April 13.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Chained and shot
Shot dead while chained together.
By the end of 1884, the missionaries' concerns about the behaviour of the settlers had extended to the actions of the police. In December Reverend W.F. Schwarz complained to [Protector of Aborigines Edward] Hamilton that Aboriginal people had been coming onto the mission station 'for fear of the police, who had shot a number of Natives around the neighbouring cattle stations', [1] Within months, Reverend A.H. Kempe was writing to the Protector with the same concerns. Responding to Hamilton's assurance that violence against people would be kept in check by the expansion of the police force at Alice Springs, Kempe wrote: 'Whether from this measure shall arise any good for the natives is rather doubtful as long as there is nobody to control the actions of the police troopers. The only difference will be that the natives are now shot down by policemen whilst before the other whites did it’. [2] In his letter he raises the case of the three Aboriginal prisoners taken from the mission station by [Mounted Constable Erwin] Wurmbrand's party five months previously who, bound 'with a strong trace chain fastened together around their necks', had been shot dead en route to Glen Helen. Kempe visited the site where the bodies still lay and expressed disbelief at Wurmbrand's report of events:
the natives informed us the 3 natives were shot down by the whites. We went there & convinced ourselves [of] the truth of this statement. Now we expected the whites would say they tried to escape & so they did when we asked them. But who can believe it? Who can believe that they broke the strong chain? Who can further believe that escaping they kept together? One should think, if it happened that they got unfastened the chain, they would run away in every direction, but the bodies were lying on one heap & exactly as they were tied together. [3]
Schwarz to Hamilton, Far Northern Division Police Journal, 24 December 1884, SAPHS 000319
Kempe to Hamilton, Far Northern Division Police Journal, 13 April 1885, SAPHS 000319
Ibid.
Acknowledgment: Amanda Nettlebeck & Robert Foster, In the Name of the Law – William Wilshire and the Policing of the Australian Frontier, pp. 37-38, 191 n.1, n.2, n.3.
Note also: Amanda Nettlebeck, ‘Writing and remembering frontier conflict: the rule of law in 1880s Central Australia’ in Aboriginal History, Vol. 28 (2004) pp. 190-206.
____
“A lot of blacks were shot while we were at this camp.”
Events of this journey include the now legendary battle of the Normanby (at Battle Camp). [1] William Webb, a member of the expedition, described the fate of Aborigines in this unequal combat: 'Thereupon the blacks ran away and were pursued as far as a large lagoon, and all that went there stayed there.' [2] Later at the Kennedy River: 'A lot of blacks were shot while we were at this camp. I do not know why, as they had not interfered with us.' [3] Another expedition member, J Hogg, also recalled an attack on 'a big mob of blacks' on the Kennedy River: 'It was decided to disperse them at once and for this purpose the troopers rode ahead.' [4] When Mulligan met fierce Aboriginal resistance on his second Palmer expedition in 1874, the scene was set for war: 'After three times being repulsed ... they made a fierce rush at us as we were leaving the camp. I never saw blacks so determined ... They will however, for the future, know the effect of the rifle in this locality.' [5]
E.g. see Kirkman 1978: 120-5.
Webb quoted in Jack 1922, vol II: 422; see also Hughes 1978; Kirkman 1978.
Webb quoted in Jack 1922 vol II: 423.
Hogg nd: 203 (John Oxley Library JO)
Mulligan 27 May 1874, quoted in Jack 1922 vol II: 426.
Acknowledgment: Noelene Cole, ‘Battle Camp to Boralga: a local study of colonial war on Cape York Peninsula, 1873-1894’ Aboriginal History, Vol. 28 (2004) pp. 160-161 n. 43, n. 44, n.45, n.46, n.47.