Eora people
| Eora people | |
|---|---|
|
aka: Ea-ora, Iora, and Yo-ra Eora (AIATSIS), nd (SIL) |
|
Sydney Basin bioregion
|
|
| Hierarchy | |
| Language family: | Pama–Nyungan |
| Language branch: | Yuin–Kuric |
| Language group: | Yora |
| Group dialects: | Dharug |
| Area | |
| Bioregion: | Sydney Basin |
| Location: | Sydney, New South Wales |
| Coordinates: | 34°S 151°E / 34°S 151°ECoordinates: 34°S 151°E / 34°S 151°E |
| Notable individuals | |
The Eora /jʊərɑː/ is the name given by the earliest settlers to a group of indigenous people belonging to the clans along the coastal area of what is now known as the Sydney basin, in New South Wales, Australia.
Contact with the first white settlement's bridgehead into Australia quickly devastated much of the population through epidemics of smallpox and other diseases. Their descendants live on, though the language, social system, way of life and traditions are mostly lost.
The language spoken by the Eora has, since the time of R. H. Mathews, been called Dharuk, which generally refers to what is known as the inland variety, as opposed to the coastal form Iyora (or Eora). It became extinct after the first two generations, and has been partially reconstructed in some general outlines from the many notes made of it by the original colonists, in particular from the notebooks of William Dawes.
Some of the words of Aboriginal language still in use today are from the Eora (possibly Dharawal) language include: dingo=dingu; woomera=wamara; boomerang=combining wamarang and bumarit, two sword-like fighting sticks; corroboree=garabara;wallaby, wombat, waratah, and boobook (owl). The Australian bush term bogey (to bathe) comes from a Port Jackson Dharuk root buugi-.
Eora territory, composed of sandstone coastal outcrops and ridges, coves, mangrove swamps, creeks and tidal lagoons, stretched from the southern area around the Georges River and Botany Bay through to Port Jackson, northwards to Pittwater at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River Westwards it extended to Parramatta. In terms of tribal boundaries, the Kuringgai lay to the north: on the Western edges were the Darug; and to the south, around Kundul were the Gwiyagal, a northern clan of the Tharawal. Their clan identification, belonging to numerous groups of about 50 members, overrode more general Eora loyalties, according to Governor Phillip, a point first made by David Collins and underlined decades later by a visiting Russian naval officer, Aleksey Rossiysky in 1814, who wrote:
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