IDNO

LS.109156.TC1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Australia. Arunta.
Initiation Ceremony of the Water Totem Quatcha.
showing how the waninga is carried used in Quabara Quatcha - a rain ceremony." [first manuscript in ink]
"Nat. T.C.A. fig. 57. p.308, p.306." [second manuscript in ink]

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.354.ACH1: "Arunta waninga of the Quabara Quatcha rain ceremony of water totem. North. T.C.A. pp.306-8, fig.57."

Portrait of two southern Aranda (Arunta) men, one a Purula, the other a Bulthura, but both belonging to the emu totem, are decorated for the ceremony of Waninga which happens on the fifth day of the Engwura initiation ceremony. The men are decorated with white bands of down at each side of the body. On the top of the head, each wears a bunch of parings made of gum tree wood speared with human blood. The front man has a freshly cut gum stick about two and a half feet in length with the green bark still on, and. like the parings, smeared with blood. This he carries across his shoulders, one hand holding it at either end. His back is adorned with a bunch of eagle-hawk feathers fixed in to his waist girdle. The other man, who walks immediately behind him, carries the Waninga, which he grasps with two hands at the back of his neck.
The landscape in the background consists of shrubbery. [WV 4/2/2009]

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

Publication: Image published in Baldwin Spencer, W., and F.J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, (MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London), p. 307, fig. 57 with the following caption:
"Ceremony of the water totem, showing how the waninga is carried". [WV 4/2/2009]

Photographer: Note in Baldwin Spencer, W. and F. J. Gillen, 1927, p. xiii states all photos were taken by the authors. [WV 23/1/2009]

Context: "Waninga: A sacred object emblematic of some totemic animal or plant." (Baldwin Spencer, W., and F.J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, (MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London), p. 657) [WV 4/2/2009]