May 16.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Instances of ‘Dispersals’
The euphemism of murderous ‘dispersal’.
In 1868 the Rockhampton Northern Argus reported 'a scrimmage' between the Indigenous people and the police triggered by some trivial petty theft and it 'resulted in the rascals being (in official language) quietly dispersed'. [1] Arthur Leslie Bourcicault (1840-1916), the conservative owner-editor of this journal, rarely left his readers in doubt as to the meaning of the phrase 'dispersal'. In an editorial later the same year he condoned the idea of settlers taking matters 'into their own hand'. He then went on to attack certain unnamed Brisbane humanitarians saying, if the 'squatter...'dispersed' these fiends without a commission to do so...a howl [would be raised] amongst our Exeter Hall humbugs in Brisbane...which would set all the black philanthropists yelping with pious horrors at the destruction of their pets...'. [2]
Quotes from Brisbane Courier 28 Dec 1864, QSA A/40323/66/10. Q Nov 9, 1867 p.7, Northern Argus 16 May 1868.
Northern Argus 16 November 1868.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited pp. 36-37, n.43, n.44.
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Violence on the Downs
Violence was rarely absent from the colonial frontier. Settlers saw any signs of Aboriginal resistance to colonisation as attacks on European concepts of ownership, industry and development. White settlers generally saw all large groups of Aborigines as threats, and frequently called on government officers to stop what they saw as ‘depredations’ and ‘outrages’.
The Native Police impacted severely upon the movement of Aboriginal people and control of their lands within the colony of Queensland. One of their roles was break up or “disperse” camps and assemblies of Aboriginal people. Often “dispersal” was a synontym for killing. In March of 1850, James Bennett from the Roma district signed an affidavit describing the “dispersal” of a camp of Aboriginal people. Native Police were involved in this action and Bennett concluded his statement, “I did not count the number of natives slain”. [1] In 1861 Native police Lieutenant Rudolph Morisset reported on a gathering at the Bunyas; ‘I found the blacks collected in several places in very large numbers and also that they had been killing cattle at nearly all the stations in the district, and on two or three occasions I found it necessary to fire upon them before they could disperse.
Affidavit from James Bennett, 14 March 1850, QSA, NMP/4.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards and Andrew Walker, One Hour More Daylight, p. 33 and n. 83.
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..remuneration ought to be made...
In 1821, while discussing the Aboriginal inhabitants with a pioneer missionary, Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane remarked that ‘we have taken the land from the Aborigines of the country and a remuneration ought to be made’. [1]
G. Walker, letter, 29 November 1821, Bonwick transcripts, ML, series 1, Box 52.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling – History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, pp. 54, 252 n.11.
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“...glorify in shooting the blacks...'‘
A South Australian clergyman wrote home to England in 1840 of a co-religionist who since arriving in the colony had ‘adopted the opinions of the other Overland Desperadoes who glorify in shooting the blacks’. [1]
R W Newland to Anti-Slavery Society, 8 December 1840,, MSS British Empire, s. 22, Rhodes House Archive, Oxford.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling – History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, 64-65, 253 n.31.
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Violence was implicit in British policy...
Fighting was the only way disputes about land could be resolved. Violence was implicit in British policy from the start. The gift of becoming a subject of the monarch meant nothing. Colonial government has neither the will nor, more significantly, the capacity to shield the Aboriginal peoples from vigilante violence.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Truth-Telling – History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, p. 77.