November 26.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Intrusion and aggression.
An Explorer Explains
The famous explorer Edward Eyre set out to explain why Aborigines attacked frontier settlers. He gave seven reasons:
First, That our being in their country at all is, so far as their ideas of right and wrong are concerned, altogether an act of intrusion and aggression.
Secondly, That for a very long time they cannot comprehend our motives for coming amongst them, or our object in remaining, and may very naturally imagine that it can only be for the purpose of dispossessing them.
Thirdly, That our presence and settlement, in any particular locality, do in point of fact, actually dispossess the Aboriginal inhabitants.
Fourthly, That the localities selected by Europeans, as best adapted for the purposes of cultivation, or of grazing, are those that would usually be equally valued above others, by the natives themselves, as places of resort, or districts in which they could most easily procure their food. This would especially be the case in those parts of the country where water was scarce, as the European always locates himself close to this grand necessary of life. The injustice, therefore, of the white man's intrusion upon territory of the Aboriginal inhabitant, is aggravated greatly by his always occupying the best and most valuable portion of it.
Fifthly, That as we ourselves have laws, customs or prejudices, to which we attach considerable importance, and the infringement of which we consider either criminal or offensive, so have the natives theirs, equally, perhaps, dear to them, but which, from our ignorance or heedlessness, we may be continually violating, and can we wonder that they should sometimes exact the penalty of infraction? Do not we do the same? Or is ignorance a more valid excuse for civilized man than the savage?
Sixthly, What are the relations usually subsisting between the Aborigines and settlers, locating in the more distant, and less populous parts of the country: those who have placed themselves upon the outskirts of civilization, and who, as they are in some measure beyond the protection of the laws, are also free from their restraints? A settler going to occupy a new station, removes, perhaps, beyond all other Europeans, taking with him his flocks, and his herd, and his men, and locates himself wherever he finds water, and a country adapted for his purposes. At the first, possibly, he may see none of the inhabitants of the country that he has thus unceremoniously taken possession of; naturally alarmed at the inexplicable appearance, and daring intrusion of strangers, they keep aloof, hoping, perhaps, but vainly, that the intruders may soon retire. Days, weeks, or months pass away, and they see them still remaining. Compelled at last, it may be by enemies without, by the want of water in the remoter districts, by the desire to procure certain kinds of food, which are peculiar to certain localities, and at particular seasons of the year, or perhaps by a wish to revisit their country and their homes, they return once more, cautiously and fearfully approaching what is their own – the spot perhaps where they were born, the patrimony that has descended to them through many generations; - and what is the reception that is given them upon their own lands? Often they are met by repulsion, and sometimes by violence, and are compelled to retire again to strange and unsuitable localities. Passing over the fearful scenes of horror and bloodshed, that have but too frequently been perpetrated in all the Australian colonies upon the natives in the remoter districts, by the most desperate and abandoned of our countrymen; and overlooking, also, the recklessness that too generally pervades the shepherds and store-keepers of the interior, with regard to the coloured races, a recklessness that leads them to think as little of firing at a black, as at a bird, and which makes the number they have killed or the atrocities that have attended the deeds, a matter for a tale, a jest or boast at their pothouse revelries.
E.J. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery Etc., 2 Vols., London, 1845, 1, pp. 167-168.
Acknowledgment: Henry Reynolds, Dispossession – Black Australians and White Invaders, pp. 27-28.