IDNO

LS.109152.TC1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Australia.
Arunta initiation ceremony.
Arranging churinga on the KAUAUA or sacred pole. Tuft of eagle-hawk feathers et: at top. Pole reddened + blood." [first manuscript in ink]
"v. S & G. N.T. 372 fig.84.
Nat. T.C.A. p.372." [second manuscript in ink]

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.338.ACH1: "Arranging the churinga on the Kanana [sic, kauaua]. Arunta."

A group of Aranda (Arunta) people erecting the kauaua (sacred pole) as part of the Engwura, a long series of ceremonies concerned with totems.
The pole is reddened with human blood and further ornamented at the top with eagle-hawk feathers, white chilara (head bands), two bunches of alpita tail tips and a long nose point. The man who is climbing in the pole is attaching a few churinga.
All the men have full beards and moustaches. The background consists of rocks, shrubbery and small trees. [WV 28/1/2009, from record P.338.ACH1, JD 21/8/2012]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Central Australia

Cultural Affliation

Arunta

Named Person

Photographer

Baldwin Spencer, Walter; or Gillen, Francis James

Collector / Expedition

Baldwin Spencer, Walter [Spencer and Gillen 'Arunta' Fieldwork, Summer 1896 - 1897]

Date

?November 1896 - ?February 1897

Collection Name

Teaching Slide CollectionHaddon Unmounted Collection

Source

?Haddon, Alfred Cort (Dr)

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Context: The erection of the pole as part of the Engwura initiation ceremonies is described in Baldwin Spencer, W., and F.J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, (MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London), p. 370-372 as follows:
"On the next day, while the Illpongwurra were all far away out in the bush, the sacred pole, or Kauaua, was first of all ornamented and then erected in the middle of the ceremonial ground. It had been lying all night in the bed of the creek, where the preparations for ceremonies were made, and in the morning the men who had brought it in began to decorate it. First of all one of these men, a Kumara, bled himself, opening for the purpose a vein in his arm. From this he allowed blood to flow until there was enough to fill five times over the haft of a shield. This was quite the equivalent of five half pints, and, as if that were not enough, he ended by walking slowly once up and down by the side of the pole, allowing the blood to spurtle over it in the form of a thin stream. He did not seem to be any the worse for the loss of so much blood; in fact, during the whole Engwura, an astonishing quantity was used, and the natives appeared to think nothing whatever about it, no one objecting for a moment to open a vein in his arm or, just as frequently, to obtain it from the subincised urethra, these being the two parts from which the blood is obtained. The blood in the shields was then smeared with a small brush, made of a stick and opossum fur-string wound round one end, on to the pole, until the latter was reddened all over, an, being upwards of twenty feet in length, it took, as may be imagined, a considerable amount. Then to the top was affixed a large bunch of eagle-hawk feathers; white Chilara or head-bands were tied round under this; then Alpita tail tips were suspended in two bunches, one on either side, and just below the Chilara a long nose bone was attached, - in fact the decoration was just that of a human head. Then a few Churinga, which might be of any totem, were strung on near to the top, and the pole thus decorated was brought on to the pointed digging stick, and the pole thus decorated was brought on to the ground. A hole was dug two feet deep by means of a pointed digging stick, and in this is was firmly implanted at a distance of about six yards from Parra and opposite to the middle of the mound." [Wonu Veys 28/1/2009]