September 4.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Atrocities
Aborigines frequently brought Threlkeld news of atrocities committed by settlers in the district
[Lancelot] Threlkeld [Methodist missionary with the London Missionary Society] had intimations of the violence out on the frontiers while he was still in Sydney, writing to the London Missionary Society in February 1825 that at a meeting he had attended a prominent landowner advocated the shooting of all Aborigines. [1] Once he settled at Lake Macquarie the Aborigines frequently brought him news of atrocities committed by settlers in the district...as with many other humanitarians he was deeply troubled by the already entrenched tradition of the punitive expedition which by its very nature was likely to be both random and excessive. He had no doubt that murderers, whether black or white, should be executed. 'But let it be the Murderer', he cried in anguish, 'not his wife, his children, his friends, his relatives, his race'. [2]
A few months later he was writing home to England again with news of continuing violence. 'We are in a state of warfare up the country here', he observed, 'the blood of the blacks begins to flow'. Two stockmen had been speared in revenge for the earlier deaths of four Aborigines who were 'deliberately shot without any trial or form whatever'. For their part the settlers were demanding martial law and massive retaliation...
The violence which disturbed Threlkeld when he established his mission in 1826 was merely a prelude to what was to occur in the following decade as the settlers fanned out in ever increasing numbers along the broad river valleys of northern New South Wales. As pressures on them increased the Aborigines responded, spearing shepherds and stock, driving off whole flocks of sheep, firing huts and grass. Punitive expeditions, both official and private, struck back exacting revenge out of all proportion to the intensity of Aboriginal resistance. Threlkeld gathered information about the border war from many sources and began to compile a catalogue of the various atrocities which was then passed on to government officials, churchmen and members of the judiciary by means of conversations, letter, reports and speeches. He prepared a document for the Supreme Court judge Justice William Burton and in April and October 1838 had long interviews with Governor George Gipps. [3]
His speech to the public meeting in Sydney in October 1838 which launched the Aborigines Protection Society was characteristic of the man. He began by saying that he had seen circumstances for many years that had pained his mind in the conduct of Europeans towards Aborigines. 'if the natives did wrong' he argued, 'let them be punished on Christian principles'; let not the innocent be punished for the guilty. The whites, he believed, were generally the aggressors, and he told his audience that he could, if necessary, make out a list of 500 blacks who had been slaughtered by the whites,* and that 'within a short time'. He then turned his attack on the editors of the pro-squatter Sydney newspapers who stood charged 'with criminality in the sight of God' for having inflamed the public mind against Aborigines...Threlkeld concluded his speech with the assertion that
He should strongly maintain the principle that the Aborigines were entitled to protection and compensation from those who had forcibly deprived them of their patrimony. [4]
Threlkeld Report, 21 June 1826, Bonwick Papers, 53 ML.
Threlkeld to Bunder, 4 September 1826, Gunson, op. cit., 2, p.213.
The Colonist, 27 Oct. 1838.
Gunson, op. cit., 1, p. 139.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, The Whispering in Our Hearts, pp. 61-62, 64-5, 257 n.33, n.34, n.39, n.40.
* For a stark list of atrocities cited by Threlkeld see Reynolds, Whispering, p. 65.