Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania

Front matter

OF THE

OF THE

OF

Chapter 1

OF THE

WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &c.,

OF THE

NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA.

By J. E. Calder.

CHAPTER I.

The most interesting event in the history of Tasmania, after its discovery, seems to me to be the extinction of its ancient inhabitants; and as the causes that have led thereto have been only imperfectly told, I purpose throwing a little more light on the subject than has, as yet, been made public, which I derive from authentic official documents—not generally perused by writers on the colonies—that I have had the rare advantage of studying, and which contain, also, copious accounts of their wars on the whites, and some information about their habits.

It is believed they were never a numerous people, and at no period since the colonisation of the country, in 1803, do they seem to have exceeded 7,000—which may be safely taken as an outside estimate of their numbers.

One individual of the race is now its only living representative, a very old woman, known amongst the colonists by the name of Lalla, but whose native name is Truganini.

The first settlers after landing on these shores, lived peaceably in their new possession for several months before the two races came to blows; and the hostility thus begun continued, with no great intermission, until, and only ended with, the removal of the last of the blacks to Wyba Luma, which was the name they gave to their asylum on Flinders Island.

The first landing of the white pioneers of the colony took place on the 13th of June, 1803 (Evans, Bent.). The party located themselves on the shores of a little bay, which they called Risdon, about three or four miles north-easterly of Hobart Town, and on the opposite side of the Derwent. It consisted of a few soldiers, civil officers, and convicts, all under the command of Capt. Bowen, of the Royal Navy. They hutted themselves at Risdon, and remained in undisturbed possession of their encampment till the 3rd of May, 1803, when it was that the first rencontre took place between the soldiers and the blacks.

A few months before this last-named date, the first Governor of Tasmania (Colonel Collins) arrived here from Port Phillip, and fixed himself at Hobart Town, but without removing Bowen's little party from Risdon, which remained there under the independent command of that officer, who was superseded by the Governor five days after the skirmish, but not in consequence of it, as he had nothing to do with it.

At 11 o'clock of the morning of the 3rd of May the shouts of the natives were heard on the Risdon hills, as they drove a herd of kangaroos before them. They were armed with waddies only (short thick hunting clubs), and were accompanied by their women and children—a certain proof that they had no hostile intentions against anyone at the time, as it was their constant rule to leave them behind when they went out to fight. An eyewitness of the events of this deplorable day, of the name of White, who gave evidence on the 16th March, 1830, to a number of gentlemen, styled the Aboriginal Committee, thus describes the approach of the natives. He says;—"I was hoeing new ground near the creek. Saw 800 of the natives come down in a circular form, and a flock of kangaroos hemmed in between them. There were men, women, and children. They looked at me with all their eyes. I went down to the creek and reported them to some soldiers." It would seem that these savages were at this time unacquainted of the occupation of their country by Europeans, this witness saying, "Is sure they did not know there was a white man in the country when they came down to Risdon." A quarrel soon took place but it is not quite certain who began it; though, in balancing the evidence, the blacks seem to have been the aggressors. Captain Bowen was just then absent, on a visit to Slopen Island, and the troops were, at the moment, under the command of Lieutenant Moore.

The testimony of several witnesses was taken by the committee touching this unhappy event, which was generally confirmatory of White's, except that he—who was the only one actually present at the moment—declared, in opposition to all the rest, that the soldiers began the fight that took place, and not the blacks.

The following extract from the committee's report of the 19th March, 1830, thus sums up the evidence they took on this head:—"The committee have some difficulty in deciding whether it is to be considered as originating in an aggression by the natives, calling forth measures of self-defence, or in an attack upon them commenced by the settlers and military, under an impression that an attempt was about to be made on their position, by the unusually augmented numbers of the natives. It appears unquestionable that a person named Burke, whose habitation was considerably advanced beyond the rest, was driven from it by the natives, whose number was estimated at upwards of 500 (that is, by some of the witnesses), and much violence was threatened by them towards this man, his wife, and dwelling. But whatever may have been the actual course of previous events, it is indisputable that a most lamentable encounter did at this time take place, in which the numbers of slain, men, women, and children have been estimated as high as 50; although the committee, from the experience they have had in the course of this enquiry of the facility with which numbers are magnified, as well as from other statements contradictory of the above, are induced to hope that the estimate is greatly overrated." One of the witnesses, the Rev. Mr. Knopwood, who was in the colony at the time, said he "does not know how many natives were killed, but supposes five or six."

Another battle is said to have been fought some time alter on the ground where the Hobart Town Hospital now stands, in which artillery is supposed to have been used against the blacks. But this oft-told tale seems to rest on no better proof than that a little grape-shot was afterwards found, and some skeletons disinterred, at this place. Mr. Knopwood disposes of this fable in his evidence thus:—"There were no natives killed upon the hospital hill at Hobart Town. Some shot and skeletons were found there some years after the settlement was formed—the shot were the remains of stores brought from Port Phillip, and the bones those of persons who arrived from India, died, and were buried there."

Numerous fictitious fights are recorded as having taken place in the early times of the colony, and which, though still repeated by lovers of the marvellous and horrible, were found to be utterly false on investigation. Thus, some time in 1828, a party of military and police, who were sent in pursuit of the blacks, instead of acting against them, lay idly by in the bush, and on returning to their station reported a success over the enemy, having killed seven of them, they said; which rumour soon magnified into, first, 17, then 40, 50, 70, and finally 100 (as stated in Mr. Gilbert Robertson's evidence, 3rd March, 1830). They surprised them, they said, in a ravine, a perfect cul de sac, from which there was no escaping. Another gentleman, also a Mr. Robertson—who, like his namesake, discredited the story, pro- ceeded next day to the field of slaughter, along with one of the heroes of the fight, a corporal of the 40th Regiment; but, on reaching the ravine, the only victims of their fury were found to be three dead dogs. The soldier then said—"To tell you the truth, we did not kill any of them; we had been out a long time, and had done nothing, and said it in bravado."—(Evidence, 4th March, 1830.) These two examples of a hundred such battles will probably be enough.

That many hostile collisions occurred between the two races during the 30 years that succeeded the first colonisation of the country is true enough; but I know of no trustworthy record of more than one, two, three, or at most four persons being killed in any one encounter. The warfare, though pretty continuous, was rather a petty affair, with grossly exaggerated details—something like the story of the hundred dead men, reduced, on inquiry, to three dead dogs.

The gradual decrease and final extinction of the ancient inhabitants of Tasmania, which is now so very nearly accomplished, is assignable to very different causes than the hostility of the whites, to which it has been so much the fashion to ascribe it; for, up to the time of their voluntary surrender to the local Government, they not only maintained their ground everywhere (the towns excepted), but had by far the best of the fight. Tribal dissensions, causing mutual destruction (for such were their jealousies and hatreds, that they fought one another all the time they were thrashing the whites), contributed to their decrease in some degree, and the justly provoked hostility of the settlers aided the progress of their decay, but only in minor manner; for, beyond all doubt, they were no match for the blacks in bush fighting, either in defensive or offensive operations. The settler and his homestead were generally, but not always successfully, surprised by his subtle enemy; and in pursuit (if the savages were beaten off), the less active European, stood about the same chance of coming up with him, as the slow hound would have in a deer chase; and as far as I can learn from a pretty attentive perusal of the massive correspondence on the subject of the long quarrel between the two races, that is deposited in the office of the Colonial Secretary, filling nineteen awful volumes of manuscript papers, aggressiveness was almost always on the side of the blacks; and in this unequal contest the musket of the Englishman was far less deadly than the spear of the savage, at least five of the former dying for one of the latter. Thus, in the first and largest volume of the series above spoken of, which treats solely of these encounters, we learn that in the five years preceding the close of 1831, 99 inquests were held on such of the white people, whose bodies could be found after death, against 19 blacks, killed in these farm fights; and it is further recorded, that in the same period 69 Europeans were wounded against one, or at most two, of the other race; some of the latter were also taken. That many others on both sides were killed in the same period whose deaths are unreported, is very certain; and equally certain is it, or at least highly probable, that in these unrecorded encounters our countrymen got the worst of it, as they generally did. I have here to remark that the number of inquests actually held must have been much greater than what I have stated, as the coroners of three principal districts were unable to furnish the returns required by the Government, doubtless from the defective state of their office records. I say nothing of the operations of certain bands of whites, called "roving parties," one of which, at least, did kill several of them.

If it had been possible to bring the savage into fair and open fight, with something like equal numbers, all this would have been reversed, of course. But the black assailant was far too acute and crafty an enemy to be betrayed into this style of contest, and never fought till he knew he had his opponents at a disadvantage to themselves. He waited and watched for his opportunity for hours, and often for days, for he knew nothing of the value of time, and when the proper moment arrived he attacked the solitary hut of the stock-keeper with irresistible numbers, or the hapless traveller whom he met in the bush, taking life generally singly, but often; the largest number that I read of his destroying on any one occasion being four persons.

In the assaults on the dwellings of his enemy he contrived his attacks so cleverly as to insure success at least five times in six, and if forced to abandon his enterprise, his retreat, with few exceptions, was a bloodless one.

The natives so managed their advance on the point of attack as not to be seen until they were almost close to the dwelling of their victim. They distinguished between a house and a hut, and seldom approached the former, for they quite understood that there was some difference between the most imprudent stock-keeper, and his more thoughtful employer. They had several instances of this, and profited by their experience. There was no want of pluck in the former, but a great absence of vigilance; and until these barbarians were reduced to a mere remnant by disease and strife, they never attacked except in parties of 20, 50, or 100, or even greater numbers. Their mode of assaulting a dwelling when there were several inmates at home, which they knew by previous watching, was to divide into small gangs of five, ten, or more, each concealing itself as effectually as the clansmen of Roderick Dhu, their approach being so quiet, as to create no suspicion of their presence, to which the woody and uneven nature of the country is eminently favourable. Then one of these parties, which was prepared for instant retreat, made its presence known, either by setting fire to some shed or bush fence, or by sending a flight of spears in at the window, shouting their well known war-whoop at the same time. This never failed of bringing out the occupants, who, seeing the authors of the outrage, now at a safe distance, but in an attitude of defiance, incautiously pursued them; and no experience of the artifices of the savage, ever taught the assailed a lesson not to continue this insane practice. The blacks then retreated just as quickly as the others advanced, keeping out of gunshot and defying them, generally in good English, to come on; for it was always found that some of nearly every tribe spoke our language well, as will be presently explained. Having decoyed their pursuers to a safe distance into the woods, and generally with rising ground between them and the hut, the others sprang from their cover, and rushing the place, plundering it of its contents, often finishing their work by burning it to its foundations; first, however, killing, or leaving for dead, any unfortunate persons—mostly a mother and her children—who chanced to be left behind. They then fled with their booty, reuniting with the decoy party at some distant point.

In their first systematised assaults, which seem to have commenced about 1824, or a little earlier, their principal object was murder; but in later times, plunder was the chief motive of the savage in attacking the white; and murder, which was often superadded, only a secondary idea. They took everything that was useful, and often what was no use at all to them; and more than once afterwards when their encampments were surprised, perhaps 50 miles from any settlement, when instant flight was necessary, they left articles behind that they could not even have known the nature of, such, for example, as clocks, work-boxes, &c., of which there are still extant some curious inventories.

But provisions of all sorts, and, above all, blankets, firearms and ammunition, were the articles they prized most; of which latter they eventually surrendered many stand to the Goverment—pistols, muskets, fowling-pieces, powder and ball, all perfectly clean and dry, and in excellent order. Of these latter it was found that they knew not only the use, but were practised in using them; but there is no instance of their bringing them into the field, though they afterwards assured their principal captor and future "protector," Mr. George Augustus Robinson, they meant to have done so, but to the last they seem to have preferred their own arms in both fight and chase—namely, the spear and waddy.

Of firearms they had learned the use from both men and women of their own race, who, having been taken in early infancy by the settlers, were brought up in their own families, mostly as their own children; but they invariably left them when they grew up, and rejoined their own people, just like wood-pigeons, whose natural instincts can never be repressed. To these flights the youths were generally induced by the girls of their own race, with whom alone they could intermarry, and who had, therefore, no difficulty in enticing them into the woods. The natural propensity of the domesticated black females to be with their own people, operated similarly on them, and they became the instructors, in mischief at least, of the wild natives, and strangely enough, were foremost in every aggression on the whites, by whom, with hardly an exception, they had been treated with unvarying kindness, but they were probably thrust to the front by the others; and, possessed, as the whole race was, of most excellent memories, they never lost the language of our country.

Women, too, who had been either forcibly removed from their tribes, or purchased of their husbands or fathers, by a lawless handful of ruffians called sealers, sometimes escaped from their merciless masters, and after years of separation, rejoined their tribes, and became the most hostile of the enemies of all who belonged to the race of their persecutors; and notwithstanding the ancient custom of the blacks, not to permit the women to take any part in active war, these individuals could not be restrained from joining in, and sometimes leading the attack. One of these persons, called the Amazon by her captor Robinson, (a woman of one of the East Coast tribes whose real name was Walyer or Taierenore) planned and executed nearly every outrage that was committed in the districts bordering on the North and North-western coast. In the days of their decay, she collected the poor remnants of several tribes into one hostile band, of whom she was the leader and chieftainess; and true to the natural instincts of the savage, avenged the many indignities she had suffered at the hands of a sealer, on every one she fell in with who bore his complexion, telling Robinson that she would kill the whole race "as soon as she would crush a black snake."

But in their attacks on the widely separated dwellings of the stock-keepers, they were not always successful; and several instances are recorded of their defeat, and once by the intrepidity of a woman, who held her little fortress for six hours against eight of them (part of a band of 20). The account of this most gallant act is contained in an official report of Captain Moriarty, of the R.N., of the 25th of August, 1831.

Knowing by previous watching that this woman—a Mrs. Dalryrmple Briggs—and two female children, were the only occupants of her hut, they abandoned their usual stratagem in approaching it, and advanced undisguisedly to the door. Hearing "some little noise outside," says the report, "she sent the eldest child to see what was the matter, and hearing her shriek, went out herself with a musket. On reaching the door, she found the poor child had been speared. The spear entered close up in the inner part of the thigh, and had been driven in so far as to create a momentary difficulty in securing the child." The savages came on en masse, and so quickly, that she had scarcely time to close and barricade the doors and windows before they closed around her dwelling.

Her only means of defence was her musket and a few charges of duck-shot; and their only means of entry, the chimney, which in all bush huts are low, and so large, that two or three persons could jump down them at once. This being the weak point, our heroine took post here, and defied all their efforts to enter, firing her duck-shot at them, whenever they gave her a chance. They next tried to pull the chimney down; but she managed to give one of them such a dose of small lead that they desisted from the attempt. Baffled and repulsed they retired for about an hour, which time they employed in making a number of faggots, and then returned to the attack, to burn her out, as they could not force an entrance. They threw these blazing brands on the roof, to windward, says the report, but she contrived to shake them all off before ignition took place—how, is not stated. Her maternal affections and duties, quite mastering her natural fears, she actually maintained her post against them, for the time I have stated, when an armed and mounted party suddenly galloping up, the siege was raised.

The child that was speared was enticed outside by the blacks, (many of whom were famous mimics), imitating the cries of poultry when alarmed by hawks, &c. Moriarty's report also mentions, that these men had on the same day, attacked the hut of a person named Cubitt, and speared him; and further that the natives had assailed and badly wounded him eight times before; but another report from a different quarter states that he had always been very active against them; and as forgiveness is not amongst the attributes of the savage, nor forgetfulness one of his defects, they never appeared in his neighbourhood without letting him know that they still hold him in remembrance.

The craft of the savage and his uniform disposition to treachery, in his early intercourse with the settlers, are very faithfully described in the report of the Aboriginal Committee, 19th March, 1830. This committee consisted of some of the best informed and most intelligent men of the colonies of New South Wales and Tasmania, of whom Archdeacon Broughton, the immediate superior of the church of both colonies, was chairman. From this report I will here make an extract:—

"It is manifestly shown that an intercourse with them on part of the insulated and unprotected individuals or families has never been perfectly secure. Although they might receive with apparent favour and confidence such persons as landed from time to time on various parts of the coast, or fell in with them in remote situations, yet no sooner was the store of presents exhausted, or the interview from other causes concluded, than there was a risk of the natives making an attack upon the very persons from whom they had the instant before been receiving kindness, and against whom they had, up to that moment, suffered no indication of hostility to betray itself. It is within the knowledge of many members of the committee, and has been confirmed by other statements, that even at this period" (they are speaking of the early times of the colony) "there was, beyond all doubt, in the disposition of the aborigines a lurking spirit of cruelty and mischievous craft, as upon very many occasions, and even on their retirement from houses, where they had been kindly received and entertained, they have been known to put to death with the utmost wantonness and inhumanity stock and hut keepers whom they fell in with in retired stations, at a distance from population, and whom there is every reason to believe had never given them the slightest provocation."

This general friendly disposition of the colonists towards them was almost invariably repaid by acts of savage violence; and they robbed and murdered whenever it was safe to do so. But notwithstanding all this, a kindly intercourse was still maintained with them, and they came to the settlers' houses and departed at will, without molestation of any kind; until Colonel Arthur, in 1825, wishing to terrify them by such an example as would show them they should not continue their murderous practices with impunity, caused some of the ringleaders and actual perpetrators of a shocking murder at Grindstone Bay, of a person named William Hollyoak, to be apprehended and brought to justice. The offence was proved by some men who escaped from the assault of the blacks, and the murderers were hanged for it; "after this," says the committee's report, "they came no more to the usual places of resort," and it may be added that they were never more known to visit the house of the settler, or the hut of the stock-keeper except as enemies.

Many of the tribes were united by relationship or other ties, and Colonel Arthur was soon made to understand that the example of these executions had quite the opposite effect to what he expected, for the aggressiveness of the enemy increased ten-fold from the time when they took place.

I have spoken before of the conduct of a few persons called sealers, as ministering to the bad feeling that so long prevailed amongst the natives towards the other race, and I will here say something about them.

These men dwelt on some of the islands in Bass's Straits, and the very worst accounts are given of them by the official protector of the blacks, Mr. G. A. Robinson; and though his statements are very generally confirmed by the prior evidence of some of the witnesses of the Aboriginal Committee, they are not quite so in every particular. Two of these gentlemen, who knew the sealers quite as well as he did, though they loudly denounced the brutality of some of them, accompany their testimony, as to their original possession of the native women, with some slightly palliative circumstances, which he, in his hatred of these men, either overlooked, or was ignorant of.

From the earliest times of the occupation of the country, a horde of reprobates lived on these islands, quite beyond the range of human observation, and equally beyond the controlling power of the Government. They consisted mostly of a mixed class of runaway convicts, of bad character and disposition, and of runaway sailors as profligate as themselves. They lived by collecting the beautiful skins of the seal, which formerly frequented the off-lying rocks of these islands in vast numbers, and are still to be found there, but so greatly thinned are they, and so shy that they are no longer sought after, or not much. These persons often resorted to the coasts of the main land to obtain kangaroo skins, in which they also traded; and if all that Robinson says of them is quite true, they never failed attacking the native tribes who frequented these parts, whenever and wherever they met them, carrying off their women and female children into slavery of the worst description, and shooting the men if they dared to interpose; and he gives such instances of their after cruelties to their captives as can hardly be read with patience. That there was great truth in what he said on this subject is indisputable, for he was quite fortified by the previous evidence of Captains Kelly and Hobbs, who had had accidentally, so to speak, much intercourse with these men in their own various coasting enterprises of discovery, survey, or whaling. But the protector shirks the question of this traffic in women, which the others, who hated these men quite as much as him, impute chiefly to the native men, who first bartered their women for the carcass of the seal or for hunting dogs. These unfortunate women became so useful to their masters, that when they could not get enough of them by purchase they kidnapped them, but made no active war on the blacks until the latter rose against them in a body and killed four of them, "since which time," says Robinson, "the sealers have shot the natives whenever they have met with them." (Appendix, Report 24th Oct., 1830,) These kidnappings contributed largely to the decay of two or three tribes less by their onslaughts on the men than the seizure of the women; and the protector, in one of his many reports on the condition of the natives, gives the names (mostly unpronouncable ones) of every individual then remaining of two of the tribes, who lived within reach of these fellows, viz.. 74, of whom only three were females; and two of these three did not belong properly to either tribe, being only visitors.

"This vast disproportion of the sexes," he says, in his report, 20th Nov., 1830, "has been occasioned principally by the sealers, who have stolen their women and transported them to the different islands." And in a marginal note against this passage, he says, "there are at the present time not less than 50 aboriginal females kept in slavery on the different islands in Banks' and Bass's Straits. (Banks' Strait separates the islands he refers to from the main land of Tasmania). But many of these women were, no doubt, obtained by purchase in former years, a practice which in those days was not confined to them, but was universal. But this is a matter that Robinson does not touch on.

To recapture these women and take them under his own protection was always a pet scheme of his, and the means by which he effected it were not always very straightforward or always approved by the Government he served, who made him restore some of them, who, if they were slaves, as he constantly represents them, were the mothers of the sealers' children. No doubt the conduct of these men, like that of other slave-dealers, was very bad, but he seems to have painted it as disadvantageously as he could. Captain Kelly—no friend of the sealer—states that many of the women preferred living on the islands rather than return to their own people, by whom it is well known they were often very badly treated. "The women," Kelly says, in his evidence, "were not always unwilling to go, and after a time preferred stopping on the islands of the straits." He then gives such a fearful account of the torments some of them endured, especially from one miscreant named Harrington, that if they preferred the treatment he describes, to what they underwent from their own husbands, their condition at all times must have been a truly unhappy one.