Darug people

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Darug people

The Darug (also spelt Dharuk, Dharug and Daruk) people are a language group (sometimes called a nation) of Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent and its nearby islands and their descendants. Indigenous Australians are distinguished as either Australian Aborigines or Torres Strait Islanders, who currently together make up about 2.6% of Australia's population....
, who are traditional custodians of much of what is modern day Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the List of cities in Australia by population in Australia, with a metropolitan area population of approximately 4.34 million . It is the List of Australian capital cities of New South Wales, and was the site of the first British Empire colony in Australia....
. There is some dispute about the extent of the Darug nation. Some historians believe the coastal Eora

Eora

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The Darug (also spelt Dharuk, Dharug and Daruk) people are a language group (sometimes called a nation) of Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians

Sydney

Eora

The traditional owners of the inner Sydney City region of Australia are the Cadigal people, one of the peoples who belong to the Eora language group....
people were a separate tribe to the Darug. Others believe they were part of the same tribe. The term eora has been proven to mean 'this place'. And many historians now say the coastal language is a dialect of the Western language. The territory that was indisputably Darug was the Cumberland Plain

Cumberland Plain

The Cumberland Plain is a region in the Sydney Basin of New South Wales, Australia. The plain extends from 10 kilometres north of Windsor, New South Wales in the north, to Picton, New South Wales in the south; and along the Parramatta River into Sydney City's Inner West ....
area in western Sydney and it stretched from Wisemans Ferry

Wisemans Ferry, New South Wales

Wisemans Ferry is a town north of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Wisemans Ferry is located 75 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district in the Local Government Areas in Australias of Hornsby Shire, The Hills Shire, City of Hawkesbury and City of Gosford....
in the north down to around Camden

Camden, New South Wales

Camden is a historic town in New South Wales, Australia. Camden is located 65 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, and is the administrative centre for the Local Government Areas in Australia of Camden Council....
in the south. They also extended into the foothills of the Blue Mountains in the west and the Hills District to the east.

There was certainly a cultural divide between the western Darug and the coastal Darug. The coastal Darug were katungal or 'sea people'. They built canoes and their diet was primarily seafood including fish and shellfish from Sydney Harbour

Port Jackson

Port Jackson, containing Sydney Harbour, is the harbor of Sydney, Australia. It is known for its beauty, and in particular, as the location of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge....
, Botany Bay

Botany Bay

Botany Bay is a Headlands and bays in Sydney, New South Wales, a few kilometres south of the Sydney central business district. The Cooks River and the Georges River are the two major tributaries that flow into the bay....
and their associated rivers. The inland Darug were paiendra or 'tomahawk people'. They hunted kangaroo

Kangaroo

A kangaroo is a marsupial from the family Macropodidae . In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the Red Kangaroo, the Antilopine Kangaroo, and the Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Western Grey Kangaroo of the Macropus genus....
s, emu

Emu

The Emu , Dromaius novaehollandiae, is the largest bird native to Australia and the only Extant taxon member of the genus Dromaius. It is also the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich....
s and other land animals and used stone axes more extensively.

Darug clans

The Darug nation was divided up into a number of clan

Clan

A clan is a group of people united by kinship and descent, which is defined by actual or perceived descent from a common ancestor. Even if actual lineage patterns are unknown, clan members may nonetheless recognize a founding member or apical ancestor....
s who each tended to live in a certain geographic area. This geographic area would also house descendant clans. Each clan contained about 50 to 100 people. Numbers in a geographic descendant clan area were kept at the lowest levels necessary for the survival of the clan. Men would pair with women from other clans to ensure genetic stability of clan and prevent in breeding . So the clans were interrelated and members from one clan would frequently travel in the territory of others, including to hunt, trade and perform ceremonies. They didn't consider themselves owners of the land, rather custodians. Known Darug clans were the:

Kurrajong
Boorooberongal

The Boorooberongal are probably one of the most well known of the Darug clans.

Cattai
Bidjigal
Bidjigal

The Bidjigal people were a group of Indigenous Australians living to the West of Sydney. Their geographical location is confusing, as they seem to have been based in Southern Sydney Sydney, in the region between the Cooks River and the Georges River and yet also seem to have inhabited land in Hills District Sydney, in what is now Baulkham H...
Gommerigal
Mulgoa
Cannemegal
Bool-bain-ora
Cabrigal
Muringong

The clans had different cultures. The Bidjigal

Bidjigal

The Bidjigal people were a group of Indigenous Australians living to the West of Sydney. Their geographical location is confusing, as they seem to have been based in Southern Sydney Sydney, in the region between the Cooks River and the Georges River and yet also seem to have inhabited land in Hills District Sydney, in what is now Baulkham H...
, for example, were known for their warlike nature. Led by Pemulwuy

Pemulwuy

Pemulwuy was born around 1750 and was an Indigenous Australians man who was born in the area of Botany Bay in New South Wales. He is noted for his resistance to the European settlement of Australia which began with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788....
, they conducted a guerilla campaign against the British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
colonists who attempted to trade and befriend the natives, as per Governor Phillip's orders from the King.

Smallpox introduced in 1789 by the British

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, and other Dependent territory ruled or administered by the United Kingdom , that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries....
colonists decimated the population by as much as 90% in some areas.

Neighbouring people were the Kuringgai

Kuringgai

Kuringgai is a name referring to an Indigenous Australians people of New South Wales.In 1892, John Fraser used the term Kuringgai to refer to the people inhabiting a large stretch of the central coastline of New South Wales....
to the northeast around Broken Bay, the Darkinjung

Darkinjung people

Darkinjung is an Indigenous Australian nation located inland between Sydney and Newcastle, Australia in the area known as west of the Central Coast, New South Wales of New South Wales, Australia....
to the north, the Wiradjuri

Wiradjuri

The Wiradjuri are an Indigenous Australian group of central New South Wales.In the 21st century, major Wiradjuri groups live in Condobolin, New South Wales, Peak Hill, New South Wales, Narrandera, New South Wales and Griffith, New South Wales....
to the west on the other side of the Blue Mountains, the Gandangara to the southwest in the Southern Highlands

Southern Highlands, New South Wales

The Southern Highlands, also locally referred to as the Highlands, is a geographical area in New South Wales, Australia, 103km south west of Sydney....
and the Tharawal

Tharawal people

The Tharawal people were the Australian Aborigine inhabitants of southern Sydney and the Illawarra region in 1788, when the first European colonists arrived....
to the southeast in the Illawarra

Illawarra

File:Subpointlookout.jpgIllawarra is a region in the Australian state of New South Wales. It is a coastal region situated immediately south of Sydney and north of the Shoalhaven region, encompassing the cities of Wollongong and Shellharbour and the municipality of Kiama....
area.