March 14.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
'...all been shot down by the police.'
“...one fifth of the white population have been murdered...numbers of black lives lost in 'collisions' or 'dispersals' are vague...”
By March 1850 Roderick Mitchell was Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Maranoa and he continued to ask for the Native Police to be sent to the district to stop the hostility of the Aborigines. [1] By May 1850, Mitchell's requests had become more desperate and he wrote directly to Richard Marshall, the officer in charge of the Native Police at Callandoon. He said:
During the last eighteen months, no less than one fifth of the white population have been murdered by the Aborigines and that more than six thousand head of cattle and two thousand sheep have been either driven away or destroyed – and presuming these facts to be generally known, we cannot but express our surprise that although the Force under your command has been in existence during the same period and within easy distance of that part of the District in which these atrocities were perpetrated – it has never visited that locality. [2]
Marshall replied that he had been ordered to remain on the Macintyre and Condamine rivers, and due to the state of affairs on those rivers he 'did not deem it prudent to leave'. Mitchell should not have been surprised by the reply. In March 1850 he had taken depositions about a Native Police attack near Wallan on the Lower Condamine. James Bennett, a local squatter, took part in the reprisal and gave evidence to Mitchell:
We went out – that is to say W. John Ferrett of Wallan and myself accompanied by W. Marshall and the Native police, on the tracks of the blacks, and in three days came up with them. Some of the Blacks ran away, and a portion remained and resisted W. Marshall's endeavours to apprehend them, and an affray took place in which some of the natives fell. Having dispersed the natives we examined their camp and found several articles which were taken from this station when it was burnt down by natives in April last. We also recognized amongst the blacks who had fallen two natives who were present on the occasion I referred to when … and the hutkeeper were murdered. I did not count the number of natives slain.[3]
Reports such as this highlight the difficulties involved in accurately calculating loss of Aboriginal lives on the frontier. This was a typical report on a Native Police action. Numbers of black lives lost in 'collisions' or 'dispersals' are vague, while those killed are found guilty before being charged or even arrested. Recent debates over the number Aboriginal deaths on Australian frontiers are a distraction. Murderous attacks such as the one just described cannot be denied. These are not encounters in which "British law" was being upheld and carried out. These are encounters in which lives were being taken indiscriminately and justifications sought in the aftermath of violence.
This attitude of indifference to Aboriginal deaths persisted in colonial Queensland, with former Premier George Thorn arguing in 1880 that the Native Police were only needed in the coastal districts as 'the blacks elsewhere were pretty well shot down and got rid of'. [4] He told the Queensland Parliament that on the Warrego he had not seen any Aborigines at all and was told they had 'all been shot down by the police'. [5]
Roderick Mitchell to Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands, 22 March 1850, John Oxley Library, A2.22.
W.K. Ogilvie and Roderick Mitchell to Richard Marshall, John Oxley Library, A2. 22.
Ibid.
Affidavit from James Bennett, 14 March 1850, QSA, NMP/4.
Queensland Parliamentary Debates 1880, vol. 32, p.665.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards and Andrew Walker, One Hour More Daylight, The Social Justice Commission, Catholic Diocese of Toowoomba, 2006, pp. 61-63, n.175, n.176, n.178, n.179, n.180.