September 6.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Another massacre
Massacre of 59 Aboriginals because of the killing of several horses and one white man.
It is obvious that the details of only a small percentage of Aboriginal attacks and European acts of aggression or retaliation have been discovered. Indeed, generally only the most blatant acts of the Native Police or the activities of the Aborigines most alarming to the settlers were recorded. Upon the receipt of a petition detailing most of the Aboriginal attacks...another detachment of Native Police was despatched. The officer in charge of both the native and the ordinary police, Sub-Inspector [D'Arcy] Uhr, had previously earned the respect of the residents with the limited force he had at his disposal. [1] With the increase in conflict between the settlers and the Aborigines he soon won enthusiastic approval for his ruthless reprisals. In one of the extant detailed accounts of a Native Police dispersal, the Burketown correspondent to the Brisbane Courier exulted at Uhr's success in killing fifty-nine Aborigines in retaliation for the slaughter of 'several horses' near Burketown and the killing of a Mr Cameron near the Norman River:
I much regret to state that the blacks have become very troublesome about here lately. Within ten miles of this place they speared and cut steaks from the rumps of several horses. As soon as it was known, the Native Police, under Sub-Inspector Uhr, went out, and I am informed, succeeded in shooting upwards of thirty blacks. No sooner was this done that a report came in that Mr Cameron had been murdered at Liddle and Hetzer's Station, near the Norman. Mr. Uhr went off immediately in that direction, and his success I hear was complete. One mob of fourteen he rounded up; another mob of nine, and a last mob of eight, he succeeded with his troopers in shooting. In the latter there was one black who would not die after receiving eighteen or twenty bullets, but a trooper speedily put an end to his existence by smashing his skull. [2]
The complacent tone of this report and the absence of any hostile reaction and of an official enquiry demonstrate the changed attitude towards Aborigines in the Burke district even more strikingly than the ferocity of the deeds themselves. They suggest that this was, perhaps, only the most successful act of revenge and bloodshed.
C.C.L. Burketown, to Col. Sec., 6 September 1867, Q>S>A> CCL/14G1, pp. 184-7; Pol. Com. To Col. Sec. (with enclosures), 12 June 1868, Q>S>A> COL/A106, 1788 of 1868; Brodie Brothers and Little and Hetzer to Col. Sec., 18 April 1868, loc cit. See Col. Sec's minute, 9 June 1868.
Brisbane Courier, 9.6.1868. Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp. 36-37, 257 n. 26, n.27.
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The consequences of protecting the lucrative wool industry.
The British, in their bid for expansion, did not conciliate Aboriginal aggression as they had in their North American colonies. The orders issued to the governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling (1825–1831), stated: In reference to the discussions, which have recently taken place in the Colony respecting the manner, in which the Native Inhabitants are to be treated when making hostile incursions for the purpose of Plunder, you will understand it to be your duty, when such disturbances cannot be prevented or allayed by less vigorous measures, to oppose force by force, and to repel such Aggressions in the same manner, as if they proceeded from subjects of any accredited State. [1]
Henry Bathurst…Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1812–1827, indicated that [Governor] Darling needed to protect the lucrative wool industry, if necessary at the cost of amicable settler-Indigenous relations. There was a significant change, from Governor Arthur Phillip’s policy of treating the Aborigines with ‘amity and kindness’ to Darling’s political instructions to ‘oppose force by force’ if necessary. [2]
Bathurst to Darling, 14 July 1825 in Watson (ed) 1971, vol 12: 21.
Instructions to our trusty and well-beloved Arthur Phillip, Esq. in Bladen (ed) 1978, vol 1 part 2: 89. See also: Bathurst to Darling, 14 July 1825 in Watson (ed) 1971, vol 12: 21. For a discussion on the Aborigines being viewed as British subjects see, Atkinson 1997: 152–153, 158–167.
Acknowledgment: Prosecution of whites - Kelly K Chaves, “‘A solemn judicial farce, the mere mockery of a trial’: the acquittal of Lieutenant Lowe, 1827” in Aboriginal History, Vol. 31 (2007) pp. 124-125.