March 19.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Poisoning and other deeds
Instances of the poisoning of Indigenous people.
The Norwegian scientific traveller Carl Lumholtz, for one, reported hearing many such rumours in the early 1880s while he was exploring the natural fauna and life amongst Aboriginal people in the remote districts of Queensland. He recounted one such case in his book. It was the story about 'A squatter at Long Lagoon, in the interior of Queensland, [who had] achieved notoriety by laying strychnine in the way of the blacks, and thus taking the life of a large number of them in a single day'. [1]
Lumholz, Among Cannibals pp.372-73.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited – Colonial Queensland and the 'History War', p.78 and n.1.
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“Their 'weakness', he reasoned, was not an argument for dispossessing and destroying them, but an argument for treating them justly...”
Edward Wilson, editor of the Argus from 1848 to 1858, was particularly outspoken in his influential editorials. He was angered by the laughter which accompanied the announcement by the newly-formed [Victorian] parliament that what he called 'the contemptible sum’ of £1,750 had been set aside for Aborigines. During just the few years that Victoria had been a separate colony, wrote Wilson, the Government had sold Aboriginal land worth £4.5 million, £35 million worth of gold had been extracted and there had been millions of pounds worth of beef, mutton and wool.
Wilson accepted the usual derogatory view that Aborigines were inferior both mentally and physically. Although his presumption was wrong, his conclusions based on it followed truly humanitarian, perhaps even Christian logic. Their 'weakness', he reasoned, was not an argument for dispossessing and destroying them, but an argument for treating them justly:
We do not say that the Anglo-Saxon was not justified in taking possession of this fine country, and developing its magnificent resources, as the original occupant would never have done. If even our presence here should be made the instrument in the hands of Providence for the early extermination of this people, we will say that the onward march of the white man must not be arrested. But there is too great a readiness in recognising as 'the hand of Providence', that which is directly traceable to our own nefarious neglect and wickedness.
In less than twenty years we have nearly swept them off the face of the earth. We have shot them down like dogs. In the guise of friendship we have issued corrosive sublimate in their damper and consigned whole tribes to the agonies of an excruciating death. We have made them drunkards, and infected them with disease which have rotted the bones of their adults, and made such few children as are born amongst them, a sorrow and a torture from the very instant of their birth. We have made them outcasts on their own land, and are rapidly consigning them to entire annihilation. [1]
Argus, 17 March 1856.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 174-175, 187 n.99.
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'Our own intellectual history is not an absolute standard by which to judge others. The worst imperialisms are those of preconception.'
Acknowledgment: W.E.H. Stanner, White Man Got No Dreaming: essays, ANU, Research School of Social Sciences, 1979, p.30.