Tanganekald people

The clan name Milmenrura (also spelt Milmendura, Milmendjuri, or Milmendjeri) was often used in the early days of the colony of South Australia to mean the whole tribe, in particular in association with the Maria massacre, in which 25 or 26 shipwrecked survivors of the brig Maria were massacred by local people on the Coorong.

A distinction was made between (a) teŋgi - the sandy grassed limestone slopes just back of the pandalapi (Coorong lagoon) where they fished and favoured for camping, as was the southern seaward side, the pariŋari, protected by the natunijuru, duned sandhills between them and the seashore (jurli) - and the inland mallee and swamps, known as lerami, which were good for hunting.

Tindale recorded and transcribed many Tanganekald songs from Milerum, several of them bawdy. One story cycle describes legends associated with the people the Tanganekald regarded as having lived in their land before their arrival. These people, the Thakuni, inhabited the lagoons around the Robe district's limestone coastal area. They could render themselves invisible at will, and were the object of particular horror for their piercing eyes, which could, at a mere glance, kill a person. They could only be observed by making swift slanting gazes. These people were said to have finally driven out of their habitats by the ancestral forefathers of the tribe, who managed to drive them into the sea. There they were transmogrified either into jagged limestone boulders on the outer reefs, or became fairy penguins.

According to Tanganekald belief, ancestral human-like beings, the Ŋurunderi and others, collectively referred to by the term maldawuli, were responsible, together with ŋaitje, (totemtotemic animals, consisting mostly of birds) for the creation of the landscape they now inhabit. One story in this sequence, whose events are associated with a crater near McGrath Flat homestead, concerns an aged woman, Prupe, and her sister Koromarange, both of the Marntandi clan. Growing sightless, Prupe had turned cannibal and had eaten almost all of the district's children, save one, her sister's granddaughter Koakaŋgi. To save her grandchild and stave off Prupe's intrusive foraging for her, Koromarange would bring her sister food. This only made the latter suspicious and, as she went blind, she thought of taking the child to harvest her eyes so she might regain her sight. While the grandmother was netting fish, Prupe managed to kidnap her young ward, who had revealed her presence by crying out for water, and took her back to her camp.