Post-contact Aboriginal aversion to pork

[den...@tpg.com.au]

Hi folks

Its time to pick your brains.

I'm working on a diary written in 1889 by a man visiting the Birdsville-Boulia area of Queensland, on the edge of the Simpson Desert.  He's travelled up with drovers, including four Aboriginal stockmen, returning with a mob of horses from Dubbo to their traditional country.  

Early on in his journey he noted that none of the Aboriginal men ['boys'] would eat their totem animals.  No surprise there because, as they explained, they are relatives.  However he records that all of them refused to eat pig.

‘Boys’ have different animals they cannot eat; all refuse pig. ‘Frank’ will not eat kangaroo, ‘mine brudder’ he says.  ‘Iguana mine fellow brudder’ says Billy.

I have not come across the avoidance of pig before.  I can't tell from the context whether its freshly killed, or comes from the magic animal in bacon, ham or salt pork form. I've checked almost-contemporary Roth, who covers the adjoining Pitta Pitta speakers, and the central Australian classics, but cant find any reference saying that people do or don't hit the pig when they are hungry.

Any light that be shed on this through contemporary accounts or other observations would be very welcome.

cheers

Denis Gojak

[Oliver Brown]

Hi Denis,

I wonder if perhaps 'pig' refers to the Echidna. Echidnas are often called 'porcupine' (thorny pig) by Aboriginal people and I've heard it said that it tastes like pork. Also, they remain a prized food with some communities and I've been told by people as far apart as Brewarrina and the NSW north coast that they are supposed to be reserved for the old people. That is quite a big spread of country to have the same rule saying that it is not for children and young adults; and one supposes that it is not a new rule. Ron Heron (Yaegl/Bundjalung elder/archaeologist from around the Clarence River) once told me you had to have grey hair to get some - I asked if having some grey in my beard might qualify me for a bite at least; he shook his head. I also remember some guys from Brewarrina once caught one at Cuddie Springs and kept it alive in drum for a couple of days before taking it home to share with elders.

Echidnas are the only native mammal with a pan-continental distribution, so they were around wherever your description is coming from. Pigs on the other hand, while existing now in variable (rainfall dependant) numbers in the ephemeral wetland areas of the channel country, may very well have not been there at all in 1889.

For a less likely possibility, I have similarly heard of bandicoots tasting like pork and they have a slightly mini-pig onmivorous diet of things they root around for. Bandicoots (including bilbies) are right in that 'critical weight range' where a few are extinct and many have very contracted ranges and numbers, but they were once supposedly numerous in that area.

Oliver Brown

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[Jeannette Hope]

Denis’s original inquiry triggered my memory. I have heard or read  of avoidance of pig before, but can’t remember where.  Trying to recall, I did a quick search and came across this, which Denis may have already discovered.

 

The Capricornian 15 June 1889

 

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES FOLK LORE.

A leading article in this day's issue, says the Brisbane Courier, calls attention to a desire on the part of the Royal Society of Queensland to obtain reliable data respecting the manners, customs, and institutions of the aboriginal tribes of this colony. The matters to which notice is particularly directed are embodied under ten heads, each of which is printed on a folio of a form for private circulation. The subject is sufficiently important to warrant public attention. With a view, therefore, of aiding the society in its laudable efforts to throw light upon the complicated ethnological problems set for solution by our indigenous decaying nomads, as also to show within what limits the society proposes to act, the heads of inquiry are hereunder repeated with such observations as appear pertinent thereto.

 

9. — Food ; kinds ; how obtained ; modes of cooking or preparing ; food forbidden to various classes within the tribe.

 

The flesh of the pig is the sole article of diet rejected so far as the writer's experience is concerned, and this fact in a country where the animal was unknown prior to the arrival of the whiteman gives birth to a long train of thought as to the germ place of this race.  Fat is their luxury of luxuries. The greatest mark of marital affection is for the husband to rub his wife with grease. The most prized toilet requisite is a lump of emu fat. A fat woman is a Venus. A fat wombat, a plump dish, call forth expressions of delight, yet no black man or woman will touch the flesh of the pig except under compulsion.

 

This is repeated in several newspapers. The original source in the Courier just lists the ‘heads of enquiry’ (19 altogether), in this case, just the first line.  The following extract about pigs is part of very long and interesting response to the heads of enquiry, which is unfortunately unattributed (it was picked up by several papers). However it is unlikely to be by someone in the Royal Society, since they are the ones asking for information.  Was it Archibald Meston?  I’m not too familiar with Qld ethnographers, but someone out there will know.  Note that this comment rules out the possibility that ‘pig’ referred to echidna.  

 

Back to pigs.  I researched (briefly) the history of feral pigs for my PhD in the 60s and a google search reveals that the source I found then is pretty much the main one still quoted today!  Pullar, E.M. 1953 The wild (feral) pigs of Australia: their origin, distribution and economic importance. Mem.Nat.Mus.Melb. 18:7-23.  (He wrote an earlier article in a veterinary journal). The most interesting recent paper is http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091657, which shows that feral pigs in NQLD come from two different sources, Asian and European domestic; live in different areas and don’t interbreed.

 

Pigs have been around for a while. They were on the islands of Bass Strait by the 1840s, where they still occur, but have never established feral populations in Tasmania itself.  (Cook released a boar and sow on Bruny Island, Tas. in 1777. He expected the pigs to be killed by the Aboriginal population;  no signs of pigs were seen by the Baudin expedition in 1802.)   They were in Qld, and along the Murray and Darling by the 1860s and regarded as a pest by the 1870s.

 

Today in WNSW wild pigs are eaten by Aborigines though I’m not sure whether anyone goes out specifically to hunt for them, preferring emu and kangaroo.  

 

All this has not helped me remember where I came across Aboriginal aversion to pork!

 

Finally, I have eaten echidna, cooked in an earth oven in the backyard of an Aboriginal home in Broken Hill.  It is a white meat but didn’t taste much like pork, rather chicken, or perhaps snake.  What did strike me was its unusual texture – something like vegetable spaghetti (that marrow with soft fibrous strands).    It was in the 1980s and I didn’t have grey hair then; I don’t remember any mention of restricting it to older people.

 

Jeannette

 

 

From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Oliver Brown
Sent: Tuesday, 18 August 2015 12:23 PM
To: oza...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: {OzArch} Post-contact Aboriginal aversion to pork

 

Hi Denis,

I wonder if perhaps 'pig' refers to the Echidna. Echidnas are often called 'porcupine' (thorny pig) by Aboriginal people and I've heard it said that it tastes like pork. Also, they remain a prized food with some communities and I've been told by people as far apart as Brewarrina and the NSW north coast that they are supposed to be reserved for the old people. That is quite a big spread of country to have the same rule saying that it is not for children and young adults; and one supposes that it is not a new rule. Ron Heron (Yaegl/Bundjalung elder/archaeologist from around the Clarence River) once told me you had to have grey hair to get some - I asked if having some grey in my beard might qualify me for a bite at least; he shook his head. I also remember some guys from Brewarrina once caught one at Cuddie Springs and kept it alive in drum for a couple of days before taking it home to share with elders.

Echidnas are the only native mammal with a pan-continental distribution, so they were around wherever your description is coming from. Pigs on the other hand, while existing now in variable (rainfall dependant) numbers in the ephemeral wetland areas of the channel country, may very well have not been there at all in 1889.

For a less likely possibility, I have similarly heard of bandicoots tasting like pork and they have a slightly mini-pig onmivorous diet of things they root around for. Bandicoots (including bilbies) are right in that 'critical weight range' where a few are extinct and many have very contracted ranges and numbers, but they were once supposedly numerous in that area.

Oliver Brown

 

On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 8:43 AM, <den...@tpg.com.au> wrote:

Hi folks

 

Its time to pick your brains.

 

I'm working on a diary written in 1889 by a man visiting the Birdsville-Boulia area of Queensland, on the edge of the Simpson Desert.  He's travelled up with drovers, including four Aboriginal stockmen, returning with a mob of horses from Dubbo to their traditional country.  

 

Early on in his journey he noted that none of the Aboriginal men ['boys'] would eat their totem animals.  No surprise there because, as they explained, they are relatives.  However he records that all of them refused to eat pig.

 

‘Boys’ have different animals they cannot eat; all refuse pig. ‘Frank’ will not eat kangaroo, ‘mine brudder’ he says.  ‘Iguana mine fellow brudder’ says Billy.

 

I have not come across the avoidance of pig before.  I can't tell from the context whether its freshly killed, or comes from the magic animal in bacon, ham or salt pork form. I've checked almost-contemporary Roth, who covers the adjoining Pitta Pitta speakers, and the central Australian classics, but cant find any reference saying that people do or don't hit the pig when they are hungry.

 

Any light that be shed on this through contemporary accounts or other observations would be very welcome.

 

cheers

 

Denis Gojak

[den...@tpg.com.au]

Thanks Oliver

From the context I think not echidna, but that wonderfully explains another reference thats been puzzling me for years where there seemed  a confusion between echidna and pig.  From memory it described some  country kids being injured by a little pig as it tried to burrow away, which now makes more sense.

cheers

D

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Tue, 18 Aug 2015 12:22:40 +1000

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Re: {OzArch} Post-contact Aboriginal aversion to pork

[den...@tpg.com.au]

Jeannette, 

Thanks for the great references.

Yes the Capricornian article makes a great read, and frustratingly no author.  Thanks for sharing the find.

cheers

Denis

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Tue, 18 Aug 2015 16:17:20 +1000

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RE: {OzArch} Post-contact Aboriginal aversion to pork

[Michael Lever]

Hi All,

 

While this thread was running I was out in the field with an Aboriginal gentleman from WA, who was interested in comparing Aboriginal and Jewish cultural practices , in particular aversion to pork consumption.

He stated that his old relatives had explained to him that pork looked, smelt, and tasted like human flesh - and that he recalled individuals who would happily eat bacon but not pork.

Purely anecdotal I realise, but then sometimes ethnography is.

Cheers,

Michael

[Steve Corsini]

1.       Where are the empirical studies that test the hypothesis - Roasted human flesh looks, smells and tastes like Pork??

2.       Otherwise, How would anyone know?

 

I wondered if the reports of non-pork eating coincided at all with the historical distribution of “Afghan” cameleers? (who I am presuming were non-pork eating Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus)

 

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/08/feature-why-big-societies-need-big-gods?utm_campaign=email-news-weekly&utm_src=email

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[Shaun Canning]

Humans weren’t called ‘long pork’ or ‘long pig’ by some cannibals for the fun of it…..

 

Regards,

 

Dr Shaun Canning
General Manager
M	0400 204 536
E	Shaun....@achm.com.au
Australian Cultural Heritage Management
Adelaide Brisbane Melbourne Perth Sydney
P	1300 724 913
W	www.achm.com.au
Find me at LinkedIn

[Michael Lever]

Steve,

I was reporting firsthand evidence on cultural beliefs and cultural practice of the immediate family of an informant - who volunteered this information of his own volition.

By definition, neither these beliefs nor practices need to pass empirical testing in order to hold sway among subscribers.

It is enough that those who subscribe to a practice believe in its veracity.

There are several billion humans alive who moderate their behaviour daily to placate deities - all of which I believe are less than empirically demonstrable.

Cheers

[den...@tpg.com.au]

The non-pork eating Aboriginal people in my original post were in an area that was being serviced by Afghan camel trains, and they even met one en-route to home.  Direct influence would have been minimal I suspect at this stage in the early 1890s, as the nearest base was probably Hergott Springs at that time.

Given the strong push of new songs, dances, cultural practices pushing out of NT into this area, there may be an argument for pork aversion being something the Yolngu picked up from Macassans and ritualised in the context of correct behaviour for a new animal on the scene, and it spread from there with the pig following its release at Port Essington.

"Long pig" as a term for cooked human goes way back to the good old days of native stereotyping with missionaries cooking away in big pots.  Thats British Empirical!

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Mon, 31 Aug 2015 12:30:11 +0800

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RE: {OzArch} Re: Post-contact Aboriginal aversion to pork

[Eleanor Crosby]

The Fijians are reported to have  referred to human flesh as 'long pig', so perhaps there is a similarity in taste and texture?
Pigs are a post-European introduction there too.

El

On 31/08/2015 2:30 PM, Steve Corsini wrote:

[Shaun Canning]

Yes Eleanor, you are correct, as did other cultures where cannibalism was practiced.

 

This was not just a colonial construct.

 

Regards,

 

Dr Shaun Canning
General Manager
M	0400 204 536
E	Shaun....@achm.com.au
Australian Cultural Heritage Management
Adelaide Brisbane Melbourne Perth Sydney
P	1300 724 913
W	www.achm.com.au
Find me at LinkedIn

 

From: oza...@googlegroups.com [mailto:oza...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Eleanor Crosby

Sent: Monday, 31 August 2015 3:03 PM
To: oza...@googlegroups.com

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