September 10.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Further killings
Killings - their background and costly reprisal.
It was common knowledge on the frontier that violence was being practised against Aborigines before the arrival of the Native Police. In 1853 [Native Police Commandant Frederick] Walker's force was criticised in a letter to the Moreton Bay Courier, and Walker referred to the author of this letter, James Marks, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary. Walker wrote that Marks was 'an individual whose atrocities on the Macintyre first induced His Excellency to command me to raise the Native Police'. [1]
James Marks was a leaseholder in the Goodiwindi district between 1847 and 1850. He first occupied a station named 'Yalleroy', but Aboriginal attacks on his shepherds and flocks of sheep forced him to abandon the run and move his flocks to 'Goodar' on the Weir River, north of Callandoon. One of the few European women in the district, Margaret Young, described Marks' relations with the local Bigambul people: 'Old Mr. Marks was a hater of all Aboriginals and would shoot any seen approaching his property'. [2]
Early in September of 1847 a neighbour of Marks [3] killed a beast and sent a 'native boy' with fresh meat to Goodar. It is unclear what occurred between the 'native boy' and James Marks, but it resulted in the death of the 'boy'. [4] The Bigambul who believed that a messenger was "sacred" were outraged by this attack and sought revenge. [5] Marks' hatred of Aborigines was well known and a number of Aborigines at Beebo, upstream on the Macintyre, told squatter John Watts that they had been seeking vengeance on Marks for a long time. [6] On the 10th of September an opportunity presented itself.
Local Aborigines apparently killed Marks' son Johnny who had been left to tend a flock of sheep while his father took lunch. Graphically venting their anger, the Bigambul cut up the boy's body and placed it in a nearby log. Some accounts suggest that Marks could not find the head of his son until that evening he located it impaled on the limb of a tree in front of the Goodar hut. [7] Whether this brutal act of defiance occurred or not, once Marks found the grisly remains of his son, he lost little time in arming himself and preparing for what would be a twelve month reign of terror upon the local Aboriginal population.
The Sydney Morning Herald [8] reported the killing of Marks' son and called on the government to provide official protection for settlers' lives and property...Similar pleas for protection of squatters' lives and property all failed to mention Marks' original act of aggression that had sparked off the attack on his son. The Moreton Bay Courier published a letter written by a Macleay River squatter who believed that the killing of Marks' son was enough justification for the extermination of all Aborigines in South East Australia.
Frederick Walker to Colonial Secretary, 31 December 1853, QSA, NMP B/5.
A.E. Tonge (n.d.), The Young's of Umbercollie: The First White Family in South-West Queensland, Mitchell library, Sydney, ML, MSS 3821, 5-537C, p. 22.
Possibly Legislative Council member and owner of Callandoon Station, Augustus Morris.
In this context the word 'boy' is a [demeaning] paternalistic term given to Aboriginal males of all ages.
Copland (1990) p. 52.
John Watts (n.d.), Personal Reminiscences, John Oxley Library, Q994.33WAT.
See Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1847.
Sydney Morning Herald, 15 October 1847.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland et al. One Hour More Daylight, pp.39-41, n.106, n.107, n.108, n.109, n.110, n.111, n.112, n.113
____
On 10 September, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signed an Emancipation Proclamation which freed 6 million black slaves in the United States of America.