Ayapathu

The Ayapathu people, otherwise known as the Ayabadhu or Aiyaboto , were Indigenous Australian group, living on the western side of the Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland.

Language

The Ayapathu language appears to have been closely related to the coastal language of Yintyingka,^[1] and they may be considered dialects of the same language.^[2] Etymologically, aya means 'language', while patha may be cognate with the homophonous Yintyingka word for 'to eat', paralleling the ethnonym Wik-Mungkan (speech (wik)+eat (mungka).^[3]

Little is otherwise known of the language. Some word lists were compiled from information given by George Rocky,whose vernacular was Umpila, though his father was an Ayapathu. He was raised from boyhood at the Lockhart River Mission, and then worked on Japanese lugger boats fishing for beche-de-mer and pearls. The Japanese generally treated their aboriginal hired labourers better than white employers did. A Kaantju clansman, Jack Shephard , whose mother was an Ayapathu, ^[4] The last speakers died out in the late 20th century.

History

The Ayapathu were an inland tribe closely related to the coastal Yintyingka people. The first mention of them in settlement records comes from 19th century police reports. .^[5] Ursula McConnel who studied the tribes of the region intensely from 1927 to 1934, nonetheless provided little information on them other than noting that their hunting grounds were on the upper Holroyd River, that they intermarried with the Kaantju, and held corroborees with that tribe and the Wik-Mungkan at the junction where the Hoyroyd meets the Pretender river. The Wik-Mungkan tribe lay to their west, the Kaantju to their north, and the Koko Taiyari southwest. ^[6] Otherwise they (called Aiyaboto), reduced by pastoral expansion over their lands, gathered for hand-outs on the river bed outside Coen.^{[7] [8]}

Society

The kinship terminology in Ayapathu was essentially identical to that in Yintyingka.^[2]

Notes and references

Notes

References