January 21.
“Australia Day” by Glenn Loughrey
Terror and Dawn Raids
[Continuation of excerpt from Henry Reynolds' Forgotten War in the entry on 16 January.]
“...against this tribe [Governor Arthur Phillip] was determined to strike a decisive blow...and to infuse a universal terror
The two military expeditions that marched out towards Botany Bay [in December, 1790] failed to come up with the targeted Aborigines, but the chosen leader, Lieutenant Watkin Tench, left a compelling account of [Governor Phillip's] motivation.
Phillip initially ordered Tench to capture two members of what was presumed to be the offending tribe and kill ten others, whose heads were to be chopped off and brought into the settlement. Tench suggested a slightly less sanguinary venture. He was to capture six Aborigines and bring them into the settlement. Two were to be hanged and the four others sent to Norfolk Island. But if capture was impossible, the six were to be shot and decapitated. In another account, Captain John Hunter remarked that Phillip was convinced that 'nothing but a severe example, and the fear of having all the tribes who resided near the settlement destroyed would have the desired effect' of bringing all resistance to an end. And while there was danger that the 'innocent might suffer', the punishments inflicted on a few would in the end be what he termed 'an act of mercy to numbers' because peace would be imposed. [1] Tench noted in his journal:
His Excellency was now pleased to enter into the reasons which had induced him to adopt measures of such severity. He said that since our arrival in the country, no less than seventeen of our people had either been killed or wounded by the natives:- that he looked upon the tribe known as Bid-ee-gal, living on the before-mentioned peninsula, and chiefly on the north arm of Botany Bay, to be the principal aggressors:- that against this tribe he was determined to strike a decisive blow, in order, at once to convince them of our superiority, and to infuse a universal terror, which might operate to prevent further mischief. [2]
It is important to remember that Tench's two expeditions failed to either capture or kill any Aborigines and clearly were unable to infuse either a local or a universal terror.
J Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1968, pp. 326-45.
Tench, Sydney's First Four Years, p. 215.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Forgotten War, pp. 55-57, 259 n.4 and n. 5.
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Origin of the deadly ‘dawn raids’
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[Captain of Marines Watkin] Tench's efforts [in 1790] showed tactical adaptations in swift, silent night marching in separate columns to raid encampments at dawn, a strategy used in the future as one of the only ways to successfully combat Aboriginal tactical advantages. Perhaps unwittingly, in a reflection of both Aboriginal skill and British tenacity in attempts to counteract it, Tench had begun what became a signature tactic of frontier warfare: the dawn raid. [1] *
Cobley, vol. 2, p. 314 (Tench, 22 Dec.1790); SFFY, pp. 212-16; Easty, pp.121-22.
Acknowledgment: Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, pp. 89, 298-9 n.35.
* The 'dawn raid' was to be used extensively in other parts of Australia to surprise and to kill or maim the members of many Indigenous clans – RB.