September 25.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Ratio of killings.
“Occasional hostile actions were common on both sides.”
In parts of the Bowen District, the Aborigines were still resisting the squatters as late as 1881. The editor of the Port Denison Times doubted 'whether two black troopers here and two at Mackay will be sufficient force to prevent or even check their depredations'. He also pondered philosophically upon the extension from the Native Police to the ordinary police force, of the customary, if illegal, practice of arbitrarily shooting down Aborigines and wondered 'whether it will improve the morale of the police to make them executioners not by warrant of law but merely as an experiment on the part of the government'. [1] This, in areas that were first settled in the 1860s.
In many areas after the main frontier conflict, there was a period when the two races uneasily co-existed. In some areas Aborigines were let in but continued to live traditional lives with, at first, little contact with the settlers. In others, a reduction in Aboriginal attacks led settlers to cease direct interference with Aborigines without any conscious adoption of a policy of letting in. During this period of mutual suspicion and fear, occasional hostile actions were common on both sides. [2]
...Near Cloncurry a station employee was killed in a period when the Aborigines were not troubling the pastoralists because he tried to keep an Aboriginal woman against her and her husband's wishes. Such provocative liaisons with Aboriginal women became very common as soon as the most tenuous contact was established. [3]
P.D.T., 25 September 1880, editorial. See also 1. P.D.T., 30 October 1880; 26 February 1881.
P.D.T., 24 August 1878 (Bowen District); P.D.T., 26 February 1881 (Bloomsbury District).
N.M. 29 April, 29 September 1897; Fysh, Taming the North, p.210; P.D.T., 10 April 1869; Eden, My Wife and I in Queensland, pp. 211-12.
Acknowledgment: Noel Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp. 56, 262 n.94, n.95, n.97.
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A ratio of killings in a ‘dispersal’.
The ratio of the killing, as well as the use of the word 'disperse', was well described in one sentence in a letter to the Queenslander in June 1880 by the managing proprietor of Natal Downs station William Chatfield junior, saying – 'a few white men will be killed, and a great many blacks “dispersed”...'. [1]
In September of the same year Frederick Thomas Rayner (1832-1900), the owner-editor of the conservative Port Denison Times made his contribution to the ongoing Carl Freiberg orchestrated Queenslander campaign. He ended his article with the words: 'But having systematically declined to adopt the proper way for managing the native population, we must try improper and less satisfactory ways till we arrive at a solution of the difficulty, if it ever be arrived at before the difficulty is totally “dispersed” or “snuffed out”. [2]
In the reminiscences of an old pioneer in 1888 it was said that in the old days, 'in the case of cattle-killing, they did their own dispersing, and did not talk about it...'. [3]
Queenslander 24 July 1880 p114a. Letter to the editor signed 'Natal Down, Jul 3.C.'
Port Denison Times 25 September 1880.
Brisbane Courier 27 Jan 1877 p3; DN 1 Jan 1879 p2; Q 16 Aug 1879 p199a; Q 21 Sep 1878 p775a; Q 2 Oct 1880 p434a; Ernest Favenc, The History of Australian Exploration 1888 in Favenc Papers, Q 930.IF, NLA) in quote from Richards: A Question…Appendix 6.
Acknowledgment: Robert Ørsted-Jensen, Frontier History Revisited p. 39 n.52, n.53, n.54.