Madngela facts for kids
The Madngella, otherwise known as the Matngala or Hermit Hill tribe, are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory, Australia.
Contents
Language
The Madngella spoke Matngele, one of the Eastern Daly languages, now extinct.
Country
The Madngella lived traditionally in the middle and lower reaches of the Daly River nearby to the Mulluk-Mulluk people. Norman Tindale assigned to them some 100 square miles (260 km2) of tribal land around Hermit Hill, and the area west of the Daly River, placing them to the southeast of the Yunggor people. The Pongaponga lay to their north.
Social system
In the merbok system of ceremonial exchange, the Madngella used the words in a way that indicated the coastal provenance of the articles (ninymer) exchanged, north-easterly and south-westerly. Medrdokfrom the former direction was calledpork padaka, as opposed to the south-westerly merbok, called nim berinken, where berinken is a generic term used of tribes living south-west of the Madngella.
History
The Madngella tribe had experienced intense culture shock in the wake of white settlement, whose effects over 50 years, according to who studied them in the early 1930s, had been to disintegrate many of their attachments to the traditional way of life.
Jesuit missionaries, after several endeavours to set up a station in the general area of the Daly River, eventually managed to establish a viable community at Hermit Hill.
Alternative names
- Madngella.
- Muttangulla.
- Matngelli.
- Hermit Hill tribe.
