April 24.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Lynchings and lack of treaties
[According to a report by the Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld] at [Dr James] Bowman’s Ravensworth estate, an [Aboriginal] man was taken during the pursuit of those involved in the spearing of Bowman’s stockman. This man was brought in to Bowman’s hut, where a rope was secured around his neck. He was then marched a mile (1.6 kilometres) into the surrounding bush, forced to climb a nearby tree and tie the rope to a branch. The troopers then proceeded to fire their muskets at him, wounding him twice before he fell and left hanging in the tree. Threlkeld said that the person who supplied the rope had told his informant of the incident. [1] This was not the first report of Aboriginal people being hung from trees in the district. In July 1826, Threlkeld had been told by Biraban, his interpreter and intermediary, that a man caught stealing corn had been shot and hung on a tree with the corncob stuck in his mouth as a warning to others. [2]
Neil Gunson (ed) Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L.E. Threlkeld: Missionary to the Aborigines 1824-1859, vols I and II, Canberra, Australian Insitute of Aboriginal Studies, 1974, p. 95
Ibid. p. 92
Acknowledgment: Mark Dunn, The Convict Valley, 174, 261 n.7, n.8.
____
No imperial offer of any treaty
Cultural encounters are by nature marked by misunderstandings. Language barriers obscure meaning. Even gestures can be misinterpreted, as winks and handshakes in one group are mere twitches and touches to the other. Governor Phillip observed cuts on Eora women's temples – marks of mourning – but to him they were signs of Aboriginal men's brutality to their women. The Eora noted Phillip's missing front tooth and mistook it for a sign of men's initiation, which to them it was. Natural misunderstandings arising from cultural differences were exaggerated as these two peoples held radically different orientations. The Eora lived a life largely without possessions, looked to the past, the community and a religiously based Great Tradition for inspiration, while the British valued material items, eyed the future and lauded the individual, science and the Enlightenment.
Seven other factors shaped these colonial encounters and those elsewhere across the continent...first the British brought no treaty with them; second, they came with a particular exclusivist view of land and society; third, the British held preconceptions of Indigenous people as savage; fourth, the colony they formed was a penal colony; fifth, the encounters were shaped by Aboriginal peoples themselves through their own agency; sixth, particular individuals on both sides helped shape the action; and seventh, the logics of colonialism began to take hold.
The British government offered treaties to Indigenous people before and after taking Australia. It offered treaties to Indian tribes in North America during wars there in the 1750s with the French, and offered a treaty at Waitangi, New Zealand, to the Maori in 1840. However, it offered no treaty to Aboriginal landowners in Australia. Lieutenant James Cook's voyage was formative in this decision. Cook was ordered to search for 'a Continent or Land of great extent' in the south-west of the Pacific and 'with the Consent of the Natives to take possession of Convenient situations in the Country in the name of the King'...Cook decided their consent for the British taking possession was not necessary, as the land seemed 'waste' and unowned.
Acknowledgment: Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians – A history since 1788, pp.17-18.