October 3.
Artwork by Glenn Loughrey
Two snapshots – Relationships and Sovereignty
Wartime relationships and emotions
The Tasmanians* were highly emotional people. After living with them for seven years, [George] Robinson reflected in his journal: 'Never shall I forget the unsophisticated, the sincere and warm affection of those interesting people'. [1] Rarely were these emotions more evident that when friends and family, torn apart by war, were reunited. In September 1829, eleven captives were escorted to the Richmond jail where three of their relatives had for some time been imprisoned. A local correspondent observed that
immediately on their coming in sight of the newly arrived party, the cry of welcome was evinced, and on coming near each other the feeling portrayed on either side would have done honour to the most civilised – the two women long confined clasped to their arms children and grandchildren each shedding floods of tears of joy. The mutual happiness displayed in the countenances of these poor savage people beggars all description, the mothers overwhelmed in transport in having found their children, and the children in having recovered a parent. [2]
The angst of being separated from loved ones weighed heavily on the minds of Tasmanians...The feelings of loss and powerlessness were even more profound when loved ones fell into the hands of the enemy. A Mairremmener woman stated that when she was captured and jailed with four others at Launceston, their kinfolk made smoke signals in the surrounding hills to reassure them. [3] Indeed, the desire to be reunited with those who had been imprisoned or exiled probably influenced the decision of some tribes to surrender. A particularly warm bond existed between parents and their children.
Plomley, Weep in Silence, p. 300.
Hobart Town Courier, 3 October 1829.
Plomley, Friendly Mission, p. 550.
Acknowledgment: Nicholas Clements, The Black War, pp. 118-119, 241 n.132, n.133, n.135.
* Clements, throughout his book, refers to the Aboriginal people as 'Tasmanians'.
* Nick Brodie, writing about this incident, noted that: When captured, the 11 Aboriginal people already possessed blankets, as well as jackets and other colonial items. Because these goods were apparently 'robbed' from settlers they were taken away, meaning the group was sent into captivity in a state of practical nudity.
Acknowledgment: Nick Brodie, The Vandemonian War, pp.106.
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...the sovereignty which has been assumed over the whole of their ancient possessions...
[In May 1841 the South Australian Governor George Grey wrote that] all Aboriginal peoples...held the same rights of British subjecthood as did all settlers, and that ‘to regard them as aliens, with whom a war can exist, and against whom Her Majesty’s troops may exercise belligerent rights, is to deny the protection to which they derive the highest possible claim from the sovereignty which has been assumed over the whole of their ancient possessions’. [1] That last phrase – ‘their ancient possessions’ – comes as close as was then possible to an acknowledgment of pre-existing native title, a title that in the colony’s law was subsumed under, though never completely cancelled by, the assumption of British sovereignty. In his reminder of the government’s legal, as well as moral, obligation to the Indigenous population, Grey was supported by the Register’s editorial of 29 May which compared his response with [Governor] Gawler’s actions of the previous year:
...What becomes now of...the right of a Governor to take her Majesty’s native subjects prisoners, and then hang or shoot them without proof, trial or conviction? [2]
Robert Gouger for Grey, Response to Memorialists, PRSA No. 87/Encl, 6 Published in the Register, 29 May 1841.
Register, 29 May 1841.
Acknowledgment: Robert Foster, Rick Hosking and Amanda Nettelbeck, Fatal Collisions, pp. 32, 145 n.11, n.12.