If we look at the nature of the relationship between the Macassans and their Aboriginal trading partners, we can see that the Macassans created a benchmark of behaviour expected of aliens by Aborigines. Berndt and Berndt relate the Yolngu legend of the first Macassan contact which occurred at Cape Bradshaw, where the Macassans had demonstrated kindness to the Yolngu they encountered, and were thereby able to induce Yolngu people to work for them.
1 Cordial relations were a hallmark of the relationship, as Worsley writes:
Quote:"If one listens to aboriginal accounts…the Macassarese era was a Golden Age, a time when food was given away in vast quantities, when the aborigines had only to ask their Macassarese 'brothers' in order to be given unlimited tobacco, cloth, knives, etc. Moreover, they say, "we were treated with equality; we ate at the same table, ate the same food, used the same dishes." The contrast is plainly between the generosity and democracy of the Macassarese and the parsimony and colour bar of the Whites. "2
Aboriginal elder, David Burrumarra, described how the Yolngu considered the era of early Macassan contact as a golden-age of partnership, coexistence and sacred alliance. McIntosh was told of an ‘unparalleled material wealth and prestige’ that was believed to have characterised that era.
3 Galiawa Nalanbayayaya Wurramarrba an elder at Groote Eylandt narrated in 1969 how the Anindilyakwa tribe lived with the Macassans on Bickerton Island, between Arnhem Land and Groote Eylandt:
Quote:We lived together, the old men, all my fathers, uncles and others and the Macassans. They collected trepang. We ate “birrida” (rice), “dirdirra” (sugar), coconut…Then they were gone, there were none left, no more Macassans…then white people arrived, missionaries arrived…[after many years] we were all gone, we knew the Macassans, they [who remember the Macassans] died and were gone, all except me and the old men, we three remained...we knew the Macassans, we ate their food we smoked their tobacco. These people today are ignorant, they’re stupid…[When the Macassans were here] We had plenty of food to eat. 4
A Maung elder on Goulburn Island, Lazarus Lamilami, as saying that his people remember that they ‘were very friendly with the Macassans.'
51R Berndt & C Berndt, Arnhem Land: its history and its people, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1954, p.42.
2P Worsley, ‘Early Asian Contacts with Australia’, Past and Present, vol. 7, 1955, pp. 8.
3 I McIntosh, ‘A Treaty with the Macassans?: Burrumarra and the Dholtji Ideal’, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 2, August 2006, p. 153.
4C Wuramarrba, trans. J, Stokes, ‘Macassar Story’, in L, Hercus, & P, Sutton, (eds.) This is What Happened; historical narratives by Aborigines, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Melbourne, 1986, pp. 119-23.
5D J Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: outsiders and Aboriginal Australians 1606-1985, University of Queensland Press, Adelaide, 1989, p.26.
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