January 8.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Massacres and Civilisation
“...he admitted that he and his party had killed 'between twenty and thirty’ Aboriginal men...”
Another example of an occasion which prompted a spate of newspaper correspondence and editorials was the inquiry into a report by Corporal George Montague of the Northern Territory police in which he admitted that he and his party had killed 'between twenty and thirty' Aboriginal men near the Mary River late in 1884 while ostensibly investigating the killing of four white men at the Daly River copper mine. [1] The southern press, which had at first called for revenge, was outraged at the lawless and arbitrary action the police had taken. 'The manner in which Corporal Montague and his associates murdered these unhappy wretches is a disgrace to him, a disgrace to the community, and an outrage on the civilisation about which we boast,' wrote the South Australian Register. [2] 'Corporal Montague...and his party are...entitled to the hearty thanks of the whole community,' replied the Northern Territory Times. [3] 'As to the shooting of blacks,' said the North Australian, 'we uphold it defiantly.' [4]
Report on the pursuit of the Daly River murderers, SAPP, No. 170, 1885.
South Australian Register, 14 November, 1885.
Northern Territory Times, 26 December, 1885.
North Australian, 8 January, 1886.
Acknowledgment: John Harris, One Blood, p.28, 78 n.26, n.27, n.28, n.29.
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Numbers of fatalities
It is difficult to assess how many killings and assaults Aboriginal people suffered; even the colonists' own reports varied...Jan Barkly-Jack suggests that from 1794 to 1799 (before the murders of [Aboriginal] Jemmy and Little George), forty Aboriginal people and twenty colonists were killed at the Hawkesbury. [Settler William] Goodall recalled that when he first arrived at the Hawkesbury, before receiving his discharge and taking up farming, 'there were parties of soldiers frequently sent out to kill the natives' by the commanding officer. Even [Governor] Hunter suspected there were more deaths than reported. After seeing the various estimates from settlers of the deaths of 'white people' and 'natives' provided for the courtroom, he said that if they could have actually asked the 'natives' about the 'wanton and barbarous manner in which many of them had been destroy'd' there would have been an 'astonishing difference in numbers'. [1]
HRNSW, vol. 3, p. 25 ('General order', 22 Feb. 1796); vol. 4, pp. 1-2 (Hunter to Portland, 2 Jan. 1800); SAR, X905, pp. 329-62 (Braithwaite, Archer, Molloy, Goodall, McKellar). For an overview of the trial, see Stewart; Barkley-Jack, pp. 309-26.
Acknowledgment: Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, pp.142-143, 302 n.15.
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Massacres
The largest obvious difference between British and Aboriginal casualty rates is in massacres. While there is some divergence in opinions in what constitutes a massacre, [1] generally it involves several unarmed people, unable to act in self-defence, being indiscriminately killed. Counting as a massacre a minimum of five deaths in a single violent incident, during the period 1788 to 1817, five Europeans and forty-two Aboriginal people were massacred. [2]
Note Philip G. Dwyer & Lyndall Ryan (eds), Theatres of Violence: Massacre, mass killing and atrocity throughout history, Berghahn, New York, 2012.
Jeffrey Grey, ed., A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p.26.
Acknowledgment: Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, p.267, 307 n.6.