| Coordinates WGS84 | 12°06'S, 134°55'E -12.10, 134.91 |
BM_Oc1925_1113_49
Title: A message stick made by Micky in 1924 requesting payment for the construction of a canoe on behalf of missionaries at Milingimbi
Description: British Museum 1925 register description: "1925 register description: 49. Wooden 'letter-stick'. Incised decoration, the deeper lines of which have been filled with a white pigment - the rest is red. Notched at sides towards tip. L. 7.2 inches Listed as #13 on list by Wilkin of material collected at Crocodile Islands August to December 1924." Wilkins, George Hubert. 1929. Undiscovered Australia: Being an account of an expedition to tropical Australia to collect specimens of the rarer native fauna for the British Museum, 1923-1925. London: Benn. "One day during the wet season [1924-1925] a messenger arrived from a camp where a canoe was being cut for the [Milingimbi] Mission Station. He brought a message and delivered a letter-stick shaped like a cricket bat and marked with various carvings. The carvings were not by any means an attempt at calligraphy, but the stick was carried as a token of good faith, as messengers in other countries carry signet rings and other tokens. It was also an aid to a system of mnemonics practised by the tribe to which the man belonged. This messenger held the stick in his hand while he delivered the message, but he did not indicate the meaning of the signs until he was asked to do so. There were ten cuts to represent tobacco, and he could not very well ask for more and pocket the difference, as he might have done without the stick. Each letter-stick is usually signed, for every native can make a mark by which the tribe may recognize him. The black boys whom I had with me left on several [234] occasions some tobacco at a temporarily deserted native camp, and in each instance they left some mark on the sand or carving on a stick, and on being asked what it meant, they would say, “That one name belonga ma.”[sic] Micky, a native, arrived at the station with a new canoe a few days before Christmas, and at our first meeting he proudly introduced himself and volunteered information that left no doubt as to his identity. “Me Micky,” he said. “Me bin longa gaol five years. Me savvee everything now, whisky, missionary, white missus ben see-em that pfeller picture. All about savvee everything.” Micky was the sender of the letter-stick referred to, and was one of the men who had served a term of five years’ imprisonment in the Darwin gaol for being suspected of the murder of some foreign fishermen at one of the Crocodile Islands. He consistently pleaded not guilty, and later the real murderer confessed his crime, but the confession did not reach the ears of the officials at Port Darwin. Micky and his companions had served the full length of sentence and gloried in the fact. They were innocent, and they had suffered for the guilty, but they did not mind and were proud of the knowledge thus gained." p235
Message: Requesting payment for the construction of a canoe on behalf of missionaries at Milingimbi
Creator of Object: Micky
Date Created: 1925
Notes on date created: terminus ante quem
Item type: message stick in a collection
Subtype: traditional
State/Territory: NT
Linguistic area 1: Chirila: Yan-nhangu Austlang: N72 - Yan-nhangu Glottolog: yann1237
Notes on linguistic areas: The message stick is associated with Crocodile Islands, NT, Australia
Cultural region: TopEnd_arnhem_east
Dimension 1: 180mm Dimension 2: 40mm Dimension 3: 13mm
Materials: wood
Techniques: incised, pigmented
Source types: museum collection
Date collected: Acquisition date: 1925
Institution/Holder file: The British Museum object identifier: Oc1925,1113.49
Collector: Transferred from: Natural History Museum Field Collection by: Wilkins, Sir George Hubert Field Collection by: The British Museum
Coordinates: 12°06'12.801600"S,134°54'39.398400"E (-12.103556, 134.910944)
Media copyright: The British Museum British Museum Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Notes on coordinates: Absolute coordinates for Milingimbi Mission
IRN: EOC16241
Notes: PK: No more images to request from BM PK wrote to LK of Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center on 30 May 2023 requesting additional metadata for the "Letter stick" listed by Wilkins in his "Provisional and Preliminary Report" of January 1925. LK replied that there is no additional data but will ask high-school interns to search through their voluminous records in mid-June 2023. PK wrote to the British Museum on 31 May 2023 through their online 'Object feedback' button via the entry on their website, asking for any additional card files etc associated with the object. PK: I cannot find the details of Micky's arrest and incarceration at Fanny Bay Gaol. The closest is this article in Trove that details the arrest of "Mickie" and "Caramel" or "Corromel" for wounding with attempt to murder a Chinese gardener on the Goyder River in 1906: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/4337395 PK called Fanny Bay Gaol on 1 June 2023, left a message. PK from MAGNT wrote back: "I have gone and looked through all our Fannie Bay Gaol records that date before 1919. Only one, a ledger from 1888-1913, has the name Mickey. This Mickey was convicted on 15 January 1906 before being released on 5 November 1909. This ledger only records long term inmates sentenced to 6+ months of hard labour and only provides their name, time spent and when discharged. I have attached the photographs of the pages at the beginning and end of his sentence as well as a spreadsheet I created with all the names mentioned in that book in case he had an alias or was known by another name. In those records there wasn’t a Caramel and the above mentioned was the only “Mickey” (of any spelling) but there were some Michaels. Fannie Bay Gaol was used by the army in WWII after the bombing of Darwin and many of the records and objects were ‘souvenired’, so we only have a patchy collection of material that has been donated to the museum. I would recommend getting in contact with LANT (Library & Archives NT) if you haven’t already to see if they have any other records that might help your research. We would be very interested to know the outcome of your work and specially anything you find out about him!" PK: The ledger is called ‘Fannie Bay Goal Prison Register’ and dates from January 1888 - November 1913. Its accession number is TH87.017 and the credit line is “TH87.017. Gift of Bryce McInerney, 1987. MAGNT Collection.” The 'marks' column likely refers to the reformatory tasks that prisoners were expected to complete as a condition of release, as explained in: Moore, John. 2011. "Alexander Maconochie’s ‘mark system’." Prison Service Journal 198:38-46. 1.12.23 NR: previous OCCAMS measurements were 181mm, 40mm, 7mm. 1.12.23 NR: checked against BM online catalogue.
Media Files:
Data Entry: Olena Tykhostup, Piers Kelly