November 29.

Artwork by Glenn Loughrey

 

Ratio of killings.

“...mass killings of Aborigines were a key feature..”

[Governor] Arthur now took stock of the situation. In the sixteen months since the government notice of 29 November 1826 he knew that at least forty-three male colonists in the Settled Districts had been reported killed, even if he did not know that, in response, an estimated 350 Aborigines had been killed. He certainly believed that the Aborigines' numbers had been dramatically reduced, because he was expecting them to surrender, in the same way as the Wiradjuri nation had done following a decisive military campaign in Bathurst in New South Wales in 1824. [1]

But where should they go? To hunt them from the island altogether, he believed, would only aggravate their injuries:

They already complain that the white people have taken possession of their country, encroached upon their hunting grounds, and destroyed their natural food, the kangaroo; and they doubtless would be exasperated to the last degree to be banished altogether from their favourite haunts; and they would be ill-disposed to receive instruction from their oppressors, any attempt to civilize them, under such circumstances, must consequently fail. [2]

...Few historians of the Black War appear to have understood the significance of the second phase. Henry Reynolds, in two recent accounts, acknowledges the importance of the government notice of 29 November 1826 in escalating the war but overlooks the extreme violence that followed. This has led him to estimate the Aboriginal death toll at about the same number as the settlers; that is, around 200. [3] Keith Windschuttle, in The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, acknowledges the possibility of the Mount Alexander massacre near Campbell Town in April 1827, but he avoids a serious discussion of the settlers massacres along the Meander River in June and July 1827 and declares 'implausible' a press report of a massacre of Oyster Bay warriors following their attack on Mrs Langford and her family in late October 1828, just before the declaration of martial law. [4] James Boyce, on the other hand, contends that most Aborigines in the Settled Districts were probably killed before the declaration of martial law and that a proportion of them were 'likely to have been killed in massacres'. [5] His ground-breaking research encouraged me to carefully re-examine the wide array of known sources for the second phase. They reveal that mass killings of Aborigines were a key feature. This new information offers fresh insights into Arthur's conduct of the war in this phase and show how he may have considered massacre, even though it failed, a necessary strategy to force a quick surrender.

If we accept the evidence that 878 Aborigines were killed in the Settled Districts between 1823 and 1834, and that fewer than 150 others are known to have surrendered, then at least half of the remaining 122 of the original estimate of 1,200 Aborigines can be accounted for.

  1. See Connor, 'The frontier war that never was', 21-3.

  2. HRA, series III, vol. vii, 28.

  3. Reynolds, An Indelible Stain?, 61-5; see also Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, 81-2, 87-119.

  4. Keith Windschuttle, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Vol. 1, 389-90.

  5. Boyce, Van Diemen's Land, 197-8.

Acknowledgment: Lyndall Ryan, Tasmanian Aborigines, pp. 100, 143-144, 370 n.46, n.47, 373 n.2, n.3, n.4.

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