October 6.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Terror and War Crimes
The use of terror.
In June 1826, following the deaths of two labourers at Doctor James Bowman's station, Lieutenant Nathaniel Lowe of the 40th regiment and the entire Hunter Valley Mounted Police detachment were ordered to the frontier. Of course, by the time the Mounted police had ridden up the valley, the Wonnarua raiders had long gone, so Lowe returned to Wallis Plains almost immediately, leaving Sergeant Lewis Moore and four privates on the frontier. In late July a man known as 'Jackey Jackey' was arrested for the attack on Bowman's station and handed over to the Mounted Police. Two soldiers took 'Jackey Jackey' to Lieutenant Lowe at Wallis Plains and presented the prisoner to him. Lowe ordered his men to take 'Jackey Jackey' into the bush and kill him. The men tied the prisoner to a tree and obeyed their order. [1]
The execution of 'Jackey Jackey' was just one incident in Lieutenant Lowe's campaign of terror on the upper Hunter. During the first half of August a further three Aboriginal men were 'shot while trying to escape' by the Mounted Police. Selesky points out that the use of brutality in frontier warfare was justified in other parts of the British empire on the grounds that terror broke resistance and ended fighting sooner. [2] This attitude certainly existed in New South Wales at this time. In June the Australian argued that the best course in dealing with the Hunter Valley Aborigines was: 'To strike these with terror, by the discriminating application of firearms, [which] will ultimately prove a saving of human life, and leave the [white] people in the quiet enjoyment of their farms'. [3]
When news of Lowe's murderous activities reached Sydney in early August [1826], Governor Ralph Darling immediately ordered an inquiry and recalled Lowe. Despite the obstruction of Hunter Valley magistrates and of settlers who approved of Lowe's behaviour, Darling eventually collected sufficient evidence to put the mounted police officer on trial the following year. [4] It is important to note that Darling did not put Lowe on trial for shooting Aborigines without the legal sanction of a magistrate or martial law. He put Lowe on trial because, by shooting a prisoner, he had committed what would now be termed a 'war crime'. Earl Bathurst had told Darling when he began his term as governor that if Aborigines attacked British settlements he should 'oppose force by force', and to repel such Aggressions in the same manner, as if they proceeded from subjects of an accredited State'. This is the closest the British government ever came to accepting the reality that the Aborigines were not misbehaving British subjects, but were sovereign peoples defending their lands in war. Though Saxe Bannister, the New South Wales attorney-general, told him that Bathurst's advice was 'illegal', Darling followed it and viewed the fighting on the Hunter as warfare that did not need to be legalised by the declaration of martial law. Darling's comment that 'prompt measures in dealing with such people may be the most efficacious' implies approval of the use of some terror tactics in frontier warfare. However, Darling stated that 'it is impossible to subscribe to the massacre of prisoners in cold blood as a measure of justifiable policy', and this is the reason he pursued the case against Lowe. [5]
Letters – Condamine to Allman, 21 June 1826, Allman to Condamine, 27 June 1826, HRA, XII: 620, 621; Australian, 24 June 1826; Sydney Gazette, 21 May 1827.
Letter – Scott & MacLeod to MacLeay, 3 October 1826, HRA, XII: 611; Australian, 26 August 1826; Harold E Seleskey, 'Colonial America', in Howard, Andreopolous, & Shulman (eds), Laws of War, p. 61.
Australian, 28 June 1826.
Australian, 5 & 26 August 1826; letters – Darling to Bathurst, 6 October 1826, Darling to Robert Hay, British Colonial Under-Secretary, 23 March 1827, HRA, XII: 623, XIII: 179; Wood, Dawn in the Valley, p. 131.
Letters – Bathurst to Darling, 14 July 1825, Saxe Bannister, NSW Attorney-General, to Darling, 5 September 1826, Darling to Bathurst, 6 October 1826, HRA, XII: 21, 578, 609, 623; evidence - Bannister, 14 March 1837, British Parliamentary Papers Anthropology Aborigines, 3 vols, Irish University Press, Shannon, Ireland, 1968-69, 2:21.
Acknowledgment: John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, pp. 64-65, 139 n.27, n.28, n.29, n.30, n.31.