May 29.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
'Blood and bullet' civilization
Indigenous populations and their despair
Statistical returns in south-eastern Australia show that by 1843, Aboriginal populations were declining by about a third of their strength every decade...As well as the death toll from massacre and disease, there was a tragically low birth rate. Many attributed this to sterility caused by venereal diseases in very young girls, [1] but some thoughtful observers knew another reason was despair.
One such observer, William Thomas, one of the Victorian Protectors of Aborigines, kept detailed records of the Port Phillip and Westernport Aborigines. Only twenty births were recorded amongst all seven tribes in the decade from 1839 to 1849 and in the next decade to 1859 the population decreased from 92 to 56 and only one child survived. Thomas reported that there was an 'indifference to prolonging their race, on the ground as they state of having no country they can call their own'. [2] Many people recorded Aboriginal people's words of despair:
What good hab him piccaninny?
What por? Blackfellow, him all die. [3]
No country, no good have it piccaninny.
No country now for them and no more come up piccaninny. [4]
Why me have lubra? Why me have piccaninny? You have all this place, no good have children, no good have lubra, me tumble down and die very soon now. [5]
Look, all dying away, all dying away. [6]
See examples in Report from the Select Committee on the Condition of the Aborigines, NSWLC, V&P, 1845, p.27 and at many other places.
Ibid. p.55.
Bonwick, 1870: 386.
Quoted in Crawford, 1967: 22.
W. Hull, Select Committee on the Aborigines, VLC, V&P, D8, 1858-1859, p. 12.
Gunther Journal, 29 May 1839, AJCP, M224, NL.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 149-150, 185 n.15, n.16, n.17, n.18, n.19, n.20
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“lost opportunity to change from violence to a more humane and understanding interaction”
In September 1897 'Stone Age' wrote to the Queenslander and observed:
Mr Meston and others ask why on these subjects do persons persist in writing under nom de plume. The reason is that so demoralized have the bulk of Australians become on this subject that a person who advocates any amelioration of the condition of the blacks is in about the same position as an abolitionist in the Southern States before the Civil War, and would have a very bad time of it; for, though his neighbours are very intelligent on other subjects, on this they are often as brutal and unreasonable as a gentlemanly Southern planter. Murrells's [sic] history describes our 'blood and bullet' methods of civilization; it shows also the natural kindness of the black. [1]
[James] Morrill, as Bruce Breslin has noted, 'desired harmonious relationships between the Aboriginals and the settlers and he offered his services for the benefit of both peoples'. [2] ...Similarly, the Frenchman, Narcisse Pelletier, [3] who also spent seventeen years (1858-75) living with the local Aboriginals around Cape Weymouth, [4] was not consulted. Colonial officials singularly failed to capitalise on Morrill's and Pelletier's intimate knowledge of the original inhabitants’ way of life. It was a lost opportunity to change from violence to a more humane and understanding interaction.
'Stone Age', Queenslander, 29 May 1897.
B. Breslin, 'The James Morrill Story', unpublished manuscript, 2000, p.2. This work is the most comprehensive and insightful coverage of James Morrill to date.
S. Anderson, Pelletier: The Forgotten Castaway of Cape York, Melbourne Books, Melbourne, 2009.
On the central coast of eastern Cape York Peninsula.
Acknowledgment: Timothy Bottoms, Conspiracy of Silence, pp. 196-7, 248 n.76, n.77, n.78, n.79.