Eora
The Eora are the Aboriginal people (language group or tribe) of the Sydney area, south to the Georges River, north to the Hawkesbury River, and west to Parramatta. The indigenous people used this word to describe where they came from to the British. "Eora" was then used by the British to refer to those Aboriginal people. The Eora people are made up of separate family groups or clans.
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[edit] Etymology
The word Eora (sometimes spelled Iora or Iyora)is pronounced ‘yura’ is a word derived from 'here' or 'this place', and means 'the people'.[1]
[edit] Clans
The traditional owners of the inner Sydney City region of Australia are the Cadigal people, one of the peoples who belong to the Eora language group.[2] Their land south of Port Jackson stretches from South Head to Petersham. The people described by British settlers as the Eora people were probably Cadigal people, the Aboriginal tribe of the inner Sydney region in 1788 at the time the first European settlers arrived. The Cadigal clan lived to the southwest of the Balmain peninsula, the Wanegal to the northwest, and the Cammeraygal on the present-day lower North Shore.
[edit] Language
The Eora language has been reconstructed from the many notes made of it by the original colonists, although there has possibly not been a continual oral tradition for over one hundred years. Some of the words of Aboriginal language still in use today are from the Eora (possibly Dharawal) language: dingo, woomera, wallaby, wombat, waratah, and boobook (owl).
[edit] Lifestyle
The Eora/Dharawal/Darug (coastal) people lived largely from the produce of the sea, and were expert in close-to-shore navigation, fishing, cooking, and eating in the bays and harbours in their bark canoes.The Eora were not farmers. They did not grow or plant crops. The only "farming" they did was that the women picked herbs which they used in herbal remedies. They were also very spiritual people. They believed that inside everything, no matter what it was, there was a living spirit inside it keeping it in existence and something could only really be gone from the world if the spirit inside was destroyed. They also believed that if land was taken away from them that all the spirits in that land would die.
[edit] Demise
When the First Fleet of 1300 convicts, guards, and administrators arrived in January 1788, the Eora numbered about 1,500.[citation needed] A smallpox-like disease, in conjunction with other pathogens and viruses and the destruction of their natural food sources, saw the Eora virtually die out during the nineteenth century.
[edit] Bennelong
Bennelong, of the Eora tribe, served as a link between the British colony at Sydney and the Eora people in the early days of the colony. He was given a brick hut on what became known as Bennelong Point where the Sydney Opera House now stands. He traveled to England in 1792 along with Yemmerrawanie and returned to Sydney in 1795. His wife, Barangaroo is commemorated in the naming of the suburb of Barangaroo on Darling Harbour. [3]
[edit] References
- ^ "Eora: Mapping Aboriginal Sydney 1770–1850". State Library of New South Wales. 2006. p. 1. http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/exhibitions/2006/eora/docs/eora-guide.pdf. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
- ^ "Aboriginal People and Place", City of Sydney government website, 2002
- ^ Barangaroo, NSW Geographical Names Board, http://www.gnb.nsw.gov.au/name_search/extract?id=MnqwZxUlKW
- Notes
- Daniel Kurupt (gen. ed.) (1994). The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press. ISBN 0-85575-234-3 (set).
- N. Thieberger, W. McGregor junior
(gen. eds.) Macquarie Aboriginal Words, section "Sydney language".
