October 19.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Men, women, children - wounded
‘...there was scarcely one among them – man, woman, or child, but had been wounded by the whites'
Indeed, Tasmanian [Aborigines] readily altered or abandoned their age-old customs in response to white invasion, often in quite creative ways.
In addition to changing their migratory patterns, the Tasmanian [Aborigines] were also forced to move faster. One settler recalled that 'the rapid movement of the blacks was remarkable, 40 or 50 miles [64-80 km] a day must have been travelled by them at the height of the war'. [1] Moving at such speeds gave them an extraordinary advantage, but this came at a cost. John West claimed that 'individuals of the tribes were often left behind. It was the custom to fix small pieces of stick at short distances, to assist the stragglers in rejoining their main body'. [2] Other tribes notched trees for the same purpose, but often the sick, elderly and wounded could not keep up. [3]
[Aboriginal] men and women with gunshot wounds or amputations endured unimaginable suffering in order to keep pace. The bodies of those few who survived the war were covered in scars. Robinson observed among the Mairrenmener people who surrendered to him in 1831 that 'there was scarcely one among them – man, woman, or child, but had been wounded by the whites'. [4] Years later, on Flinders Island, he again remarked in his journal on the prevalence of gunshot wounds, going so far as to say that 'there is not an Aborigine on the settlement nor an Aborigine that has been at the settlement but what bears marks of violence perpetrated upon them by the depraved whites. Some have musket balls now lodged in them such as Adolphus...Some of the natives have slugs in their bodies and other contusions, all inflicted by the whites'. [5] Although some of these wounds were no doubt received in internecine combat, the scar left by a 19 millimetre slug is difficult to mistake. These projectiles inflicted terrible wounds, shattering bones, rupturing vital organs and causing massive internal haemorrhaging. Seriously wounded victims had to be left behind; any other course would place the whole tribe in jeopardy. The same difficulty presented itself with the sick and elderly. They too struggled to maintain the pace of wartime movement, and were sometimes abandoned out of necessity. [6]
H J Emmett, 'Reminiscences of the Black War', 1873, TAHO, NG1216, p. 1.
West, History of Tasmania, p. 30.
Plomley, Friendly Mission, p. 549.
Robinson's speech to the Australian Aborigines Protection Society, 19 October 1838.
Plomley, Weep in silence, p. 464.
Hobart Town Courier, 23 October 1830; William Grant's journal, 13 February 1829, TAHO CSO1/331, pp. 126-27; Plomley, Friendly Mission, pp. 59, 776.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 116-117, 240 n.122, n.123, n.124, n.125, n.126, 241 n.127.
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Explanations based on biology, history and Christian religion for extinction of Aboriginals.
In the first century of colonisation and beyond, it was a convenient and widespread assumption that their extinction was irreversible. Appeal could be made to biology — ‘We cannot fail to recognise in their extinction a decided widening of the chasm by which mankind is now cut off from its animal progenitors’; [1] to history — ‘This is the history of all new countries ...The Australian blacks are moving rapidly on into the eternal darkness’; [2] and even to God — ‘It seems, indeed, to be a general appointment of Divine Providence that the miserable Aborigines of New Holland should be utterly swept away by the flood- tide of European civilisation’. [3]*
McAllister 1878: 157.
Meston 1889: 1213.
Bull 1884: 72.
Acknowledgment: John Harris,’ Hiding the bodies: the myth of the humane colonisation of Aboriginal Australia’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 27 (2003) p. 81-82, n.16, n.17, n.18.
* A number of scholars have noted the biblical story of Exodus as being cited by colonisers to sanction the dispossession foundational to Western colonisation. Note J. Docker, ‘Liberation or disaster? Exodus in contemporary cultural theory’, Anthropology Seminar Paper, Australian National University, 1999.