May 11.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Dawn raids and resistance
Dawn raids, dispossession, disease, hunger and the military stir Indigenous resistance.
...in early May [1827] , when Andrew Gatehouse's stock-keeper, Richard Addey, was killed by another group of Oyster Bay men at Great Swanport, Gatehouse set off with a party of field police, soldiers, neighbouring settlers and stock-keepers, including James Gumm, in search of the culprits. Many decades later, Gumm told James Bonwick that the party met Douglas Evans, who said that a large group of Aborigines were camped for the night in the gully by Sally Peak, 10 kilometres from Bushy Plains, on the border of Prosser Plains.
They proceeded stealthily as they neared the spot; and, agreeing upon a signal, moved quietly in couples, until they had surrounded the sleepers. The whistle of the leader was sounded and volley after volley of ball cartridge was poured in upon the dark groups surrounding the little camp fires. The number slain was considerable. [1]
These kinds of reprisal killings appear to have aroused alarm among some settlers who did not believe that undefended Aborigines should be shot down in such numbers. The Colonial Times also acknowledged that Aborigines had legitimate grounds for bearing animosity towards the settlers, 'when it is remembered that we have taken possession of their country, and driven them from their native land'. But the editor reassured his readers:
when we consider that they made no use of it, and their being in a state of nature, they knew no rights, but the rights of nature, we cannot so decidedly condemn the action of taking possession of their country...where there are no laws to govern the human actions, the only right is vested in power, i.e. strength...the right of possession always lies in the strongest to possess...we may fairly consider, that as the Aborigines know no other...there is less injustice in driving them from their country than at first view may appear. [2]
This view appears to have been widely shared by the settlers, for it was repeated in a host of settler tracts and underpinned the establishment of new settler colonies on the Australian mainland over the next decade.
The dramatic increase in Aboriginal resistance in the settled districts at this time could have been provoked by a range of lethal factors. First was the arrival of more than 3,000 convicts and settlers in the colony in 1826, the largest number in any year since 1803. The following year many of the new settlers began to occupy their land grants in the Campbell Town district and some of them started to plant hedges. 'Old hands' noted that these new properties were located on well-known Aboriginal hunting grounds and that hedges would eventually impede Aboriginal access. Then, in May 1827, during unseasonably dry, cold weather, the first major epidemic of catarrh, more likely influenza...probably affected some of the Oyster Bay people. Finally, the beginning of military patrols in the region appears to have provoked Aboriginal retaliation. From this time, the colonists noted that the Oyster Bay and Big River clans were often hungry, and they were increasingly reported plundering huts for bread, flour, tea and blankets, but not salted meat. [3]
TAHO CSO 1/316, 840: Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians, 99.
Colonial Times, 23 Feb., 17 March, 11 May 1827.
Vamplew, Australians, 25-6; for population increase, see Colonial Times 15 June 1827; for hawthorn trees, see HTG, 17 March 1827; for a list of land grants in the region, see HTG, 26 Aug. 1826; for catarrh epidemic, see Colonial Times 15 April, 8 June 1827.
Acknowledgment: Lyndall Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, pp.90-93, 369 n.17, n.18, n.19. Note Map of Mass Killings of Aborigines Dec.1826 – Oct.1828 – Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, p. 92