December 28.
“A Portrait of Australia With Important Bits Missing” by Glenn Loughrey
A system of assassination
...at least 47 Aboriginal people were killed
Macintrye River squatters and their employees went to extraordinary lengths to prevent the investigations by Crown Land Commissioner [Richard] Bligh. Local squatters helped provide funds to defend the Umbercollie killers, just as other settlers had done after the Myall Creek episode. In December 1848 a man and woman were committed for trial for attempting to bribe the main witness, Daniel Maclean. [1] In November 1848 two police horses were stolen and three of Bligh’s personal horses were driven fifty miles from the Macintyre River. Local squatters refused to sell or give police food as well as dispatching messengers warning all residents when the police were in the district. [2]
After months of enquiry Richard Bligh concluded:
I feel justified in stating that could these miserable savages give evidence in a court of justice or even support their case with a little of the eloquence employed against them the balance of injury and crime would be fearfully against the white population. During the past year a system of assassination has been pursued by the whites which has been now first discovered though it is impossible to say how long it may have existed). [3]
By September 1848 attacks had been made on Aboriginal people camped on Carbucky, Broomfield, Callandoon and Umbercollie stations. On the 2nd October 1847 the Warialda Bench of Magistrates sent Chief Constables McGee and Hancock to the district. They were instructed to join with the group of settlers already in pursuit of the Aborigines, but were told not to use ‘unnecessary violence’. [4] From October 1847 a number of attacks upon camps of Aborigines occurred. Primary sources show that at least 47 Aboriginal people were killed at the hands of marksmen. [5] Most reports of these attacks reflect a focus on ‘station blacks’.
On the 4th October 1848 the Colonial Secretary authorised the Warialda Bench of Magistrates to engage four additional constables on the Macintyre River pending the arrival of the Native Police Corps. [6] Walkers’s force, comprising fourteen troopers from southern New South Wales, arrived at the Macintyre River on the 10th May 1849. One of their first actions was the ambush of a group of Aborigines on the Severn (Dumaresq) River. The troopers attacked ‘a large tribe’, and John Watts, a squatter on the Severn, reported that they ‘were so excited that Captain Walker could not control them, this being the first time they had been in action’. [7 ] According to Watts, ‘the number they killed no one but their commander and themselves knew’. [8]
Moreton Bay Courier, 16 December 1848.
Commissioner of Crown Lands, Gwydir District to Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands, 10 January 1849.
Commissioner of Crown Lands, Gwydir District to Chief Commissioner of Crown Lands, 8 January 1849.
Warialda Court of Petty Sessions Letterbook, 2 October 1847, New South Wales Archives, 4/5681.
Copland A System of Assassination, B.A. Honours, University of Queensland, (1990), Appendix II.
Colonial Secretary to the Commandant of the Native Police, 4 October 1848. NSW State Archives, 4/3860, reel 2818.
John Watts (n.d.), p. 20; Frederick Walker to Colonial Secretary, 26 May, 1849, NSW StateArchives, 4/2920, 49/5554.
ibid.
Acknowledgment: Mark Copland, Jonathan Richards and Andrew Walker, One Hour More Daylight, pp. 44-45,n.120, n.121, n.122, n.123, n.124, n.125, n.126, n.127.