each moiety, they have thus, a 8-class system’ (Strehlow
1913: 62). He wrote that according to Aranda tradition these divisions were
established in a mythological past:
This division of the people into different marriage-classes is regarded
as being of very ancient origin and is already hinted at in the
legends concerning the people of primordial times. Even before
Mangarkunjerkunja had formed the people, the undeveloped rella
manerinja were divided into two strictly separated groups. While the
members of one group lived on dry land and were therefore known as
alarinja, the members of the other group, having long hair and feeding
on raw meat, lived in water and were therefore called kwatjarinja.
(Strehlow 1913: 62)
According to Aranda mythology the moiety called ‘alarinja’ was divided into
Purula (Pwerrerle), Kamara (Kemarre), Ngala (Ngale) and Mbitjana (Mpetyane);
and the other moiety ‘kwatjarinja’ into Pananka (Penangke), Paltara (Peltharre),
Knuraia (Kngwarreye) and Bangata (Pengarte). In the Southern Aranda myth
on the section-system, the alarinja group was composed of Purula (Pwerrerle)
and Kamara (Kemarre), while the kwatjarinja group was comprised of Pananka
(Penangke) and Paltara (Peltharre).
Northern/Eastern/(Western) Aranda Southern Aranda

(Subsections) (Sections)
Alarinja: Purula-Kamara, Ngale-Mbitjana Purula-Kamara
Kwatjarinja: Pananka-Bangata, Paltara-Knuraia Pananka-Paltara
16. Alarinja and Kwatjarinja of the Aranda.
Source: Strehlow 1913.
Each moiety includes two generational pairs in father-child relationships.

These pairs are called patricouples and in Aranda ‘njinaŋa’ (nyenhenge) (T.G.H.
Strehlow 1947, 1965). The patricouples Kamara-Purula and Ngala-Mbitjana
form one moiety and Paltara-Knuraia and Bangata-Pananka the other. Aranda
marriage rules prescribe that Kamara marries Paltara, Purula marries Pananka,
Ngala marries Knuraia and Mbitjana marries Bangata. Carl Strehlow (1913:
63) shows this pattern in the following way, A and B are parents and C their
children:
173
The Aranda’s Pepa
A. B. C.
Purula m. + Pananka f. : Kamara
Kamara m. + Paltara f. : Purula
Ngala m. + Knuraia f. : Mbitjana
Mbitjana m. + Bangata f. : Ngala
B. A. C.
Pananka m. + Purula f. : Bangata
Paltara m. + Kamara f. : Knuraia
Knuraia m. + Ngala f. : Paltara
Bangata m. + Mbitjana f. : Pananka
17. Aranda ‘marriage rules’.
Source: Strehlow 1913.
This system, called by Aboriginal people in central Australia ‘skin’, has been
chartered by the Institute of Aboriginal Development in the following way:
18. Arandic skin chart.
Source: Henderson and Dobson 1994.

174
Strehlow wrote that the Western Loritja, i.e. the Kukatja-Loritja, had a ‘marriage
order’ identical to the one of the Aranda. They too divided their society into
two exogamous groups and into subsections. He made a brief remark on the
Southern Loritja, observing that they did not have a section or subsection
system. Nevertheless, they did use the reciprocal terms ‘Ngananu-karpitina
and Tananukarpitina’ for patrimoieties, Western Loritja kin terms and the same
basic marriage regulation of the Aranda and Loritja, i.e. the grandchildren of
different sex siblings, or the children of cross-cousins were preferred marriage
partners (Strehlow 1913: 87).
Further, Strehlow described how the sections of the Aranda-Lada and Aranda-
Tanka in the south and the sub-section system of Western Aranda could
interlock, and that Loritja subsections are compatible with the ones of the
Aranda. To him the Loritja subsection terms seemed to have been originally
based on the Aranda terms, with the addition of the prefix ‘Ta’8 to indicate a
male subsection name and ‘Na’ a female subsection name. Thus, the Loritja have
differentiating subsection terms for their male and female members, which the
Aranda do not have.
Eastern/Central Arrerntei Western Arandaii Loritjaiii

Angale Ngala Ta/Nangala
Ampetyane Mbitjana Ta/Nambitjinba
Peltharre Paltara Ta/Napaltara
Kngwarreye Knuraia T/Nungaraiï
Kemarre Kamara Ta/Nakamara
Perrurle Purula Ta/Napurula
Pengarte Bangata Ta/Nabangati
Penangke Pananka Ta/Napananka
i. Reproduced from Henderson and Dobson (1994: 42).
ii. Carl Strehlow’s Aranda spelling of subsections.
iii. Carl Strehlow’s Loritja spelling of subsections. For a modern spelling of the Luritja terms see the Pintupi-
Luritja kinship learning material (Institute of Linguistics 1979).
These observations on how the section and subsection systems interlocked,

how people were shifted into different categories and from which areas they
came as well as the time frame when this data was collected (1896–1909),
are particularly interesting when placed in the context of comments on the
diffusion of section and subsection systems and names across Australia. Among
others Spencer and Gillen (1899, 1927), T.G.H. Strehlow (1947, 1971, 1999),
McConvell (1985) and Dousset (2005), have observed that these systems diffused
into the desert areas of Australia. McConvell (1985) suggests that the systems
8 Today ‘Tja’ is used.

175
The Aranda’s Pepa
of the Aranda had come from the Pilbara; it had diffused fanlike to the east and
south-east as far as Southern Aranda territory. Dousset (2005: 40) maintains
that the section names Kemarre and Penangke of the Southern Aranda had come
from the Pilbara. As the western section system met in the north-east with a
section system in the Victoria River Downs (VRD) area, it created a subsection
system that facilitated marriage arrangements and probably ritual and social
interaction. This subsection system then made its way south towards Aranda
country (McConvell 1985).
In 1896 Spencer and Gillen (1899: 72; 1927: 42; T.G.H. Strehlow 1947: 72)
recorded that the Central Aranda had originally only a section system and that
the additional terms for a subsection system had been a recent borrowing:
This division into eight has been adopted (or rather the names for the
four new divisions have been), in recent times by the Arunta tribe from
the Ilpirra tribe which adjoins the former on the north, and the use
of them is, at the present time spreading southwards. At the Engwura
ceremony which we witnessed men of the Ilpirra tribe were present, as
well as a large number of others from the southern part of the Arunta
amongst whom the four new names are not yet in use. (Spencer and
Gillen 1899: 72)
It is believed that the subsection system is a relatively recent borrowing or
innovation in Arandic cultures. The cosmologies of the Western Aranda and
Loritja, however, may indicate that the subsection system is an institution of
‘ancient origins’ (relatively speaking) in Carl Strehlow’s study area (Strehlow
1907, 1908, 1913). His data support Spencer and Gillen’s and McConvell’s
hypothesis of the southwards movement of the subsection system, in so far as
he described in detail how one system locks into the other and that it had been
spreading southwards. At the same time the narratives about Mangarkunjerkunja
ancestors (Strehlow 1907: 6–8), suggest that the subsection system had been for
quite some time in use on Western Aranda and Kukatja-Loritja territory when
Spencer and Gillen were studying the ‘Arunta’ at Alice Springs in 1896.
Strehlow’s myth data may indicate that the systems had possibly fallen into
disrepair and had been ‘re-established’ (Strehlow 1907: 6–9). At different times,
‘Mangarkunjerkunja’ ancestors came from the north teaching the subsection
system and the ‘marriage-rule’, and even later on a third ancestor called
Katukunkara had to reinforce the system that had been abandoned. What this
really means is impossible to know. It may indicate that at different times in
the past, regional meetings of people occurred that introduced new concepts
or reinforced communication modes that had not been used for a while. The
subsection system is very likely to have been one of them that cross-cut
176
linguistic and social boundaries. He remarks that it is noteworthy that in Aranda

traditions all good laws come from the north and the bad spread from the south
(Strehlow 1907: 8).
On a more practical note, T.G.H. Strehlow’s material, recorded in the 1930s,
suggests that the diffusion was not a simple process. Difficulties were
encountered to fit one system into the other. He recorded a scathing remark
about the subsection system from the north that the Southern Aranda felt was
being forced upon them:
The four-class system is the better of the two for us Southerners; we
cannot understand the eight-class system. It is mad and purposeless,
and only fit for such crazy men as the Northern Aranda are; we did not
inherit such a stupid tradition from our fathers. (Strehlow 1947: 72)
Still decades later in the early 1980s Ray Wood, a consultant anthropologist,
recalls his senior Pertame (Southern Aranda) informants complaining about the
subsection system:
The older Pertame generation I worked with in the 1980s told me that
there was still only a 4-section system when they were young, and
the 8-subsection system has been coming in since then. They said its
introduction made for all sorts of complications, even splitting descent
groups and sometimes siblings into different patricouples, due to e.g.
different mothers, marriages, and/or its differing introduction at different
places in the Pertame region, like Horseshoe Bend versus Orange Creek.
I often noticed that they themselves still struggled with the 8 system
quite a bit, and sometimes told me a given apical figure was of this
subsection, only to later revise it to another, told me it would be x if
you figured it out through Maryvale or through certain of their kin, but
y if you figured it out another way etc.9
Today most Pertame use the subsection system in inter-group dealings and will
readily supply the information of the existence of eight skin names. However, it
seems that intra-group dealings may not rely entirely on the subsection system
and may be the reason for the oversight of two subsection names that did not
appear in a recent Pertame wordlist (Swan and Cousen 1993). T.G.H. Strehlow
made another interesting observation on the transition from one into the other
system in his family tree FT I. 28, which is based on his father’s family tree F.T.
9 Ray Wood, email, 14.8.2006.

177
The Aranda’s Pepa
XXVIII (see also T.G.H. Strehlow 1999). He remarked that ‘C.S.’s class-names have
been preserved throughout, so as to show the continual wavering and hesitation
of his informants when assigning class names to the people in this F.T’.10
Today, it is clear that the function of the subsection system is to facilitate group
interaction, ritual-exchange and marriage (Elkin 1932; Myers [1986] 1991;
T.G.H. Strehlow 1999; Dousset 2005: 78–80). They are convenient social labels
and propose global categories for ranges of behaviour that are especially useful
in inter-group gatherings and communication. Dousset writes that the section
system is ‘convenient in the context of contact’ and ‘that contact is indeed their
vehicle for diffusion’ (Dousset 2005: 82). What Dousset says about the section
system may also be said about the application of the subsection system of the
Aranda and Loritja today:
Such contacts were either traditional – based on networks linking
neighbouring groups for ceremonial, economic and marital exchanges
and relations – or they were “new”, resulting from colonisation’s and
settlement’s increasing effect on inter-group relations and modes of
communication. In every case, sections are a lingua franca of kinship,
which in turn propose a formal framework for interaction among
humans. (Dousset 2005: 82–83)
At Hermannsburg where people were forced together, the compatibility of
Aranda and Loritja subsections would have been of invaluable use, because
many people were concentrated at the mission who under other circumstances
would not have had to interact with the same intensity. It is likely that in this
period the compatibility of Aranda and Loritja ‘skins’ became firmly established,
as they had to accommodate and reconcile the new living conditions at the
Lutheran mission settlement.
Aranda and Loritja kin terminology

Carl Strehlow made a significant contribution in the area of kinship studies by
collecting a vast number of kinship terms (Strehlow 1913: 66–69, 81–85). He
described the kinship system as encompassing the whole society. Aranda and
Loritja kinship terms could be used for all members of the society without taking
‘blood’ ties into consideration, although there were ways to describe closeness
of relatedness. He observed that every child is born into a particular subsection
and thus enters into a certain kin relationship to all other subsections, regardless
of whether or not blood ties exist. On the Loritja terminology he remarked that
‘The relationships between a member of a certain subsection and the members
10 T.G.H. Strehlow’s FT I. 28.

178
of all the other subsections is expressed in kinship terms in Loritja society,

regardless of existing blood relationship or the lack of it’ (Strehlow 1913: 79).
In daily life, the presence or absence of known genealogical connections are not
distinguished (Strehlow 1913: 63), and each person stands in a set of relations
to others described in kin terms. On both these counts this system differs from
a European one.
In a classificatory system, certain kin terms are used to cover a wide range of
relatives who are regarded as equivalents of one’s father, mother, brother, sister
and so forth. For example, in Western Aranda, kata (karte), the term for father,
covers all father’s brothers, who in English would be called uncles. The term for
mother, maia (meye), is used for all mother’s sisters, who in English we would
call aunties. Maia also includes daughter-in-law, from a man’s point of view.
Wanna (wenhe), the term for aunt, is applied to father’s sisters as well as mother’s
brother’s wife, and from a woman’s point of view, it can also include her mother-
in-law. The term for uncle, kamuna (kamerne), includes mother’s brothers and
father’s sister’s husband. From this it can be seen that the classificatory kinship
system not only incorporates consanguineal, but also affinal relatives. Loritja
classify their kinsfolk, including affines, in a similar way, although there are
differences.
Where some relatives whom Europeans distinguish are classified together in the
Aranda system, others who bear the same European term, are distinguished by
Aranda speakers. For example, Western Aranda used and still use four different
terms for one’s grandparents. The terms are aranga (arrenge) for father’s father,
tjimia (tyemeye) for mother’s father, palla (perle) for father’s mother and ebmanna
(ipmenhe) for mother’s mother. The grandparental terms are also used to cover
one’s grandparents’ siblings as well as one’s grandchildren on a reciprocal
basis. The term for one’s father’s father, aranga, for example, includes father’s
father’s brothers and sisters and son’s sons and daughters. Relationships with
grandparents are of particular importance to the question of land-ownership.
Carl Strehlow’s Loritja kin data records also four grandparental terms (Strehlow
1913: 81–82), but today only two seem to be in use: tjamu for grandfathers
(father’s father and mother’s father) and kami for grandmothers (father’s mother
and mother’s mother) (Sackett 1994: 31; Vaarzon-Morel and Sackett 1997: 36).
However, there are ways to express which grandfather is spoken of, in particular
when reference is made to land-ownership (Sackett 1994: 31–32).
Strehlow explains the kinship classification of the Aranda and Loritja via the
subsection system which locks into the kinship system. He uses as an example
of how a Purula man not only calls his natural brothers kalia (older brother)
or itia (younger brother) but also calls all other Purula belonging to the same
179
The Aranda’s Pepa
generation as himself brother or sister. At the same time he calls all Purula in the
generation above or below him aranga, which is the term for his father’s father
as well as his natural (and classificatory) son’s son, who are both Purula.
As an Aranda person, who has been born into a subsection, can be placed
into three connections to the other subsections – on an equal, higher or lower
generational level – it follows that just 24 classificatory kin-terms would be
required. However, gender and age (whether older or younger than the person
speaking), also bear on the kin terms used making for a larger number of terms
(Strehlow 1913: 63). To illustrate this point, Strehlow compilled an extensive list
of the terms used for classificatory and ‘blood’ relatives which show how close
and distant kin are labelled (Strehlow 1913: 66–70).
Typical for his time Carl Strehlow presented kinship terms at a distance from
social life. He did not indicate that they may imply ‘codes for conduct’ which
include avoidance and respect rules, obligations and rights, but for a brief remark
in a section called Marriage Customs (Strehlow 1913: 89–94) on obligations and
behaviour of spouses towards their in-laws:
The husband is obliged to continue to furnish his father-in-law, whom
he calls antara tualtja, with food, particularly with meat. Should he
kill a kangaroo, for example, then he has to give a large piece of it to
his father-in-law. … He is further required to give his shorn-off hair
to his father-in-law, who will make strings etc. out of it. At the death
of his father-in-law he will let his shoulder be scratched with a stone
knife (unangarala kalama, from unangara = shoulder, and kalama = to
cut oneself) until the blood flows, as a sign of sorrow. Were he to omit
this, he might conceivably be clubbed to death by his own relatives.
Following the death of his father-in-law, he gives his own shorn-off hair
to a brother of the latter.
The husband is not allowed to speak to his mother-in-law marra tualtja
while she resides in the camp. Indeed, he may not even approach her.
Should he encounter her outside the camp, he may communicate with
her from a distance by means of the common secret language ankatja
kerintja, or in the sign language to be described at a later stage. … The
mother-in-law on her part must avoid the hut of her son-in-law and is
obliged to give him the hair shorn off her head, so that he can make
himself a belt or other strings from it. At his death, the mother-in-law
punctures her head with a stone so that blood gushes out of it. (Strehlow
1913: 90–91)
Later, the study of kin terms developed into a study of social terms of address
and inter-relations. Green’s account of the use of kinship terminology in Arandic
180
languages, for example, demonstrates how the terms work in their social
context and how kinship relationships contain behavioural patterns (Green
1998; see also Institute of Linguistics 1979; Centre for Indigenous Development
Education and Research 1996). While Carl Strehlow described the regular use
of kin terms, Green (1998) explores their actual and pragmatic application
taking social context into account which determines their use and may appear
as an irregular use of terminology. Also T.G.H. Strehlow (1999) shows that in
reality irregularities were not out of the order. There was and is flexibility in a
classificatory kin universe that allows variations.
Finally, following the explanation of how section and subsection systems
interlock, how they related to a kinship system, and how kin terms are used
in relation to close and distant relatives, Carl Strehlow addressed the Aranda’s
marriage rule. In their system it is the rule to marry one’s second cross cousin:
a mother’s mother’s brother’s daughter’s daughter or MMBDD (Scheffler 1978:
42) who is also a father’s mother’s brother’s son’s daughter or FMBSD (Fox
1967: 196). Carl Strehlow’s investigation puts great emphasis on the fact of this
preferential rule:
Its most important principle is found in the rule that the pallukua, the
grand-children of brothers and sisters (it is immaterial whether they are
real brothers and sisters or regarded as siblings according to their class),
should marry each other, and that according to their class they are in
a relationship of noa = spouse to each other already from birth. The
following two tables should demonstrate that this will often lead to the
marriage of the grand-children of two natural siblings, and many more
examples could be given. (Strehlow 1913: 70)
He included here a discussion on patrilineal descent, although he considered that
Spencer and Gillen’s work had sufficiently demonstrated that the Aranda and
other peoples in central Australia traced descent through the patriline and that
subsection names were inherited through fathers or more correctly from father’s
fathers in alternating generations. The discussion of patrilineal descent and that
the subsection is inherited from father’s father, one’s aranga (Strehlow 1913:
71–72), was motivated by his disagreement with R.H. Mathews who was using
material supplied by him11 without quoting him and arranging it arbitrarily to
support his theory that descent is traced matrilineally amongst Aranda people
and their subsections are allocated through their mothers (Mathews 1908). Von
Leonhardi assured Strehlow that ‘Mathews does not understand the marriage
laws and classes, not that he would be the only one.’12
11 Carl Strehlow to R.H. Mathews, 1906–1907 (NLA 8006/2/4).

12 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 2.6.1907 and 26.2.1909.
181
The Aranda’s Pepa
In Aranda society, Strehlow as well as his son maintained, that it is the father’s
fathers who always give their grandsons their subsection, whether the mother is
from the correct subsection or not, the children always belong to the subsection
of their father’s father (Strehlow 1913: 71–72; Strehlow 1999: 23, 29). To this
day, Western Aranda people generally allocate subsections according to father
and father’s father’s subsections.
Carl Strehlow’s genealogies

Although Carl Strehlow had recorded all births, deaths and Christian marriages
at Hermannsburg since 1894, he seems only to have started to collect family
trees when researching social classification with von Leonhardi. He compiled 28
family trees13 of Aranda families incorporating Loritja people who were living
at the Hermannsburg Mission and had Aranda spouses (Strehlow 1913: 85).
Only a small portion of his genealogical material was published to illustrate
the ‘marriage-order’ of the Aranda and one ‘imaginary family tree of a Loritja
belonging to the Takamara class’, because he believed that ‘one would have had
to live among the Loritja for several years and have gained sufficient knowledge
of the individuals in order to draw up a really reliable family tree’ (Strehlow
1913: 85). His genealogies were supplemented in 1920 with a remarkable index
of all indigenous names of the people appearing on them and what they mean
(Strehlow 1920: 15–39).
At the beginning of the twentieth century it was not clear in anthropology what
‘kinship’ should really mean, hence, sociocultural and biological aspects were
not carefully distinguished or recognised. European notions of what constituted
a family and marriage, what descent and kin terms like father, mother, and so on
meant, were taken for granted or at least not well defined (see Schneider 1984:
97–112). To make this point Schneider maintained that ‘anthropology’s whole
enterprise of treating kinship as a genealogical grid laid over the assumed facts
of biology was misguided; instead, it was the “core symbols” that defined what
kinship was for a given culture’ (Silverman 2005: 289). During the 1970s he even
rejected the anthropological concept of kinship itself, ‘claiming it was nothing
more than anthropologists turning their own, Western symbolic system into a
universal theory’ (Silverman 2005: 320).
Clearly, the European concept of ‘family tree’ was for Strehlow’s study of
indigenous kinship inadequate. The notions of consanguinity, apical ancestors
and bias towards patrilineal descent attached to a European family tree14 were
13 T.G.H. Strehlow’s FT I. 28 and Book of XVII, p. 118a bottom.

14 European traditions tend to have a patrilineal bias for inheritance of surnames and property or accession
to a throne, for example. It is nevertheless bilateral and/or cognatic in general character. These sorts of
182
not sufficient to describe the complexities of classificatory kinship systems,

that, for instance, included affines to a much larger degree and categorised close
and distant kin not by the sole criteria of ‘blood ties’. A European family tree
represents a particular universe of biological facts (ideally) which includes the
same range of relatives that can be theoretically traced in every society. Descent is
commonly understood as consanguine and patrilineal, which suggests ancestry
many generations deep with apical ancestors. Aranda and Loritja people did
not think of themselves and their relatives, or relatedness, in this way. In
Aboriginal societies these links are often assumed, putative and classificatory,
and can include ‘consanguinity’ under certain (ethno-scientific) aspects. The
kin universe of indigenous people was vertically shallow, but horizontally very
differentiated and wide. The main direction of reckoning kinship was and still
is within two descending and ascending generational levels. For instance, the
descendants of older and younger brothers and sisters would have been of
importance, not an apical ancestor who had lived before their time, and a large
number of affines would be included.
The fact that Aboriginal people generally do not remember the names of
their great-grandparents, although there are ways to address them if they are
still alive (Green 1998: 29), and that the names of deceased people in central
Australian cultures were (Strehlow 1915: 17; Meggitt 1966: 5) and are taboo
(see also Sansom 2006: 156–157), indicates that a European mode of genealogy-
taking could not and would not capture Aranda and Loritja kinship adequately.
In addition, it was and is inappropriate in many situations to make inquires
about the deceased.15
Aranda people today, for example, use the word Kwementyaye (Breen 2000: 27)
in place of the name of a deceased person or try to replace the name of a living
person altogether finding a synonym. Only after an adequate amount of time has
elapsed, is a name put back into circulation and will be associated with a living
person. Hamilton (1998: 102) remarked that ‘the taboo on the names of deceased
persons, and the desire to erase their memory as soon as possible, ensures that
no precise genealogical knowledge can be maintained.’ Also Meggitt ([1962]
1986: 194) observed that Warlpiri ‘men were rarely sure of details of genealogy
in their grandparents’ generation-level’ and Peterson adds that ‘young children
often do not remember their genitor and this, combined with the prohibition
on the mentioning of the names of the dead and the dependence of children on
differences also apply in Aboriginal Australia, not least in relation to distinctions between ‘actual’ relatives as
opposed to more nominal ones.
15 Often researchers have to describe ‘in a round about way’ a person who has a tabooed name and has to
ask if it is allowed to say that name. In June 2006, for example, I was asked not to use the Luritja word tjala
(honeyant), it had been temporarily taken out of circulation in this particular family due to a recent death. On
this occasion I was also informed that the word apme (snake) had been replaced by arnerenye (belonging to
the earth/ground or living in the earth/ground) in the Hermannsburg area.
183
The Aranda’s Pepa
their mothers who are therefore likely to be the main teacher of the terminology,
emphasises the tracing of social links through women’ (Peterson 1969: 29).
Sansom (2006: 153; 2007) makes a strong point that in Aboriginal cultures there
are mechanisms specifically to support ‘forgetting’.
It is rather unusual to find an Aboriginal person even today who can reproduce
their genealogical links beyond their grandparents without the help of archival
records. In some cases the answer, when seeking names of great-grandparents,
may be jukurrpa or tjukurrpa by Warlpiri and Luritja people – referring to
the dreaming. I have, however, not heard this reply from Western Aranda
people. This may be the result of their sustained exposure to Lutheran culture
and a ‘family tree tradition’, as well as their relative early sedentarisation at
Hermannsburg. Aboriginal people did not have a tradition like the Pashtuns
of Afghanistan, or Hawaiians, who incorporated their genealogies into oral
traditions (Sansom 2006: 153, 158).
Despite the limited notions of European family trees, Carl Strehlow’s genealogies
contain valuable data. He did not present ego’s descent as strictly patrilineal in
his published family trees. He included a number of ancestors whose descendants
had intermarried and shows their relatedness, rather than unilinear descent
from one apical ancestor. His published family trees illustrate multi-lateral
descent of a particular individual and his spouse. The couples Ipitarintja and
Laramananka (1,1a), Loatjira and Ilbaltalaka (2,2a), Nguaperaka and Lakarinja
(3,3a) and Erenkeraka and Kaputatjalka (4,4a) were placed in the centre of his
published genealogies (Strehlow 1913: Stammbäume). His unpublished family
trees, in contrast, traced patrilineal descent from an apical ancestor, which were
the model that his son and the Finke River Mission would adopt.
The obvious data on Carl Strehlow’s genealogies include personal Aboriginal
and sometimes European names, if they had been baptised at birth or had
converted,16 subsection affiliations and ‘consanguine’ relatedness; this data has
assisted in land and native title claims to identify appropriate claimants. He
also included the ‘ratapa’ and ‘altjira’ of most people appearing in his family
trees. Both terms are polysemic expressions. In the context of his family trees,
‘ratapa’ means the conception dreaming of a person, which could be acquired
in three ways. Von Leonhardi summarised how this dreaming association could
be acquired:
Either an embryo (ratapa), living in the metamorphosed body of an
altjirangamitjina, enters the body of a woman passing by, in which case
the child would be born with a narrow face, or a “totem ancestor” emerges
from the earth and throws a small bullroarer at a woman, in whose body
16 At the mission generally only the Christians had European names.
184
the bullroarer turns into a child which would then be born with a broad
face. Apart from these two methods of conceiving a child some of the
blacks also report rare cases of an altjirangamitjina entering a woman and
thus being reincarnated. The old men, too, eventually admitted this. Such
a reincarnation is possible only once. (Strehlow1907: Preface)
19. Genealogy of Ipitarintja and Laramanaka.
Source: Strehlow 1913: I.
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The Aranda’s Pepa
In Carl Strehlow’s work the word ‘ratapa’ is not only used as a synonym for
‘totem’, but also for ‘spirit child’ or ‘child-seeds (Kinderkeime)’. He wrote that
this word derived from the verb ‘ratana’ meaning ‘coming from, originating’.
These spirit children were said to be invisible, but fully developed children
with reddish skin colour (Strehlow 1908: 52).17 He writes that as soon as a
woman knows that she is pregnant, i.e. that a spirit child has entered her, the
paternal or maternal grandfather carves a small tjurunga with the designs of
the ancestor from whom it emerged and stores it in the rock cave where all the
other objects are stored. When the baby is crying, it is said to be crying for the
tjurunga that is lost when entering into the mother. The tjurunga is called in the
presence of women and children ‘papa’. To calm the child the relevant tjurunga
is taken from the cave, wrapped with strings, to prevent women from seeing it,
and laid in the wooden baby carrying tray where it emanates secret powers into
the child that makes it grow quickly (Strehlow 1908: 80).
The word ‘altjira’ in this context18 references yet again another spirit entity. It is
used for mother’s conception dreaming. Carl Strehlow describes the relationship
that a person has generally to mother’s conception dreaming as follows:
However, every person is also connected with another particular totem
which is called altjira. This is the totem of his mother. Every native sees
this as the animal or plant, whichever might be the case, that belongs
to him, and therefore calls it his garra altjira or deba altjira. The Aranda
permit the consumption of these maternal totem animals or totem plants
respectively. Although all the children of one family, i.e. of one mother,
may each belong to a different totem (ratapa), they nevertheless share
another totem (altjira). (Strehlow 1908: 57)
There are a number of remarks which indicate that also other words could
be used to denote personal and mother’s conception dreaming. He noted, for
example, that ‘A person’s specific altjirangamitjina is called iningukua; the
altjirangamitjina of one’s mother is simply called altjira’ (Strehlow 1907: 3). The
word ‘iningukua’ means ‘spirit double’ and does not seem to be in use anymore.
Western Aranda people call this type of spirit ‘pmere kwetethe’ (Kenny 2004a,b).
Thus, altjira can also mean spirit double of one’s mother; and one’s own spirit
double is called ‘iningukua’. However, in a more general context von Leonhardi
remarked that ‘iningukua’ was an alternative name for ‘altjirangamitjina’
(Strehlow 1910: 7), which means dreaming ancestor. He explains that ‘the
specific altjirangamitjina, from whose metamorphosed body the ratapa emerges,
is described as the iningukua of the person concerned’ (Strehlow 1908: 53).
17 T.G.H. Strehlow maintained that only the spirit children of Ntaria were called ratapa (Strehlow [1964] 1978).
18 See Chapter VI for discussion on altjira’s semantic field.
186
Carl Strehlow does not mention in his entire work that a dreaming could be
patrilineally inherited. This is rather intriguing, in view of later emphasis on
patrilineal connections to dreamings in Australian anthropological literature,
including his son’s work and among the Western Aranda themselves. I will
discuss this issue in the following chapter.
Carl and T.G.H. Strehlow’s family trees in the

present
Carl Strehlow did not use family trees as an instrument of social analysis. He used
them as a matrix to show classification of kin, and as a vehicle for collating data
on individuals. Nevertheless, they have influenced the family documentation of
Western Aranda people. His family trees have determined in two main ways the
perception and development of family documentation in Arandic society. They
provided a starting point for his son, T.G.H. Strehlow, and they seem to have
initiated a practice of recording genealogical data at the Finke River Mission
that went beyond the usual practice of the Lutheran church to record birth,
marriage and death. It continued for the better part of a century and has to some
degree impressed onto the Western Aranda themselves a concept of ‘families’
with apical ancestors and may have strengthened patrilineal emphasis.
T.G.H. Strehlow was in possession of his father’s family trees when he produced
his own genealogies nearly 50 years later. During his own research he was
often only able to gather data reaching back to the grandparental generation
of his informants. He incorporated his father’s groundwork, only occasionally
referencing it. He compiled 150 genealogies, which usually begin with an ‘apical
ancestor’ and his wife. About 50 of these family trees are based on his father’s
work and thus, can be dated back to circa 1800, and further, and ‘from which
all authentic facts can be extracted to substantiate theories of aboriginal land
rights and law’.19
The information on T.G.H. Strehlow’s family trees is very rich, but it can only
be understood in its particular theoretical and ethnographic context, which is
not immediately apparent. The genealogical data are not clearly defined, as he
may have assumed that anyone interested in his family trees would have read
his extensive oeuvre and would be able to contextualise them. Like his father’s
work, his data presupposed an enormous amount of knowledge. Carl Strehlow,
for example, included the ‘ratapa’ and ‘altjira’ of most people appearing in his
family trees published in volume five (Strehlow 1913). It is not clear without
having read volume two (Strehlow 1908) what the terms ‘ratapa’ or ‘altjira’
describe on these family trees.
19 T.G.H. Strehlow F.T. I. 6.

187
The Aranda’s Pepa
Obvious data on T.G.H. Strehlow’s family trees include personal names,

subsections and relatedness through apical ancestors, which evokes patrilineal
descent and physical kinship. He also included labels such as ‘half caste’ (H.C.)
or ‘full-blood’, which he colour coded, and sometimes supplemented with
fractions, i.e. 7/8. This coding made the notions of descent and blood ties
unmistakably clear. Nearly every person on these family trees has a footnote that
is often cross-referenced to his diaries or to other family trees. These footnotes
contain an immense variety of historical, cultural, social, geographical (location
of sites, sometimes the description is in Aranda) and additional kin information
as well as gossip.
The conception sites, called ‘pmara kŋanintja’ in T.G.H. Strehlow’s work (1971:
596) and the conception ‘totem’, ‘kŋanintja’,20 of most people can be found on
his family trees. However, he does not explain these terms and abbreviations or
include an explicit key or legend. The reader is left to his or her own devices
to interpret, for example, ‘from Emalkna; imora kŋ.’ Thus, it is not surprising
that many (mis)-interpretations and -understandings occur. The information on
a personal conception site is often interpreted by descendants of a particular
individual that this place is also associated with them and that they have
traditional rights to own it. Sometimes it is even understood as the name of a
traditional country or estate. The abbreviation ‘kŋ.’ stands for kŋanintja and
‘from’ refers to the place where the spirit-child entered the mother to be, i.e.
the conception site of an individual, it is not a patrilineally owned place as
wrongly assumed by many Aboriginal people. The example above therefore
shows only that a particular person’s conception site is ‘Emalkna’ (Mt Heuglin
in the Western MacDonnell Ranges) associated with ‘possum dreaming’. See
also Morgan and Wilmot (2010) who have made similar observations on these
matters.
According to T.G.H. Strehlow, a conception site was the place where a pregnant
woman felt for the first time her baby move in her womb, and theoretically
could have been on any estate where a woman had the right to forage. At these
places the spirit part of a person – left behind in the landscape by the ancestral
dreaming beings – entered the mother (Carl Strehlow 1908: 53, 56; T.G.H.
Strehlow 1947: 87). The human soul begins its existence when the ‘spirit-child’
enters a pregnant woman giving the embryo a soul (Strehlow 1908: 52–56;
Strehlow 1971, [1964] 1978). T.G.H. Strehlow wrote that these spirits were part
of the trails of ‘life’, left behind throughout the landscape by the ancestral
dreaming beings ([1964] 1978: 20, 22). Human children could come into being
at all places situated along these trails. In Aranda Traditions (1947: 88), he used
the word ‘ŋantja’ for spirit child. He also called them ‘life cell’ or ‘life giving
property’, which entered a woman and developed into a human being. Pink
20 Unpublished dictionary K: 92; see also Strehlow 1947.

188
(1936: 288–290) wrote that baby-spirits gave the spirit part to human beings
when entering the mother. Her Northern Aranda informants maintained that
baby-spirits were left behind by a dreamtime ancestor who had left some
tjurunga in the landscape.
While, according to T.G.H. Strehlow, the conception site of an individual was
of great importance and prominent in an individual’s life, it did not confer
automatically landholding rights to any of his or her descendants, but they
had the right to learn about it, if they were prepared to do so, which required
engagement and effort. A conception site was associated with a particular
person, unlike the dreaming places or country claimed through father and
father’s father which would belong to a well defined group of persons.
T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogies usually represent njinaŋa (patricouple) groups
with a male apical ancestor; to a degree these genealogies were understood by
him as one of the instruments for the analysis of land ownership. To most users
of T.G.H. Strehlow’s family trees it is not clear that they are dealing with what
he called a patrilineal ‘totemic clan’, i.e. a njinaŋa section. He wrote in Aranda
Traditions that he had ‘attempted to introduce the term njinaŋa section to
denote a group of men forming a local totemic clan’ (Strehlow 1947: 143). Only
the people of this group, who are patrilineally affiliated, belong to the main
dreaming associated with a particular place (pmara kutata21 in T.G.H. Strehlow’s
terminology) of the male apical ancestors on that particular family tree which
may or may not be his conception site.
The lack of an explicit key to the Strehlow genealogies has caused much
confusion and misunderstanding of what they represent. In particular when
Aboriginal people access T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogical material at the Strehlow
Research Centre in Alice Springs and mistake the conception sites of their
ancestors with a place they may claim as their own, believing that it confers
primary rights to a place or country. Also the memory of apical ancestors was
not preserved in Aboriginal societies. It is only with genealogical records like
the ones produced by the Strehlows, Tindale and the Finke River Mission
that Aboriginal people today are able to reproduce such ‘deep’ genealogies.
As already mentioned this is not likely to have been the way Aranda people
perceived their relatedness. The reality of desert life with its particular social
circumstances and traditions determined who was emphasised in a person’s
kinship net. The cultural significance and the appropriate interpretation of the
information on these family trees can only be understood through close reading
of the ethnographic works of both Strehlows. This means they have to be set
in their theoretical and historical context with consideration of contemporary
indigenous community politics.
21 See Kenny (2004a,b) for more on this term.

189
190
The Aranda’s Pepa
20. Hesekiel Malbunka’s family tree drawn by T.G.H. Strehlow. Exhibited in 2007 with the consent of the Malbunka
family in the tourist facility of the Museum of Central Australia in Alice Springs.
The concept of Western Aranda families, resulting from a long influence of

constant reinforcement of family trees produced by the Finke River Mission,
T.G.H. Strehlow and the Central Land Council, may be seen as a paradigm for
Sutton’s (2003: 206–231) conceptualising his ‘Families of Polity’ as a modern
kinship form among indigenous Australians that are not residential or local
groups (Austin-Broos 2004: 61). Generally these ‘families’ are today characterised
by a patronymic identity and cognatic descent many generations deep. A
different treatment of this phenomenon takes a view of kinship application in
the contemporary social context of day-to-day living in which elaborate and
complex networking by individuals takes place (Austin-Broos 2003a, 2006,
2009). Carl Strehlow’s treatment of kinship was still at a considerable distance
from such a description and analysis of social organisation.
T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogies, by extension also his father’s and other family
trees of the Finke River Mission, and more recently family trees generated by the
Central Land Council during the land rights era, have assumed new meanings
in the context of land-ownership. Genealogies are increasingly the way to
claim affiliation or connection to Aranda country rather than through esoteric
knowledge of myth which is in decline (Oberscheidt 2005). Sometimes T.G.H.
Strehlow’s genealogical information is almost treated as secret-sacred material.
There is a perception that once on a family tree one is ‘in’, even if the connection
is marginal or affinal.22 T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogies are often perceived as the
last word on traditional membership of a landholding group by some indigenous
people, and used by them as evidence for membership. However, they do not
define how kinship confers particular rights and obligations in land or how kin
networks function. In addition, placing weight on these genealogical records
can obscure other processes including fission, fusion, the end of patrilines and
political alliances of particular families.
Is there a responsible use of family trees?

In November 2007, Central Land Council anthropologists, Helen Wilmot and
Rebecca Koser, presented at the conference of the Australian Anthropological
Society a paper in which they addressed problems in the context of
Aboriginal land claims, mining and royalty distribution processes created by
genealogical materials obtained from archives. They raised the question: how
are anthropologists to deal with problems, generated by archival materials,
in particular by family trees, amongst Aboriginal people in central Australia.
People are gaining positions of power and influence in Aboriginal decision
making with these documents that under traditional laws and customs they
22 Affines can have contingent rights under certain conditions (see Sutton 2003: 12–13).
191
The Aranda’s Pepa
would not be able to gain, and are rejecting others. They discussed how some
facets of identification are based on these documents that are perceived as
‘quasi-traditional authority’ and how this information is reified.
Land Council anthropologists are witnessing that written documents are used
as ‘proof’ of ownership and connections to land. They have observed that
parts of genealogies, such as a footnote, are internalised even by senior people.
These snippets of genealogical information, which may or may not be wrong,
are on occasions recited as if they were traditional knowledge and misconstrue
traditional ownership. Morgan and Wilmot (2010: 9) give an example of such a
situation. As an explanation for how certain families were related to each other,
various senior members of a particular group had repeatedly told a Land Council
anthropologist that ‘All our mothers were sisters from Bambi Springs (location
a pseudonym)’. Some time later it was discovered that this sentence had been
plucked from a footnote of a Strehlow genealogy (the traditional owners had
in the meantime lost their copy of this family tree), and after careful analysis
of the genealogy it emerged that the connections claimed had been based on a
misunderstanding of the document with significant implications for claims to
land.
Ethically it is difficult for anthropologists and institutions, who hold this type
of genealogical material, to address these issues (Morgan and Wilmot 2010: 3–4).
Once such material enters the public domain it is not possible to control or
guide what people do with this material, how they interpret it or base their
identity on it. The use of written material as proof of identity is not common
to all Arandic regions; degrees of urbanisation and westernisation in central
Australia differ. There are Arandic people who barely speak English, and are
embedded in their traditional laws and customs. These are often the people who
suffer when the written artefact takes on a new life in the hands of relatives
who are proficent English speakers and familiar with modern mainstream life
and administration. Morgan and Wilmot remark that one of the issues of the
rise of genealogical documentation as a new form of authority, is that it is used
by Arandic people, who are print-literate and adept in processes of negotiation
within the wider society, to successfully demand recognition as traditional
owners or native title holders from recognised senior, knowledgeable people
based on these genealogies. They write:
In these scenarios, it is often the case that such a heavy reliance on
genealogical documentation is the result of limited knowledge about
kinship rules, how country is inherited or knowledge of the country
purported to be owned and even, in some cases, where that country is
located. It is not uncommon to receive requests from senior traditional
owners to hold workshops about some of these issues in order to pass
on cultural information. There is clearly recognition that knowledge and
192
traditional hierarchies are diminishing, which is related to socio-cultural

change between generations, in a context of reinvented post-traditional
forms of knowledge. (Morgan and Wilmot 2010: 9)
On the other hand Carl and T.G.H. Strehlow’s family records are highly valued
today among many Aboriginal people in central Australia. For some descendants,
to possess excerpts of T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogies showing one’s ancestors is
one of the most precious and cherished possessions, giving some indigenous
people a kind of sense of belonging, and the feeling of empowerment knowing
‘who’ they are and from ‘where’ they come.
193
VII. Territorial Organisation
Although Carl Strehlow was not documenting territorial organisation, and did
not elaborate on Aranda and Loritja land tenure as such,1 he made some explicit
remarks about an individual’s rights to and affinities with his or her conception
site and about mother’s conception site. He took these to be links to places and
their dreamings. He also recorded, though less systematically, data on patrilineal
descent, inheritance rights through fathers, and rights to ritual knowledge.
These data give evidence of a number of pathways to connections to land or
place and show the relevance of Carl Strehlow’s work today in the context of
land and native title claims. They provide some of the earliest evidence for ways
of being connected to country other than through patrilineal principles among
Aranda and Loritja people. The data allow us to canvas various dimensions of
traditional laws and customs relating to land ownership as it may have existed
at the time of Northern Territory sovereignty in 1825.2
In the course of the twentieth century a number of researchers passed through
the area and made observations that clarify Carl Strehlow’s findings. Some of
these were based on views of informants who were born before the incursion of
white people into Aranda and Loritja lands. These later records have expanded
in a major way our knowledge of traditional ownership and the nature of
contemporary landholding groups. Carl Strehlow’s material indicates that even
the Western Aranda, who are often viewed as the paradigm of patriliny in
central Australia, had a system of land tenure that offered ‘multiple pathways’
to ‘belonging to country’ (Myers [1986] 1991: 138ff). This does not mean that
these connections were not ranked, qualified or otherwise proposed mainly
as cultural norms, as can be the case today. Before I consider Carl Strehlow’s
contributions, an outline of what a ‘country’ implies today in central Australia
and an overview of the history and twentieth century issues and debates of
Australian land tenure are important to understanding the significance of his
ethnography.
1 The focus in this chapter is on Aranda land tenure, because the Loritja Carl was mainly writing about,
the Kukatja-Loritja, had similar social institutions (Strehlow 1908, 1910: 1; 1913); and according to T.G.H.
Strehlow, Western Aranda and Kukatja had virtually the same land tenure system (Strehlow 1970: 99).
2 British sovereignty over Australia was aquired in several stages. In 1788 it extended westwards from the
east coast of the continent to longitude 135 degrees taking in what is now the eastern third of the Northern
Territory. In 1825 sovereignty was extended to around the present day western border of the Territory. Western
Australia was claimed in 1829. In a native title claim the claimants are required to prove that their system of
land-ownership is consistent with the system that might have been in place at ‘sovereignty’ or at effective
‘sovereignty’ as far as Aboriginal life was concerned. Under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) Aboriginal people
also have to prove that their ancestors were the original inhabitants and traditional owners of the area claimed.
195
The Aranda’s Pepa
Pmara and Ngurra

Today, Western Aranda people refer to countries that they may claim, usually
through their grandparents, and its associated esoteric knowledge, as pmara
(pmere), called ‘country’ in Aboriginal English and ‘estate’ in the anthropological
literature. Luritja call it ‘ngurra’ and it can mean place, camp or country
depending on context (see also Myers [1986] 1991: 54–57). Carl Strehlow spelled
pmara ‘tmara’. He recorded tmara altjira, tmara runga or tmara rungatja as well
as the term knanakala for ‘totem place’ in general and the terms mbatjita (grosser
Totem-Platz, big totem place), tmarutja (ewiger Platz, eternal place) and takuta
(immerwährender Platz, everlasting place) for important places associated with
particular ancestral beings (Strehlow 1907: 5). In his son’s work these places
were called pmara kutata (everlasting place). Today, Western Aranda people
use the term mekemeke for ‘sacred site’ (Kenny 2004a: 20), which also means
‘dangerous place’ due to its spiritual powers. T.G.H. Strehlow’s unpublished
material records makamaka (mekemeke) as meaning ‘to be avoided’ or ‘sacred
cave’3 and defines ‘pmara makamaka’ as ‘asylum, a place whither men in danger
of death can flee for safety, e.g. the area around an arknganaua, where nothing
could be killed and within whose precincts not even a hunter could pursue an
animal that already had a spear stuck into it’.4
The country of a landholding group generally comprises a set of significant
sites or areas that are associated with one or more dreamings. Each country
is usually associated with a particular patricouple, i.e. subsection couple as
discussed in the previous chapter. These local group countries were called
‘njinaŋa (patricouple) section areas’ by T.G.H. Strehlow. It is also identified
with predominant dreaming tracks, sites, site names and particular families
or groups. Aranda people usually think of their country in terms of sites and
the dreamings connected to them rather than as a bounded area. Although,
sometimes the notions of boundaries, ‘blocks of land’ (as may be used in the
pastoral context) and even the word ‘estate’ (as used in anthropological reports
for legal proceedings) appear in conversations with Aranda people. While
people do speak of ‘boundaries’ this cannot be taken at face value as it really
denotes areas which can be up to several kilometres wide. Where boundaries of
neighbouring estates converge or become better defined is often at a site or sites
along tracks of travelling dreamings, so that each estate group has interests in
such a site or sites.
For these reasons, and due to the aridity of the environment, boundaries are
not always clear. Pink observed during her work on Northern Aranda territory
3 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary 38 (1968: 39).

4 T.G.H. Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary M: 126.
196
that ‘on the outer edges the boundaries of individual estates became somewhat
indefinite’ (Pink 1936: 283), while T.G.H. Strehlow recorded boundary points
between countries called ‘arkngata’ or ‘barrier’:
It marked the limit beyond which a myth might not be told, a song not
sung, nor a series of ceremonies performed by members of a njinaŋa section
area who shared these traditions with neighbours. (Strehlow 1965: 138)
He remarked that such sites could figure equally prominently in a number of
myths held by different people or groups of people (Strehlow 1947). In the
Palm Valley Land Claim Justice Gray heard evidence and found that definitive
boundaries were rare (Gray 1999: 116). Earlier, Stanner noted that the ‘known
facts of inter-group relations simply do not sort with the idea of precise, rigid
boundaries jealously upheld in all circumstances’ (Stanner 1965: 11).
Knowledge about country, that is the knowledge of the cultural geography and
associated mythology, is one of the defining principles for traditional Aboriginal
land ownership. According to T.G.H. Strehlow (1965: 135), the extent of a
Western Aranda local group’s country was defined geographically and validated
by episodes mentioned in the sacred myths. Pink made the observation among
her Northern Aranda informants:
The songs, according to my Aranda informants, definitely establish a
man’s title, to use legal phraseology, for the site a man inherits has a
song, or songs, associated with it; to inherit the song is to inherit the
estate. (Pink 1936: 286)
This knowledge relating to land was well-guarded and concealed – not freely
transmitted – because rights to country hinged on it. Great effort was invested
in the acquisition of knowledge which was not evenly distributed in central
Australian Aboriginal societies, as Róheim observed ([1945] 1971: 2). Claims
to country are still commonly based on knowledge of the associated dreaming
stories and places, about which members of a landholding group simply know
more than others. T.G.H. Strehlow in Aranda Traditions (1947) writes that his
informants, even the best informed, would not know the entire body of myths,
and Spencer and Gillen (1899: 10) observed that ‘Old age does not by itself confer
distinction, but only when combined with special ability’. Carl Strehlow (1915:
1–2) wrote in a similar vein that it was knowledge that made an ‘inkata knara’
(great chief), while ‘inkata kurka’ (little chief) was a title to father’s country
inherited simply through descent. People with knowledge are still respected
in Western Aranda society, and are frequently referred to, because ritual
knowledge is and was highly valued and the basis of prestige. Knowledgeable
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The Aranda’s Pepa
people have the right and duty to be involved in the management of mythology
and land; and are entitled to some kind of payment for the knowledge they
transmit to others.
Although Carl Strehlow’s myth collection has been effectively used in the
context of land claims over traditional Arandic lands and in native title
determinations, nowhere does he explicitly indicate that these narratives are
owned by particular individuals or groups of individuals. He seems not to have
realised that ownership of myths played an important role in connecting people
to their countries and conferring rights and responsibilities both to individuals
and groups. This creates a distance between Carl Strehlow’s view of myth
and the political and legal contexts in which myth is often canvassed today,
as land ownership has become a topic of enduring debate within Australian
anthropology.
A brief account of research into traditional land

ownership
The study of territoriality, called local organisation in early ethnography, did not
feature prominently on the agenda of the emerging discipline of anthropology
in the nineteenth century. The documentation of rights to country is incidental
and linked to other aspects of Aboriginal life. Early writers did not canvas clear
structures of land ownership. They paid little attention to indigenous land
rights, decision-making processes, succession and many related subjects that
are relevant for a systematic treatment of Aboriginal land tenure. Nevertheless
they collected some limited data on local (territorial) organisation that indicates
that Aboriginal Australians had rights in land (Peterson 1986: 13). In 1839
Reverend John Dunmore Lang, for example, suggested that property rights
certainly existed among Aboriginal people in Australia (Grey 1841: 232–236;
Hiatt 1996: 18). He wrote that:
I have already observed that the aborigines of Australia are universally
divided into distinct and independent tribes, each occupying as their
hunting-grounds a certain portion of territory, of which the limits are
generally well defined by prominent features in the natural scenery
of the country, and well known to all the neighbouring tribes. This
division appears to have taken place from time immemorial, as there is
no part of the available portion of the country to which some tribe or
other does not lay claim. (Lang 1861: 335)
198
The territory of each tribe is subdivided, moreover, among the different

families of which it consists, and the proprietor of any particular
subdivision, has the exclusive right to direct when it shall be hunted over,
or the grass burned, and the wild animals destroyed. (Lang 1861: 336)
In 1865 August Oldfield who had spent many months with the Nanda people in
Western Australia remarked on the general nature of ‘tribes’ that their territorial
boundaries were well defined and that Aboriginal people had not been able to
retreat ‘before the white invader, for to pass beyond their own limits would be
to expose themselves to the hostilities of some other tribe’ (Oldfield 1865: 221).
In Aboriginal Australia land ownership often manifested itself in strict rules
relating to trespass and elaborate invitation and welcome rituals that commonly
regulated access to and control over country (Peterson 1986: 27). The use of the
concept of ‘tribe’5 by early writers is often confusing as it can refer to anything
from an extended family to a linguistic grouping; the implication that groups
at the linguistic level had property rights and ownership in land was clearly
wrong. However, the use of this concept indicated to some degree that early
writers departed from some kind of assumption that tribes had rights to land
(see Hiatt 1996: 18).
Some early writers observed that ‘tribes’ were divided into smaller landed
units and found hints that patrilineal descent, totemic affiliation, birthplace
and knowledge pertaining to place played a role in conferring rights to land.
Smaller landholding groups belonging to distinct areas in south-east Australia,
for example, were mentioned by early writers such as Breton (1833), Barlow
(1873: 174), Howitt and Fison (1883), Howitt (1884, 1904), Mathews (1906, 1912,
1917), Parker (1905) and Mathew (1910: 129, 147).
In 1880 Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt published Kamilaroi and Kurnai:
Group Marriage and Relationship, and Marriage by Elopement and in 1883
‘From Mother-right to Father-right’. While their book focuses on the social
organisation of these groups (kinship, moieties, section system), their article
was of ‘seminal importance’ (Hiatt 1996: 20) in some ways, because it progressed
the discussion about territoriality by distinguishing between the social and
local (territorial) organisation. They showed that traditional societies had two
separate but interconnected institutions (Howitt and Fison 1883: 33–34). One
was a system determined by totems and exogamous intermarrying classes in
which descent was traced in the matri line and, the other system in which
country was inherited ‘with descent through the father’. They wrote:
The Australian tribe (or community) presents itself under two aspects,
and it is very necessary to see clearly, and to keep in view, the distinction
5 It has been clear for some time that the ‘concept of tribe’ is inadequate to describe traditional landowning
units in Aboriginal Australia. See, for instance, Strehlow (1947) and Berndt (1959).
199
The Aranda’s Pepa
between them. We may view the tribe as a whole made up of certain

exogamous intermarrying classes, or we may study it as a whole made
up of certain local divisions, each of which may contain classes aforesaid.
The former may be called its social aspect, the latter we may speak of as
its local and physical aspect. The two are co-existent and conterminous;
they cover and inter-penetrate each other, and yet the classes of the one
are distinct from the divisions of the other, excepting in rare cases to be
mentioned by-and-by, and are subject to quite different organic laws. Let
us for the sake of convenience call the former the social organisation, and
the latter its local [territorial] organisation. (Howitt and Fison 1883: 3)
They maintained that a tribe was composed of a number of local groups or
clans, each having ‘a local position in some part of the tribal territory’ and
that ‘perpetual succession through the males, who hunt over the same tracts of
country over which their fathers hunted before them’ took place (Howitt and
Fison 1883: 34). In 1904 Howitt restated that ‘the principal geographical and
territorial division of a tribe’, the ‘clan’, recruited its members by ‘descent in
the male line’ (Howitt 1904: 89).
A.R. Brown, better known as A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, was the first professional
anthropologist in Australia to make a serious attempt to systematise the entire
study of social and local organisation of Aboriginal Australians. Soon after his
Western Australian fieldwork in 1911 he reinforced the notion that the basic
land-owning unit ‘forms what we may call a “clan” with male descent, all the
male members of the clan being “father’s father,” “son’s son,” “father,” “son,” or
“brother,” to each other’ (Brown 1913: 160). He suggested that ‘tribes’ (linguistic
groups) were divided into small landed units and that patrilineal descent in
particular, as well as knowledge of country and totemic affiliation pertaining
to place and land together played a role in conferring rights and interests to
country in all traditional Aboriginal societies.
During his work in Western Australia he had found ‘over a considerable area
from the Western Kimberley district in the north to the Murchison River in
the south’ (Radcliffe-Brown 1929: 399) the existence of localised rites and
ceremonies for the increase of natural species that were tied to local totemic
centres and owned by particular clans.6 These localities were associated with
certain mythical beings who were believed to have existed at the beginning of
time and who were ‘responsible for the formation of the totem centres’ which
were in the territory of different clans. A clan’s country he generally defined as
‘a certain area of territory, the boundaries of which are known’, and the persons
belonging to the horde [sic clan] as ‘possessing in common proprietary rights
6 To clarify Radcliffe-Brown’s model in this paragraph ‘clan’ has been inserted where he often used ‘horde’.
The reason for this is set out in the following paragraphs.
200
over the land and its products’. He maintained that the clan ‘is the primary
land-owning or land-holding group’ and membership of a clan ‘is determined in
the first place by descent’ (Radcliffe-Brown 1930: 35). He found that each clan
had a number of different totem centres, some more important than others (see
Radcliffe-Brown 1930: 60–63). He wrote about the close connection of people
and country in the following manner:
It should be noted that the most important determining factor in relation
to this wider structure is the strong social bond between the horde or
local clan and its territory. The strong local solidarity, which is the most
important thing in the social life of the Australians, is correlated with
a very strong bond between the local group and its territory. There is
an equally strong and permanent association between the territory and
the animals and plants that are found on it. It is this intimate association
of a group of persons with a certain stretch of country with its rocks
and water-holes and other natural features, and with the natural species
that are abundant in it, that provides the basis of that totemism of local
totemic centres that is so widespread and so important in the Australian
culture. (Radcliffe-Brown 1930: 63)
Radcliffe-Brown’s early model of local organisation remained unchallenged
until 1962 (Hiatt). In that year Hiatt pointed out that Radcliffe-Brown did not
distinguish between a descent based land owning group, and the land using
residential group, collapsing the distinction by using the term horde for both.
This has led to his version of the land using group being referred to as the
‘patrilineal band’. In fact he did recognise a distinction but did not see it
as relevant. All males in the patrilineal band, like the clan, were of the land
owning group, in his view, but because of exogamy only unmarried girls of
the clan were part of the band, all adult women were in-marrying wives from
diverse clans and the adult women of the clan off elsewhere living with their
husbands. After a comprehensive literature review Hiatt (1962) argued that the
patrilineal band in Radcliffe-Brown’s sense was unrecorded, and had probably
never existed (see also Peterson 1970: 9).
Stanner contested Hiatt’s criticism of Radcliffe-Brown in his 1965 article
‘Aboriginal Territorial Organisation; Estate, Range, Domain and Regime’. He
suggested that any examination of Aboriginal land tenure patterns (territoriality)
should take the distinction between ‘estate’ and ‘range’ into account. He
described ‘estate’ as ‘the traditionally recognized locus (“country”, “home”,
“ground”, “dreaming place”), of some kind of patrilineal descent-group forming
the core or nucleus of a territorial group’ and ‘range’ as ‘the tract or orbit over
which the group, including its nucleus and adherents, ordinarily hunted and
foraged to maintain life’. The range normally included the estate, and together
Stanner called them (1965: 2) a ‘domain’. The domain was the ecological ‘life-
201
The Aranda’s Pepa
space’ of a group. He proposed that issues concerning ecology and season could
be seen to influence the composition of a residential group at any particular
point in time so that males of several clans could be found living together.
He departed from a static model of a residential group strictly composed
according to patrilineal principles by adding some flexibility, which allowed
the incorporation of other kin to join the group to hunt and gather on a certain
stretch of country which belonged at its core to a patrilineal group. He concluded
that a local or residential group was of mixed clan composition for males as well
as females and that ‘visitations of cognates and affines’ (Stanner 1965: 15) was
common. However, he insisted that it was generally true to say that:
(1) Some sort of exogamous patrilineal descent-group was ubiquitous.
(2) It had intrinsic connection, not mere association, with territory. (3)
There was a marked tendency towards, though not iron rule requiring,
patrilocality and virilocality. (4) The group thus formed was basic to
both territorial and social organisation, however concealed by other
structural groups (e.g. phratries, moieties, sections, etc.) or by dynamic
emphasis. (Stanner 1965: 16)
Stanner (1965: 3) conceded that patri-virilocal residence on account of ecology
was at best a hypothetical assumption. Factors other than patri-focal criteria
influenced residence and group composition. Male knowledge of a tract’s
resources could easily be exaggerated. Moreover, foraging by women was just
as if not more crucial to a group’s survival. Peterson (1970) affirmed that links
through women were an important factor that determined the composition
of residential groups in Aboriginal society. Both sociological and ecological
considerations had an impact. It was quite common for a man’s first marriage
to require uxoripatri-local residence so that he could fulfil bride-service
obligations towards his in-laws. In Aranda society, for example, Carl Strehlow
(1913) recorded that young spouses had to supply food to their in-laws, and
this would have had an impact on where and with whom the couple would live.
Another reason why a newly married man might reside with his wife’s father’s
group involved a senior man’s desire to keep his (female) labour force together,
observed by Peterson in Arnhem Land (1970: 14). Alternatively, in the Western
Desert, a young woman may have wanted to remain close to her parents because
she received meat from her mother and father (Hamilton 1987: 41). These
individual choices of everyday life explain many aspects of group composition.
Myers demonstrates that among the Pintupi individual choice determines how
people see themselves as part of a group and that there are multiple pathways to
claim connection to a place and country (Myers [1986] 1991: 129–130, 138–140).
In the eastern Western Desert, Hamilton (1987: 38–39) suggested that an
important tool used for grinding seeds by women, and exclusively owned and
202
inherited by women, influenced the local organisation. These implements,

belonged to groups of uterine kinswomen and were left behind in countries
affiliated to mothers as they were often large and heavy sometimes weighing
as much as 22.5 kg. During major ceremonies, when the men were dependent
on the labour of women who produced much of their foodstuff, the location of
these grinding stones influenced where and who would have been present. She
writes that ‘this aspect of women’s labour around a single scarce resource (the
grindstone and mill) acted as a kind of perpetual opposition to the men’s desires
to promote patrilocal residence’ (Hamilton 1987: 40).
Hamilton writes, that the ‘Hiatt-Stanner debate led to a crucial clarification –
that is, the necessity to maintain a clear distinction between economic and ritual
relationship to land – so that instead of a horde there is both a ritual and an
economic group’ (Hamilton 1998: 91). Notwithstanding, the ritual group also has
economic roles (Hamilton 1998: 94). In this context she cites T.G.H. Strehlow:
Each Aranda local group was believed to perform an indispensable
economic service not only for itself but for the population around its
borders as well … the religious acts performed by the totemic clan
members of all the inland tribes at their respective totemic centres were
regarded as being indispensable for the continuation of all human,
animal and plant life in Central Australia. (Strehlow 1970: 103)
Thus, it is important not to confuse the ritual group (clan) with the residential/
land-using/economic group (band). They are different groups with highly
variable degrees of overlap in their composition.
The passing of the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory)
Act 1976 and Native Title Act 1993, has led to a great deal more research into
relationships to land for the preparation of land claims that these Acts make
possible. The result has been a diversification of models of land tenure, ranging
from strictly patrilineal to the fully-fledged cognatic, some, but not all of this
diversity due to more recent changes in people’s lives.
The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) shifted focus
onto the ‘local descent group’ as defined in the Act. In the initial claims this
was equated with the clan but later expanded to include matrifiliates as people
that also had a ‘common spiritual affiliation’ to a country as required by the
Act. Under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) no definition of traditional owner
was provided and so the definition of land owner was left to the empirical
situation in each case, although descent from the original owners at sovereignty
is required. This research provoked considerable academic debate around land
tenure issues.
203
The Aranda’s Pepa
Ian Keen’s paper ‘Western Desert and the Rest’ (Keen 1997: 66) provoked debate
on the nature and the significance of descent groups. Keen’s research among
the Yolngu in the 1970s and 1980s, and strategies of belonging to country by
individuals in the McLaren Creek Land Claim,7 threw doubts on the existing
assumptions regarding patrilineal dogma, in particular the clan system in
Arnhem Land. In his article, ‘The Western Desert vs the Rest: Rethinking
the Contrast’, he reinforced his view that in Arnhem Land groups were not as
strictly patrilineally organised as portrayed in the literature, but that individual
choice played an important role. Keen argued that rather than being clan-
based, Yolngu society is more appropriately thought of in terms of a kindred
(Keen 1997: 66–67; Morphy 1997: 130). He offered a re-analysis of the patrifilial
identity of the Yolngu clan which he preferred to call ‘group’, and put forward
that it would be more appropriate to use metaphorical expressions, such as
‘strings’ of connectedness, rather than the terms ‘patrilineal descent group’,
‘clan’ or ‘corporation’ (Keen 1997: 67), which he maintains do not capture the
‘Yolngu constructs related to identity, country and ancestors’ (Keen 2000: 32).
Morphy (1997) responded by offering a processual model that maintains the
clan-based model taking individual behaviour that determines variation in a
system into account and thus, aims ‘to transcend such divisions and to show
how structural factors, such as an on-going system of clan organisation, can be
integrated into a praxis-oriented framework in which the individual has a role
in the transformation and the reproduction of the system over time’ (Morphy
1997: 124).8 This seemed to a degree acceptable to Keen (2000) provided social
change is considered alongside ancestral law and politics; though he added that
‘the concept of the “clan” is perhaps the last vestige of the Radcliffe-Brown
synthesis to remain’ and that ‘it has long been unsafe to assume a fundamental
uniformity in aboriginal social arrangements’ (Keen 2000: 39).
Sansom (2006, 2007) also critiqued Keen and his ‘West’ is not all that much
different to the ‘Rest’. He was not necessarily opposing Keen’s view that
patriliny did not have such an exclusive position, but he thought that Keen
ignored underlying social structures and norms. Sansom writes:
Those (like me) who radically distinguish the contemporary desert West
from the contemporary Rest, do so by pointing to normative difference.
In The West there are nowadays ‘multiple pathways’ to land. Outside
the Western Desert, specific rules of kinship traditionally prescribe that
primary right-holders in land would be patrifilial inheritors of estates
in land, and that holders of secondary (and mediated) rights constitute
a limited set of persons who have particular and specified relationships
7 See quotation of claim book (exhibit CLC 3) in Aboriginal Land Commissioner’s report (Olney 1991: 11–13).
8 Myers’ emphasis on ‘multiple pathways’ and his re-rendering of kinship in terms of relatedness and
identity have affinities with these more praxis-oriented approaches.
204
that link them to those who hold the primary rights. Keen sets aside
modelling that emphasises explicitly rendered ideological rules (or
‘normative norms’) by shifting the emphasis from normative norms to
statistical norms. He then looks past ideologies to instances of behaviour
and to rates that describe trends to actions. (Sansom 2007: 79–80)
Keen’s response was that he clearly accords ‘patrifiliation rather more than mere
rhetorical value’, and while he had ‘certainly questioned the usefulness of the
concept of corporate “clan” to Aboriginal relations to country and sacra’, he
had not thrown into doubt ‘the concept of social structure as a whole’ (Keen
2007: 170).
In general, Western Aranda today emphasise patrifilial connections to land
strongly, making it part of the ‘Rest’. They are disposed towards a tighter
land tenure model than Western Desert peoples, mainly because their country
belongs to the better-watered areas in central Australia. In his essays written in
the 1930s, later published in Aranda Traditions, and in particular in his article
‘Culture, social structure and environment in Aboriginal Central Australia’
(1965), T.G.H. Strehlow maintained that the landholding group was strictly
patrilineal (Strehlow 1947: 139; 1965). In these works he appears to present an
ideal group that is mainly determined by ritual and not by ‘secular’ links which
would have determined the everyday composition of an Aranda residential
group. He wrote that due to harsher environmental conditions Western Desert
peoples had a local organisation that was of much looser and fluid nature, but
that the Kukatja-Loritja were an exception, because their social and local system
was very similar to the Aranda’s, although linguistically they belong to the
Western Desert people (Strehlow 1965: 143; 1970: 99).
Hamilton observed in the eastern Western Desert during 1970–71 an ideological
preference for patrilineal and patrifocal structures amongst her informants, that
were counterbalanced by women’s labour organisation and female secret ritual
life, as well as by the climatic and environmental conditions (Hamilton 1987,
1998). Munn wrote about the residential foci of Pitjantjatjara that ‘the men of
the group ideally based themselves after marriage in their father’s home country
(even though at any given time they might actually have been living or hunting
elsewhere)’ (Munn 1970: 146). In the anthropologists’ report of the Yulara
Native Title Claim another factor is mentioned that determines the connection
of a woman to an area:
There is some tendency for men to have a special relationship to their
fathers’ and fathers’ fathers’ places, and for women to have a similar
connection to those of their mothers and mothers’ mothers, though this
is not a uniform rule. It appears in some kin sets but not in others.
(Sutton and Vaarzon-Morel 2003: para. 7.55 cited in Sutton 2007: 178)
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The Aranda’s Pepa
It is likely that T.G.H. Strehlow’s informants, who were male, stressed this
patrilineal preference. However, his own work (Strehlow 1971, 1999) shows
how men have ritual rights and links to country based on a range of other
claims. Connections to country through mothers are already mentioned in his
first essays written in 1934, as well as individual rights through conception
at a particular place. These people with matrifilial rights, he called kutuŋula
(kwertengerle). Its role in central Australia is well understood now (see Pink
1936; Meggitt [1962] 1986; Morphy and Morphy 1984; Peterson 1986; Myers
[1986] 1991; Morton 1997a,b; Vaarzon-Morel and Sackett 1997; Elliott 1999:
105–110; 2004: 74–76). It became clear during the land claim era that claims
to membership of a landholding group through matrifiliation were and are of
great importance and that these people hold distinct and significant rights
and responsibilities in relation to land. In the Palm Valley Land Claim under
the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth), Justice Gray
recognised in addition to patriliny and matrifiliation, cognatic descent as a basis
for membership of the Western Aranda landholding groups involved in the
claim (Gray 1999: 17–18). These other connections provided the land tenure
system with (strong) provisions for ways to claim places and dreamings other
than through the patriline, which is evident in a large number of land and
native title claims in the Northern Territory and elsewhere in Australia.
These various pathways to ‘belonging to country’ find early support in Carl
Strehlow’s data. They suggest that around 1900 the Western Aranda had beside
patrilineal connections to country, connections to their own conception site
and their mother’s conception place, (i.e. where mother’s mother conceived
mother). This mother’s place may or may not have been located on mother’s
father’s country. He wrote:
Every individual, then, is placed into a relationship with two totems.
He belongs to one totem by virtue of his birth9 and is related to another
because he inherits it from his mother. He may actively participate in
the cult of both totems. (Strehlow 1908: 58)10
In the following sections I will show how Carl Strehlow’s material does not
support the Radcliffe-Brownian view though one might expect this from data
collected from Aranda during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
It is not my contention that Carl Strehlow’s true account is only now being
discovered through land claim debates. Rather, the fact that Carl Strehlow
emphasised conception and mother’s conception place and not father’s father’s
place suggests that systems may be dynamic over time, and subject to varieties of
representation – what is said and to whom in the micro-politics of relationships
and translation.
9 He means here the dreaming from an individual’s conception site.

206 10 See also Strehlow (1910: 2).
Rights to country through conception

The literature on Arandic cultures shows consistently that conception was
important in conferring rights in or ‘belonging’ to country in the first part
of the twentieth century (Spencer and Gillen 1899: 121–127; Strehlow 1908:
52–61; T.G.H. Strehlow 1947: 86–96; [1964] 1978: 20–23; 1971: 158, 596). In
Carl Strehlow’s work the conception dreaming is called ‘ratapa’ which can mean
totem in general or spirit child; and the conception site of a person is called
‘tmara runga’ or ‘tmara rungatja’. This place is where a person entered ‘his
mother as a ratapa, and where his tjurunga is kept’ as well as where she felt the
first movement of the foetus in the womb (1908: 53, 56). The terms ‘tmara runga’
or ‘tmara rungatja’ mean ‘my own place’ (Strehlow 1908: 57–58). He also used
the general term for ‘totem place’, ‘knanakala’, for conception site (Strehlow
1907: 5; 1920). He remarked on Aranda and Loritja conception beliefs:
The totemic conceptions of the Loritja are very closely related to those
of the Aranda. Every Loritja also belongs to two totems, a personal
totem which he calls aratapi (= (A) ratapa), and a maternal totem which
he calls altjiri (= (A) altjira). The manner by which children enter the
womb of the mother is seen by the Loritja in exactly the same way as
by the Aranda. Either an aratapi enters the woman or a totem ancestor
emerges from the earth and throws a bullroarer at her, which changes
into a child inside the woman. The Loritja say that the latter case is the
more frequent. (Strehlow 1908: 60)
His son’s earlier work (1947) and genealogy collection evokes the impression
that T.G.H. Strehlow was mainly interested in conception sites of individuals
to whom they were of great importance, as their significance as personal totems
may have rested on a ‘mythopoetic’ and ‘their experience of self in a world
forged through hunting and foraging practice’ (Austin-Broos 2004: 60). The
conception site ‘pmara kŋanintja’ (Strehlow 1971: 596) was a well-defined place
which was of particular significance to an individual, as his spirit or soul was
believed to have come from there; one had the right to detailed knowledge about
this place and conception bestowed on the owner a special connection to it
(Strehlow 1947: 87; 1971: 158). In Aranda Traditions he placed great emphasis
on them, writing that the conception site took ‘by far the most important place
in all the complex arguments which centre around the possession of the myths,
chants, ceremonies and sacred objects owned by any large local totemic clan’
(Strehlow 1947: 87), but at the same time he maintained that ‘the doctrine of
the conception site is deliberately counterbalanced by the strong emphasis laid
upon the unifying ties represented by the allegiance claims of the pmara kutata
and by membership obligations to the local njinaŋa section’ (Strehlow 1947:
139–140).
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The Aranda’s Pepa
The probability of being conceived on one’s father’s father’s country was quite
high (Pink 1936: 288; Austin-Broos 2004: 62; 2009: 114) when people resided
on well-watered land, as did the Western Aranda. This seems to be broadly
substantiated in T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogies (Austin-Broos 2009: 289, fn.
13).11 If a person’s conception site was on their father’s father’s country, they
would quite likely have had a stronger connection to that site than to others.
However, there were exceptions. A person conceived outside their father’s
father’s country had a right to acquire detailed knowledge of their conception
site, but required some personal efforts. In ‘Agencies of Social Control in Central
Australian Aboriginal Societies’, T.G.H. Strehlow ([1950] 1997) described how
Rauwirarka, a Western Aranda man, went to a substantial amount of trouble
to acquire knowledge about his Anmatyerr conception site to the north of his
primary estate on the Ellery Creek.
Under certain circumstances people with strong connections to and knowledge
of their conception site and adjacent areas outside of their father’s father’s
country could over time potentially establish themselves in a country as a new
landholding group, if the original group had reached the end of their patriline.
Although rare, it may even have resulted in a change in the patricouple associated
with that country (Morton 1997a: 119), in situations where a person’s conception
site was located on a country associated with the opposite patrimoiety.12
Knowledge about one’s conception site alone seems not to have been sufficient
to entitle a person or group to make claims to hold rights and interests in the
land concerned; other factors, such as long-term residence, neighbouring estate
affiliation, intermarriage, and political negotiation skills also played a vital role
in the process of succession and establishing a new landholding group where
the original owners were extinct or the patriline severely depleted. Spencer and
Gillen’s work seems to support this proposition:
Once born into a totem, no matter what his class may be, a man,
when initiated, may witness and take part in all the sacred ceremonies
connected with the totem, but, unless he belongs to the predominant
moiety, he will never, or only in extremely rare cases, become the head
man or Alatunja of any local group of the totem. His only chance of
becoming Alatunja is by the death of every member of the group who
belongs to the moiety to which the Alcheringa men belonged. (Spencer
and Gillen 1899: 126)
Writing about Northern Aranda people, Pink maintained that the country of
one’s father’s father was of primary significance in relation to land ownership,
11 Helen Wilmot, pers. comm., 2009.

12 More commonly the individual with the conception site is seen as either pmerekerteye or kwertengerle
based on their subsection in relation to the known subsection identity of the land.
208
and the country on which one’s conception occurred was ‘only of personal and
secondary importance’ (Pink 1936: 285). Indeed today, people sometimes refer to
it as one’s ‘own personal or little story’, to which individuals have an emotional
attachment. The conception site is sometimes conflated with birthplace, a
tradition that may have been imported from neighbouring Western Desert areas,
and has lost much of its significance as a basis for rights and responsibilities in
relation to land. Justice Gray suggested a reason for the reduced significance
of the conception site, when he observed that ‘Otherwise the large number of
people conceived and born at a place such as at Hermannsburg would have the
potential to swamp the land tenure system’ (Gray 1999: 18). Indeed, settlement
seems to be the main component for conception’s loss of relevance. The multiple
demographic and land use factors involved in settlement seemed to undermine
the imagination of a social world embedded in country, in which conception had
a central part (Austin-Broos 2004: 60). Initially, movement over Aranda country
was restricted by pastoral expansion into the region and the efforts of both the
church and state to settle Aranda people at missions and in other permanent
settlements. More recently, settled community life and employment have
resulted in fewer opportunities for people to be permanently present on their
country. Austin-Broos writes that Christianity’s creationism as well as sedentary
life and the attenuation of practical and ritual knowledge it brought contested
the Western Aranda’s notion of conception (Austin-Broos 2009: 128–129) and
may have caused an ontological shift (Austin-Boos 2009: 5–7, 112; 2010: 15).
It is noteworthy that today many Western Aranda people speak in terms of
a ‘conception dreaming’ rather than conception site. The place of conception
is not necessarily associated with a particular site, but rather with one of the
dreamings found in an area. A particular encounter with an animal or natural
phenomenon ultimately confirms what kind of spirit or spirit child has entered
a woman. An encounter with an animal that might determine the dreaming of
conception can be connected to an incident experienced by the father of a child
while out hunting, according to Aranda woman Mavis Malbunka (2004: 13).
They speak affectionately of their ‘dreaming mark’ or ‘birthmark dreaming’
and use the word tnengkarre when they refer to it (Kenny 2003: 35). Munn
(1970: 146) found in the mid 1960s among the Pitjantjatjara living at Areyonga
that such birthmarks were believed to be ‘marks left by the ancestors at their
birthplace’.
Unless conception has occurred on one’s father’s father’s country, which is
very rare in the contemporary context, it appears that today relatively little
significance is placed on site of conception by Western Aranda in regard to
claims to land.
209
The Aranda’s Pepa
Belonging to country through matrifiliation

The first remark on matrifiliation to Aranda country was made by the Lutheran
missionary Louis Schulze (1891: 238–239). He recorded the term ‘tmara altjira’
meaning ‘the place where mother of the dead person was born’. Likewise Carl
Strehlow mentioned as one of his first encounters with connection to country,
mother’s conception dreaming, called in Aranda ‘altjira’. He described the
relationship of an individual to mother’s dreaming, ‘altjira’, also called ‘garra
altjira’ or ‘deba altjira’, and to mother’s conception site, called ‘tmara altjira or
more precisely, tmara altjirealtja, i.e. the place of the totem associated with me’
(Strehlow 1908: 57; 1910: 2). Altjira is used in this context as meaning mother’s
conception dreaming. He lists these in his published family trees (Strehlow
1913: Attachments) as ‘ara’ (kangaroo), ‘ilia’ (emu), ‘jerramba’ (honeyant), etc.
and mentioned how to ask properly about this particular place:
The following question should be put to him in order to ascertain the totem
place of his mother, tmara altjira (or altjirealtja) unkwanga ntana? i.e. Where
is the place of the totem associated with you? (Strehlow 1908: 58)
He observed that sets of siblings with the same mother shared a dreaming and
the associated site. He had found that an ‘altjira (totem)’ could be inherited from
mothers.13 There seems to be an emergent thought here that mother’s dreaming
and place were collectively held, as all children of one mother had the same
altjira implying ownership rights to mother’s place, and that at different times,
different ‘totem’ affiliations were more or less important. Unfortunately these
thoughts were not developed any further. Nevertheless, it shows, that the right
questions, thoughts and concepts were emerging. A passage written on the 6
April 1907 to von Leonhardi indicates this clearly:
As the tjurunga [sacred property or object] is the symbol of the personal
totem, some blacks have told me, that the wonninga can be seen as the
symbol of the maternal totem or altjira. However, I am not yet certain
about this, and will make further inquires. While the tjurunga of
individuals are different (each individual has his own totem ancestor),
the wonninga as the symbol of altjira would tie the members of a family
together, because they all have the same altjira, but all have different
ratapa ancestors. It is hard to tell which of the two totems is older, the
personal or the one inherited from one’s mother.14
The altjira, Strehlow wrote, had a providing and protecting role ‘like a mother
feeds and protects her children during the early years of their lives’ and appears

14 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, n.d. possibly 6.4.1907 (SH-SP-11-1).
210
in dreams to warn from danger but also to tell friends about a person’s well-
being (Strehlow 1908: 57). The particular tjurunga associated with a man’s
mother, he regarded ‘as the body of his altjira (mother’s totem ancestor), who
would accompany him on his lonesome journeys’ (Strehlow 1913: 25). He also
recorded some interesting details surrounding the ‘altjira’ and ‘tmara altjira’:
After the boy has carried his knocked out tooth about with him for
several weeks, he tosses it into the direction of his tmara altjira. (Strehlow
1911: 9)
After a person’s death, his spirit goes first to his grave where he remains
until the completion of the second burial ceremony. Then he goes to the
tmara altjira to collect his tooth, which will show him the way to the
Island of the Dead. From there he returns with the tooth and presses
it into the arm or a leg of a former camp companion, causing him to
become very ill. The magic doctor, however, is able to remove the tooth.
(Strehlow 1911: 9, fn. 4)
Another aspect of its importance is expressed in death and burial customs and
beliefs. At the death of a person, he is laid into his grave facing his tmara altjira
(‘maternal totem place’) (Strehlow 1915: 16).15
Radcliffe-Brown, writing about the Arandic type of social organisation, had
also noted ‘that there is an important relation between an individual and the
totem and totem-centre of his mother’ (1930: 325). He did not elaborate on this
observation while T.G.H. Strehlow wrote in the 1930s that people connected to
land through their mothers had rights to ‘mother’s tjurunga’ and were called
kutuŋula, but did not define this role precisely. He wrote of ‘mother’s tjurunga’:
In Western and Southern Aranda territory claims are frequently put
forward by the older men to a share in the possession of the tjurunga
which were once regarded as the property of their own mothers.
(Strehlow 1947: 137)
A kutuŋula, according to Olive Pink, was a father’s sister’s son or a mother’s
brother’s son, who should be theoretically the same person, however, in reality,
she remarked in a footnote, that ‘they seldom are in these days of diminished
numbers’ (Pink 1936: 303). At any rate these relatives are of the opposite
moiety and of the same subsection. A male ego, for example, from the Mbitjana
(Mpetyane) subsection, has a Paltara (Peltharre) man as his kutuŋula, who can
also be classified as his mother’s father. If close relatives are not available to
deal with issues arising in relation to land and for this role then classificatory
15 T.G.H. Strehlow wrote in 1964 that ‘when a man died, he was buried (generally in a sitting position) in
such a way that his face was turned towards the conception site of his mother: for that was his pmara altjira,
his “eternal home”’ (Strehlow [1964] 1978: 39).
211
The Aranda’s Pepa
kinsmen from the opposite moiety with appropriate subsections and knowledge
or seniority will be recruited for this position. Myers observed among the
Pintupi that this type of process was ‘to fill the ranks of an estate group depleted
of personnel’ (Myers [1986] 1991: 149) and Bell (1983) called it ‘sufficiency of
minds’ concept. Accordingly, the division into intermarrying moieties has the
potential to create and establish alliances between particular members of two
social groups, neighbouring opposite moiety estates, even if no actual marriages
or genealogical links otherwise exist, which is rather rare.
Today it is quite common for people of neighbouring countries who belong to
opposite patrimoieties to express their rights and interests in those countries
by saying that they are ‘kwertengerle [kutuŋula] for each other’. This kind of
reciprocity is based on the fact that one can find in neighbouring estate groups
of the opposite patrimoiety, potential spouses, mothers, mother’s brother’s sons,
sister’s sons, and mother’s fathers, all of whom can assume the important role
of kwertengerle. The strength of any reciprocal rights is dependent on various
factors, including the perceived closeness of kinship and personal relationships,
intermarriage, knowledge of shared dreaming stories and associated sacra.
In the course of the 1960s and 1970s the concept of kutuŋula/kwertengerle
became well understood, in particular through the land claim process under the
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth). The first ‘claim book’
by Peterson and others (1978) for central Australian Aboriginal people under
this legislation, outlines clearly the role and recruitment of the kurdungurlu
amongst Warlpiri people, for example.
In Western Aranda society today kutuŋula/kwertengerle are usually said to be
people who claim rights to land through their mother’s fathers, tyemeye, which
is the other main way to claim country beside one’s father’s father, arrenge. Also
people who claim country through their father’s mother, perle, and mother’s
mother, ipmenhe, are often called kwertengerle, however, they may require
the recognition and support of primary patrifilial landholders to ascertain their
rights (see Morton 1997b: 26). Although kwertengerle who acquire rights and
responsibilities in this way have incontestable rights to country, they are usually
not as strong as rights derived through father’s father and mother’s father.
In 1947 T.G.H. Strehlow made general remarks on the kutuŋula’s role and in
his later work he wrote that kutuŋula status was gained through ‘matrilineal
inheritance’ and that ‘they did have the right at all times to be present at
performances of the totemic acts that belonged to their mothers’ (Strehlow
[1964] 1978: 25, 38). The kutuŋula remains loosely defined in his work; it is not
clear what the exact matrifilial requirements were to become one. He did not
define precisely how the kutuŋula is recruited in kin terms, but rather recorded
that this role involved ritual preparation and was crucial in the preservation of
knowledge, calling them ‘servants’ and ‘ceremonial assistants’ (Strehlow 1947:
212
123–125, 132, 148–150, 164, 170; 1971: 248, 752). It was not simply a kinship
connection to country among the Aranda for him (see also Meggitt 1966: 30;
Nash 1982: 149). In his earlier work, Morton (1992) found that kwertengerle
was not strictly defined among Western Aranda people. Central Arrernte in
Alice Springs told him (Morton 1997b) during native title claim research, and I
also have been told by Western Aranda, that people who claim country through
their father’s mother and mother’s mother are called kwertengerle.16
It should be noted here that the term kutuŋula/kwertengerle seems to be a
relatively recent introduction into Arandic cultures while the underlying
concept pre-existed in Aranda thought. Nash suggests, that kurdungurlu is a
Warlpiri word that diffused southwards (Nash 1982: 149–151). A letter written
in Aranda by Nathanael Rauwirarka to Carl Strehlow, suggests that Ilpara men
from the north, believed to be Warlpiri people, had visited Hermannsburg in
the first decade of the twentieth century.17 This Warlpiri term, kurdungurlu,
is composed of ‘kurdu’ and -ngurlu. Nash suggests that kurdu in this context
is most likely to mean ‘sister’s child’ (Nash 1982). The word does not seem to
appear in Carl Strehlow’s or in Spencer and Gillen’s published work. It features
only in Carl Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary spelled kutungula in Aranda
and pipawonnu in Loritja meaning ‘subject, servant’.18 In his bible translations
and the small primer he wrote for Aranda children it is used for ‘disciple’ or
‘evangelist’ (Austin-Broos 2010: 21).
In the anthropological literature on Arandic people the term kutuŋula is first
documented in the 1930s in Olive Pink’s Oceania articles (1936) and T.G.H.
Strehlow’s unpublished essays (1934). The recent importation of this term may
also account for its various concepts among people speaking different Arandic
languages. Considering the concept under these diffusionist and linguistic
aspects, it is no wonder that anthropologists have found a number of variations
of the kutuŋula (kwertengerle) concept in Arandic areas. They explain to
some degree why it has been difficult to find and describe the meaning of the
term. Some Arandic people seemed to define the concept of kwertengerle more
broadly than others. It was, and maybe still is, evolving, and meanings from
other terms moved to such newly acquired words and concepts. It seems, for
example, that some Western Aranda meanings of altjira, in the sense of mother’s
dreaming, was shifted to this newly adopted expression, while other parts of
altjira’s semantic field moved to tnankara (tnengkarre) as discussed in Chapter V.
16 Connections to country through one’s mother’s mother may be construed to pmerekwerteye, because
ego and his mother’s mother are in the same patrimoiety. However, mother’s mother connections are usually
understood as conferring kwertengerle status among Western Aranda people, in my experience.
17 Letter from Nathaneal (and Moses) to Carl Strehlow, 30.4.1911.
18 Carl Strehlow’s handwritten unpublished Aranda-German-Loritja dictionary manuscript (c.1890s–1909)
held at the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs.
213
The Aranda’s Pepa
Carl Strehlow’s record of altjira meaning ‘mother’s dreaming’ provides one of

the earliest comprehensive pieces of evidence that rights to country could be
gained through mothers and determine a number of entitlements, including
ritual rights. He writes concerning these ritual rights that actors for certain
ceremonies should be of the appropriate ‘ratapa’ or ‘altjira’:
During the mbatjalkatiuma the men selected as actors for the respective
ceremonies must belong to the totem concerned, or at least it must be
their maternal totem (altjira). For example, if a kangaroo cult ritual is to
be held the actors may be chosen only from among those whose ratapa
or altjira was a kangaroo-altjirangamitjina. In the case of the intitjiuma,
however, men belonging to the totem concerned will be preferred, but
men of other totems may also appear as actors. Hence, a lizard-man may
play an active role in a kangaroo ceremony. (Strehlow 1910: 1–2)
Altjira, meaning mother’s dreaming in this context, seems to indicate that
Western Aranda land tenure was somewhat differently orientated during
Carl Strehlow’s time, although it still confers rights through mothers. These
affiliations are now articulated through the concept of kwertengerle in Western
Aranda society. The rights to be a kwertengerle come mainly through mother’s
father, and sometimes through father’s mother and mother’s mother. In other
Arandic languages the term altjira still denotes today similar meanings to those
Carl Strehlow elicited from his informants (see, for instance, Green 2012: 167).
Altyerre in North-Eastern Arrernte (Henderson and Dobson 1994: 105) and
altyerr in Alyawarr19 (Green 1992: 29–30) and Anmatyerr20 (Green 2010) which
are often glossed as ‘dreaming’ in English, can also refer to the dreaming tracks,
places and stories which are inherited through maternal ancestry, and can mean
mother’s place. Green writes:
The compound from ALYERR-ANKETHENH (lit. ‘having Dreaming’)
refers to ‘those related to a place or Dreaming through their mothers’.
(Green 1998: 57)
Father’s father’s country

There are no explicit remarks on land ownership through a patrilineally inherited
‘totem’ (dreaming) in Carl Strehlow’s work. However, belonging to land through
fathers appears in some ways ‘at the beginning of time’. It is striking how the
mythological account of primordial times on earth, that presents embryonic
19 Arandic language spoken in parts of north-eastern central Australia.

20 Arandic language spoken in parts of north-western central Australia.
214
people slumbering under the earth’s surface, divides them into patrimoieties
and patricouples, although at the time the subsection system was believed to
have been a very recent introduction into Arandic cultures:
The rella manerinja, who lived on the slopes of the mountain, were
divided into four classes: Purula, Kamara, Ngala and Mbitjana. Because
these people lived on dry land they were referred to as alarinja [land
dwellers]. However, there were other undeveloped people who lived
in the water, called kwatjarinja, water dwellers. These people had long
hair and their food consisted of raw meat. They were also divided into
four classes: Pananka, Paltara, Knuraia and Bangata. More of these
undeveloped people lived at Rubuntja [Mt Hay] in the north-east and
at Irbmankara on the Finke River, now known as Running Waters.
(Strehlow 1907: 2)
It was only with Mangarkunjerkunja who had come from the north that
the helpless rella manerinja’s lot was improved. It was he who awoke them,
explained to them how their subsection system worked and who should marry
whom. In addition, he allocated patricouples to all areas in the Aranda landscape
(Strehlow 1907: 6–7; 1915: 1).
The mythology of the Loritja provides similar data on this issue. Carl Strehlow
wrote that ‘the undeveloped people matu ngalulba of primordial times were
already divided into 8 marriage classes [that is, a subsection system] and lived in
the vicinity of Unkutu-kwatji’ (Strehlow 1908: 4). Unlike the ‘rella manerinja’ of
the Aranda who were divided into land dwellers and water dwellers, the ‘matu
ngalulba’ of the Loritja lived beside each other; ‘one group resided in the north
and east and the other group lived in the south and west’ (Strehlow 1913: 79).
In a chapter called ‘The Constitutional and Legal Order’ of the Aranda (Strehlow
1915: 1–15) he refers again to the fact that country is allocated to subsections and
talks about what can perhaps be described as estates, or at least, as forerunners
of what his son would call the ‘njinaŋa (nyenhenge) section areas’:
According to the primordial legends, Mangarkunjerkunja had already
partitioned the vast territory of the Aranda among the individual
marriage-classes (Aranda Legends, page 6,7). This division of territory,
presented in detail in Part I, p.6f., is important to the extent that the
individual marriage-classes still regard the tracts of land given to them
at that time as their property and claim chieftainship over them.21 For
example, in the first mentioned western territory of the Aranda the chief
has to belong to either the Purula class or the Kamara class. In Alice
Springs and the surrounding region he must be a Paltara or a Knuraia. In
21 Emphasis added.

215
The Aranda’s Pepa
the Ellery Creek territory he must be a Pananka or a Bangata; whilst in

the territory south of Rubula only an Ngala or Mbitjana may claim the
honour of a chief. (Strehlow 1915: 1)
He goes on to explain that the chief of an estate is called ‘inkata’ (chief or father
of all), but on a general level he is only a ‘primus inter pares’, and that his
position is hereditary.22 He wrote:
The Aranda and Loritja do not elect their chief. He is, as it were, born
into that position. The chieftainship is always inherited by the next
younger brother, and after the death of the youngest brother it passes
to the oldest son of the oldest brother, should he still be alive. If that is
not the case, then it passes to a younger son of the oldest brother, etc.
The greater or lesser esteem for a chief depends on his personal
achievements. Although every larger settlement has a resident chief
who presides at meetings, only those from among them who have
distinguished themselves by their courage and strength would be called
inkata knara (= great/big chief) and held in higher esteem than the
inkata kurka (= little chief), who holds this honour merely by virtue of
his inheritance and does not exceed the other men of his camp in terms
of personal achievements. (Strehlow 1915: 1–2)
The old men were called ‘knaribata (kngerrepate)’, ‘pintulara’ in Loritja and
‘pinaru’ in Diyari meaning ‘the big man, the older man of high status)’ in Carl
Strehlow’s time23 and these men were highly esteemed according to their level of
knowledge (see also Spencer and Gillen 1899: 10). This term appears in volume
one (1907), but is only much later explained and translated in Carl’s work (1913).
T.G.H. Strehlow also uses the term ‘knaribata’ which ‘always refers to an old
man who knew all the sacred traditions of his clan or group, and is therefore fit
to be a member of the council of elders of his group’.24
Carl Strehlow writes that the subsection ‘is passed on from grand-father
to grand-child or, to put it in other words, that the class continues along
patrilineal and not matrilineal lines’ (Strehlow 1913: 71). He concurs with the
findings of Spencer and Gillen (1899: 115) that ‘so far as the class [subsection] is
concerned, descent is counted in the male line’ from one’s father’s father. In this
context, Spencer and Gillen make an interesting comment on the way in which
a ‘churinga’ dropped by a spirit child is found, once it has entered the mother:
22 Inkata (A) = tina, atunari (L) = Kapara (D): Häuptling, Herr (allg. Vater) (Carl Strehlow’s unpublished
dictionary c.1900–1909).
23 Knaribata is composed of knara (big) and ata a contraction of atua (man). It was used for ‘old man’ (Carl
Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary c.1900–1909).
24 T.G.H. Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary K (n.d.): 92a.
216
Sometimes it is found, sometimes it is not. In the former case, which is

stated to occur often, we must suppose that some old man – it is most
often the Arunga or paternal grandfather who finds it – has provided
himself with one for the occasion, which is quite possible, as Churinga
belonging to their own totem are not infrequently carried about by the
old men, who obtain them from the sacred storehouse in which they are
kept. (Spencer and Gillen 1899: 132)
It is noteworthy, that Carl Strehlow very rarely recorded any explicit remarks
on subsection affiliations of myths in either prose or poetic texts. He only made
a comment on the subsection affiliation of the frog ancestors. He wrote that they
‘belonged to the Mbitjana class’, and it was the only myth and song in his entire
oral text collection (Strehlow 1910: 72–73; 1911: 37) in which his informants had
made an explicit remark that it was about ancestors of a particular subsection:
It will be noticed that the marriage-class of the altjirangamitjina
concerned is mentioned in this legend only, while in the legends passed
on by Spencer and Gillen they are almost always specified. However,
the marriage-class was given to me only in this case. I suspect that
Spencer and Gillen made it a practice to ask for the class to which the
respective totem ancestor belonged. I have deliberately avoided this, the
black can, by means of simple deduction, state the marriage-class of a
particular totem ancestor (iningukua) because every individual is born
into the same class as his specific iningukua. Therefore, if one knows
a person whose ratapa has emerged from a rock, tree, or tjurunga of a
particular altjirangamitjina, and if one takes into account the marriage-
class of the mother, then it is easy to state the marriage-class to which
the iningukua must have belonged. It should be obvious, however,
that such a subsequent determination by the various black narrators is
without value. (Strehlow 1907: 82)
It seems to have been taken for granted by his informants that he knew, as they
did, that a myth was about a particular country and ancestors with particular
subsection affiliations. In 1932 his son went to considerable trouble to find
out to which subsections the protagonists of the myth ‘atua arintja’ of Ulamba
belonged. He found out that the father, Toppatataka, was a Purula and his son,
the atua arintja (monster man), a Kamara.25 It may have been taken for granted
and, thus, completely unnecessary to mention that a myth or an ancestor was
of a particular subsection, as it was clear to everyone at that time that country
had subsections.

217
The Aranda’s Pepa
In the 1930s, Olive Pink witnessed an emphasis on traditional estates associated

with patricouples and owned through the patriline among Northern Aranda
people and T.G.H. Strehlow among the Western Aranda. In his early work,
although it was not the centre of his attention, T.G.H. Strehlow defined the
landholding group as consisting of ‘all men, women and children of a given
totemic clan who stand to one another in the relation of fathers, sons, brothers,
sisters, and daughters, relationship being determined both by actual and by
class ties’ (Strehlow 1947: 139).
A tight reading of this statement and of T.G.H. Strehlow’s 1965 view on Aranda
land tenure appears in the ‘Summary Statement’ of a Finke River Mission report.
The authors of this statement appear to be perpetuating and emphasising a
patrilineal and patriarchal model, although they add the role of the kutungula,
defined as ‘custodians or managers of the tjurunga, and so also the land’ who
are the ‘male descendants from women belonging to the land-owning group’.
They wrote that:
The most important kin grouping in relation to land ownership is
the patrilineal descent group, composed of people descended from a
common male ancestor through the male line. Each patrilineal descent
group belongs to a particular tract of land and its member are called
the Pmarakutwia (people belonging to the land, the land owners) for
that particular area of land. A clearly defined system of leadership,
and a recognised leader, exist within each of these groups. The female
descendants from the male line are part of the patrilineal land-owning
group, but only the fully initiated males are taught the secret knowledge
relating to the land and its tjurunga. (Albrecht et al. 1976: 1)26
T.G.H. Strehlow called the country of a patrilineal descent group the ‘njinaŋa
(nyenhenge) section area’. Rights and interests in such an area were and still are
articulated in terms of knowledge of particular dreaming tracks or segments of
dreaming tracks and sites, as well as in terms of kinship links. Aranda people
affiliated with a landholding group and its country through their fathers and
father’s fathers are today called pmerekwerteye (Morton 1992, 1997a,b; Kenny
2003: 31). According to Morton, T.G.H. Strehlow’s ‘njinaŋa’ group more or less
corresponds with what is understood under the term pmerekwerteye (Morton
1997a: 117). In land rights and native title claims this was found to be one of the
principal ways to become a member of a landholding group and thereby acquire
rights and responsibilities in relation to land. The other principal way today
is through mother’s father discussed above. Pmerekwerteye means literally
‘country-owner’. It is a compound: pmere-ke-rtweye. The -ke is a dative suffix,
which is very common, and -rtweye is the same as artweye (Henderson and
26 This summary statement has been reproduced in Albrecht (2002: 80–82).
218
Dobson 1994: 286–287) in Eastern Arrernte and means ‘owned or owner’.

However, in Western Aranda it does not seem to be used as an independent word
(as artweye can be, but is not usually); -rtweye is rare in other combinations,
and so people do not think of it as a unit.27 Gillen in 1899 mentioned ‘Kartwia
Quatcha’ to Spencer ‘meaning rain or water country and applied to the district
occupied by a water totem group’ (Wilkins 2001: 508). Wilkins continues:
It is not clear whether kartwia is really intended as a separate word
or not. The form artweye means ‘custodian of, person having major
responsibility for something’ and it typically follows a noun in the
dative case -ke. For instance traditional owners of country are Pmere-k-
artweye (country-DATIVE-custodian). Thus k-artweye could be a mis-
parsing of some more complex construction. Kwatye-k-artweye would
be the term referring to custodians of rain and water Dreaming country.
(Wilkins 2001: 508–509)
The term pmerekwerteye seems to have emerged in the context of land right
claims in the Northern Territory. In written records pmerekwerteye seems
to appear for the first time in 1976 in a land rights submission of the Finke
River Mission (FRM), spelled ‘pmarakutwia’ (Albrecht et al. 1976). Garry
Stoll28 remembers hearing it in the late 1960s. This expression does not seem to
appear in either of the Strehlows’ or Pink’s work. It appears as ‘Atwia-atwia’ in
Spencer and Gillen’s work where it is said to be the ‘name applied to the men
who operate at the ceremony of circumcision’ (Spencer and Gillen 1899: 647).
It appears that one of the two ‘Atwia-atwia’ of the ceremony they witnessed
in Alice Springs was the novice’s father (Spencer and Gillen 1899: 241–248).
According to Wilkins, this Central (Mparntwe) Arrernte term artweye-artweye
can be understood in the following way:
The form artweye means the person/people who have the primary
responsibility for looking after something; the custodians or ‘owners’
of something. This form shows up in the term for parents, the term
for traditional owners of country and the term for the ancestors (‘the
custodians of us all’). In Arrernte the term artweye-ke-artweye means
related to one another in kinship. (Wilkins 2001: 496)
The suffix -gatuia appears on T.G.H. Strehlow’s genealogies collected from
Anmatyerr people in July/August 1968 at Alcoota and Laramba.29 Imora-gatuia,
for example, translates as ‘possum dreaming owner’ or ‘belonging to possum
27 Gavan Breen, email, 17.9.2007.

28 Garry Stoll worked for over three decades at Hermannsburg. Initially he worked as a mechanic and later
became the executive officer of the Finke River Mission. He is a fluent speaker of Aranda and was involved in
most aspects of public Western Aranda life, including the land rights movement.
29 T.G.H. Strehlow’s Diary 38 and Anmatjerra FT series IX.
219
The Aranda’s Pepa
dreaming’. The same dreaming affiliation appears on a Western Aranda family

tree as ‘imora kŋ. (kŋanintja)’. However, the suffix -gatuia appears in the word
pmaragatuia used in documents written for the Palm Valley Land Claim (Morton
1992 and Gray 1999).30 In the Land Claim by Alyawarra and Kaititja (Toohey
1978: 5) and Utopia Land Claim by Anmatjira and Alyawarra to Utopia Pastoral
Lease (Toohey 1980: 5) some patriclans had the tendency to add the suffix -rinya
(meaning ‘belonging to’) to their estate name. This though is another suffix.
In sum, Carl and T.G.H. Strehlow use inkata and knaribata to reference what
we today understand as primary Aranda land-owners. The term pmerekwerteye
that carries connotations of ownership has replaced some of the meaning that
was covered by the terms inkata and knaribata which implied ritual authority
and power.31 Austin-Broos (2004: 63) suggests that the impact of settlement life,
pastoralism with its ideas and notions of ‘ownership’ and the state’s jural order
shifted the focus from custodianship of rites and sites to ‘blocks’ of land and
‘bounded patrilineal estates’. A term such as pmerekwerteye with its affinity to
notions of European ownership possibly was a convenient one in the land claim
context and seems to have been reinforced by its use in legal procedures.
Change and continuity?

Clearly there is a tension between Carl and T.G.H. Strehlow’s respective emphasis
concerning connections to country in Western Aranda culture. While both
documented conception as important, their data seem to diverge with regard
to mother’s and father’s connections to place and dreaming. In fact Strehlow
senior did not even mention explicitly a connection to a father’s ‘totem’, only to
a patch of country that was inherited through patrilineal descent and associated
with patricouples. His data on ratapa (conception dreaming) and altjira (mother’s
conception dreaming) and associated places stands in contrast with the emphasis
that his son and others have given to dreamings and places inherited through
patrilineal principles. Carl’s altjira as well as ratapa were connected to mother,
both her own conception and that of her child. These personal details seem to
give ‘mother’s side’ some significant meaning in belonging to country. T.G.H.
Strehlow did not explore these mother’s connections in detail. His father’s
‘altjira’ would appear in some way in connection with the kutuŋula’s rights
to mother’s tjurunga ([1964] 1978: 38). In his work patrilineal connections
conferred primary land-ownership rights which were transferable through the
30 ‘-gatuia’ meaning ‘own’ or ‘self’ (Morton 1992).

31 The term pmererenye (A) meaning ‘belonging to country’ seems to give in the contemporary context some
counterbalance to the notions of ‘owner’ in the word pmerekwerteye. (Ngurraritja (L) has been translated to
me as pmererenye.) However, I have not discussed its translation and its underlying concepts sufficiently yet
with Aranda and Loritja people to make a conclusive statement here.
220
patriline. Connections and rights to a conception site he seems to have mainly

understood as an individuating characteristic within the context of a patrilineal
descent group, his njinaŋa group, and were generally not transferable. This may
have given the ritual group balance within their estate, as the people involved
shared a ritual focus but also had their own personal identity (Austin-Broos
2009: 116).
One wonders if Carl Strehlow’s informants provided him with these personal
details because that is what he seemed to ask rather than for an account of a
located socio-territorial order. Perhaps his style of questioning elicited personal
details most readily, or perhaps the personal details were the most readily
provided information. These seem to be egocentric principles, as described by
Myers ([1986] 1991), that are operating at the turn of the twentieth century. Or,
possibly, Carl Strehlow’s informants took it as evident that every person was
connected to a father’s dreaming, as it was obvious that all country on Western
Aranda territory had subsection affiliations, that is the bond between fathers
and their offspring was embedded in land.
A tight and literal reading of T.G.H. Strehlow’s work and the ideologies he
presented at different times during his long career as an anthropologist, have
led to the view that he promoted a rigid patrilineal model or gave too much
prominence to conception sites. It seems he was trying to grasp a land tenure
system which was undergoing shifts due to a number of events that had been
occurring since the 1870s, and focused at different times on different aspects
of the system. To understand the Western Aranda’s land ownership system
and the changes it was undergoing in the twentieth century, T.G.H. Strehlow’s
complete work spanning over four decades has to be considered. It shows that
he had found evidence for multiple paths to be included even in a system such
as the one of the Western Aranda (though the rights are not all equal) and that
it was changing as he was researching it. In his publications he seems to have
been oblivious of socio-cultural changes, as he opted to present the Aranda’s
‘classical’ system as if it had been handed down unchanged ‘since time began’.
The fact that T.G.H. Strehlow tried to capture an untouched, pre-contact world
of the Western Aranda people – an ideal Aranda world – in which demographic
and climatic accidents of a desert environment, like long droughts or the end of
a patriline, were not taken into account, shows clearly that he was not formally
trained in modern anthropology. Morton has argued that Strehlow junior
attempted ‘to over systematise a dynamic framework of land tenure in which
contradictions have been as historically significant as harmony and integration’
(Morton 1997a: 109). While the patrilineal model was likely to have been an
ideal even in a desert environment that was relatively well watered, such as the
areas of the Aranda, it would have been impractical, if not unrealistic. People
had to move to survive – and to maintain their far flung social networks, as
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The Aranda’s Pepa
they still do. In an environment as unpredictable and harsh as that of central

Australia, mechanisms to ensure the maintenance of knowledge and land
ownership needed to be inherent in a land tenure system. Their system had
to survive in a desert environment which only allowed a low demographic
density; the population was made up of very small groups, with lineages that
constantly expanded or diminished in numbers in unpredictable ways. T.G.H.
Strehlow’s model of Western Aranda land ownership does not always reflect
what contemporary indigenous landholding groups regard as true.
It also has to be kept in mind that Strehlow junior worked with men and did
very little research into the world of Aboriginal women. He made a remark
late in his oeuvre about women and their ritual knowledge. In Songs of Central
Australia, he writes briefly how little is known about the sacred life of Aboriginal
women and how regrettable this is (1971: 647–653). He remarked that women
‘were aware of all32 the landscape features associated with the various totems
located in their area of residence’ (Strehlow 1971: 648) as they were the ones
who ultimately determined the conception sites of their children, and that
there ‘is the undoubted existence of a body of unknown dimension of special
women’s lore, which used to be kept jealously secret from the men’ (Strehlow
1971: 649). His work depicts largely a male Aranda worldview. His bias towards
a patrilineal land tenure model may to a certain degree be the result of the lack
of consultation with women.
Nevertheless, there seems to be little doubt that Western Aranda society had
and still has a preference for the inheritance of knowledge through the patriline
connecting people to father’s father’s country. Carl Strehlow’s references on
how country is associated with subsections, and chieftainship is inherited
through the male line as well as his position on patrilineal descent, seem to
point to a patrilineally biased model, despite his evidence that matrifiliation and
conception were other pathways that were valid ways to claim rights to land
and very possibly emphasised by individuals.
In sum, we find generally in contemporary Western Aranda culture that the
group of landholders of a country consists of pmerekwerteye, who connect to
their land through their father’s father, and kwertengerle, whose rights and
responsibilities are mainly derived through mother’s father. They are the core
members of a landholding group under traditional laws and customs. People
who are connected to country and have rights and responsibilities in relation to
it through their father’s mother and mother’s mother are also called kwertengerle
and can acquire membership in a landholding group. Long-term residence,
conception sites, responsibility of shared dreaming tracks, and knowledge and
authority in relation to dreaming tracks and stories enhance the status of the
32 T.G.H. Strehlow’s emphasis.

222
latter kwertengerle (Kenny 2010: 42–48) – in rare cases this includes exceptional
individuals without descent links. Morton described a comparable situation
among Central Arrernte people:
While a person’s connections to, and rights in, all four grandparental
estates are held simultaneously, those connections tend to be more or
less ranked in people’s minds. One belongs first to the estate on one’s
father’s father; second to the estate one’s mother’s father; third to the
estate of one’s father’s mother; and fourth to the estate of one’s mother’s
mother. However, there may be exceptions to this ranking system
based on factors such as knowledge, seniority and long term residence.
(Morton 1997b: 26–27)
This type of model based on traditional principles manifests itself in the
context of land and native title claims and decision-making with regard to
some infrastructure and mining developments on Aboriginal land rather than
in everyday life. It is determined by dreaming associations and certain kinship
links, because many principles of land ownership are based on descent and who
has a right to acquire knowledge of the mythology associated with particular
parts of the landscape. Indeed, kin or rather descent-based connections to land
are becoming in the contemporary setting more prominent in claiming rights
and the accepted way to be part of a landholding group, in particular when the
distribution of resources from mining ventures or joint management of National
Parks are involved. Sutton (2003: 252) has observed that there is a tendency in
settled areas of Australia to move towards a cognatic model of inheritance to
rights in land. Western Aranda people seem to oscillate between a patrilineal
‘biased’ and a cognatic model depending on the social, economic and political
context.
Carl Strehlow’s material, and its many imponderable dimensions, especially
when it is placed beside that of his son, suggests something other than a mere
developmental sequence or a static model. Aboriginal rights to land in central
Australia have involved a significant range of personal as well as socio-centric
links. These have been ranked in a variety of ways, and can be made more or less
prominent, according to context. This is unsurprising in view of the Aranda’s
twentieth century history.
223
VIII. Positioning Carl Strehlow
in Australian Anthropology and
Intellectual History
Histories of Australian anthropology have had an overwhelmingly Anglophone
focus rendering invisible the contribution of the German humanistic tradition.
In this chapter I will make some suggestions as to how Carl Strehlow’s work
might be positioned in Australian anthropology and the implications of this for
a re-assessment of the work of Spencer and Gillen and T.G.H. Strehlow as well
as the history of the discipline more generally.
Old texts or ideas can become the object of current debate and reflection in a
discipline (Langham 1981: xxii). Carl Strehlow’s text, for instance, suggests new
forms of reflection on contemporary Australian anthropology and especially on
the way in which professionalism can promote research but also narrow the
history of a discipline. There are other early ethnographic writers including
W. Ridley, A.H. Howitt, R.H. Mathews, K. Langloh Parker and W.E. Roth from
whom new insight might be gained concerning how anthropology was shaped
specifically in Australia across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Using translations both from French and German, Martin Thomas (2007, 2011)
has made an impressive start on the work of R.H. Mathews. His tracing of the
linguistic journey involved in the publication of Mathews’ work, suggests
that Australian anthropology then may have been more cosmopolitan than it
is today. Chris Nobbs’ ‘The Bush Missionary’s Defence’ (Nobbs 2005: 26–53)
on missionary Otto Siebert makes a start on showing underlying premises that
lie outside an Anglophone tradition of a modern anthropology and its field
method. Once again, there is more than one route to an empirical discipline.
Silverman (2005) suggests national anthropologies should be aiming towards a
cosmopolitan discipline and Austin-Broos (1999: 215) proposes that to engage
with anthropology’s maturing path in the course of the twentieth century, it is
paramount in the Australian context to consider traditions outside of a British-
Australian intellectual world, that takes the psychological and hermeneutic
traditions of European anthropologies into account.
There are two forms of mainly Australian writing that frame Carl Strehlow’s
work. The first are comments, sketches and longer studies contemporaneous
with Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien and produced by
others interested in or engaged with Aboriginal people. These writings provide
a further important background to Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-
Australien. To ultimately place his work in perspective, and the work of
Spencer and Gillen, it is important to compare and contrast what they achieved
225
The Aranda’s Pepa
with other writers of the time. The focus should not be just on the ‘armchair’
anthropologists of Europe and Great Britain but also on the diarists, chroniclers
and policeman-scribblers who shaped popular attitudes to Aboriginal people.
It may have been some of the work of this latter group that most influenced
settler society in its view of indigenous Australians. It is in comparison with
this work that Australia’s transitional ethnographers need to be judged, for
what they achieved in a nascent science rather than for ways in which they fell
short of a modern anthropology. A history of how anthropology in Australia
enlightened its readers, rather than reinforced colonial prejudice, is still to be
written, although Hiatt’s Arguments about Aborigines (1996) makes a start.
The second set of literature I will address are some relevant discussions in the
history of Australian anthropology that bear on my study of The Aranda’s Pepa
and also differ from it. This book is unusual to the extent that it focuses only on
one major text, in this case of a missionary-scholar. It is the unique circumstance
of Carl Strehlow’s work, largely forgotten in Germany and hardly known in
Australia, that led me to this particular focus especially when I discovered
the von Leonhardi correspondence at the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice
Springs. It seemed a fitting redress for Carl Strehlow’s opus. The contemporary
writings that correspond most directly with this study are those by John
Mulvaney and his co-authors and co-editors in their works on both Spencer
and Gillen. Although these are not the only writings on a transitional figure
in Australian anthropology, they are certainly the most important. Possibly,
the other major work to consider beside these is Ian Langham’s study of ‘the
“school” of Cambridge Ethnology’ in which the roles of W.H.R. Rivers and A.R.
Radcliffe-Brown are central (Langham 1981: xxiii). His approach was influenced
by George Stocking’s mode of writing about anthropology, which he usefully
applied to early Australian anthropology.
Early contemporaneous work

In the 1860s and early 1870s J.M. Stuart (1865), W.C. Gosse (1873), P.E.
Warburton (1875), E. Giles (1889), and other explorers, recorded the presence
of Aboriginal people in central Australia by making some occasional remarks
on brief encounters and indigenous terms. These accounts were followed by
a number of books with contributions from a variety of people including
surveyors, missionaries, policemen and telegraph masters. Examples of
this genre which often came in the form of collations, are: R.B. Smyth’s The
Aborigines of Victoria with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts
of Australia and Tasmania (1878), G. Taplin’s The Folklore, Manners, Customs
and Languages of the South Australian Aborigines (1879), J.D. Woods’ The Native
Tribes of South Australia (1879) and E.M. Curr’s The Australasian Race (1886–
226
VIII. Positioning Carl Strehlow in Australian Anthropology and Intellectual History
1887). These collections cover subjects such as the origin of the Australian race,
their languages (usually wordlists and occasionally skeletal grammars) and their
‘customs, manners and habits’ in general. ‘Ethnographic’ writing by troopers,
such as Gason (1874) and Willshire (1888), were also published.
Samuel Gason, a mounted constable of the South Australian police force was
stationed at Lake Hope in the early 1870s, and took an interest in the Diyari
people of the region collecting ethnographic data on their social and religious
life. In 1874 he published The Dieyerie Tribe of Australian Aborigines; in the
same year he led punitive expeditions near Barrow Creek on Kaytetye country
(Nettelbeck and Foster 2007: 7). In 1888 William Willshire’s The Aborigines
of Central Australia appeared, which, according to Nettelbeck and Foster, ‘is
more tellingly a literary reconstruction of his experience and opinions as a
Mounted Constable in the Interior’ than an account of the ‘manners, customs
and languages’ (Nettelbeck and Foster 2007: 53).
Also noteworthy are Thomas Worsnop’s The Prehistoric Arts, Manufactures,
Works, Weapons, etc., of the Aborigines of Australia (1897), a survey of Aboriginal
art and material culture, and John Mathew’s Eaglehawk and Crow (1899).
Mathew attached special importance to his linguistic studies and was interested
in diffusionist thought. His data seemed to indicate that the distribution of
language proved that settlement of the continent was first in the north-east
where the lines of language converged and not, as was put forward in an earlier
hypothesis by Eyre and endorsed by Curr, that the first settlement was in the
north-west, and that the distribution of population was effected by the original
stream of people crossing to the south of Australia in three broad separate bands
(Mathew 1899: ix–xi).
W.E. Roth, Oxford educated, published in 1897 Ethnological Studies among the
North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, a classic in Australian anthropology.
Roth was a surgeon working in Boulia, Cloncurry and Normanton, where he
made his own empirical investigations into the languages and traditions of the
Aboriginal people of North-West-Central Queensland. He concluded that ‘his
tribes lacked any totemic beliefs, a finding which Spencer condemned as heresy’
(Mulvaney and Calaby 1985: 209). Spencer set out to demonstrate its falsity and
made derogatory remarks about Roth, as he did about R.H. Mathews (Mulvaney
and Calaby 1985: 195; Thomas 2004, 2011).
Like other Australian ethnographic writers of the time, R.H. Mathews (1841–
1918) was a self-taught anthropologist. Between 1893 and 1918, he published 171
anthropological reportages in English, French and German (Thomas 2007). Some
of it was based on his own observations, but like most of his contemporaries, he
also had to rely on the information supplied by others through correspondence.
Among his prolific writings were a number of articles on Aranda people
227
The Aranda’s Pepa
(Mathews 1906, 1907a,b,c, 1908) although he never visited central Australia

and seemed to base his accounts at least in part on his letter exchange with Carl
Strehlow.
E. Eylmann (1860–1926), a German doctor and adventurer, also had contact
with Strehlow. In 1908 he published Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien.
During his travels in remote Australia, he had been a guest of Carl Strehlow
at Hermannsburg Mission in 1898. His account contains some interesting
ethnographic and historical data on Aboriginal Australia as well as an ungracious
account of the Lutheran missions of the inland (Eylmann 1908: 464–482) who
had been his hosts. Monteath (2013) writes that Eylmann stood in the camp
of the anti-humanists who were also well represented amongst Germans, and
that his views differed fundamentally from those of the German missionary
anthropologists, above all Carl Strehlow.
In the 1860s with a stream of Protestant missionaries arriving in the Lake Eyre
region the Diyari language and culture received a great deal of attention. One of
the first missionaries at Killalpaninna Mission, Carl Schoknecht, wrote a Diyari
grammar and wordlist within two years of his arrival (Schoknecht 1997: 16,
80). His successors continued to collect data on the Diyari language and culture
until the mission was closed in 1917 (see Kneebone 2001; Stevens 1994). The
Lutheran ethnographers of this region are fairly well-known today. Among
these, missionaries Siebert and Reuther made outstanding contributions (Völker
2001; Hercus and McCaul 2004; Nobbs 2005). Reuther left a monumental work
behind called Die Diari. It remains unpublished despite Tindale’s efforts. In
1902 Siebert co-authored with M.E.B. Howitt ‘Some Native Legends from
Central Australia’ in Folklore and in 1910 his article ‘Sagen und Sitten der Dieri
und Nachbarstämme in Zentral-Australien’ was published in Globus with the
help of von Leonhardi (Völker 2001). Siebert’s unpublished correspondence
with Howitt remains a valuable source for the cultures of the Cooper Creek area
(see Hercus and McCaul 2004; Nobbs 2005). However, others also made records
of the Diyari. A.W. Howitt who had corresponded with S. Gason between 1879
and 1888 published ‘The Dieri and other kindred Tribes of Central Australia’
in 1891, which according to Nobbs (2007: 3), is the first comprehensive
ethnography about Aboriginal people in the Cooper Creek region.
However, among Aboriginal peoples in central Australia and in Australian
anthropology generally, the Aranda are now one of the best-documented
Aboriginal groups. The Aranda, as John Morton remarks, ‘need no introduction’
as they and their first significant ethnographers, Spencer and Gillen, were
propelled around the 1900s to international celebrity (Morton 1985: 3) and
are one of the ‘best-known Aboriginal groups in world anthropology’ (Morton
1992: 24; see also McKnight 1990). Their ethnographers and anthropologists are
among the finest.
228
The documentation of Aranda culture began when the first Lutheran missionaries,
A.H. Kempe, L. Schulze and W.F. Schwarz, arrived in 1877 at the site of Ntaria
in central Australia where they set up the Lutheran mission. As soon as they
had made first contacts with the indigenous population, they started to study
the language of the local people and collected material on their customs. By
1880–1881 they had produced a school primer and a book with bible stories,
psalms, hymns and prayers in the local language. In 1883 Kempe published his
first ethnographic account of the ‘Aldolinga’, as the people he had met at Ntaria
called themselves, ‘Zur Sittenkunde der Centralaustralischen Schwarzen’. In
1886 and 1887, F.E.H. Krichauff published ‘Customs, Religious Ceremonies,
etc., of the “Aldolinga” or “Mbenderinga” Tribe of Aborigines of the Krichauff
Ranges’, which was based on data collected by Kempe and Schulze. By the time
these missionaries left Hermannsburg Mission in the early 1890s they had also
published ‘A grammar and vocabulary of the language spoken by the Aborigines
of the MacDonnell Ranges’ (Kempe 1891) and ‘The Aborigines of the Upper and
Middle Finke River: their habits and customs’ (Schulze 1891). Schulze had also
corresponded with Howitt.1
After these early anthropological accounts on Aranda people and language by the
German missionaries, they became the subject of scientific research during the
Horn Scientific Expedition of 1894. E.C. Stirling, the expedition’s anthropologist
and the director of the South Australian Museum, collected ethnographic data
principally on the ‘Arunta’ (Stirling 1896: 9) which was published as the fourth
volume, Anthropology, in the expedition’s report. This volume also contains a
piece on Aboriginal beliefs by Frank Gillen. Baldwin Spencer, the expedition’s
zoologist and editor of the reports, made some remarks on the Aboriginal people
he had encountered in central Australia, which includes Gillen’s famous coining
of ‘alcheringa’ as the ‘dreamtime’ (Spencer 1896: 111). Gillen’s contribution was
not his first anthropological or linguistic attempt. Previously, he had collected
wordlists, and one of them had been published in Curr’s third volume of The
Australasian Race in 1886. He had also made field notes, some of which were
published posthumously (Gillen 1968, 1995).
Based on the observation of ceremonial cycles performed in 1896 for a number
of weeks at the Alice Springs telegraph station, and Gillen’s previous and
subsequent field research, Spencer and Gillen’s first classic The Native Tribes
of Central Australia appeared in 1899. It was followed by The Northern Tribes
of Central Australia in 1904 which was the result of a long fieldtrip from Alice
Springs north along the Telegraph Line in 1901. One year earlier Gillen read and
published a Frazerian paper, called Magic amongst the Natives of Central Australia
in Melbourne which Spencer had written (Morphy [1997] 2001: 28). Their work
was ‘in no small measure sponsored’ (Morton 1985: 12) and mentored by James
1 Schulze’s letters to A.W. Howitt, 1887–1889 (State Library of Victoria, Howitt Papers MF 459, Box 1051/Icc).
229
The Aranda’s Pepa
Frazer (Marett and Penniman 1932). These books address both physical and
social aspects of Aboriginal people, but focus on totemic beliefs and ceremonial
practices. After Gillen’s death in 1912, Spencer continued publishing and his
oeuvre amounted to several more books and reports on Aboriginal people of the
Northern Territory, culminating just before his death in two volumes called The
Arunta (1927), which included Gillen as co-author.
Another anthropological classic called The Native Tribes of South-East Australia
by A.W. Howitt (1830–1908) was published in 1904. It was based on his field-
data and the data of dozens of others with whom he corresponded. In 1873
he had joined ‘Dr Lorimer Fison in investigating the classificatory system of
relationships, which obtains among these savages’ (Howitt 1904: vii). Their results
had been published in Kamilaroi and Kurnai: Group Marriage and Relationship,
and Marriage by Elopement in 1880 and ‘From Mother-right to Father-right’
in 1883 and were indebted to Morgan’s approach to kinship studies. These
publications which were concerned with origins of group-marriage maintained
they had found evidence for the practice, which, according to Hiatt, belongs to
‘one of the most notable fantasies in the history of anthropology’ (Hiatt 1996:
56). Howitt understood wife-sharing between two brothers as group marriage,
evident in a practice called pirrauru, by which an older brother granted access
to his wife to a younger brother. In 1899 Spencer and Gillen reported a similar
institution among the Urabunna giving Howitt’s finding powerful backing.
However, Malinowski would seal the fate of group marriage in 1913 with his The
Family among the Australian Aborigines that showed that Howitt and Spencer’s
theoretical loyalties had led them to distort the facts of Aboriginal family life
(Hiatt 1996: 45, 51).
Earlier in 1906 N.W. Thomas had taken issue with the existence of group marriage
in Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia, a summary of the
existing Australian material on kinship study (Thomas 1906a: 123; Hiatt 1996:
46–47). Generally N.W. Thomas belonged to those who did not accept many
of the assumptions generated by evolutionistic thinking. He commented on
Australian anthropology in German and English journals. In 1905, for example,
he wrote ‘Über Kulturkreise in Australien’ in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie and
in 1906 ‘Dr. Howitt’s Defence of Group-Marriage’ in Folklore. In the same year
he also published Natives of Australia, a summary of the existing literature
on the Aborigines of Australia, and an article called ‘The Religious Ideas of
the Arunta’. These works were literature based and relied on information
obtained from people in the field. For example, Thomas corresponded briefly
with Carl Strehlow asking him to fill in some gaps left by Spencer and Gillen’s
publications.2
2 See for example N.W. Thomas to Carl Strehlow, 22.10.1904 (SRC 1904/39) and 27.4.1905 (SRC 1905/58).
230
Andrew Lang, another armchair anthropologist, also rejected the idea of group
marriage that led him to an interest in K. Langloh Parker’s work. In the foreword
of her book The Euahlayi Tribe: A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia (1905),
he remarked that she had not found the custom ‘by which married men and
women, and unmarried men, of the classes which may intermarry, are solemnly
allotted to each other as more or less permanent paramours’ (Lang 1905: xi).
He also took the opportunity to hint that Parker’s collections of certain beliefs
might be styled as ‘religious’.
Some press notices of K. Langloh Parker’s earlier compilations of folklore,
Australian Legendary Tales and More Australian Legendary Tales, remark that
‘the wild man of that land deserve to occupy a somewhat higher position in the
scale of intelligence than that which is generally attributed to them’ and that
‘The poetic and imaginative quality of these tales will surprise readers who are
chiefly impressed by the savagery and the degraded condition of the Australian
blacks’ (advertising space in Mathew’s Eaglehawk and Crow 1899).
A number of English intellectuals were sceptical about the wide-sweeping
generalisations made by the evolutionists, who were often lawyers or natural
scientists. The literature generated by people with clerical or humanistic
backgrounds tended to avoid the sweeping generalisations of natural scientists
and focused more on specific cultures and groups. But as natural science was
the dominant paradigm and a new era seemed to be dawning, it dominated
mainstream thinking – not least because it delivered some readily understandable
generalisations such as progressive moves from ‘magic, religion to science’ that
were attractive to the Victorian mind (see Stocking 1987, 1995).
Historical writing on transitional Australian

anthropology (c.1890–1920)
Without doubt the most impressive corpus of commentary to consider in relation
to Carl Strehlow’s work is the body of work produced by John Mulvaney and
his associates that celebrates the life of Baldwin Spencer and, to a lesser degree,
that of Frank Gillen. These works include Mulvaney and Calaby’s biography of
Baldwin Spencer, not only as anthropologist but also as biologist, public man
of letters and administrator (Mulvaney and Calaby 1985). This corpus includes
the collection of Baldwin Spencer’s photographs selected and annotated by
Geoffrey Walker and edited by Ron Vanderwal to which Mulvaney wrote an
introduction (Walker and Vanderwal 1982). Interestingly, a second edition of
Spencer’s photographs, this time edited by Philip Batty, Lindy Allen and John
Morton was produced in 2005. It reflects the impact of historical perspectives
in anthropology and a consequent effort in the selection to underline both the
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The Aranda’s Pepa
specificity of Aboriginal people, especially in their ritual life, and the colonial
context in which Spencer took his photographs. For example, the second edition
includes photographs of body decoration and ritual acts not included in the
earlier selection, and photographs of living conditions, on the fringe of Darwin,
for instance, that help contextualise Spencer’s other images.
In his introduction to the first collection of Baldwin Spencer’s photographs,
Mulvaney canvases the view of Spencer that he, and Howard Morphy in
particular, would develop in their later work. The latter involved editing the
correspondence of Gillen to Spencer and also other outback correspondence
with Spencer especially from Constable Ernest Cowle who resided for some time
south of Hermannsburg at Illamurta (see Mulvaney, Morphy and Petch [1997]
2001; Mulvaney, Petch and Morphy 2000). While neither Mulvaney nor Morphy
deny Spencer’s strong evolutionary views, they tend to give them less weight
by emphasising their data collection through fieldwork that was the product
of the Gillen-Spencer partnership. Mulvaney sums up Spencer’s evolutionary
position quite precisely:
Spencer believed that biological evolution went along with mental
development and material progress. He conceived of Aborigines as
surviving fossil remnants from the remote past, whose social and belief
systems reflected this pristine condition. (Mulvaney 1982: x)
At the same time, Mulvaney observes that Spencer was a ‘generous’ man who
attended to the ‘individuality’ of his indigenous photographic subjects. He
underlines that Spencer and Gillen’s research, due to its density, can be revisited
and has been by other anthropologists. Morphy goes further to propose that the
partnership of Spencer and Gillen involved an example of the newly emerging
‘fieldworker theorist’ with one particular twist: ‘[R]ather than being combined
in a single person [the fusion results from] their separate identities in joint
research and co-authorship’ (Morphy [1997] 2001: 43). Morphy seems to suggest
that by over-emphasising Spencer’s evolutionary concerns, the partnership has
been done an injustice in histories of social anthropology (Morphy [1997] 2001:
30, 46). As a consequence, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski have been given
more prominence than Spencer and Gillen as trail-blazers of modern fieldwork
and the ethnographic method. Morphy seems to propose that ‘theory’ in this
work ultimately has been less important than the actual data, and he also seems
to give Baldwin Spencer equal credit with Frank Gillen for the production of
that data in The Native Tribes of Central Australia.
This argument is difficult to sustain when it is juxtaposed with Philip
Jones’s preliminary research on the relative ethnographic contributions
of Gillen and Spencer to The Native Tribes of Central Australia. His
examination of correspondence and text reveals that, notwithstanding Gillen’s
232
acknowledgements of Spencer, the latter more often acted as editor than as

original contributor to the work. In addition, many of the original photographs
in their first publication were Gillen’s rather than Spencer’s (see Jones 2005).
If Spencer was mainly the theorist in this fieldwork-theorist fusion, then
his contribution to this partnership needs to be carefully re-assessed for, as
Mulvaney indicates, his theory was a radical evolutionary type that would soon
be superseded by others.
Notable in these discussions is the absence of any sustained attempt to assess
the impact of Spencer’s evolutionism on the ethnography and interpretations
that the pair produced, whether it be their views on conception (but see Wolfe
1999), the controversy about altjira and the presence or absence of a high
god, or their views on the inheritance of totems. Morphy ([1997] 2001, 2012)
focuses mainly on the production of fieldwork data per se and Mulvaney in
his biography of Spencer, authored with Calaby, addresses a host of activities
well beyond anthropology (Mulvaney and Calaby 1985), which included some
foundational ideas and projects for future assimilation policies (Ganter 2005:
124–129). However, Mulvaney and Calaby do suggest that the feuding relation
between ‘Spencer and the Lutheran authorities’ was regrettable and detrimental
to the advancement of anthropological research in Australia and that Gillen’s
view of Strehlow contributed to Spencer’s attitudes towards the Lutherans
(Mulvaney and Calaby 1985: 391). Mulvaney and Calaby remark:
The fact that Strehlow was to publish significant studies of Aranda
religion, the only other major anthropology of this area, was to
compound the rancour which developed between Spencer and the
Lutheran authorities, for they conflict with his own interpretations.
(Mulvaney and Calaby 1985: 124)
Furthermore, the biographers also suggest that whatever his critiques of the
Christian Strehlow, Spencer’s own research methods were by no means beyond
reproach. They note that in Spencer’s The Arunta (1927), he virtually claims a
‘monopoly of knowledge’:
He [Spencer] disposed of Strehlow’s conflicting evidence as unreliable,
because his informants were not “unspoilt” by culture contact, whereas
he assumed that Gillen’s elders were authentic “primitives”. He felt
confident that no future anthropologist “will ever be able” to add
anything substantial to the Arunta testament according to Spencer
and Gillen. Their record provided “as much insight as we are now ever
likely to gain into the manner of life of men and women who have long
since disappeared in other parts of the world”. However, because their
traditional informants were now dead, he had the comforting sense that
their veracity was unassailable. This was, however, a sad reflection on his
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The Aranda’s Pepa
conception of scientific research method in anthropology. He disparaged

Strehlow’s informants, but his own were safely beyond questioning
in this world. In this sense, Spencer was the classic example of the
proprietorial anthropologist, who claimed a people as “his.”’ (Mulvaney
and Calaby 1985: 379)
Morphy proposes that it does ‘not matter what Spencer and Gillen labelled
Arrernte rituals and ceremonies – whether they classified them as religious or
magical practices’ (Morphy [1997] 2001: 37). This underestimates a powerful
underlying framework in both academic and popular life that, in Australia,
has treated indigenous practices and belief as survivals of an earlier time, and
thereby with contempt.
Austin-Broos has argued that although ‘Gillen’s knowledge of the marriage
system and churinga led him beyond the issues of primitive promiscuity and
totemic cannibalism as they had been posed by Baldwin Spencer’, Gillen failed
nonetheless to formulate either anthropological or historical questions to
replace ‘these spurious evolutionary ones’ (Austin-Broos 1999: 210–211). Thus,
she argues, it is ‘inappropriate to compare, as Morphy does, Gillen’s historical
interests with the interests of anthropologists today in their discussions of myth
and historical transformations’ (Austin-Broos 1999: 211). Rumsey also questions
Morphy’s claims for Spencer and Gillen. Morphy argues that some of their
‘key concepts’, ‘the network of ancestral tracks that intersect the landscape’,
actually specified an Aboriginal ontology (see Morphy [1997] 2001: 37). In reply,
Rumsey showed that ‘the centrality of place in the people-totem-place nexus’
was a theme that Spencer and Gillen did not even closely apprehend (Rumsey
2001: 42). These views suggest that the advances of theory in conjunction with
ethnography that Morphy imputes to Spencer and Gillen would only emerge
some decades later as a professional anthropology developed. Once again,
this is not to diminish the achievements of Spencer and Gillen as early field
anthropologists of central Australia, but rather to locate them appropriately in
terms of subsequent as well as previous work.
Beyond the status of their field research, it is Spencer and Gillen’s influence
on public and political life that makes them a difficult case. It seems clear
that they had a major impact on public opinion that shaped negative views of
Aboriginal Australians (Mulvaney [1997] 2001: 9; Ganter 2005). In the context
of this opinion, functionalism for all its limitations was critical and almost
revolutionary. In arguing that all the elements of a people’s practice and belief
are ‘functional’ in the present, it eschewed the evolutionary assumption of
lower level survivals from the past in a superior present. As Morphy remarks,
Spencer and Gillen were ‘by no means embryonic functionalists’ (Morphy [1997]
2001: 50). They belonged to a Victorian past that subscribed to evolutionism;
one that W.H.R. Rivers, Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski had to reject as they
234
developed the discipline. Therefore it is fair to conclude that their work, like
Strehlow’s as well, requires very careful and dispassionate treatment concerning
both its strengths and its limitations. Few would argue with the view that
both Christianity and social Darwinism can impair ethnography (Austin-Broos
1999: 214). Carl Strehlow and Baldwin Spencer each instituted a different
way of looking at Aboriginal futures. Overall for the Lutherans, the idea was
adaptation to the new circumstances if not assimilation; and for Spencer and the
like, reserves, where Aboriginal people could remain much as they always had
been and ‘humanely’ die out. Both ideas were highly problematic. Nonetheless,
the idea that Aboriginal people could not or should not have engaged with the
new world that was clearly overtaking them was fundamentally flawed.
As Mulvaney and Calaby indicate, and as Hiatt (1996) confirmed, these types
of anthropological debate have continued throughout the twentieth century.
Teasing out the real value of works that have been tainted by their own times
cannot be done by ‘exonerating accounts’, critiques of other researchers who
might have incorrectly read something into it, textual analysis, or a personal,
purposive or interpretive reading of early ethnographic texts (see for instance
Morphy 2012: 545–560). Indeed, it does not do these texts justice. Forms of
work are needed that integrate personal and institutional agendas with the
particular intellectual issues and debates that engaged practitioners and
shaped anthropology. Intellectual biographies that address the anthropology
produced by these early writers furthers our understanding of ongoing issues
in modern anthropology and helps to identify the shadows of early paradigms
in contemporary thought. Austin-Broos (1999: 215) writes, for example, that
a ‘thorough assessment of Baldwin Spencer would require at least a careful
comparison of his work with that of W.H.R. Rivers and Franz Boas, in addition to
a comparative assessment of Frank Gillen’s regional ethnographic achievements’.
In this light R.H. Mathews’ work on Bora type initiation ceremonies should also
be carefully examined (Mathews 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897). It appears likely that
Mathews’ extensive work on these matters influenced Spencer. For example,
Spencer had ‘communicated’ in 1896, Mathews’ paper on ‘The Bora of the
Kamilaroi’ (Mathews 1897: 137–173), to the Royal Society of Victoria just before
he left for his fieldwork on central Australian ceremonies in 1896.
In his account of the early ‘“school” of Cambridge Ethnology’, Langham
(1981) analyses a range of work conducted mainly in Oceania and the Pacific
that forged the method of early professional social anthropology as a fieldwork
discipline. Central to his account are W.H.R. Rivers and his genealogical method,
developed in the course of the 1898 Torres Strait Expedition with Haddon,
Seligman and others, and the innovations of Radcliffe-Brown following his West
Australian fieldwork in 1910–1912 and his earlier writings on Australian social
235
The Aranda’s Pepa
organisation.3 Langham stipulates clearly the bases on which he distinguishes

the discipline of social anthropology: First, it had some key terms, ‘society’,
‘function’ and ‘structure’, meaning in the latter case, for instance, ‘the
combination of behavioural options employed by the society’ and reflected in
further terminological distinctions such as ‘patrilineal’ and ‘matrilocal’ (Langham
1981: xii–xiv). Second, this anthropology provided ‘exhaustive treatment of
restricted social groups’ produced through ‘intensive and prolonged fieldwork’
(Langham 1981: xv). A third feature was that the discipline had ‘close links
with British imperialism’, being largely dependent on government grants for
the intensive fieldwork pursued. He comments:
An anthropology with the avowed aim of uncovering the factors which
kept societies in smoothly-functioning harmony, and a national colonial
policy which imposed its will upon distant peoples by plugging into
the indigenous political organization, could not have been innocent
playmates. (Langham 1981: xv)
Finally, he notes the centrality of kinship studies as the major component of
comparative work in forms of social organisation in British social anthropology.
Namely, a style of study that focused directly on investigated forms of social
relatedness, like Meggitt’s Desert People (1962), rather than notions projected
from Europe.
With Radcliffe-Brown’s appointment in Sydney, Langham notes the beginnings
in Australia of social anthropology as a professional discipline (see also Gray
2007). Once again, he is careful to stipulate the criteria: (i) that there exist the
opportunity for rigorous training by practitioners; (ii) that an income is earned
from ‘contributions to the subject’; (iii) that scientific findings are propagated
systematically;4 (iv) that institutionalisation occurs, preferably at universities;
and (v) that the scientific output becomes sufficiently technical to command a
specialist ‘group of fellow practitioners’ (Langham 1981: 245).
These specifications of a particular anthropology that is also a professional
discipline, frame Langham’s discussion of the various debates around kinship
analysis that progressively marked out the parameters of social anthropology.
His study helps to locate the phenomenon of ‘transitional’ anthropology
exemplified by Carl Strehlow as well as Spencer and Gillen. In his terms, neither
Spencer and Gillen nor Carl Strehlow were engaged in a modern and professional
anthropology. And he makes a further pertinent observation on why he would
consider this to be the case. At the end of the nineteenth century, the agenda for
research was very much set by comparative religionists so that Frazer (Spencer’s
3 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown was professor of the Department of Anthropology at Sydney University between 1926
and 1929 before he travelled to Chicago and thence back to England where he became Professor at Oxford.
4 The journal Oceania was first published in 1930.
236
patron), outside of anthropology, and Tylor within it, were both focused on
issues of religion and evolution rather than matters of comparative social
organisation (Langham 1981: xviii, xx, 49). These were also issues that absorbed
Carl Strehlow and Baldwin Spencer. While they collected data on class systems
and Strehlow additionally genealogical data, these did not yet present analyses
in comparative social organisation as such. Spencer and Gillen in particular took
their lead from Lewis Henry Morgan (1871) and his interest in classificatory
terminologies. It would not be until the impact of Rivers, and his genealogical
method, that this interest would be refined in Australia and elsewhere.
Langham designated Radcliffe-Brown as the anthropologist writing on
indigenous Australia who took the next step. Here he mirrors the mainstream
of Australian anthropology that excluded T.G.H. Strehlow’s work for a lengthy
period, not least because he pursued his father’s central interest in language
and myth and augmented these with his seminal work on indigenous Australian
ontology. Issues of social organisation were secondary to Strehlow jnr and would
remain so, due to the intellectual tradition in which he had been raised. Géza
Róheim also pursued a tradition somewhat foreign to British social anthropology
though Hiatt, with his interest in psychoanalysis, engaged with this work,
and the Berndts who contributed to Róheim’s Festschrift Psychoanalysis of
Culture. However, where central Australian ethnography is concerned, it took
the work of Nancy Munn (1970) and her interest in the relationship between
the individual and the collectivity as mediated by the object world to begin
the contemporary re-integration of this tradition into Australian anthropology.
Recent interests in a contemporary phenomenology, or social phenomenology,
have redeemed T.G.H. Strehlow’s work for an interested audience (see, for
instance, Myers [1986] 1991; Morton 1987; Redmond 2001; Musharbash 2008;
Austin-Broos 2009).
These issues bear on Langham’s proposal that his study of the British tradition
is intended to echo the work of George Stocking who, although his essays
range widely through many terrains of mainly ‘Victorian’ and early modern
anthropology, tends to take his standpoint from contemporary cultural
anthropology as it is practised in the United States. This means that Baldwin
Spencer, whom Stocking takes to be ‘the ethnographer’ in the pair of Spencer
and Gillen, figures fleetingly in some of his essays, while Carl Strehlow does not
figure at all, and his son T.G.H. Strehlow only in a footnote (see Stocking 1987,
1995: 97). Langham suggests that history writing in anthropology should take
contemporary issues into account and use older texts to interrogate present
assumptions. He remarks that Stocking uses his histories often ‘with the express
purpose of demolishing myths about the history of anthropology’ and to craft
‘argument[s]’ that ‘modern practitioners of the trade will find challenging’
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The Aranda’s Pepa
(Langham 1981: xxii). In this respect, Langham’s and Stocking’s work differs
from that of Mulvaney and Calaby (1985) who produced a conventional
biography of Spencer, independent of specific anthropological reference points.
This discussion of the contrast between the British and German-American
traditions has relied on the initial contrast between Spencer’s Darwinism and
Strehlow’s humanism. To be fair it could be said that the continuity in the
English tradition was its general materialism and instrumentalism, rather than
Darwinism per se, which is partly what made it turn to or stay with kinship,
politics and, to a lesser degree, economics. Religion, more in the sense of
‘meaning’, remained somewhat an add-on until perhaps the 1960s, although
T.G.H. Strehlow was trying to straddle this divide in his early essays in the 1930s
published as Aranda Traditions (1947). These matters have progressed much in
contemporary work and in the Arandic context has led to a more mature state
in Austin-Broos’ Arrernte Present Arrernte Past (2009) in which she forcefully
argues for the need to deal with ‘economy’ and ‘culture’ in the same breath.
Repositioning T.G.H. Strehlow

Carl Strehlow’s opus has implications for the assessment of his youngest son’s
work. Without doubt the father’s masterpiece furnished the foundation for the
work of T.G.H. Strehlow. The myth and song collection in Die Aranda- und
Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907–1920) provided a basic model for
Songs of Central Australia (1971) – T.G.H. Strehlow’s much celebrated work.
Carl’s genealogies gave his son the opportunity to construct family trees reaching
sometimes back from the 1960s to the early decades of the nineteenth century.
In both these domains of ethnographic work the achievements of the son far
surpassed those of the father in volume and in acknowledgements. However, Carl
Strehlow’s unresourced and lonely work, with only von Leonhardi’s support,
was equally remarkable in its time. Although T.G.H. Strehlow was marginalised
from academic anthropology, he had the support of the University of Adelaide
and the Australian National Research Council for many of his ventures.
Moreover, Carl Strehlow’s massive handwritten dictionary that was intended
to give ‘anyone’ the chance to know the significance of Aranda and Loritja
myths,5 sat for a lifetime unpublished on T.G.H. Strehlow’s desk as his personal
reference work. Finally, the father smoothed the path for the son in personal
as well as scholarly ways. Carl Strehlow’s standing among central Australian
people conferred a privileged position on his youngest son that facilitated his
collection of confidential and classified information. It is beyond the scope of
these remarks to explore the reasons why T.G.H. Strehlow allowed his father’s

238
work to lie untranslated in obscurity throughout his own Australian research

career. Why parts of Carl’s work were not deposited at the Strehlow Research
Centre and some material only discovered in the 1990s at the house of T.G.H.
Strehlow’s widow, Kathleen, are things that we may never know.
T.G.H. Strehlow gained crucial insights from his father’s work, but also details
such as his statistics on natural species in central Australia. He recorded these
in his first diary (1932: 2), and this record subsequently found its way into
the second seminal essay of Aranda Traditions (1947: 66–67) – based on his
father’s dictionary work.6 Aranda Traditions (T.G.H. Strehlow 1947) is dedicated
to the detailed explanation of the particularities of different Arandic groups and
specification, which is reminiscent of early particularism and clearly references
the German view that language, including the oral literature of a people, is the
manifestation of the Geist of a people. All the essays in this publication draw on
data or comments from Carl Strehlow’s work and possibly from von Leonhardi’s
letters that were in his possession.
One of von Leonhardi’s main concerns was with unwarranted generalisations,
a view echoed by T.G.H. Strehlow when he rebutted Baldwin Spencer’s attack
on his father’s work (Strehlow 1947: 68–69, 83). Spencer had alleged that it
was nonsense to propose that tjurunga were ever mentioned in the presence
of women or that, wrapped with strings to prevent women from seeing them,
these tjurunga were laid in wooden baby-carrying trays to hasten children’s
growth (Strehlow 1908: 80; Spencer 1927: 586). When Strehlow junior defended
his father he did so using not simply his own observation but also the carefully
worded observations of both von Leonhardi (1904)7 and Carl Strehlow (Strehlow
1910: 7–8).8 T.G.H. Strehlow wrote:
… European writers have fallen into serious mistakes owing to their fatal
habit of dumping together irreconcilable beliefs collected from different
Aranda groups and then attempting to work out a coherent system of
religious thought and ceremonial customs for the ‘tribe’ regarded as a
coherent whole. (Strehlow 1947: 69)
In making these remarks, my intention is not to disqualify T.G.H. Strehlow as a
scholar – he was an excellent one – but rather to place the achievements of father
and son in a more appropriate relation. He admitted that his own research was not
completely created ex nihilo. Most great thinkers, he observed, have ‘certainly
been greatly indebted to their own cultures’ (Strehlow [1967] 2005: 86). Despite
a certain amount of unreferenced reliance on Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in
Zentral-Australien and his father’s language studies, he took his father’s work a
6 Quoted in Chapter V.
7 Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 28.8.1904. Quoted in Chapter IV.
8 Quoted in Chapter IV.
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The Aranda’s Pepa
step further by conceptualising the specificity of an Aboriginal ontology and in

so doing arguably made Aboriginal culture an object of wonder for many non-
indigenous Australians. The father’s work and intellectual background allowed
the son to write about indigenous relations to land in a way that had not been
done prior to the publication of Aranda Traditions (1947). T.G.H. Strehlow ends
his first essay on Aranda traditions with a Herderian remark that may reflect
his father’s and his own German enculturement. He wrote what no Anglophone
anthropologist would have penned9 namely that ‘the soul of a race is enshrined
in its legends’ (Strehlow 1947: 46).
It is therefore unfortunate that only late in his career did T.G.H. Strehlow start
to look towards North America for ideas on how to integrate his thoughts on
culture and language in a more explicit anthropological method. In 1967 he
gave a talk entitled ‘Man and Language’ (Strehlow [1967] 2005: 76–88) at the
University of Adelaide. In comments that were conversational in style, he
presents in an idiosyncratic and almost anachronistic way, his views on the
importance of language study to understanding culture, such that anthropology
should be seen to entail appropriate training in linguistics. The divergence of
British social anthropology from the language and culture studies of German
particularism had made it necessary for T.G.H. Strehlow to state in an awkward
fashion matters his father had seemed to take for granted. Far from criticising
Strehlow junior, this event reflects the limited representation in Australia at
the mid-century point of the style of anthropology that Franz Boas founded
and promoted in the United States. At that time in Adelaide, T.G.H. Strehlow’s
talk was a plea for collaboration between the disciplines, an argument that the
study of people must be accompanied by the study of language and vice versa
(Kenny and Mitchell 2005: 5). In these remarks the son seemed to respond, albeit
unconsciously, to his father’s German intellectual and anthropological roots, as
revealed in Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien.
9 John Morton, pers. comm., 13.11.2012.

240
Conclusion
Perhaps it is fair to say that Carl Strehlow’s masterpiece and its context,
demonstrate that every ‘hero’ of past scholarship is but one notable route among
others to better understand contemporary thought. This book has been devoted
to elucidating his work, both its strengths and its limitations, and the tradition
of German humanistic anthropology in Australia. In Part One of this book, I have
addressed the wider intellectual context in Germany and in Lutheran Australia
that might have shaped his ideas, directly or indirectly. In Part Two, I have
discussed his legacy for today’s anthropology, and also the ways in which his
intellectual method fell short of a modern anthropology. Carl Strehlow’s opus
represents a transitional phase in modern anthropology.
Noting the transitional status of Carl Strehlow’s text in its relation to modern
anthropology, it is also worth noting what Carl Strehlow offered, and
what modern ethnography has lost. A decade or a lifetime ‘in the field’ has
become almost unknown in anthropological practice. An acute and effective
fieldworker, a committed empiricist, he nonetheless brought with him implicit
models from Europe that did not fit indigenous Australian cultures. Still, his
European preconceptions and assumptions allowed him to begin systematic data
collection in a way that was rare for the period and remains of immense value.
This data as discussed in Chapters V to VII furnished many starting points for
central developments in the modern field of twentieth century anthropology.
In this sense he was collecting material for a new century of anthropology; the
ingredients that would be essential for a modern comparative and specifying
study of societies and their cultures are present in his work. While Die Aranda-
und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien supplies source material for the
study of religion and society, it serves another purpose which he could not
have anticipated at the turn of the century: land rights, native title and mining
and royalty agreements. These matters make Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme
in Zentral-Australien a work of international significance in anthropology’s
history. It is a classic that stands beside other transitional Australian works of
his time such as Howitt, Spencer and Gillen, Langloh Parker or Mathews, and
even the early works of Franz Boas.
Carl Strehlow’s importance into the present is particularly evident in the
context of land and native title claims in which his materials have provided
unmistakable evidence that connects claimants to named ancestors who
occupied and exploited the area claimed before ‘Sovereignty’ occurred in 1825
in the Northern Territory. T.G.H. Strehlow integrated his father’s data collection
into his work and together they produced a truly unique record of marriage,
relatedness, place and ritual significance. In the land rights movement and
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The Aranda’s Pepa
native title context the ethnographic detail of this record has not only shown the
physical connection of named Aboriginal individuals to their traditional lands
but has also demonstrated cultural continuity. No other indigenous Australian
group can draw on such a rich cultural heritage record and deep and detailed
genealogical documentation. Maybe ironically, this record has so impinged on
Western Aranda consciousness that it has become an artefact in their modern
culture, invested with their own use-values.
I have also sought to draw out some of the anthropological implications of Carl
Strehlow’s views in relation to the social Darwinistic work of his contemporaries,
the role of language, the high god and ‘altjira’ issues, European frameworks
that impinged on and limited Carl Strehlow’s anthropology, and his humanistic
position that accepted cultural diversity and the gamut of human possibilities
among the Aranda and Loritja. The main difference between Strehlow’s work
and that of most other Australian researchers of his time is that he did not use
ranked categories to position Aranda and Loritja beliefs at the baseline of mental
development.
For an intelligent young missionary as Carl Strehlow was, educated in a
Lutheran humanistic tradition, Baron von Leonhardi’s request to train his gaze
on language and myth, and those for further clarifications that followed, made
sense. This was the simple foundation on which their collaboration was built.
This simple fact reflects that Strehlow’s orientation to the world and the people
he encountered in it was shaped by a particular cultural milieu, intellectual
life, theology and missionary practice. It is important to note that beyond von
Leonhardi’s engagements with Andrew Lang, and Lang’s engagement with James
Frazer, not to mention Baldwin Spencer’s jousts with the shadow of Strehlow, von
Leonhardi and Strehlow opened up a correspondence in which the recording of
myth and language was foundational for learning about central Australian life.
This was their route to an empirical science that differed in radical ways from
the route through developmental stages as reflected in biology. Though engaged
with ritual practice, Gillen and Spencer used their data on that practice to
distance and subordinate Aboriginal intellectual life to that of Europeans. This
was reflected especially in their views on Aranda nescience concerning human
birth (see Hiatt 1996; Wolfe 1999: 9–42). Possibly the true nature of Strehlow’s
work was most evocatively rendered by Marcel Mauss when he remarked that
the volumes represented a form of an Aranda Rig Veda (Mauss 1913: 103). This
ancient collection of Hindu hymnal chants is also one of the earlier records of
Indo-European language and thereby a philological treasure. Perhaps the same
might be said of Carl Strehlow’s work on myths collected in Aranda and Loritja
language as well of his son’s later work.
The singularity of Carl Strehlow’s work is underlined not merely by the contrast
it presents to Spencer’s and Gillen’s texts but also by the contrast that the work
242
Conclusion
on Aboriginal myth of the Strehlows, father and son, presents to the rest of
Australian anthropology. Save for the work of Róheim, also at Hermannsburg
shortly after Carl Strehlow’s time, there is nothing in the Australian literature
quite like their early attempts to specify an indigenous ontology. Yet the manner
in which Carl proceeded, supported by von Leonhardi, seems to have been
nothing more than a shared and self-evident method. Carl Strehlow’s route may
have seemed the natural course for a German missionary-scholar. In the first
instance, he lived intimately over a long period with a group of hunting and
gathering people who were gradually becoming sedentary. He learned their
languages as required by good missionary practice. But as he learnt, and began
recording myth from his key Aranda collaborators Loatjira, Pmala, Tjalkabota
and Talku, it became evident to him that their cultures were being revealed
through their oral forms. So absorbing was this task, and illuminating, that less
than a year before he died Strehlow confidently repudiated any suggestion that
the Aranda’s modest technology might reflect a limited intellectual life. ‘Never’
Strehlow said.1
This confidence was born of both extensive exposure ‘in the field’, and
also of an environing intellectual milieu. This milieu was both secular and
theological. It suggested the possibility of multiple cultures, once thought of
as God’s plenitude but, in Carl Strehlow’s time, increasingly identified with a
multiplicity of languages that each carried a people’s own spirit and intellect
but also the capacity to translate Euro-Christian truth. Through the particular
inheritance embodied in the rise of nineteenth century German anthropology
based on thought initiated by Herder and developed in the work of the von
Humboldts and then Bastian and Virchow, an appreciation of the psychic unity
of humankind was fostered along with an active engagement with language
work. This line of thinkers preceded Graebner and Boas who began to shape a
recognisably modern tradition within anthropology. Carl Strehlow’s work falls
in this German tradition of anthropological specification, which bears a strong
resemblance to Franz Boas’ approach. Although Boas entered the academy,
while Strehlow remained a missionary-scholar in the field, Strehlow’s opus sits
comfortably as an early field project in the Boasian tradition of anthropology.
The Lutheran missionary training in Germany and missionary practice in
colonial Australia demonstrates the types of tool and worldview that Strehlow
brought to life in central Australia. To begin with, the German Lutheran tradition
sustained at Neuendettelsau placed importance both on classical language study
– Greek, Latin and Hebrew – and on the study of vernacular, the medium for
worship in Lutheran churches. This emphasis on vernacular led at least some
pastors to take an interest in the Weltanschauung (worldview) of the people they
worked with. Strehlow was one of them. In addition, both Johannes Deinzer at

243
The Aranda’s Pepa
Neuendettelsau and Wilhelm Löhe, whose teachings Deinzer supported, placed

an emphasis on the ‘outer mission’ to unbelievers as well as the ‘inner mission’
to those settlers in colonised areas already admitted to the Lutheran faith. This
Lutheran emphasis on the vernacular and the fluid relation between an outside
mission that might become an inside mission over time almost certainly informed
Strehlow’s practice in central Australia. It involved a Christian frame in which
the Aranda and Loritja people who lived at the mission became his Lutheran
community. The mutual engagement between Aboriginal people and the pastor
is to some degree reflected in Basedow’s comment:
As a disciplinarian he has established himself at the head of the tribal
group he manages, and even in quarrels and feuds of the bitterest nature
his word is and must be final. Moreover the religion taught is sincere
and not overdone. (Basedow 1920–22: 22)
This comment suggests that, possibly, the Western Aranda word inkata, or
ritual leader, was more readily applied to Strehlow than it might have been to
other missionaries. Facilitated both by his language studies and his particular
missionary persona, Strehlow’s engagement through research may have
encouraged the Aranda to provide him with a status that referenced their world
and very possibly tried to make him part of their world. It certainly appears
that towards the end of his life, the Aranda had made him part of their world;
whether he knew or felt this, is not known. Letters written in Aranda to him
during his last days at Hermannsburg and later to Frieda Strehlow in South
Australia show the emotional attachment his Aranda congregation had to him.2
The different types of intellectual context in which Carl Strehlow proceeded
into the field also informed his collaboration with von Leonhardi. The foci that
von Leonhardi suggested were just the ones that Strehlow with his Lutheran
background would likely have chosen for himself. In addition, it is pertinent to
underline again that, as an armchair anthropologist, von Leonhardi subscribed
to the full range of professional journals, especially in German and English, that
otherwise would have been unavailable to Strehlow. This bore on Carl Strehlow’s
work in two particular ways. First, it meant that von Leonhardi’s comments
kept current issues such as the ‘high god’ issue present. Through reference to
Andrew Lang and others, von Leonhardi encouraged Strehlow to explore these
matters as thoroughly as he could. Strehlow’s view shifted over time as did his
understanding of altjira. Whether or not a later ethnography would endorse
all Strehlow’s positions, the dimensions of meaning concerning these issues
2 Between 13 September and 9 October 1922 when Carl was still at the Hermannsburg Mission, Jakobus,
Rufus, Nathanael and others wrote letters to their ‘Inkata’ and after his death letters written in 1923 from
Mariana, Jacobus, Nathanael and Maria give touching testimony to the relationship between the missionaries
and the Aranda people. Other letters written between 31.8.1903 and 28.8.1911 by Aranda people have
survived and are held at the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs.
244
Conclusion
that the correspondence with von Leonhardi brought to the fore reveals the
subtlety of Aranda culture and belief in ways that are foreign to other works of
early ethnographic work in Australia. Notwithstanding Strehlow’s position as a
missionary, the fact that he could consult with his informants in their language
gave them some agency and allowed the building of an ethnographic record that
still fascinates today. The correspondence between Strehlow and von Leonhardi
had a second major impact. It reinforced Strehlow’s own propensity to focus
on the empirical record and turn away from premature theory. Time and again,
von Leonhardi enjoined Strehlow to check his facts and to record the precise
meaning of particular terms and the nature of particular practices. This focus
on empirical particulars may have encouraged Strehlow towards a limited,
yet refined diffusionism that his studies of the Aranda and Loritja involved.
His recording of the ways in which forms of myth overlap and interpenetrate
foreshadows the work of T.G.H. Strehlow and other subsequent field research.
The foregoing comments summarise some important issues I have discussed and
underline the different factors that led Carl Strehlow towards the prolonged
empirical study of individual cultures, one in particular among other cultures.
Carl Strehlow was almost certainly Eurocentric in his view of central Australian
indigenous people. He was not, however, an evolutionist who would present
central Australians as simply culturally homogeneous. This gives his work a
modern feel despite its transitional nature. Carl Strehlow was not yet a part of
modern professional anthropology, notwithstanding the fact that he produced
immensely valuable data in central areas of research. I have shown (i) that
although his recording of myth lacked a truly comparative frame beyond the
immediate region and a sense of symbolism, his ethnographic record began in
earnest the specification of central Australian Aboriginal ontology of person-
land relations (Róheim and Morton, not to mention Strehlow junior, have
followed this route); (ii) that although Carl Strehlow collected genealogies as
family trees rather than as data used to specify a social structure, his material
make major contributions to our understanding of social classification among
Aboriginal people and most importantly, has given the Western Aranda and
Loritja a detailed record of their ancestry which they have successfully used
in claims to their traditional lands; and finally (iii) that although Strehlow did
not quite connect the issues of social classification, knowledge and land in an
understanding of ‘countries’, territorial (local) organisation or land tenure, he
recorded thought-provoking data on the different ways in which individual
people could be connected with place. Most important, these data suggest that
in his time and subsequently, what today we call ‘land tenure’ was involved in
change that would be intensified with the impact of settlement. His data make
a major contribution to loosening the ‘straitjacket’ of interpretation imposed by
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and resonate with current views on traditional Aboriginal
land ownership.
245
The Aranda’s Pepa
Carl Strehlow’s opus is a unique Australian work that allows us both to look
back to a classical tradition not well represented or studied within Australia,
and forwards to a modern anthropology that carried his interests, and others, in
multiplicity into the academy and well beyond. Boas’ critique of evolutionism
rested on this German historical particularism, an appreciation of the
historically conditioned plurality of human cultures, and thus his ‘notion of
culture also called for a stance of cultural relativism, the idea that it is necessary
to understand cultures in their own terms and their own historical contexts
before attempting generalisations’ (Silverman 2005: 262). Both wrote within a
tradition that acknowledged that all societies are equal, despite their different
moral values, and have individual features that cannot be rendered in terms
of generalised stages of development. Carl Strehlow’s work reflected the aims
of this early German anthropological tradition, which was to document the
plurality of peoples and their cultures in their own right.
246
Appendix A
IAD Pronunciation Guide to Arrernte orthography1

a Basically long ‘ah’ when stressed; ‘uh’ when not stressed at the beginning
of a word. ay like ‘ay’ in ‘hay’ in a few special words and endings, and
sometimes before rt, rn, or rl; like ‘ie’ as in ‘lie’ when stressed in normal
words. aw like ‘ow’ in ‘how’ when stressed.
e Basically like ‘uh’ or ‘er’ as in ‘catcher’, Like ‘i’ in ‘bit’ before ty, ny
or ly. At end of words it is either like ‘uh’ or ‘er’ as in ‘catcher or not
pronounced at all. ey like ‘ee’ when stressed. we like ‘oo’ in ‘wood’ after
another consonant; like ‘woo’ otherwise, except at ends of words. wey
like ‘wee’. ew like ‘ow’ in ‘snow’ when stressed.
h A bit like ‘w’ as in ‘wonder’, but without rounded lips. Not used by
some younger speakers.
i Like ‘i’ in ‘bit’ or ‘e’ in ‘bet; like ‘ee’ before rn, rt, rl, ty, ny or ly.
k Like ‘k’ or ‘g’.
l Like ‘l’.
lh Like ‘l’ but tongue touches back of upper teeth.
lth = lh+th
lty = l+ty or =ly+ty
ly Like ‘lli’ in ‘million.
m ‘m’
n ‘n’
ng Like ‘ng’ in singer, not as in finger.
nh Like ‘n’ but tongue touches back of upper teeth.
nth = nh+th
nty = n+ty or = ny+ty.
ny Like ‘ny’ in ‘canyon’.
p Like ‘p’ or ‘b’.
r Normal Australian English ‘r’.
rl Like ‘l’ but tongue tip curled back up higher.
rn Like ‘n’ but tongue tip curled back up higher.
rr Hard or rolled ‘r’.
1 Reproduced from Henderson and Dobson (1994).

247
The Aranda’s Pepa
rt Like ‘t’ or ‘d’ but tongue tip curled back up higher.

rtn = rt+rn
t Like ‘t’ or ‘d’.
th Like ‘t’ or ‘d’ but tongue touches back of upper teeth.
thn = th + nh
tnh = th + nh
tny = ty + n
ty Like ‘ch’ or ‘j’.
u Like ‘or’ when stressed; like ‘oo’ in ‘wood’ when unstressed.
w Like ‘w’; also see ew and aw above.
y Like ‘y’ in ‘you’, not as in ‘city’; also see ey and ay above.
Pronunciation Guide to Western Arrarnta

orthography2
a This central vowel has several sounds. 1. The high sound, like ‘u’ in
‘curt’. 2. The sound like ‘er’ I the English word, ‘father’. 3. The sound
like ‘u’ in the English word ‘umbrella’. Nearly every Western Arrarnta
word ends with a.
e Like ‘e’ in ‘every’.
h A bit like ‘w’ as in ‘wonder’, but without rounded lips. Not used by some
younger speakers.
i Like ‘i’ in ‘ink’ or ‘bit’, like ‘ee’ in ‘sheep’ or like a soft ‘e’ in ‘every’.
k Like ‘k’ or ‘g’ in English. Most Aboriginal Australian languages do not
distinguish between ‘g’ and ‘k’.
l Aveolar sound like ‘l’ in English.
lh Dental sound like ‘l’ but tongue touches back of upper teeth.
ly Palatal sound like ‘lli’ in ‘million’.
m ‘m’
n ‘n’
ng Velar sound made at the back of the mouth like ‘ng’ in singer, not as in
finger.
nh Dental sound like ‘n’, but tongue touches back of upper teeth.
ny Palatal sound like ‘ny’ in ‘canyon’.
2 Adapted from Roennfeldt, D. with members of the communities of Ntaria, Ipolera, Gilbert Springs,
Kulpitarra, Undarana, Red Sand Hill, Old Station and other outstations (2005).
248
Appendix A
p Like ‘p’ or ‘b’. Most Aboriginal Australian languages do not distinguish

between ‘b’ or ‘p’
r Normal Australian English ‘r’.
rl Retroflex sound like ‘l’ but tongue tip curled back up higher.
rn Retroflex sound like ‘n’ but tongue tip curled back up higher.
rr Hard or rolled ‘r’.
rt Retroflex sound like ‘t’ or ‘d’ but tongue tip curled back up higher.
rtn Retroflex sound like rt+rn together.
t Like ‘t’ or ‘d’. Most Aboriginal Australian languages do not distinguish
between ‘d’ and ‘t’.
th Dental sound like ‘t’ or ‘d’ but tongue touches back of upper teeth.
tj Like ‘ch’ or ‘j’ as in ‘jaw’.
tnh = th + nh
tny = tj + ny
u Like ‘oo’ in ‘foot’ or ‘ou’ in ‘court’, or as in ‘two’.
w Bilabial sound like ‘w’.
y Palatal sound like ‘y’ in ‘you’, not as in ‘city’.
Short Pronunciation Guide to Luritja3
Point of Articulation Stops Nasals Laterals

Bilabial p m
Apico-Alveolar t n l
Apico-Domal rt rn rl
Lamino-Alveolar tj ny ly
Velar k ng
Vibrants Semiconsonants
Apico-Alveolar rr w
Bilabial y
Apico-Domal r
3 Reproduced from Heffernan and Heffernan (1999).

249
The Aranda’s Pepa
Vowels
Short Long
High front unrounded i ii
High back rounded u uu
Low central unrounded a aa
250
Appendix B
The glossaries list frequently occurring terms. I have included in the Western
Arrernte/Arrarnta/Aranda glossary three different orthographic representations
of each word, unless a reliable spelling was not available. The main difference
between the Arrernte/Arrarnta modern orthographies is the representation
of the vowels. The final ‘e’ is a marker of the IAD orthography and the final
‘a’ for the newer Ntaria orthography. The first entry in italics shows a word
in the common IAD spelling system and the second one uses the most recent
developments at Ntaria and the third entry lists Carl Strehlow’s rendering of a
word with its English translation.
Glossary of some Western Arrernte1 / Arrarnta2 /

Aranda3 terms
akeye / akia / agia. Bush currant, Canthium latifolium.
alkngarte / alkngaarta / alknata. Native pine tree, Callitris glaucophylla.
alknginere / alkngenara / alknenera. Cicada.
alturle / alturla / aldola. West.
altyemaltyirreme / [not available] / altjamaltjerama. Ancestors would
altjamaltjerama into the landscape at particular places, which are named in
Strehlow’s work; it means ‘become a hidden body, i.e. to assume a different
form’ (Strehlow 1907: 5).
altyerre / altjirra / altjira. Polysemic expression used for ‘high god’, dream,
‘unmade’, mother’s dreaming, dreaming ancestor, mother’s conception dreaming,
mother’s spirit double and ‘totem’. 1. Dreaming, dream 2. Christian God.
altyerrengametyene / [not available] / altjirangamitjina. In Carl Strehlow’s
work generally used for ‘totem ancestor’, i.e. ‘ancestral being’. This word is a
compound of altjira (altyerre) and -ngamitjina (ngametyene and ngampetyene in
modern Western Arrernte). According to Carl Strehlow altjirangamitjina means
‘the eternal unmade ones’; altjira: unmade, ngamitjina: the eternal.
1 Compiled by Anna Kenny, checked by Gavan Breen and John Henderson.

2 Adapted from Roennfeldt, D. with members of the communities of Ntaria, Ipolera, Gilbert Springs,
Kulpitarra, Undarana, Red Sand Hill, Old Station and other outstations (2005).
3 Carl Strehlow’s published work and unpublished Aranda-German-(Kukatja)-Loritja-Dieri dictionary
(c.1900-1909).
251
The Aranda’s Pepa
anpernentye / anparnintja / eknakilinja. Skin name, term of address or greeting.

anpernirrentye / [not available] / [not available]. Subsection system, term of
address or greeting, ‘family’ in everyday use. Anpernentye and anpernirrentye
are derived from the verb anperneme ‘call someone by a kinship term or describe
them as being a particular relation’. Replacing the ‘me’ with ‘ntye’ turns it
into a noun anpernentye that means something like ‘what you call someone’.
Adding the irr makes it reciprocal, ‘what you call one another’. Anpernentye
and anpernirrentye have the same gloss, but these words also have other similar
meanings that differ. See also Dobson and Henderson (2013).
apme / apma / apma. Snake (generic, probably includes also other legless
reptiles: burrowing skink and legless lizard).
arrenge / arranga / aránga. Father’s father, brother’s son’s child.
arrethe / arratha / arata. Native fuchsia, Eremophila freelingii.
arretnurlke / arratnurlka / aratnolka. Mintbush, Prostanthera striatiflora.
arrkwetye / arrkutja / aragutja. Woman.
artwe / artwa / atua. Man.
helherenye / aalarinya / alarinja. ‘Belonging to the earth’.
herre / arra / ara. Red kangaroo. Herre is not used by most people, only by a few
of the oldest. Most people use kerarre, which is a compound of kere ‘animal’ and
arre (coming from herre) ‘kangaroo’, or just arre. (Arre would often be preceded
by kere anyway, but there is a clear difference in pronunciation between kere
arre and kerarre.)
ilakekeye / [not available] / nákarakia (or lakakia). ‘Us’, meaning the people
belonging to one’s own patrimoiety.
Irlpere / Irlpara / Ilpara. Name of people who are said to be Warlpiri neighbours
of Anmatyerr people; the Anmatyerr word is probably Arlper.
imurre / imurra / imora, antana. Possum, Trichosurus vulpecula.
inarlenge / enarlanga / inalanga. Echidna, Tachyglossus aeuleatus.
ingkarte / ingkaarta / inkata. 1. Chief, man (father in general). According to
Strehlow (1915: 1) the chief of a traditional country (called in the anthropological
literature ‘estate’) is called inkata or ‘father of all’, but on a general level he
is only a ‘primus inter pares’, and his position is only hereditary, i.e. not
necessarily achieved through knowledge or wisdom. T.G.H. Strehlow’s gloss for
‘ingkarte’ is ‘ceremonial chief’. – 2. Pastor. The word Ingkarte has changed its
252
Appendix B
meaning significantly over the past century. It seems likely that the shift started
to occur during Carl Strehlow’s period, because he seems to have been their
first white ingkarte. Today it is used for pastor. Austin-Broos (2004: 61) defines
an ingkarte as ‘a man who realised a balance between knowledge at his own
place and at other sites’. – The original meaning of ingkarte has been replaced
by the concepts of pmerekwerteye and kwertengerle in contemporary Arandic
societies.
ingkwere / [not available] / inkura. Initiation ceremonies. Engwura in Spencer
and Gillen’s work. According to Strehlow (1913) inkura is only one part of the
initiation ceremony not the entire process.
intaminte / [not available] / ntamintana. Species of fish found in Western Aranda
waters. This is the same fish called intamintane. Alternative forms: intamintenhe
and intamintame.
intetyiweme / [not available] / intitjiuma. ‘To initiate into something, to show
how something is done’ (Strehlow 1910). Initiation ceremony.
irleye / ilia / ilia. Emu.
irrentye / errintja / arintja. Evil being, wicked spirit or devil.
irretye / erritja / eritja. Wedge-tailed eagle.
irrpenge / irrpanga / irbanga. Fish (generic).
karte / kaarta / kata. Father, father’s brothers and SSS.
kawawe / [not available] / kauaua. Tall ceremonial pole with a bunch of feathers
at the top. See also tnatantja meaning ‘tall pole’ in Strehlow (1910).
knganentye / [not available] / knanakala. Dreaming (totem), father’s dreaming,
conception dreaming. According to Breen, it means today mainly ‘father’s
dreaming’. In T.G.H. Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary knganintja [knganentye]
means ‘totem’. In the Eastern and Central Arrernte dictionary aknganentye’s
first meaning is given as ‘the dreamings which are passed down through the
father’s side’ (Henderson and Dobson 1994: 69). In Carl Strehlow’s work the
word knanakala means ‘totem place’, ‘generated itself’, ‘coming out of itself’,
‘conception place’ (Strehlow 1907: 5). According to Breen, ‘knganintja’ and
‘knanakala’ are related. They are both derived from the verb knganeme (in
Eastern and Central Arrernte spelled aknganeme and defined as 1. originate in
the Dreaming and exist forever, 2. be conceived in a place). The past tense form
is knganeke. With the -ale ending it means ‘the one who …’ or ‘the place where
…’. So it could mean ‘the one who was conceived’ or ‘the place where x was
conceived’. With the ending -ntye it is converted into a noun referring to the
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The Aranda’s Pepa
dreamings or the place. – It is interesting to note here that the notion of ‘father’s
dreaming’ does not appear in any of the earlier records. If it had referred during
T.G.H. Strehlow’s time in any way to ‘father’s dreaming’, I would have expected
to have found it in his work.
kngerrtye / kngarritja / knaritja. Big. The extensions to father, chief etc. are like
calling the person ‘the great one’. In Carl Strehlow’s work knaritja is used for
father, chief, old man and totemic ancestor. In T.G.H. Strehlow’s work kngaritja
means 1. very large, huge. 2. totemic ancestor, may be translated as ‘sire’.
kngerrepate / kngarripata / knaribata. Elder or ceremonial assistant, member
of council of senior men. In Carl Strehlow’s work knaribata (zusammengesetzt
aus knara (gross) und ata-atua (Mann): der grosse Mann, der ältere Mann, in
angesehner Stellung, der älteste. (Knaribata is composed of knara (big) and ata a
contraction of atua (man). It was used for ‘old man’.)
kngwelye / kngulya / knulja. Dog.
kwatye / kwatja / kwatja. Water, rain.
kwatyerenye / kwatjarinya / kwatjarinja. ‘Belonging to water’ or ‘coming from
the water’.
Kwerralye / Kwerralya / Kuralja. Pleiades.
kwertengerle / kurtungurla / kutungula. Landholder or belonging through descent
other than father’s father to land. This appears to be a Warlpiri term written in
the Warlpiri language: kurdungurlu. In Carl Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary
recorded as ‘subject, servant’.
larletye / lalitja / lalitja. Conkerberry, Carissa lanceolata.
latyeye / latjia / latjia. Yam, Vigna lanceolata.
lthane / lthaarna / ltana. Ghost. Ulthana, a spirit being (Gillen 1896: 183).
ltyarnme / [not available] / iltjenma. Freshwater crayfish found in Western
Aranda waters.
lwengulpere / lhungurlpara / longulpura. Spangled grunter, Leiopotherapon
unicolor (species of fish found in Aranda waters).
malyenweke / [not available] / maljanuka. ‘Them’, meaning the people in the
opposite patrimoiety.
Mpeltyarte, twakeye / mpaltjarta / mbultjita. Bush-orange, Capparis mitchellii.
ngkwerlpe / ngkurlpa / inkulba. Wild tobacco (generic).
254
Appendix B
ngampekale / ngampakala / ngambakala. Eternal, everlasting, from always, from

eternity. Carl Strehlow writes that ‘The Aranda language has four words to
describe eternal = ngambakala, ngambintja, ngamitjina, and ngarra’ (Strehlow
1907: 1). – Ungambikula (out of nothing, self existing) or Numbakulla in Spencer
and Gillen’s work.
ngangkere / ngangkara / ngankara. Healer, native doctor.
nthepe / nthapa / ntape(rama). Dance of women at time of boys’ initiation.
nturrerte / nturrurta / nturuta. Spinifex pigeon.
nyurrpe / nyurrpa / [not available]. Not eligible to marry someone, wrong skin
for marriage (opposite generational moiety).
pangkelangke / pangkalangka / bankalanga. Dangerous hairy (male) spirit which
may kill and devour humans. Sometimes also used for an evil female spirit,
called arrkwetye irrentye (evil woman).
pepe, pipe / pepa / pepa. New word deriving from the English word ‘paper’. Carl
Strehlow (1915: 70) recorded a handsign for pepa meaning ‘book, letter’.
pmere / pmara / tmara. Camp, land, place or country.
pmerekwerteye / pmarakurtwia / [not available]. Landowner through father’s
father. Pmerekwerteye means literally ‘country-owner’. It is derived, via a minor
sound change, from a compound: pmere-ke-rtweye. The -ke is a dative suffix,
which is very common, and -rtweye is the same as artweye in Central and Eastern
Arrernte (Henderson and Dobson 1994: 286–287) and means ‘owned or owner’.
In Western Arrernte it does not seem to be used as an independent word (as
artweye can be, but isn't usually); -rtweye is rare in other combinations, and so
people do not think of it as a unit (Gavan Breen email, 17.9.2007).
pmererenye / pmararinya / [not available]. Belonging to land/place. Very
occasionally used to mean ‘traditional owner’ by people of Kukatja-Luritja
descent today. Luritja and other Western Desert peoples use nguraritja.
pmere kwetethe / pmara kutatha / [not available]. Sacred site in T.G.H. Strehlow’s
work and today Western Aranda people use this expression to denote ‘spirits
of the land’.
rathepe / [not available] / ratapa. In Carl Strehlow’s work ratapa means child
spirit, offspring, baby, child, conception dreaming, ‘totem’. In T.G.H. Strehlow’s
work it means mythical children or Twins of Ntaria (Strehlow 1947: 118; 1971).
renge / ranga / aranga. Euro, Macropus robustus (Gould).
255
The Aranda’s Pepa
-renye / -rinya / -rinja. Suffix meaning ‘belonging to or in’, ‘coming from’, ‘out
of’ or ‘originating from’.
rrweperrwepe / rrupa-rrupa / rubaruba. Whirlwind.
rwekerte / [not available] / rukuta. ‘Young man who has been circumcised and
has to keep himself hidden’ (Strehlow 1907: 41).
taye / taiya / taia. Moon.
tnengkarre / tnangkarra / tnankara. Dreaming, dreaming ancestor, mythological
past, birthmark, dreaming mark.
tnwerrengatye / tnurrangatja / tnurungatja. Species of caterpillar living on the
emu bush. Came from Mt Zeil in the dreaming.
tnwerrenge / tnurranga / tnurunga. Emu bush, Eremophila longifolia.
Twanyirreke / [not available] / Tuanjiraka. One of the ancestral beings; but also
meaning ‘large bullroarer’. Twanyirika in Spencer and Gillen (1899: 264, 654)
referring to a spirit being.
tyape / tjaapa / tjappa. Witchetty grub, edible grub (generic).
tyelpe / tjilpa / tjilpa. Western quoll, native cat, Dasyurus geoffroii.
tyemeye / tjimia / tjimia. Mother’s father.
Tyurretye / Tjurritja / Tjoritja. The Western MacDonnell Ranges.
tywerrenge / tjurrunga / tjurunga. This term has a number of very complex
meanings depending on its context. Tjurunga can mean songs, stories, dances,
paraphernalia, sacred object, etc associated with the ancestral beings. The term
tjurunga is a very complex term and depending on context means different
things. (See also Carl Strehlow’s unpublished dictionary in which ‘heilig
(sacred)’ is part of its meaning, and T.G.H. Strehlow 1947: 84–86; 1971: 770–
771). Tywerrenge usually means today ‘sacred object’ and is not often spoken
about (Breen 2000: 60). Choringa in Spencer and Gillen’s work.
tywerrengirreke / [not available] / tjurungeraka. ‘Change into wood or stone’ at
the end of creative activities (Strehlow 1908: 77).
ure / ura / ura. Fire.
wanenge / [not available] / wonninga. Object used during ceremonies. Item made
of hairstrings stretched over a wooden cross.
yerrampe / yirrampa / jerramba. Honey ant, Camponotus inflatus.
256
Appendix B
Glossary of some Western Arandic kin terms4

F: father, B: brother, M: mother, Z: sister, S: son, D: daughter, H: husband, W:
wife, e: elder, y: younger, (m): male view, (f): female view.
arrenge / arranga / aránga, aranga. FF (paternal grandfather), FFB, FFZ, WFM, SS
(m), SD (m), BSS, BSD, WZSS, WZSD, HFM, HZSS, HZSD.
perle / parla / palla. FM (paternal grandmother), FMZ, FMB, WFF, SS (f), SD (f),
ZSS, ZSD, WBSS, WBSD, HBSS, HBSD and HFF.
tyemeye / tjimia / tjimia. MF (maternal grandfather), MFB, MFZ, WMM, HMM,
DS (m), DD (m), BDS, BDD, WZDS, WZDD, HZDS and HZDD.
ipmenhe / ipmanha / ebmanna. MM (maternal grandmother), MMZ, MMB, WMF,
DS (f), DD (f), ZDS, ZDD, WBDS, WBDD, FZSW, MBSW, HBDS, HBDD, FZDH and
MBDH.
karte / kaarta / kata. F, FB, and SSS.
wenhe / wunha / wonna. Aunt, FZ, and MBW.
meye / mia / maia. M, MZ, SW (m), and FBW.
kamerne / kaamurna / kamuna. MB, FZH, DH (m), BDH (m), WZDH (m).
mare / mara / marra. Mother-in-law, WM, WMZ, DH (f), DHB (f), WBSW,
WBDH, ZDH, ZSW.
kelye / kalya / kalja. eB, FeBS, MeZS, WeZH, HeZH.
kwaye / kwaiya / kwaia. eZ, FeBD, MeZD, WeBW, HeBW.
newe / nua / noa. Spouse, W, WZ, BW, FBSW, MZSW, H, HB, ZH, FBZH, and
MZZH.
mparne / mparna / mbana. WB (man’s brother-in-law), ZH (m), FBDH (m), MZDH (m).
tyeye / tjia / tjia. Younger sibling, yB, yZ.
ampe / ampa / amba. Child of woman, S (f), D (f), ZS, ZD, WBS, WBD, HBS, HBD,
and HF.
lere / lira / alirra. Child of man, S (m), D (m), BS, BD, HZS, HZD, FFF.
ankele / ankala / ankalla. MBS (m) and FZS (m).
4 Based on Carl Strehlow (1913: 66–70); updated by Gavan Breen.

257
The Aranda’s Pepa
ltyele / ltjala / altjala or iltjala. MBD (f) and FZD (f).
Glossary of some Loritja terms5

ara. Skin-name.
aratjarra. Subsection system.
anumara. Caterpillar.
atanari. Ceremonial chief/leader (T.G.H. Strehlow 1970: 110).
inyurrpa. Not eligible to marry someone, wrong skin for marriage.
kami. Grandmother.
kuninka. Western quoll, native cat, Dasyurus geoffroii.
kungka. Woman.
kuniya. Carpet snake or children’s python.
kuntanka (= tjurunga). According to Carl Strehlow kuntanka describes to a
lesser degree a sacred object, but rather particular features of a landscape that
represent dreaming beings or parts of them. See above ‘tjurunga’.
kutintjingañi. ‘To bring about, make fertile, improve the conditions of’ (Strehlow
1910). Ceremony held at specific places for the increase and growth of particular
species. In the Pintupi/Luritja dictionary kutinytjinganu is said to mean ‘caused
to roll’. In the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara dictionary kutintjingani is glossed
as ‘turn over’ (transitive). The Aranda word for ‘turn over’ is ikngarrpiweme
or kngartiweme. The Aranda word mbatjalkatiuma in Strehlow’s work is not
known and no contemporary spelling can be found as the etymology is not
certain.
merinangurrara. Belonging to Merina country.
ngananangarri. ‘We all, we group, us mob’ (Hansen and Hansen 1991: 78).
ngananukarpitina (‘all of us’) recorded by Carl Strehlow (1913). Also nganankarpa
or ngananiltja (all of us).
ngurra. Camp, place, area, country.
-ngurrara. From, belonging to the place/country.
5 Based on Carl Strehlow’s Kukatja-Loritja terms. Checked by Rhonda Inkamala.

258
Appendix B
ngurraritja. Owner of land. Spirits of the land.

papa. Dog.
pipawonnu. Subject, servant.
puntulara. Elder or ceremonial assistant, member of council of senior men. Dieri:
pinaru.
tina or tjilpi. Elder or ceremonial assitant.
Talku. Bandicoot. Personal name of Carl Strehlow’s main Loritja informant.
tananukarpitina. ‘All of them’ or tananilpa or tananitja or tananarata and
sometimes the Aranda term ilakija.
tintinpungañi. Meaning ‘to initiate into something, to show how something is
done’ (Strehlow 1910). Initiation ceremony.
tjamu. Grandfather.
tjukurrpa. Dreaming, Dreaming ancestor, mythological past.
tjuta. Many.
tukutita. ‘The totem gods’; tuku: unmade and tita: the eternal, according to Carl
Strehlow. According to Hansen and Hansen (1977: 149) tjukutitja means ‘that
which belongs to the dreaming’.
wanampi. Type of snake, rainbow snake, water serpent.
wapiti. Yam, bush potato.
wolkngati. Native pine tree, Callitris glaucophylla.
Glossary of some Luritja Kin Terms6

F: father, B: brother, M: mother, Z: sister, S: son, D: daughter, H: husband, W:
wife, e: elder, y: younger, (m): male view, (f): female view.
tjamu. FF (paternal grandfather), FFB, FFZ, MF (maternal grandfather), MFB,
WFM, SS (m), SD (m), BSS, BSD, WZSS, WZSD, HFM, HZSS, HZSD.
6 Based on Carl Strehlow (1913).

259
The Aranda’s Pepa
kami. FM (paternal grandmother), MFB, MFZ, WMM, HMM, DS (m), DD (m),

BDS, BDD, WZDS, WZDD, HZDS and HZDD. MM (maternal grandmother), MMZ,
MMB, WMF, DS (f), DD (f), ZDS, ZDD, WBDS, WBDD, FZSW, MBSW, HBDS,
HBDD, FZDH and MBDH.
papa. F, FB, and SSS.
kuntili. Aunt, FZ, and MBW.
mama. M, MZ, SW (m), and FBW.
kamuru. MB, FZH, DH (m), BDH (m), WZDH (m).
waputju. Father-in-law, WF (man’s father-in-law), WFB, WFZ; and HF, HFB, HFZ.
nunari or yumari. Mother-in-law, WM, WMZ, DH (f), DHB (f), WBSW, WBDH,
ZDH, ZSW. (Also son-in-law?)
umari. HF (woman’s father-in-law), SW (m), BSW (m), and WZSW.
kuta. Brother.
kangkurra. Sister, eZ, FeBD, MeZD, WeBW, HeBW.
malany(pa). Little sister or brother.
kuri. Spouse, W, WZ, BW, FBSW, MZSW, H, HB, ZH, FBZH, and MZZH.
marutju. WB (man’s brother-in-law), ZH (m), FBDH (m), MZDH (m).
tjuari. HZ (woman’s sister-in-law), BW (f), FBSW (f), MZSW (f).
malanypa. Younger sibling, yB, yZ.
pipiri/tjitji. Child of woman, S (f), D (f), ZS, ZD, WBS, WBD, HBS, HBD, and HF.
pipiri. Child of man, S (m), D (m), BS, BD, HZS, HZD, FFF.
ukari. MBS (m) and FZS (m); MBD (f) and FZD (f).
untalpi. MSD.
katja. MSS.
260
Appendix C
Some important dates in Strehlow’s life and work

23.12.1871 Carl Friedrich Theodore Strehlow was born in Fredersdorf.
31.3.1888 Entry to the Neuendettelsauer Seminary.
31.8.1891 Graduates from the Seminary.
30.5.1892 Arrives in Australia to take his first posting at Bethesda
near Lake Eyre on Diyari country up.
1894 Finishes translation of New Testament into Diyari with
missionary J.G. Reuther. It was called Testamenta marra.
12.10.1894 Arrives at his second posting, the Hermannsburg Mission
in Central Australia.
1895 Frieda Keysser arrives in Adelaide.
25.9.1895 Frieda marries Carl at Light Pass.
5.11.1895 Frieda and Carl reach Hermannsburg.
24.3.1897 Birth of first son Friedrich.
1897 Publication of J.G. Reuther and C. Strehlow’s Testamenta
marra.
8.2.1899 Birth of their only daughter Martha.
12.10.1900 Birth of Rudolf.
15.5.1901 Carl Strehlow’s letter printed in Kirchlichen Mitteilungen.
10.9.1901 Moritz von Leonhardi writes first letter to Carl Strehlow.
20.12.1901 Carl Strehlow first letter to von Leonhardi.
16.6.1902 Birth of Karl.
1903/1904 Family Strehlow leaves Hermannsburg for a one year
holiday in South Australia.
1904 Publication of Galtjindintjamea-Pepa Aranda
Wolambarinjaka, an Aranda Service Book including 100
German hymns translated into Aranda.
15.5.1905 Birth of Hermann.
1907 Publication of first volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
Stämme in Zentral-Australien in Germany.
6.6.1908 Birth of T.G.H. Strehlow.
1908 Publication of second volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
261
The Aranda’s Pepa
24.11.1909 Carl finishes his ethnographic research.

11.12.1909 Leonhardi’s last letter.
June 1910 Family Strehlow departs Hermannsburg for Germany.
Strehlow and von Leonhardi are planning to meet in
October 1910 to discuss their scholarly future.
October 1910 Baron von Leonhardi’s sudden death in late October.
1910 Publication of third volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
1911 Publication of fourth volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
5.4.1912 Carl Strehlow returns to Hermannsburg with his wife and
youngest son. The other five children remain in Germany to
be educated; he does not see them again.
1913 Begin of translation of New Testament into Aranda.
1913 Publication of fifth volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
1915 Publication of sixth volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
1919 Finishes first Aranda translation of the bible.
1920 Publication of seventh volume of Die Aranda- und Loritja-
20.10.1922 Carl Strehlow’s tragic death at Horseshoe Bend.
1925 Part of the Aranda bible manuscript published
posthumously as Ewangelia Lukaka without mentioning the
translator.
1928 Part of the Aranda bible manuscript published
posthumously as Ewangelia Taramatara without
mentioning the translator.
1928 Publication of Pepa Araquilinja. Aranda school primer
written by Carl Strehlow.
1943 Duplicates of Carl Strehlow’s manuscripts of Die Aranda-
und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien and his scientific
letters destroyed during the bombing of Frankfurt.
262
Appendix C
Primary sources at the Strehlow Research

Centre
Strehlow, C. (c. 1905–1908) Sagen. Unpublished Manuscript.
Strehlow, C. (c. 190?–1909) Cultus. Unpublished Manuscript.
Strehlow, C. (c. 190?–1909) Leben. Unpublished Manuscript.
Strehlow, C. (c. 1900–1909) Unpublished Dictionary Aranda, Loritja, Dieri.
Strehlow, T.G.H. Diary I, 1932.
Anmatjerra FT Series IX.
Strehlow, T.G.H. Diary 38, 1968.
Strehlow, T.G.H. Childhood Diary III, 1922.
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, probably 8.4.1906 (SH-SP-1-1).
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 2.6.1906 (SH-SP-2-1).
Carl Strehlow to Dr. W. Foy, late 1908 (SH-SP-4-1).
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 13.2.1907 or earlier (SH-SP-5-1).
Carl Strehlow to N.W. Thomas, mid to end of 1906 (SH-SP-6-1).
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, probably on 3.12.1906 (SH-SP-8-1).
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, n.d. probably 1907 (SH-SP-9-1).
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, possibly 6. 4.1907 (SH-SP-11-1).
Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, n.d. (SH-SP-13-1).
263
The Aranda’s Pepa

Carl Strehlow v von Leonhardi, n.d. (SH-SP-18-1).
Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 10.9.1901 (Gross Karben).
Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 10.3.1907 (from Darmstadt).
Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 7.6. 1908 (Gross Karben).1
1 Von Leonhardi wrote this letter on the letter Karl von den Steinen had written him on the 3.6.1908 in
regard to C. Strehlow’s article in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie.
264
Appendix C

Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, Easter Monday 1909 (Gross Karben).
Von Leonhardi to Carl Strehlow, 19.7. 1909 (Gross Karben).
Carl Seidel to Carl Strehlow, 12.9.1908 (SH 1908-2-1).
Karl von den Steinen to Carl Strehlow, 3.6.1908.
Prof. Fincke to Moritz von Leonhardi, n.d.
F.C.H. Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 20.9.1912.
F.C.H. Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 18.11.1912.
B. Hagen to Carl Strehlow, 10.9.1913.
265
The Aranda’s Pepa
J.M. Bogner to Carl Strehlow, Bethesda, 8.5.1900 (1900-21-2).

Christian Keysser to Carl Strehlow, 4.9.1905 (SRC 1905/26(a)).
Von Leonhardi to R.H. Mathews, 9.6.1908 (from Gross Karben).
Strehlow, C. 1901 Ein Bericht ueber die Mission in Neu-Hermannsburg,
Australien, in einem Brief von H. Missionar Stehlow vom 8. Januar 1901. In
Kirchlichen Mitteilungen vom 15 May 1901.
Strehlow, C. 1904. Galtjindintjamea-Pepa Aranda Wolambarinjaka [Aranda
Service Book including 100 German hymns translated into Aranda]. Tanunda:
G. Auricht.
Strehlow, C. 1907a. Einige Sagen des Arandastammes in Zentral-Australien.
In Sonder-Abdruck aus dem Globus Bd. XCII(8) ausgegeben am 29. August
1907: 123–126.
Strehlow, C 1907b. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien I.
Mythen, Sagen und Märchen des Aranda-Stammes in Zentral-Australien.
Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer & Co.
Strehlow, C. 1908. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien
II. Mythen, Sagen und Märchen des Loritja-Stammes; die Totemistischen
Vorstellungen und die Tjurunga der Aranda und Loritja. Frankfurt am Main:
Joseph Baer & Co.
Strehlow, C. 1908a. Unsere Australische Mission, in einem Brief von H. Missionar
Stehlow vom 30. Juni 1908. Kirchlichen Mitteilungen vom 22. Juli 1908.
Strehlow, C. 1908b. Einige Bemerkungen über die von Dr. Planert auf Grund der
Forschungen des Missionars Wettengel veroeffentlichte Aranda-Grammatik.
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 5: 698–703.
Strehlow, C. 1910. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien III (i).
Mythen, Sagen und Märchen des Aranda-Stammes; die Totemistischen Kulte
der Aranda-und Loritja- Stämme. Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer & Co.
Strehlow, C. 1911. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien III (ii).
Mythen, Sagen und Märchen des Aranda-Stammes; die Totemistischen Kulte
der Aranda-und Loritja- Stämme. Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer & Co.
266
Appendix C
Strehlow, C. 1913. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien IV

(i). Das Soziale Leben der Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme. Frankfurt am Main:
Joseph Baer & Co.
Strehlow, C. 1915. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien IV
(ii). Das Soziale Leben der Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme. Frankfurt am Main:
Joseph Baer & Co.
Strehlow, C. 1920. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien V. Die
Materielle Kultur der Aranda- und Loritja. Frankfurt am Main: Joseph Baer
& Co.
Strehlow, C. 1925. Ewangelia Lukaka. Gospel of St Luke in Aranda. London:
British and Foreign Bible Society.
Strehlow, C. 1928. Ewangelia Taramatara, The Four Gospels in Aranda. London:
British and Foreign Bible Society.
Strehlow, C. 1928. Pepa Aragulinja: Aranda Katjirberaka. Aranda school primer.
Tanunda: Auricht’s Printing Office.
Von Leonhardi, M. 1907. Über einige religioese und totemische Vorstellungen
der Aranda und Loritja in Zentralaustralien. Globus 91(18): 285–290.
Von Leonhardi, M. 1908. Über einige Hundefiguren des Dieristammes in
Zentralaustralien. Globus 94: 378–380.
Von Leonhardi, M. 1909. Der Mura und die Muramura der Dieri. Anthropos 4:
1065–1068.
Von Leonhardi, M. 1910. Geschlechtstotemismus. Globus 97: 339.
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304
Index cosmology, 8, 10, 35, 36, 88, 90, 113, 124-
127, 135-141, 153-156.
Darwinism, 4, 61, 64-65, 77, 235, 238.
cattle, 15, 20, 25, 32.
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern descent group, 177, 201-204, 218, 221.
Territory) Act 1976, 203, 206, 212. Diyari=Dieri, 24, 28, 29, 35, 42, 81, 86-89,
agency, 128, 245. 93, 97-99, 111- 113, 123, 128, 129, 144,
alarinja, 39, 173, 215, 252. 171, 216, 227, 228.
Aldolinga, 16, 89, 229. diffusionism, 43, 65-68, 70-71, 76, 105,
Altjira, 8, 33, 36, 39, 41, 98, 103, 106-114, 110, 116, 128-131, 152, 245.
117, 125. dreaming, 15, 30, 31, 36,
altjira, 8, 104, 117, 164-168, 184-187, 196, 40, 42, 112, 113, 117, 135, 143-145, 152-
207-214, 220, 233, 242, 244, 251. 155, 160-164, 184, 186-189, 195, 196,
altjirangamitjina, 36, 39-44, 113, 123, 149, 206, 207-214, 218-223.
155-156, 184-186, 217, 251. Dreamtime, 122, 165, 189, 229.
Anmatyerr, 17, 43, 152, 168, 208, 214, dream, 39, 139, 164-168, 211, 251.
219, 252. drought, 16, 20, 21, 162, 221.
anthropological tradition: Elementargedanken, 63.
British anthropological tradition, 4, Ellery Creek, 30, 33, 63, 149, 155, 208,
106, 236-238, 240. 216.
German anthropological tradition, 6, Empiricism, 6-7, 59, 62, 70-72, 76, 105,
8, 51-78, 94, 99, 246. 116-127, 141, 156.
Arrernte: Central and Eastern Arrernte, Enlightenment, 52-54, 60, 71.
17, 175, 213, 214, 219, 223. estate, 188, 196, 197, 201, 204, 208, 212,
band, 201, 203. 215-220, 221, 223.
Bildung, 61. evolution, 3, 51, 71, 73, 109, 169, 170, 232,
camel, 103, 156-159. 237.
Central Land Council, 191. evolutionism, 3, 4, 61, 64, 65, 68, 71, 73,
ceremonies, 23, 31, 33, 43-44, 47, 89, 102, 77, 80, 106, 110, 116, 130, 233-234, 246.
107, 109-110, 117, 120-124, 127, 135, anti-evolutionism, 71.
144-145, 150, 172, 197, 203, 207-208, social evolutionism, 64, 68.
214, 229, 234, 235, 253. explorers, 19, 226.
clan, 137, 189, 200-207, 216, 218, 220. fairy tales, 10, 39, 40, 43, 69, 95, 118, 141,
class system. See section and subsection 142.
systems. family tree, 10, 32, 34, 44, 170-172, 177,
cognatic, 182, 191, 203, 206, 223. 182-193, 210, 220, 238, 245.
Christianity, 30, 31, 87, 90, 91, 125, 127, fieldwork, 7, 10, 68, 71-73, 120, 141, 232,
146, 209, 235. 233, 235.
conception, 117, 166, 184-188, 207-214, Finke River Mission, 31, 79, 86, 184, 187,
220, 232, 234. 189, 191, 218, 219.
conception site, 31, 45, 117, 188, 189, 195, folklore, 60, 72, 74, 75, 82, 91, 141, 231.
206-209, 221-222. functionalism, 10, 68, 70, 130, 234.
continuity, 220-223, 242. Geist, 5, 53, 57, 58, 91, 95, 99, 115, 118,
conversion, 30, 49, 50-51, 68-69, 84-87, 135-168, 239.
98, 126. genealogical method, 170, 171, 235, 237.
305
The Aranda’s Pepa
genealogy. See family tree. Lutherism, 79, 84.

Gross Karben, 34, 94, 102, 103, 115, 132, magic, 36, 44, 109, 211, 231.
149. maljanuka, 172, 254.
Gosses Bluff, 21, 23, 144. malyenweke, 172, 254.
guruna, 117-118. marriage order. See section and
Heimat, 116, 154. subsection systems.
high god, 36, 39, 41, 69, 104-106, 109-115, material culture, 6, 7, 30, 33-34, 36, 46-
126, 166, 233, 242, 244. 48, 62, 66, 70, 98, 99, 124.
horde, 200-201, 203. Matuntara, 15, 17, 152.
humanism: methodology, 5, 7, 33, 72, 83, 96, 121,
Christian humanism, 9, 51. 124-127.
German humanism, 6, 51-78. Missions:
Herder’s Humanität, 8, 55, 78. Bethesda Mission (Killalpaninna
ilakekeye, 172, 252. Mission), 24, 25, 86, 87, 88, 171,
independent invention, 64-65, 73, 94, 228.
129. Hermannsburg Mission, 17, 20-21,
inkata, 30, 33, 85, 127, 197, 216, 220, 244, 23-26, 102, 110, 182, 228, 229, 244.
252. missionaries, 6, 15-16, 21, 28, 81-91, 106-
initiation, 40-41, 43-44, 102, 107, 110, 107.
123, 145, 163, 235, 253. Mohammedan, 111, 112.
Kaurna, 87. Moieties, 39, 172, 175, 199, 202, 212, 215.
Kaytetye, 110, 227. monogenetic, 60, 77.
kinship, 10, 28, 32, 36, 44-46, 169-182. monotheism, 104, 105, 109, 110, 113.
classificatory kinship system, 169, Muslim, 103, 111.
179. mythology, 10, 29, 35, 39-43, 60, 72-75,
kinship terminology, 178-182. 82, 88-92, 98, 135-156, 173, 197, 198,
kŋanintja, 188, 207, 220. 215, 223.
knowledge and traditional ownership, 30, muramura, 112-113, 144, 156.
197-200, 207, 212, 222. nákarakia, 172, 252.
Kulturkreislehre, 66-68, 71, 76, 94, 98, Native Title, 7, 11, 135, 184, 192, 195, 198,
116, 129. 205, 206, 213, 218, 223, 241, 242.
kuntanka, 43, 154, 258. Native Title Act 1993, 195, 203.
kutuŋula, 206, 211-213, 220. Neuendettelsau, 9, 15, 23, 81-87, 90-91,
kwatjarinja, 39, 173, 215, 254. 116, 243.
kwertengerle, 206, 208, 212-214, 222-223, ngurra, 196-198, 258.
253. njinaŋa, 173, 189, 196, 197, 207, 215, 218,
Lake Eyre, 24, 46, 87, 88, 112, 128, 228. 221.
land rights, 187, 191, 198, 218, 219, 241. Ntaria, 15, 16, 19, 23, 25, 30, 31, 33, 45,
landholding groups, 145, 152, 191, 195- 84, 88, 92, 127, 186, 229.
199, 205-206, 208, 218, 222, 223. nyenhenge, 173, 215, 218.
local group, 25, 131, 191, 196, 197, 200, objectification, 162.
201, 203, 208. ontology, 135-168, 234, 237, 240, 243,
local organisation, 160, 195-223, 245. 245.
ltana, 117-118, 254. oral literature, 1, 7, 51, 57, 75, 87, 91, 96,
Lutheran linguistic tradition, 81-93. 141, 239.
306
Index
oral text, 51, 69, 217. subsection system, 10, 28, 39, 44, 89, 120,
particularism, 5, 7, 9, 43, 51-54, 57, 77-78, 169, 170, 172-178, 215, 252, 258.
105, 239-240, 246. tjukurrpa, 135, 161, 184, 259.
historical particularism, 5, 51-54, 57, tjurunga, 31, 39-46, 96, 113, 117-118, 121,
69, 73, 77, 246. 123, 127, 128, 135, 146-153, 154, 158,
patricouple, 172-173, 177, 189, 196, 208, 163, 186-187, 207, 210-211, 217-218, 220,
215, 218, 220. 239, 256, 258.
patrilineal descent, 181-182, 184, 188, tnankara, 135, 164-168, 213, 256.
195, 199, 200-204, 218. totem, 10, 39-44, 113, 117, 119, 125-126,
pepa, 127-128. 129, 142-156, 166-167, 170, 184-186,
Pertame, 144, 177. 188, 196, 207-210, 214, 217-220, 222,
Pintupi, 21, 135, 161, 162, 163, 175, 202, 233, 234.
212. maternal totem, 210-214.
pipawonnu, 213, 259. personal totem, 117, 207, 210
Pitjantjatjara, 135, 161, 205, 209. totemic ancestor(s), see also
Pleiades, 40, 42, 144, 254. altjirangamitjina, 159-161.
plenitude, 51-52, 69, 243. totemism, 34, 67, 108, 109, 117, 130, 138,
plural concept of culture, 4, 5, 52-57, 69, 201.
78, 90. traditional ownership, 7, 10, 11, 30, 136,
pluralism, 9, 56, 78. 145, 172, 179, 189,191, 192, 195-223,
phenomenology, 136, 138, 237. 245.
pmara, 188, 189, 196-198, 207, 211, 255. Tukura, 36, 39, 41, 112-114, 142, 165-167.
pmere, 196-198, 218, 219. tukutita, 36, 41, 42, 113, 142, 144, 159.
pmerekwerteye, 213, 218-220, 222, 255. Ulamba, 155, 157, 158, 159, 217.
polygenetic theory, 69. Völkergedanke(n), 63, 78.
psychic unity, 60, 63-65, 94, 243. Volk, 5.
race, 5, 6, 36, 52, 53, 55, 60-62, 64, 72, 74, Volksgeist, 5, 8, 52-57, 60, 63, 69, 73, 74,
77, 226, 240. 78, 94.
ratapa, 15, 31, 41, 156, 184, 186-187, 207, Warlpiri, 21, 43, 135, 152, 161, 183, 184,
210, 214, 217, 220, 255. 212, 213, 252, 254.
Relativism, 52, 54, 60, 346. Weltanschauung , 58,63, 69, 74, 78, 82,
Romanticism, 52. 243.
section system, 171, 173, 176, 177, 178, Yolngu, 204.
199. Zeitgeist, 53.
social change, 7, 66, 112, 129, 193, 204,
220-223, 245.
social organisation, 3, 51, 169, 170, 191,
199, 200, 202, 211, 236, 237.
sedentarisation, 184.
skin names, skins. See section and
subsection systems.
songs, 8, 31-33, 35, 37, 40, 42-44, 89, 96,
120, 121, 123-124, 135, 137, 145, 146,
149, 150-156, 197, 256.
Sovereignty, 195, 203, 241.
307
The Aranda’s Pepa
Name Index Graebner, Fritz, 9, 48, 63, 65-68, 70, 71,

75, 76, 77, 94, 95, 129, 243.
Gray, Justice, 197, 206, 209, 220.
Grimm, J. & W., 10, 60, 69, 82, 141, 142,
Ankermann, B., 63,65, 66, 68. 145.
Austin-Broos, Diane, 79, 127, 164, 191, Haeckel, Ernest, 64.
207, 208, 209, 213, 220, 221, 225, 234, Hagen, Bernhard, 34, 44, 64, 94, 108,
236, 237, 238, 253. Hamilton, A., 183, 202, 203, 205.
Basedow, H., 96, 244. Heidegger, Martin, 136.
Bastian, Adolf, 4, 47, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, Heinrich, H.A., 30, 49.
64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 78, 94, 99, 243. Herder, Johann Gottfried, 5, 7, 8, 9, 51,
Bauer, Friedrich, 85. 52-57, 58-63, 69, 70, 78, 91, 94, 145,
Berlin, I., 5, 54, 55. 148, 243.
Berndt, Ronald and Catherine, 137, 138, Hiatt, L.R., 36, 104, 105, 109, 112, 114,
140, 142, 143, 146, 160, 237. 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 146, 160, 199,
Berndt, Ronald, 135, 143, 146, 148. 201, 203, 226, 230, 235, 237.
Boas, Franz, 6, 7, 8, 9, 51, 56, 57, 60, 62, Howitt, A.W., 28, 51, 88, 89, 92, 95, 107,
68, 76, 77, 78, 79, 94, 99, 129, 130, 145, 108, 110, 111, 120, 169, 199, 200, 225,
235, 240, 241, 243, 246. 228, 229, 230, 241.
Bogner, J.M., 92, 93. Howitt, M.E.B., 228.
Bogner, Marie, 46. Humboldt, Alexander von, 9, 56, 57-61,
Chewings, Charles, 1, 2. 65, 71, 97.
Cowle, Ernest, 45, 232. Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 57-61, 63, 69,
Curr, E.M., 96, 226, 227, 229. 71, 78.
Darwin, Charles, 6, 62, 64, 65, 232. Humboldt, Wilhelm and Alexander von,
Deinzer, Johannes, 9, 81-86, 89, 102, 243, 6, 9, 57-61, 78, 91, 94, 99, 116, 243.
244. Jacobus, 35, 244.
Durkheim, Émile, 1, 101, 109, 122. Kaibel, Ludwig, 20, 93, 96.
Elliott, Craig, 206. Kant, Immanuel, 52, 53, 55, 71, 94.
Eylmann, E., 88, 228. Katukunkara, 176.
Fison, Lorimer, 95, 169, 199, 200, 230. Kempe, A.H., 15, 28, 31, 84, 88, 92, 103,
FitzHerbert, J.A., 2, 38, 157. 106, 120, 125, 229.
Foy, W., 67, 68, 95, 119, 120, 143. Keen, Ian, 204, 205.
Frazer, James, 1, 3, 7, 36, 51, 95, 105-109, Keysser, Christian, 83, 92, 109.
145, 169, 230, 236, 242. Klaatsch, H., 94.
Frobenius, Leo, 66, 68, 94, 129. Koser, Rebecca, 191.
Gason, Samuel, 227, 228. Krichauff, F.E.H., 229.
Giles, E., 19, 20, 226. Kroeber, Alfred, 71, 78.
Gillen, Frank, 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 28, 45, 51, 88, Lang, Andrew, 2, 94, 95, 104, 105, 106,
89, 114, 171, 219, 229, 230, 231, 232, 107, 110, 231, 242, 244.
233, 234, 235. Lang, John Dunmore, 198.
Gingrich, A., 5, 6, 52, 60, 63. Langham, I., 68, 170, 225, 226, 235, 236,
Gobineau, Arthur de, 60. 237.
Goethe, J.W. von, 53. Leenhardt, Maurice, 126.
Gosse, W.C., 20, 226.
308
Index
Leonhardi, Baron Moritz von, 2, 4, 7, 9, Pink, Olive, 28, 145, 188, 196, 197, 206,
29, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 44, 46, 47, 51, 67, 208, 209, 211, 213, 218, 219.
68, 77, 81, 89, 94-99, 101-106, 108, 110, Pmala, Silas, 29, 30, 31, 243.
111, 114-126, 128-132, 142, 143, 145, Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., 6, 169, 170, 200,
146, 149, 152, 155, 165, 166, 167, 168, 201, 204, 206, 211, 226, 232, 234, 235,
170, 181, 182, 184, 186, 210, 226, 228, 236, 237, 245.
238, 239, 242, 243, 244, 245. Ratzel, Freidrich, 64, 65-68, 70, 90, 94.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 1, 72, 75, 78, 136, Rauwirarka, 35, 208, 213.
138, 140, 150, 151, 160, 162. Redmond, A., 156, 163, 237.
Loatjira, Abraham, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 50, Reuther, J.G., 4, 24, 25, 46, 86, 87, 88, 93,
125, 127, 159, 184, 243. 111, 112, 128, 156, 228, 261.
Löhe, Wilhelm, 9, 81, 84, 85, 244. Ridley, W., 110, 225.
Ljoŋa, Tom, 157, 158, 159. Rivers, W.H.R., 68, 70, 169, 170, 171, 226,
Luschan, Felix von, 62, 94. 234, 235, 237.
Malbunka, 147, 190. Róheim, Géza, 20, 39, 124, 136, 139, 140,
Malbunka , Mavis, 79, 209. 141, 160, 162, 163, 166, 167, 197, 237,
Malinowski, B., 1, 137, 146, 230, 232, 243.
234. Roth, W.E., 120, 225, 227.
Mangarkunjerkunja, 173, 176, 215. Sackett, Lee, 179, 206.
Mathews, R.H., 97, 120, 121, 171, 181, Sansom , Basil, 183, 184, 204, 205.
199, 225, 227, 228, 235, 241. Sarg, F.C.H., 34, 44, 45, 101, 109.
Mauss, Marcel, xv, 34, 101, 109, 242. Seidel, Carl, 82, 83, 91, 92, 146.
Meggitt, M., 154, 183, 213, 236. Schmidt, Pater Wilhelm, 66, 67, 68, 70,
Morgan, L.H., 64, 169, 230, 237. 94, 95, 99, 101, 108, 109, 110, 120, 129.
Morphy, Howard, 2, 3, 28, 204, 229, 232, Schild, Maurice, 24, 79, 81, 87, 88.
233, 234, 235. Schoknecht, Carl, 87, 228.
Morton, John, 20, 95, 136, 139, 140, 141, Schulze, L., 28, 84, 92, 120, 164, 166, 169,
145, 153, 156, 160, 162, 163, 164, 206, 210, 229.
608, 212, 213, 218, 220, 221, 223, 228, Schwarz, W.F., 15, 229.
229, 231, 240, 245. Siebert, Otto, 28, 46, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93,
Mulvaney, John, 2, 3, 28, 88, 106, 109, 171, 225, 228.
226, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 238. Smyth, R.B., 226.
Munn, Nancy, 136, 138, 139, 140, 153, Spencer and Gillen, 1-3, 9,11,35, 39, 46,
156, 160, 161, 162, 163, 205, 209, 237. 51, 79, 89, 95, 98, 102, 103-105, 109-114,
Myers, Fred, 136, 153, 156, 160, 161, 162, 119, 120-124, 164-166, 169, 175, 176,
163, 178, 195, 202, 212, 221. 181, 197, 207, 208, 213, 216, 217, 219,
Namatjira, Albert, 19. 225, 226, 228, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236,
Nameia, 15. 237, 241.
Oberscheidt, Hans, xix, 1, 191. Spencer, Baldwin, 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 36, 38, 51,
Oldfield, August, 199. 63, 73, 79, 88, 98, 105-109, 114, 122,
Parker, K. Langloh, 110, 199, 225, 231, 166, 227, 229, 230-235, 238, 239, 242.
241. Spencer, Herbert, 6, 62, 64.
Peterson, Nicolas, 109, 136, 138, 160, 183, Stanner, W.E.H., 135, 136, 140, 160, 161,
184, 198, 199, 201, 202, 206, 212. 197, 201, 202, 203.
Stirling, E.C., 4, 23, 120, 129.
309
The Aranda’s Pepa
Strehlow, Frieda (nee Keysser), 25, 26, 27,

28, 34, 35, 45, 46, 48, 79, 80, 244, 261.
Strehlow, John, 79, 82, 88, 89, 101, 106,
109, 127, 164.
Strehlow, T.G.H., 1, 2, 11, 17, 20, 22, 30,
31, 32, 38, 39, 45, 49, 50, 70, 79, 127,
131, 136, 139, 143, 152, 153, 156-159,
160, 161, 162, 167, 173, 177, 181, 187-
191, 193, 196, 197, 203, 205, 206, 207,
208, 211, 212, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220,
221, 225, 237, 238-240, 245.
Stocking, George, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76,
78, 104, 170, 226, 231, 237, 238.
Stott, Robert, 48.
Stuart, J.M., 19, 226.
Sutton, P., 191, 205, 223.
Taplin, G., 120, 226.
Talku, later known as Wapiti, 29, 30, 32,
33, 243.
Tindale, Norman, 20, 21, 33, 88, 189, 228.
Tjalkabota, Moses, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 49,
159, 213, 243.
Thomas, N.W., 1, 2, 35, 68, 94, 96, 101,
111, 112, 125, 146, 154, 230, 238.
Turner, Victor, 138, 140, 163.
Tylor, E.B., 36, 64, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109,
237.
Vaarzon-Morel, Petronella, 179, 205-206.
Vatter, Ernst, 34-35, 44, 46.
Veit, Walter, 2, 79, 80, 81, 90, 91, 106,
109, 126.
Virchow, R., 4, 5, 60, 61-65, 71, 94, 99,
243.
Völker, Harriett, 79, 94, 127, 228.
Waite, Edward, 4.
Waitz, T., 57, 59, 60, 61, 64, 90.
Warburton, P.E., 226.
Warneck, Gustav, 9, 90, 91.
Willshire, William, 15, 227.
Wilmot, Helen, 188, 191, 193, 208.
Wood, Ray, 177.
Worsnop, Thomas, 227.
310

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The Aranda’s Pepa

An Introduction to Carl Strehlow’s Masterpiece

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Kenny, Anna, author.

Title: The Aranda’s Pepa : an introduction to Carl

ISBN: 9781921536762 (paperback) 9781921536779 (ebook)

Subjects: Aranda (Australian people)--Social life and customs.

Dewey Number: 305.89915

Cover design and layout by ANU Press

Printed by Griffin Press

This edition © 2013 ANU Press

Plates, Diagrams and Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

1 See Section ‘Sign language’ (Strehlow 1915: 70).

Source: Clivie Hilliker, The Australian National University.

1 John Morton, pers. comm., 13.11.2012.

The significance of Carl Strehlow’s Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-

intellectual with interests in philosophy and anthropology. In England,

This view was embodied in museum collections. Terminology derived from

anthropology was governed by methodological convictions rather than an

Two routes to Empiricism

Central concern and overview of the book

features that cannot be rendered in terms of generalised stages of development.

2. Map of route of the Lutheran missionaries to Hermannsburg.

The Aranda and Kukatja-Loritja peoples

3. Carl Strehlow’s map, 1910.

Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs.

4. Image of central Australia.

Source: Shane Mulcahy, Desert Vision.

6 Lutheran Herald, 26.10.1921: 114.

5. T.G.H. Strehlow’s map, 1971.

Carl Strehlow’s life and work in Australia

Bethesda Mission at Lake Eyre in South Australia. The moment he arrived at

6. Carl Strehlow’s ‘Aussendungsphoto’, 1892.

8 Carl Strehlow, Kirchlichen Mitteilungen, No. 3, 1895: 19.

9 Held at the Strehlow Research Centre (SRC) in Alice Springs.

in your imagination to Hermannsburg standing beside me and looking

11 Carl Strehlow to Frieda Keysser, 12 .11.1894.

7. Frieda Strehlow and her first child Friedrich, 1897.

Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs (SRC 7762).

8. Aranda girls with Frieda at Hermannsburg in the 1890s.

Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs (SRC 5835).

Carl Strehlow started work on language and translation immediately. His

9. Loatjira, Pmala, Tjalkabota and Talku, 1906/7.

Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs (SRC 6196).

14 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 30.7.1907.

23 F.C.H. Sarg to Carl Strehlow, 20.9.1912 and 18.11.1912.

Strehlow’s vast material, enriched and enlarged by further inquiries

Carl Strehlow’s magnum opus

30 Carl Strehlow to von Leonhardi, 13.12.1906 (SH-SP-7-1).

Loritja perspective, and specimens that were classified in Germany by leading

The original manuscripts

10. Ethnological Museum of Frankfurt, 1943.

Source: Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt am Main.

11. Page 1224 of Carl Strehlow’s handwritten manuscript, Volume 3, Leben.

Source: Strehlow Research Centre, Alice Springs.

33 Spencer to Frazer, 10.3.1908 (Marett and Penniman 1932: 110).

story has a number of interesting ‘foreign features’ incorporated into its

Cultus: Songs and ceremonies

performed. In view of their purpose these ceremonies are therefore known

Leben: Social life

ISBN: 9781921536762 (paperback) 9781921536779 (ebook)

Subjects: Aranda (Australian people)--Social life and customs.  

Dewey Number: 305.89915  