[6] According to Greg Dickson, Marra, which is "critically endangered" with only four completely fluent speakers (2015),[7] has played a key role in the formation of the Roper River variety of Kriol.
[9] The neighbouring tribes of the Marra were the Yanyuwa to the east, the Alawa on their southern frontier, the Mangarayi to the west, the Warndarang to the north (with the border around the Roper River)[10][11] and formerly, perhaps the Yugul resided to their northwest.
cooked rice, and if so, would be some evidence that the Marra people had enjoyed direct contact with Macassar traders from southeast Asia.
[20] The construction of the Overland Telegraph began to make the first major impact on the Marra, as materials were shipped in near Roper Bar, where a large depot was established with upwards of 300 Europeans.
In 1872, with the advent of Wentworth D'Arcy Uhr and Dillon Cox, who encountered roughly 130 Marra dressed in ceremonial costume as they trespassed with their stock into the latter's territory.
The Marra were reported as trying to spear horses, and the colonials formed a square and shot away with a Martini–Henry effective up to 1,000 yards, several revolvers, and five Westley Richards shotguns.
[22] Generally, what happened along the stockroute crossing westwards from Queensland and through Marra territory was summed up in one late memoir, in the following terms: There is no doubt that during the cattle migration and the gold rush to the Kimberleys, the whites shot down the blacks like crows all along the route.
[25] Soon after the establishment of the Roper River Mission in 1908, some Marra people together with the remnants of many other uprooted indigenous groups, Alawa, Warndarrang, Ngalakgan and Ngandi, shifted there, but a good number still remained in their home country,[26] and Herbert Basedow described them in 1907 as a large tribe.