BIBLIOGRAFÍA PARA EL ESTUDIANTE

Skeletal evidence of smallpox (osteomyelitis variolosa) is found m ainly in the three long bones that form the elbow joint ( Zimmerman & Kelley 1982: 109; Jaques 1983: 75). However, small necrotic foci involving the spine, sternum and bones of the wrist and ankle have been attri b u t e d to the

disease. Osteomyelitis variolosa is cha r a c t e r i z e d by a

d i s r u p t i o n of the area around the metap h y s e s of the humerus, ulna and radius which may lead to detach m e n t or d e s t ruction

of the epiphyses. Restr i c t i o n in l o ngitudinal growth of the

bones can then result and in severe cases ankylosis of the elbow joint can occur.

The skeletal sample from the Riv e r l a n d was examined for evidence of o steomyelitis v a r i olosa but no evidence was

found. This result was not entirely u n e x p e c t e d because of

the nature of the disease and its effect on the bone.

Smallpox, particularly in an i m m u n ologically i nexperienced population, will often kill its victims before osteological involvement occurs, so that very few cases (2 to 5 percent) of o steomyelitis variolosa result (Zimmerman & Kelley 1982:

109). Also, the severity of the d i s ease in the individual

involvement is almost entirely restr i c t e d to children under the age of fifteen.

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The lack of evidence of o s t e omyelitis v a r i olosa in the Ri v e r l a n d does not mean that smallpox was absent.

Ethnohi s t o r i c a l evidence strongly suggests that it was

present. Smallpox was active among the A b original

p opulations in the settled districts west of the Blue Mountains in 1830-31 and in the u n s e ttled Riv e r i n a by the early 1830s (Campbell 1985: 338-346) and was b e gining to

spread west along the Murray River corridor. The time of

its arrival among the Jirawi r u n g and Ngawait and tribes further downsteam on the Lower Murray was most likely

sometime a f t e r . A l though he described the state of disease among these tribes during his river journey in 1830 (as dis c u s s e d above), Sturt (1982) never consi d e r e d smallpox, a disease he was surely familiar with, to be present among these tribes. Several years later in 1838, w hen he was over l a n d i n g cattle to Adelaide, he was joined by A b origines

near the junction of the Murray and Edward rivers. He

states

... in the course of the forenoon we were joined by

various parties from different quarters that when united formed a considerable body of athletic and well

proportioned men. They came evidently with the most peaceable intentions and several of them assisted us in our work. I observed many of them as if pitted by the Small Pox, or that would appear as the disease which was having such a fearful effect upon them when I was on the banks of the Darling in 1828 and of the Hume in 1829 had been universal. It must have committed dreadful havoc amongst them, since on this journey I did not see

hundreds to the thousands I saw on my former expeditions (Sturt 1838: 147).

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On F e bruary 11th 1838 H a wdon met a group of Aboriginal men near Swan Hill on the first o v e r l a n d journey along the

Mu r r a y to Adelaide.

In the evening some of the Blacks came to Swan Hill,

where we were encamped. After holding a little

conversation with us across the river, they swam over to

us. They were fine, well-made men about five feet

eleven inches in height. Their faces were nearly all

marked with smallpox, but otherwise their features were

pleasing (Hawdon 1838: 27).

The next day Hawdon saw 52 men, a c c o m p a n i e d by their women and c hildren and described them as 'not a good - l o o k i n g set of men' and many of them 'blind in one eye' (ibid: 28). H awdon makes no further mention of smallpox after he left Swan Hill among the many other groups along the Murray he came in contact with.

Some ten years after Sturt's exped i t i o n along the Murray, Eyre was in residence at Moorunde and recorded,

A disease very similar to the small-pox, and leaving similar marks upon the face, appears formally to have been very prevalent, but I have never met with an

existing case... (Eyre 1845: 379).

There is strong evidence that the disease had reached the lower populations of the Murray well before E u ropean

settlement on the Adelaide Plains in 1836. The social

boundaries that existed between the lower M urray people and those of the Adelaide Plains (McBryde 1984) most likely shielded the latter from smallpox until the settlement of

Adelaide. Taplin, who spent twenty years among the Narrinyeri, wrote in 1879,

They have a tradition that some sixty years ago a

terrible disease came down the River Murray and carried off the natives by hundreds. This must have been small- pox, as many of the old people now have their faces

pitted who suffered the disease in childhood. The destruction of life was so great as to seriously

diminish the tribes. The natives always represent that before this scourge arrive they were much more numerous. They say that so many died that they could not perform

the funeral rites for the dead, but were compelled to bury them at once out of the way. I think there must have been more than one visitation of this kind, judging from the age of those who were pockmarked (Taplin 1879:

44-45) .

If the disease was smallpox as Taplin suggests then it was present on the Lower Murray before 1820 (that is some sixty years before Taplin was writing in 1879 and eighteen years before the settlement of Adelaide). This is too early for smallpox to have reached this region from the east, but as discussed above, syphilis was active along the lower and middle Murray corridor at this time and the two diseases were most likely being confused (if indeed they were even recognised by some Aborigines as being two separate

diseases).

Smallpox, travelling along the Murray corridor from the east, may not have reached the populations west of the Mount Lofty Ranges. Historical, archaeological and linguistic evidence emphasise a long period of cultural and social isolation between the Murray and coastal groups and those inhabiting the plains bordering on Saint Vincent's Gulf

(Tindale 1974; McBryde 1984). Every so often in times of socioeconomic hardship limited contact and the exchange of

goods may have occured, but they remained strangers to each other with no enduring social ties ever developing (Tindale 1974: 73). For smallpox to have crossed the ranges it would have needed contact between these populations at the time of the epidemic. From all accounts this did not occur, and while it cannot be unequivocally ruled out, the populations west of the Mount Lofty ranges escaped the ravages of

smallpox.

Many Europeans saw the characteristic pock-marks on the faces of the South Australian Aborigines but none observed active smallpox in those early years as the disease had already flared and subsided before settlement. Stirling

(1911) however, recorded first-hand oral evidence of the epidemic. His informant was an elderly Narrinyeri woman named Kontinyeri who had lived on the southern shore of Lake Alexandrina and who could recall the epidemic sweeping

through the communities when she was very small.

With much gesture she described how the faces of those affected with the disease came out all over with spots,

and how that many died of it, including many children.

She herself escaped, but her aunt, who is still living, and who, she says, is considerably older than herself,

caught the disease and has her face marked. She told us

of the remedies they sought, one being young reed shoots pounded and adminstered from a mussel (Unio) shell used as a spoon; another was the boiled leaves of mallee

eucalypts gathered in the scrub (Stirling 1911: 18).

Stirling cites more oral evidence, this time from three old Aborigines living near Swanport. They recollect a smallpox epidemic that

...caused a great sickness which, when they were quite young, fell upon the natives along the river, causing

their deaths in such numbers and with such rapidity that the living were at their wits' end to know how to

dispose of the dead quickly enough and they also described how in the sickness they came out all over

spots and quickly died.. .(Stirling 1911: 16).

By estimating the ages of the informants together with incidences recalled in their recollections, Stirling fixes the date of the epidemic on the Lower Murray and Lakes districts as not earlier than 1830. Given the high population densities along the Murray (Chapter 3), the movement of groups between clan and language boundaries

(Chapter 2) and the highly infectious nature of smallpox the disease would have spread rapidly along the Murray

inflicting the Jirawirung and Ngawait in the first years of the 1830s just after Sturt had passed through. The disease then appears to have died out by 1837 when Adelaide was settled leaving only the scarred survivors to act as testimony to its passing.