October 2.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Mothers and children
...whenever missionaries approached, the Aborigines hid their children.
...there were differences of opinion between [the Rev'd James William] Gunther and [the Rev'd William] Watson which concerned crucial aspects of mission policy and practice. Their bitterest confrontations were over the practice of removing [Aboriginal] children from their parents. By the time Gunther arrived at Wellington, Watson had become particularly active in obtaining children for the mission, sometimes forcing Aboriginal mothers to give up their children to him. The Watsons had treated so many little girls with venereal diseases, had seen so many children die in the Aboriginal camps, and had known of the deaths of so many unwanted part-European babies, that they were totally convinced that children had no chance of survival outside the mission.
There is no doubt about the Watson's motives. They saw no other alternative. It was also very evident that the childless Ann and William Watson deeply and sincerely loved the Aboriginal children and that they were loved in return. William wrote:
we cannot doubt but it is from our Heavenly Father that we feel such strong affection for those native children who have been much with us. Where souls are the subject of increasing care, it matters not what is the colour of the body. [1]
It appears, however, that Watson became more aggressive in forcing his will on Aboriginal mothers. Gunther began reporting this in his letters to CMS [Church Missionary Society]. Gunther once even hid a mother and child in his house only to have the child forcibly removed by Watson and two police officers. Gunther reported to CMS that whenever missionaries approached, the Aborigines hid their children. [2] This presumption of the right to remove children forcibly from their parents was still being exercised as recently as the 1950s by the Aborigines Welfare Board of NSW. Gunther was appalled to find that not only did the Aborigines refer to Watson as 'eagle hawk' but that they referred to missionaries in general as 'kidnappers'. [4] Although Watson's motives were a kind of desperate compassion, it is a sad thing indeed that those who brought the gospel were so often perceived as those who destroyed the family.
Watson Diary, 2 October 1833, AJCP, M233, NLA
Bridges, 1978: 643
Gunther Diary, 1836 – 1865, 16 and 17 December 1839. 17 and 19 January 1840, AJCP, M 224, NLA.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, pp. 62-63, 82 n.161, n.162, n.163.
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“...the Martini-Henry carbines at this crucial moment were talking English.”
Kartiya [European's] descriptions of massacres often give voice to the weapon rather than acknowledging the agency of the person wielding the revolver or rifle. For example, in one account of a killing which occurred in 1894 in the southern part of Bilinara country at Blackgin Creek, Mounted Constable WH Willshire claims, 'it's no use mincing matters, the Martini-Henry carbines at this crucial moment were talking English'. [1] Willshire was stationed to the Victoria River District in 1894...He gives a detailed description of the Aboriginal tribes of the area but does not list the Karrangpurru (or Karranga), which suggests that they had already been virtually eliminated in the early colonial times.
William Willshire, The Land of the Dawning, 1896, p. 41.
Acknowledgment: 'Other Reported Accounts of Conflict', Erika Charola and Felicity Meakins, eds. Yijarni – True Stories from Gurindji Country, Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 2016, pp. 68-69, 235 n.12.