THE ARRAN'DA LANGUAGE, CENTRAL AUSTRALIA. 

 By R. H. MATHEWS, L.S. 



(Read October 5, 1906.) 



We encounter the southern Hmit of the Arranda language about 

 Oodnadatta, the present terminus of the trans-continental railway 

 from Adelaide towards Port Darwin. The language continues 

 northerly from Oodnadatta to Charlotte Waters and onward to Glen 

 Helen Cattle Station and Alice Springs, in the Macdonnell Ranges. 

 The distance from Oodnadatta to Alice Springs is 347 miles along 

 the public mail-coach road, but as the Arranda language extends 

 some 50 miles farther north, we may say that the length of territory 

 occupied by the people speaking that language, or dialects of it, is 

 400 miles, by a width of say 200 miles at the widest part — the 

 greatest width being near the northern end in the Macdonnell 

 Ranges and sources of the Finke River. 



In 1875, more than thirty years ago, Mr. Christopher Giles, who 

 was then station master at Charlotte Waters telegraph station, 

 reported that the tribes in that neighborhood spoke the Arrinda 

 (my Arranda) language and were divided into four sections, the 

 names of which he stated, together with their intermarrying rules."^ 

 From information obtained from W. H. Wiltshire and other men 

 who had resided many years in the district and were well acquainted 

 with the natives, I communicated an article to this Society in 1899 

 showing a correct table of their intermarrying laws.^ In 19CX) I 

 sent another article to this Society, with a map defining the southern 

 boundary of the Arranda speaking people.^ 



In 1 89 1, Rev. L. Schulze, a missionary at the aboriginal station 

 at Hermannsburg, on the Upper Finke River, reported his discovery 

 that the natives of that district were subdivided into eight sections. 

 Four of these eisfht have the same names as the four sections men- 



^ " Folklore, manners, etc., of South Australian Aborigines," pp. 82-91. 

 ^Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., XXXVIIL, pp. 78-79. 

 ^Ibid., XXXIX., pp. 89-93, with map. 



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