The Pangerang, also spelt Bangerang and Bangarang, are the
Indigenous Australians who traditionally occupied much of what is now north-eastern
Victoria stretching along the
Murray River to
Echuca and into the areas of the southern
Riverina in
New South Wales. They may not have been an independent tribal reality, as
Norman Tindale thought, but one of the many
Yorta Yorta tribes. For the purposes of this article, they are treated separately, according to those sources that maintain the distinction.
Country
Pangerang lands covered some 2,600 square miles (6,700 km2), running through the lower
Goulburn River valley and extending westwards to the Murray River. It covered areas east and west of
Shepparton, taking in also
Wangaratta,
Benalla, and
Kyabram. The southern reaches extend as far as
Toolamba and
Violet Town.[1]
Social structure
The Bangerang collective of tribes, or nation, also known as the
Yorta Yorta, consists of 8
hordes, according to Norman Tindale, though others have been included in the list.
We know somewhat more about the fish-loving Wongatpan and the opossum-hunting Towroonban, two Pangerang clans, simply because they happen to have been the tribes inhabiting the area where the ethnographer
Edward Micklethwaite Curr took over his pastoral run.[2]
Some Pangerang were killed in colonial frontier wars, such as at the massacre at Moira Swamp/Lake Barmah.
Notes
^"There were eight well-defined hordes the names of which generally terminated in [-pan] or [-ban]. Curr and Mathews both show that Pangerang hordes extended a little way downriver from Echuca on both banks; these western hordes were called Jabalaljabala by downriver tribes. Three of Curr's Pangerang hordes are separated as the Kwatkwat. The hordes shown by Curr north of the Murray River belong to other tribes." (
Tindale 1974, p. 207)
Barwick, Diane E. (1984). McBryde, Isabel (ed.). "Mapping the past: an atlas of Victorian clans 1835–1904". Aboriginal History. 8 (2): 100–131.
JSTOR24045800.