July 31.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Another Resistance leader
Kickerterpoller
...[In] the incident at Bank Hill farm on December 1826...fourteen Oyster Bay Aborigines were killed and nine others including Kickerterpoller were captured and lodged in the Sorell gaol. Kickerterpoller was a problem for Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur. [After being abducted as a child] he had grown up in the Birch family, a 'Christian household', and worked on their property, Duck Holes, at the Coal River. If, as the colonists expected, he was charged with the murder of John Guinea, which he was alleged to have perpetrated on 7 November 1826, then, by virtue of his Christian baptism, it could be argued by his lawyer that he should give evidence in court in his own defence.* There is some suggestion that Arthur was made aware of the possibility. According to Kickerterpoller's biographer, his foster-mother, Sarah Birch...could have pleaded his case before the lieutenant-governor. [1] She may have indicated that she would engage Joseph Tice Gellibrand, Arthur's recently sacked attorney-general and the most experienced barrister in the colony, to defend Kickerterpoller if the case were brought to court. Arthur may have known that, in capturing Kickerterpoller and his nine compatriots, Chief District Constable Laing and the party of soldiers had killed fourteen others This was not the kind of information Arthur wanted known in an open court, let alone by his superiors in London. Whatever the reason, he decided not to proceed with any of the possible charges against Kickerterpoller and at the end of January 1827 ordered his release along with his nine compatriots. [2]
...[In July 1827] Kickerterpoller and his mob were alleged to be committing 'more ravages in the interior'. The Colonial Times reported that this 'horde', of 'about 100 in number', had attacked two men who were slipping rails near Michel Howes Marsh at the Western Table Mountain. They both escaped and a search was afterwards 'made for the tribe but without effect'. The following morning at Blackmans River, Kickerterpoller's mob attacked two sawyers; one got away and the other was severely wounded. This time, Mr Bennett, the chief district constable, and Lieutenant Travers and some soldiers, as well as the settler Mr Lackey and some of his men, 'fell in with them', but they fled precipitously, 'leaving behind upwards of 300 waddies, 3 spears and many dogs. The party shot the dogs and burned the waddies'. It is hard to believe that some of Kickerterpoller's mob did not share the same fate, for their numbers were noticeably depleted immediately afterwards, and four months later in reprisal they killed Constable Bennett. [3]
In late July, along the Clyde and Shannon rivers, a group of Big River men plundered Captain Wood's hut, chased a settler Mr Holmes, who was on horseback for a whole day and then wounded two sawyers working for Captain Wilson at Salt Pan Plains. In each case detachments of the 40th regiment set off for the great Western Tiers in pursuit, yet the outcomes were not recorded. [4] But if they matched the earlier events at the Meander River, then one can only assume that the settlers did not return until they had 'dispersed' their prey. If these incidents are added to the massacres of the Oyster Bay people in March, April and May and the Pallittorre people in June, it would appear that more than 200 Aborigines were killed in the Settled Districts in the eight months between 1 December 1826 and 31 July 1827 in reprisal for their killing fifteen colonists. [5] Arthur's aggressive measures, it seems, were making deep inroads into the populations of the Big River, North and Oyster Bay nations.
Cox, Steps to the Scaffold, 86. When Kickerterpoller died, at Emu Bay, in May 1832, G.A. Robinson acknowledged that he was baptised; see Plomley, Friendly Mission, 641.
Colonial Times, 19 January 1827.
Colonial Times, 29 June; 1827. Hobart Town Courier, 27 October 1827.
Colonial Times, 27 July 1827.
Plomley, The Aboriginal/Settler Clash, 63-4.
Acknowledgment: Lyndall Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, pp. 89, 95-96, 369 n.8, n.9, n.27, n.28, n.29.
* Indigenous persons who witnessed abductions, rape, and killings, could not testify in colonial courts because they were not regarded as Christians who could swear on the Bible. White witnesses were not so prohibited. Only after the Evidence Further Amendment Act 1876 provided for a witness to make a declaration in lieu of an oath, was testimony by Aboriginal people admissible in courts of law in New South Wales (NSW).