September 13.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Further atrocities...
What might have been...
The low point of [Captain Henry] Smyth's command came when, having issued an order that he would give a £5 bounty to any individual or group who could capture an Aborigine, he allowed an armed group of three convicts and three soldiers to go out on 28 December 1827. Seeing some Iwaidja in a canoe offshore, the armed group trailed them until they landed and went to a campsite, where there were about sixty people. The British decided to drive the Iwaidja towards the beach to enable their capture. They waited until about 2:00 AM, when the three soldiers, Privates Charles Miller, John Norton and Thomas Smith, went forward and fired into the sleeping camp. A few men threw spears in reply and then the two convicts with muskets stepped forward and fired their muskets. The Iwaidja ran towards their canoes to escape. The convict James Murray ran to the beach and saw a woman trying to bring two children one of whom was wounded, to the safety of the canoes. He bayoneted the woman. The wounded child soon died. There was also a man on the beach with a stomach wound. The British party decided, in the words of Private Charles Miller, that it was 'better to put him out of his misery at once' and killed him. Firing occasionally into the night to cover their retreat, they returned to Fort Wellington with their one captive. This was a six-year-old girl called Riveral, who Smyth renamed 'Mary Waterloo Raffles'. [1]
Both the New South Wales governor and the British Colonial Secretary rebuked Smyth when they heard what he had done. Governor Darling had Smyth relieved in April 1828, ostensibly on grounds of ill-health, while Sir George Murray wrote that Smyth had done wrong both 'to the unfortunate people, whose lives have been taken away, and to the honor of the British name'. [2] Lieutenant George Sleeman of the 39th Regiment acted as commandant until the arrival on 13 September 1828, of Captain Collet Barker of the same regiment.
Barker brought an immediate change to Fort Wellington. He addressed the garrison on 'the importance of avoiding cruelty towards the natives'...Most remarkable was the way he turned British-Iwaidja relations around. On 25 November Barker made contact with an Iwaidja man called Merriak. By 7 December Merriak and others were sufficiently convinced of Barker's good intentions that they came into the settlement. On 14 December Barker reciprocated by visiting Merriak's camp...On 29 January 1829 relations had improved so much that two men named Alobo and Mago came into the settlement and entertained the British with an evening of singing, dancing and didgeridoo playing, probably the first time any Europeans had heard the instrument. [3]
Letter – Smyth to MacLeay and attached sworn statements, 12 February 1828, HRA, Series 3 VI: 781-89.
Letter – Lieutenant George Sleeman, 39th regiment, to MacLeay, 22 April 1828, HRA, Series 3 VI:793; - Sir George Murray, British Colonial Secretary, to Darling, 3 September 1829, HRA, XV: 153-54.
Barker, Commandant of Solitude, pp. 113, 141, 199, 224.
Acknowledgment: John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars 1788-1838, pp. 74-75, 141 n.17, n.18, n.19.