Wik-Mungkan
As the largest branch of the Wik people, by Norman Tindale's reckoning, the Wik-Mungkan occupied around 8,300 square kilometres of territory in a strip between 40 and 80 kilometres wide, running parallel to the Gulf of Carpentaria coastline but separated from it by several smaller, related groups including the Wik-Natera and Wik-Kalkan.
Their territory extends to the coast at Eramangk and the mouth of the Archer River, touches the Watson River in the north, extending to the Kendall River in the south, and as far east as Rokeby Station. However, the estates of the various Wik Mungkan clans are discontinuous, falling into at least three areas separated by the estates of clans speaking other, closely related languages.
Wik-Mungkan country is s watered by five major watercourses — the Watson, Archer, Kendall, Holroyd and Edward rivers — and contains a variety of distinct habitats that may have supported a pre-contact population of between 1,500 and 2,000. A combination of factors — the beche-de-mer and pearl fisheries' labour recruiters, introduced diseases, forcible eviction from their traditional hunting grounds and occasional punitive forays that wiped out entire camps— resulted in a rapid decline in population before a Moravian mission was established at Aurukun in 1904. By 1930, Ursula McConnel estimated that fifty to one hundred Wik-Mungkan people were living there, with another two hundred on the Kendall and Edward Rivers.
Missing links:
Wik-Natera
Wik-Kalkan
Eramangk
Archer River
Watson River
Kendall River
Rokeby Station
Moravian mission
Ursula McConnel
