IDNO

LS.109219.TC1

Description

On Catalogue Card: "Australia.
Kurdaitcha (avenger) throwing spear.
(46 shows medicine man behind).
(v.s. & g. N.T. 476)." [manuscript in ink]

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.346.ACH1: "Kurdaitcha in the act of throwing his spear, the medicine man in the background."

Two Aranda (Arunta) men, the one on the foreground being the Kurdaitcha (man selected to avenge a death) and the one in the background the Raittchama (medicine man), armed and dressed for an Atninga (avenging party for the death of a clan member). The Kurdaitcha is throwing a spear. Both men are wearing full body and facial ornamentation, including being rubbed down with charcoal and decorated with white down lain out in linear patterns on the face, chest, and thighs. The Kurdaitcha is wearing Kurdaitcha shoes made form a thick pad of emu feathers matted together with human blood. The upper surface of the shoes is made of human hair. Both men are holding a magical stone churinga in their mouth, with the Raittchama holding another three churingas.
They are standing in a landscape with shrubs and larger trees in the background. [WV 27/1/2009, from record P.346.ACH1, JD 24/8/2012]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Central Australia

Cultural Affliation

Aranda [also known as Arunta; Arrarnta; Arrarnte; Arunda]

Named Person

Photographer

Baldwin Spencer, Walter; or Gillen, Francis James

Collector / Expedition

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

Date

Collection Name

Teaching Slide CollectionHaddon Unmounted Collection

Source

?Haddon, Alfred Cort (Dr)

Format

Lantern Slide Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

Expedition: Note in Baldwin Spencer, W. and F. J. Gillen, 1927. The Arunta. A Study of a Stone Age People (Macmillan, London), Vol. I , on p. vii states that Baldwin Spencer and Gillen spent four consecutive months with the Aranda (Arunta) people in 1896. The results of this stay were first published in 1899, in the "Native Tribes of Central Australia." [WV 10/2/2009]

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: "Kurdaitcha: Name applied to a man who has been either formally selected or goes out on his own initiative, wearing emu-feather shoes, to kill some individual accused of having injured some one by magic." (Baldwin Spencer, W., and F.J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, (MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London), p. 651) [WV 29/1/2009]

Context: In Arunta tradition when someone dies, his/her death needs to be avenged. Baldwin Spencer and Gillen describe this as follows:
"When it is decided who is guilty, a council of the old men in the group to which the dead man belonged is held and, if it be decided that vengeance is to be exacted by means of a Kurdaitcha party, then the man who is to play this part is chosen. The name Kurdaitcha is applied to the latter and he wears the shoes to which by white men the name of Kurdaitcha shoes has been given. In the north the native name for them is Interlinia and in the south Intathurta.
These shoes have the form of a thick pad of emu feathers matted together with human blood drawn from the arm of some young man. They are so ingeniously made however that the use of anything like blood in their construction would never be suspected; indeed it is difficult to detect, even with the shoes in one’s hands, how the feathers are matted into such a compact mass without apparently the use of anything like stitching. On the upper surface is a network of human hair string made from the hair of any living man or woman - it does not in the least signify who the individual is - and in the middle of the network is a hole through which the foot passes and across which stretches a cord made of several strands of hair twisted together. As we have said, it is is [sic] by no means an easy matter to make the shoes and, as usual, in the manufacture of any special article, there are certain individuals who are famed fur their skill in making them. No woman or child may sec them and they are kept wrapped up in skin or else placed for safety in the sacred store house along with the Churinga. It is said that they may be used more than once, but the nature of the shoe is such that it could not last more than one journey over the hard ground characteristic of the interior.
Before a man may wear the shoes he has to submit to a most painful ordeal. A stone is heated to redness and then applied to the ball of the small toe of either foot, it does not matter which, until, as the natives say, the joint is softened when with a sudden jerk, the toe is pulled outwards and the joint is thus dislocated. There is no doubt that some such ordeal as this is passed through, as we have examined feet of men who claim to be what is called Ertwa Kurdaitcha at Charlotte Waters, Crown Point on the Finke River, Owen Springs and Alice Springs amongst the Macdonnell Ranges, all of which show the remarkable peculiarity of the dislocation. In correspondence with this is the fact that the true Kurdaitcha shoe has, at one side, a small opening made in the hair network through which the toe is thrust.
Each Kurdaitcha man when going on his errand is accompanied by a medicine man and the two men are rubbed over with charcoal - black being in the Arunta tribe the colour associated with magic - and decorated with bands of white down. The hair of both men is tied up behind and a small conical helmet of twigs is fastened on with hair string. The Kurdaitcha himself has lines of down passing across the front of the helmet, down the side of the face and front of the body and legs as far as the knees. The medicine man has a median line running from the top of the helmet to the tip of his nose; another curved line meeting this at both ends encloses the eye of each side; and on the body a broad band of charcoal runs across from shoulder to shoulder and downwards till, at the level of the sternum, it divides into two, one passing on either side of the mid line and so on as far down as the knee. The bands are outlined with white down, and, as the pattern is a constant one, the Kurdaitcha man can always be distinguished from the medicine man. ... Like the man who is on any particular occasion acting as a Kurdaitcha, the doctor himself must be an Ertwa Kurdaitcha who has qualified by passing through the ordeal by fire in which the toe is dislocated. Both men carry shields and spears, and also one or more Churinga, which are supposed as usual to impart to them strength, courage, accuracy of aim, and also to render them invisible to their enemies, and in addition they act as charms to prevent their wearers being wounded. Around his waist each one wears the Kirra-urkna, or girdle, made from the hair which has been cut from a warrior after his death and which is supposed to add to the wearer all the war-like virtues of the dead man."
(Baldwin Spencer, W., and F.J. Gillen, 1899. The Native Tribes of Central Australia, (MacMillan and Co. Ltd., London), p. 477-480) [WV 29/1/2009]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Aboriginal Visual Histories Project, Monash University. [Wonu Veys 17/2/2009]