September 11.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Indigenous Resistance
An account of killings
The witness statement by Native assistant Banjo, taken 5 September 1888, gives a rare and chilling perspective on the workings of a punitive expedition. Banjo made no distinction between police and colonists. All are called ‘whitemen’, each carried a revolver and a pistol and each had primed themselves with a lot of ‘drink’ at the Gordon Hotel, taking more ‘grog’ with them as they tracked and killed four and attempted to shoot anyone they came across…
[We] went towards the fire, when close we saw the natives running away from the fire; they had no spears with them...we galloped after them, they run into some trees and bushes that were close by, we soon took over them and stopped them there, when close up to them the whitefellows and blackfellas all fired on two of the natives and shot them dead, the other native who was a very young boy had climbed up a tree. After shooting the two men then all fired at the boy in the tree and shot him dead, he fell into the fork of the tree and lay there. Howard went up close to the tree, got off his horse and fired at this boy, the other whitefellows stood a little further back and fired at him, some were on their horses and some were on the ground. After those three natives were shot the whitefellows stopped there a little while and all had more drink (grog)… We all camped that night close to where we shot the natives. During the night we heard the natives shouting and women crying all night at a distance… I have since accompanied Serg[eant] Troy to the place where the natives were shot and showed him the remains of them. [1]
1. CSO, ‘Government Resident Wyndham – Natives (5) shot by PC Graham & others in April [18]88. Report Note G.B. Phillips, Commissioner of Police to Hon. Colonial Secretary, enclosing reports from Sergeant Troy and statements from PC Graham and Native Assistant Banjo, 2 October 1888’, SROWA, AN 24, Cons. 527, File 2776/1888.
Acknowledgment: Chris Owen, ‘Every Mother’s Son is Guilty’ – Policing the Kimberley Frontier of Western Australia 1882-1905, UWA Publishing, Perth, 2016, pp. 237-239, 540 n.97.
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Indigenous resistance – guerrilla warfare.
Aboriginal action fell naturally into the archetypal pattern of guerrilla warfare which was ideally suited to their loosely articulated clan organization and dispersed population, their hunting and foraging economy and highly developed bush skills. The Hobart Town Courier noted in 1830 that nature had instructed the Aborigine in her 'original language'; that the blackman had adopted the 'natural weapons of his condition'. The writer concluded that while settlers might denounce the 'craft, the cunning and the murderous habits' they were but 'natural tactics of war which providence has provided them'. [1] Governor Arthur well expressed the anguish of the frustrated opponent of the guerrilla fighter, which is as fresh today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago:
They suddenly appear; commit some act of outrage and then as suddenly vanish; if pursued it seems impossible to surround and capture them. [2]
For a while on the Australian frontier bushcraft and local knowledge almost equalled the range and power of guns, the speed and endurance of horses. But the balance tipped dramatically in favour of the Europeans as a result of the rapid improvement of their weapons, their growing confidence in the bush and, above all, their using the blacks themselves as guides, trackers and more formally in the para-military native police forces of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The co-option of black bushcraft began with the earliest expeditions inland from the infant settlement at Sydney Cove, George Caley informing Joseph Banks in 1801 that he intended to keep 'a native constant soon, as they can trace anything so well in the bush'. [3] The use of 'friendly blacks' to counter the superior bushcraft of clans in conflict with the Europeans was formally proposed in the 1820s.
Hobart Town Courier 11 September 1830.
Arthur to Sir George Murray, 12 Spetember 1829, HRA, 1, 15, p.446.
Historical Records of New South Wales, 5, p. 514.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, pp. 84-85, 178 n.23, n.24, n.25.