March 12.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
A massacre of whites and retaliation
...the massacre of...whites at Hornet Creek in 1857 led to horrendous retaliation...
Certainly the massacre of eleven whites at Hornet Creek in 1857 led to horrendous retaliation, as did the massacre of nineteen whites four years later in 1861 at Cullin-la-Ringo, 300 kilometres to the north-west (near the future Emerald). There were reasons for these attacks by the local Aboriginals. The Hornet Bank murders were in part the result of the older Fraser sons repeatedly raping local Jiman women, the same reason for the murders of shepherds on the Upper Dawson stations. Queensland Parliamentarian J D Wood was told by Sub-Lieutenant Nicholl of the Native Police that in 1857 Mrs Fraser had 'repeatedly told him to reprove her sons for "forcibly taking the young maidens" and that, in consequence, she "expected harm would come of it"...Several other informants told Wood that the Frasers were "famous for the young gins" and all agreed "that those acts were the cause of the atrocity".' [1]
Historian Gordon Reid has analysed the Hornet Bank massacre, and identified possible causes for the attack. The Jiman resented being kept out of the station which had been built on their land, particularly as foreign blacks were allowed in, who behaved in a superior fashion towards them (especially the Native Police). The previous Christmas of 1856 saw a pudding laced with strychnine given to a clan group with devastating results. Then a group of squatters on the upper Dawson got together to discuss the spearing of cattle bogged by heavy rains and decided to teach the 'niggers a lesson'. While they failed to find the marauders, they did manage to kill twelve innocent station blacks. Compounding this were the rapacious sexual appetites of some squatters (including the Fraser boys, already mentioned) who raped local Jiman women. Lastly, he notes the false accusation by an overseer, of a Jiman who had whiteman's rations in his gunyah, which he explained had been given as payment for prostituting his wife. The overseer claimed the Aboriginal had stolen them and then shot him dead. [2] A combination of these factors was the deciding point for the Jiman and their allies to throw out the invading whites. For justice to be done, 'the punishment must fit the crime' and the main crime was that of rape; hence the approach taken at Hornet Creek.
Recollections of Thomas Davis, p.16.
G Reid, A Nest of Hornets, Oxford University Press (OUP), Melbourne, 1982, p. 55 n. 20 & 21, citing O'Connell to 1861 Select Committee, p. 87, and J D Wood, 12 March 1862, to Chief Secretary, Queensland State Archives (QSA) Col. Sec. 62/1118. Reid notes that 'Wood apparently had visited Hornet Bank some time after October 1860 and had questioned working men in the district about the massacre; he had also spoken to Nicholl'.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp.41-42, 216 n.41, n.42.
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Not equal before the law
...Aboriginal people were anything but equal before the law. No European was convicted of murdering an Aborigine in the Port Phillip district until 1848, and even then they were sentenced to just two months imprisonment. By 1848 five Aborigines had been executed for killing Europeans. [1]
J. Roberts, Jack of Cape Grim: A Victorian Adventure, (Melbourne, Greenhouse Publications, 1986, p. 82
Acknowledgment: Murray Johnson and Ian McFarlane, Van Diemen’s Land, pp. 273, 414 n.47.