September 5.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Shootings and Lynchings
...he very nearly wiped the whole tribe out.”
Around 1868 news reached Burketown that Aboriginal people had murdered three men well towards the MacArthur River and looted their wagon loaded with supplies. Arthur Ashwin, an experienced bushman and a friend of [Native Mounted Police Officer] D'arcy Uhr, described what happened:
When it was known, the police magistrate in Burketown sent D'arcy Uhr with his trackers, twelve in number, and told him to punish the tribe that committed the murders and take no prisoners, which he did; he very nearly wiped the whole tribe out. His twelve trackers were a murdering lot and took a delight in shooting any wild blacks, but they always had their white leader in front when they made a raid on a wild camp.
Uhr said in one camp the wild blacks showed fight and rushed out towards them with clubs. Uhr had his rifle barrel bent and the hammer knocked straight guarding a blow from a club and would have been done for only for one of the trackers shooting the nigger [sic] attacking him...they nearly shot the whole tribe of bucks, as Uhr called them; it done a lot of good for years after. The trackers did not shoot the women or children, [on] strict orders from Uhr, and for years after there were about two hundred gins and no bucks. [1]
Uhr and his troopers are known to have shot a considerable number of Aboriginal people in the settled districts of western Queensland and may well have acted excessively on this occasion, far from the nearest white witnesses, both to punish the presumed killers and to make the route safe for other travellers. Nevertheless, the casualties are unlikely to have been anywhere near as high as Ashwin suggests.
In 1868, the Burketown correspondent for the Brisbane Courier reported that Uhr and his troopers had shot twenty-eight Aboriginals after several horses were speared close to the town. A further thirty-one, he said, had been shot near the Norman River following the murder of a man named Cameron (or Cannon).
Uhr was demoted later that year and resigned from the force on 29 March 1869. [2]
Ashwin 2002: 158. Ashwin was told of this incident by Uhr in the 1890s, and recorded it in 1929, so some details may have blurred with the passing of time. No corroborative evidence of the incident has been located but the men may have been prospectors travelling to the scene of the gold find described in 1864 by [ R. Peel] Raymond.
I am grateful to Frank Uhr for information on D’arcy Uhr.
Acknowledgment: Tony Roberts, Frontier Justice – A history of the Gulf Country to 1900, pp. 12-13, 267 n.27, n.29.
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Lynchings in Australia
[One] report related to an alleged hanging. At [Dr James] Bowman’s Ravensworth estate, a man was taken prisoner during the pursuit of those involved in the spearing of Bowman’s stockman. This man was brought in to Bowman’s hut, where a rope was secured around his neck. He was then marched a mile (1.6 kilometres) into the surrounding bush, forced to climb a nearby tree and tie the rope to a branch. The troopers then proceeded to fire their muskets at him, wounding him twice before he fell and was left hanging in the tree. [Rev’d Lancelot] Threlkeld said that the person who supplied the rope had told his informant of the incident. [1] This was not the first report of Aboriginal people being hung from trees in the district. In July 1826, Threlkeld had been told by Biraban, his interpreter and intermediary, that a man caught stealing corn had been shot and hung from a tree with the corncob stuck in his mouth as a warning to others. [2]
Neil Gunson (ed.) Australian Reminiscences and Papers of L.E. Threlkeld; Missionary to the Aborigines 1824-1859, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1974, p. 95.
Gunson, p. 92.
Acknowledgment: Mark Dunn, The Convict Valley – The Bloody Struggle on Australia’s Early Frontier, pp.174, 261 n.7, n.8.