# Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
The history of the old races of mankind furnishes many examples of the decay of nations, but few, if any, where annihilation has followed the declension of their independence, and their emmergence into barbarity. With the subsidence of their power, and loss of national status, they have not necessarily passed away from the earth, but are still represented among its people, though it may be that their descendants are unknown to us by the names that distinguished their ancestors. The many great Communities mentioned in the Old Testament as then existing—the Idumean, Chaldean, Assyrian, and others—though long since politically extinct, have not died off, but are still perpetuated, though not as distinct nations.
The contact of the superior families of mankind with one another, even where it takes the form of collision, does not necessarily imply the extermination of either, and if it has ever occurred at all, it has not been with the frequency with which it has been observed, where civilisation has been opposed to pure barbarism, as in the New World, in Australasia, and Polynesia, where the existence of the primitive man seems incompatible with that of a superior race, as if the approach of the latter carried with it a decree for the retreat and extirpation of the other, though that extinction has always appeared to me, (at least in the case of the Tasmanian savage,) to be traceable to very different causes from those it is usual to ascribe to it, such as the pretended dissemination of European vices and practices among them, to which by far the larger number were never exposed, and to cruelties that were never directed against them in anything like the degree which some inconsiderate writers have too rashly affirmed.
It is not, however, the object of this chapter to repeat what I have said elsewhere, of the real causes that have led to the total eradication of the aboriginal men of Tasmania, but only to collect together before the opportunity is wholly lost, a few of the vestiges that are still unforgotten of a people whose generations have passed away, whose days, as the inspired psalmist says, are gone, and whose years are brought to au end, "as it were a tale that is told."
​Of what has been recorded of our first acquaintance with this people, and of their early misunderstandings with the colonists, I shall say nothing here; nor even follow the fashionable practice of quotiug stale governmental proclamations about them (published, as I believe, for after effect only,) libelling the colonists, by describing them as very generally the originators of the many disputes that took place between the two races, but shall commence the task I have cut out for myself by gathering up the few scraps of intelligence I can discover, either of tribes or individuals, of whom any trace is left, who played a part in the outrages that followed the cessation of the partial intercourse that once subsisted between them, and which terminated much about fifty years ago, when it is that their history begins to be interesting.
Up to this time the appearances and some of the realities of friendship existed between one or two of the many tribes, into which the native population was split, and the settlers. But as the favourite hunting grounds of the former were contracted by the spread of settlement, and their occupation by stock, hostile collisions between black and white became more and more frequeut, and a petty war of assaults and reprisals was carried on, the black people having then, as, indeed, the very generally had the best of the fight. But still this did not put an end to all good understanding, for in some districts both sides continued to exhibit reciprocity of friendship, or, at least, of a civility.
But this intercourse, such as it was, was brought to a close by Colonel Arthur, who was quite as fond of maintaining order by making examples, as of administering the law with strict justice; and who, managing to catch four aboriginals during the war of attacks and reprisals then going on (each side being as bad as the other,) he, faithful to his practises, hanged them all. The acts, though much applauded at this time of general excitement against the old possessors of the land, have not always found favour with his commentators, one respectable writer, Henry Melville, maintaining that these men, being prisoners of war only, ought not to have suffered for acts justified in war time by the usages of all nations.
With the deaths of these four men the estrangement of the two races, which before was never more than temporary and partial, became complete, and all the fatally disastrous consequences that befell both races afterwards may be dated from these unfortunate occurrences.
But whatever were the sentiments of the white people at witnessing these most impolitic executions, they were viewed by the other race with surprise and horror. At first, however, they ​did not believe Colonel Arthur to be in earnest with them; for even after the deaths of the two who were first disposed of, they still came to the settlers' homes, and departed peacefully from them as before. But when they saw two more of their number put to death for murder, while no kind of punishment overtook those who inflicted similar violence on them, they sullenly withdrew to the woods, and never more entered the settled districts, except as the deadly enemies of our people.
But in contrast with these and other acts of violence; said to have been indulged in against the blacks, a solitary exception has to be made in favour of one of a most degraded class of men: namely, Michael Howe, the bushranger, of whom it is recorded by the historian of Tasmania, West, that he inflicted severe corporal chastisement on a companion, for wantonly assaulting a native—an instance of commendable feeling, from which his betters might have taken a lesson. The long career of outrage of this outcast, presents too dark a picture to allow us to dispense with one illuminating ray; and I therefore introduce the following extract, from which the above statement is derived, from the History of Tasmania, vol. ii. page 17:—"Whether from policy or humanity, Michael Howe formed an exception," (that is to wanton cruelty), "he would not allow them to be molested, 'except in battle,' and he flogged with the cat one of his comrades who had 'broken the articles,' by wantonly wounding a native."—Stated by a companion.
That the above account of their separation from the colonists is the correct one, is proved by the report of a number of gentlemen styled the Aboriginal Committee, who were appointed by Colonel Arthur, in 1830, "to inquire into the origin of the hostility displayed by the black natives of the island, and to consider the means expedient to be adopted, with the view of checking the devastation of property and the destruction of human lives, occasioned by the state of warfare which has so extensively prevailed," who state, "that after these executions, the natives came no more to the usual place of resort," meaning Kangaroo Point, where the two last who died were taken.
Those four men were hanged at different times; two of them, known to the whites as Musquito and Black Jack, on the 25th of February, 1825: and the others, called Jack and Dick, on the 13th September of the next year.
In writing of the origin of the strife that now commenced in earnest, I shall have little to say of these victims, except of the two who died first; for very few particulars have reached us that relate to the others.
The black named Musquito was a native of New South Wales; ​but he had resided long in this colony, and was what was called a civilised black, that is, one who had lived among Europeans and learned something of their arts and practises. In former years he had acted for the Government as a tracker of the bush-ranging classes, then a pretty numerous community, but more particularly as the pursuer of the "last and worst of the bush-rangers," as he was styled, namely the notorious Michael Howe. But alter the downfall and death of this desperate outlaw, which put an end to freebooting in Tasmania for one long while, his services were no longer required by the police.
It might, however, have been expected that such a person as Musquito, who had "done the state some service," and jeopardised his safety over and over again in his dangerous calling, would have received something more than a mere dismissal when no longer wanted, which was what he got, and no more.
The occupation he had followed so long, and now involuntarily relinquished, acquired for him, especially with the prisoner classes, a large share of the odium that attaches itself to the miserable office of an informer, exposing him to insult wherever he appeared, that was more than the sensitive savage could bear with. Exasperated at the indignities he was doomed to undergo, now that governmental employ and protection were withdrawn, he separated himself from the whites, and joined his fortunes with those of one of the East Coast tribes, afterwards styled the Oyster Bay tribe, of which he became the leader, and, it is believed, its instructor in mischief.
During the period of his connection with these new associates, he is accused of having slaughtered very many stockkeepers; but the number of these atrocities is probably much exaggerated; and the reports, though written in a most inimical spirit, do not seem to implicate him much more deeply in them than the rest of his gang. It was, however, determined to get hold of him if possible, and bring him to justice, that the punishment of such an arch offender might act as a warning to others.
Of the horde with whom the Sydney native was associated, was a man whose tribal name has not descended to us, but who was known to the colonists by the nickname of Black Jack, the same who died with Musquito, as related precedingly. Musquito suffered for the murder of two men, named respectively William Hollyoak, and Mammoa, who was a native of Otaheite; and Black Jack for killing a person named Patrick McCarthy. Jack was also tried for implication in the offence for which Musquito died, as he was present at them along with sixty or seventy others of his countrymen; but as guilty participation could not be brought home to him, he was acquitted of the charges for which ​the other was condemned. But McCarthy's death being then brought against him, he was not so lucky as to escape condemnation a second time, and was ordered for execution accordingly.
The murders of Hollyoak and the Otahetian took place on the 15th of November, 1823, on the land of Mr Silas Gatehouse at Grindstone Bay, which is on the East Coast, between Spring Bay and Little Swanport, and about sixty miles, by land, from Hobart Town.
Though not far from the East Coast road, it is even at present a rarely visited and most retired spot; and to any person disposed to encourage despondency, and anxious for complete seclusion and isolation from the world, I should certainly recommend him a location at Grindstone Bay.
There is, however, some fair cultivable land about it, and a large extent of rough pasture ground between the shoreline and the East Coast tiers, which commended it to Mr. Gatehouse as suitable for farm purposes; though what it was that induced anyone to fix his homestead hereabouts fifty or sixty years ago, when nearly all the best lands of the colony were to be had for the trouble of asking, we need not now concern ourselves about. It is, however, as said just above, a grassy tract, and then swarmed with large game, namely, emu and kangaroo, and was one of the hunting grounds of the tribe who were just now roaming about this quarter.
It may be worth remarking that the last emu caught in Tasmania—as far as I know at least—was taken not very far from here, and just about thirty years ago.
But the monotonous quietude that generally prevaded the listless neighbourhood of Grindstone Bay, was dispelled by the unwelcome arrival of a strong detachment of the sanguinary Oyster Bay natives, on Thursday the 13th November, 1823. They numbered sixty-five, and took up their quarters by a small stream that flowed past Mr. Gatehouse's stock hut, then occupied by three persons, namely, John Radford, William Hollyoak, and Mammoa.
But at this period of partial intercourse between the two races, the appearance of a horde of natives, though not an agreeable event, did not always excite the extreme alarm, with which it was witnessed a few years afterwards. But whatever may have been the fears of the solitary stockmen, at the sight of such a number of wild looking fellows, and weird looking women, they were allayed, or partially so, by the assurances of the leading man, Musquito, that no mischief was intended, and all went on friendly enough until the catastrophe that terminated the lives of Hollyoak and Mammoa took place.
​The survivor of the rencontre that took place, seems all along to have had some suspicious of the sincerity of Musquito, that were engendered partly by his overacting his part of a friendly visitor, and partly by his everlasting intrusions into the hut, the black eating like a wolf of Radford's provisions, at every visit.
The day before the arrival of the natives, an invalid servant belonging to the establishment of Mr. George Meredith, of Oyster Bay, who was just discharged from the Hobart Town Hospital, and was journeying homewards, arrived at Gatehouse's farm hut; but being still weakly, he was unable to proceed further without a day or two of rest, after travelling sixty miles of one of the worst bush roads in Tasmania. The unfortunate fellow's request was granted directly, and he was admitted. He was William Hollyoak.
The blacks lingered about the premises, unoccupied except when at play, until 2 or 3 o'clock on Friday afternoon, when Musquito and most of his associates went away to hunt, or pretended to do so, but returned before dark, the chief uninvitedly supping with the stockmen of course.
The keen eye of the savage was everywhere, and soon informed him of Radford's means of defence, which consisted of a musket and fowling-piece, which the chief took down from the wall, and examined with the acumen of a connoisseur, and having replaced them, returned to his camp by the creek.
By daydawn of the fatal 15th of November, the blacks were all astir. The principal men of the tribe had by this time taken possession of the stock yard, where they had kindled a fire, round which they sat in earnest consultation, doubtlessly touching the attack they were about making on their white entertainers. The rest of the party, according to the evidence given at the trial, were "over the creek, where they had been at their diversions. The natives who were playing, might be 150 yards from the hut." The stockmen witnessed their games with some interest, in and Radford and Mammoa imprudently walked towards them, leaving the invalid at the hut with directions, if he followed them, to bring the guns. He, however, neglected the precaution and joined his friends, which some of the blacks seeing, slipped stealthily inside and secured their weapons unobserved by the three stockkeepers.
The first indication of active hostility was given by Musquito making prize of the shepherd's dogs, and nearly simultaneously by the rest of the natives marching on the hut. On observing the direction they were taking, Radford and Hollyoak ran for their arms but found them gone. By some artifice, Musquito had separated Mammoa from the others, and he re-joined them no more. The natives were at the door directly afterwards, all ​armed with twelve foot spears except Musquito, who that day carried a waddy only. "They stood" says Radford in his evidence, "with their spears raised and all the points directed towards me and the deceased, Hollyoak," In their defenceless state, the only chance of life left the two shepherds was in flight, and off they set, but pursued by thirty or forty enemies. The first spear that was thrown pierced Radford in the side, and Hollyoak was very badly hit in the back the next instant. At this time Radford was ahead of his companion, but stopped a moment for him and withdrew the spear from his back, and then continued running at a tremendous pace, gaining ground every minute. But not so the other, who was overtaken and speared to death directly, the last words of the dying man that reached his companion being, "O my God, the blackfellows have got me." Radford though speared himself, still ran, and finally escaped them.
The murders of Mammoa and Hollyoak, who were both killed that morning, were accomplished with all the savage brutality usual with the aboriginal man of Tasmania, whose wrath, as said before, was seldom appeased by the death of his victim, and whose body he continued to assault, long after life had gone out. The condition of the corpse of Mammoa is particularly described by the witness who discovered it about eight days afterwards, as having been horribly dealt with—the head beaten almost to pieces—the body pierced by spears in thirty-seven different places, and then thrown into a waterhole; and such was the force with which they cast their weapons at the body that many broken spears were afterwards found scattered about the ground where he died.—(Gazette, December 3rd, 1824.)
The principal wituess, Mr. John Radford, who gave evidence at the trial of these savages, is still living at Little Swanport, not very far from the scene of the murders described above; and I think I am not far wrong in saying he has resided there ever since—a period of fifty-two years.
Of the death of Patrick McCarthy, for which the companion of Musquito (Black Jack) suffered, no particulars are preserved in the old Gazettes; nor of the murder of the stockkeeper, Thomas Colley, at Oyster Bay, for which the other two aboriginals, Dick and Jack, were executed. The Colonial Times of the 15th September, 1826, does indeed publish a detailed account of the execution of the two men last-named; but as the article contains nothing very interesting, I shall abridge the details. The elder one Dick, who seem to have had a very lively abhorrence of the executioner, of his entire apparatus, and above all of his office, which he quite understood, resisted the Sheriff's officers most ​pluckily, refusing to mount the scaffold for any of them; and when forced up at last, he gave them such a specimen of his vocal endowments, as might have been heard halfway to Kangaroo Point; and being a particular sort of a fellow, he would not stand up to be hanged, along with the other six culprits (five of them whites,) who were ranked up to die along with him, but insisted on having a seat, and was accommodated with a stool, on which he squatted himself to receive the final attentions of Mr. Dogherty, the Sheriff's assistant; which seat, says the Colonial Times quite gravely, "dropped with him when the awful moment arrived which plunged him into &c., &c. The other black, a mere youth, treated the whole legal ceremonies that intervened between his capture and execution, with great unconcern, but his sufferings were painfully prolonged, by an accident that happened at the moment, before strangulation was completed.
Having described above the origin of Musquito's fleeing to the woods, it is necessary to the completion of his history to explain how he was taken at last.
This man had caused the death of so many stockmen that his removal from his old haunts, and associates, either by capture or death, was no longer a simple desire, but a overpowering necessity. But then to lay hands on a man, so overflowing with artifice and difficult to find off his guard as he, and who was known to be a most desperate fellow, was something like the old project for belling the cat, a thing very easy to propose but difficult to achieve. All sorts of rash designs were proposed by aspiring policemen, or officious savans of the outside world, for the capture or destruction of the enemy, that were abandoned as soon as examined, as failures, or sure to be so if tried. However, after a thousand devices had been gravely discussed, with the invariable fate of dismissal as impracticabilities, an idea occurred to a simple tradesman that was worth them all. This man was only a printer and editor—a mere newspaper conductor like yourself, sir.
Mr. Andrew Bent—one of the fathers of the Australian press—was at this time proprietor and conductor of the Hobart Town Gazette and General Advertiser, and combined in his own person, I believe, the entire literary and mechanical staff of the Gazette office. He was editor—he was reporter—he was reader—he was clerk, compositor, pressman, and deuce knows what besides. He was lame, little, and ugly; but as a counterbalance ​of these personal defects, he was a man of brains, common sense, and industry; and whilst others were propounding all sorts of impracticable schemes for the object above stated, it occurred to him to offer to the Government the services of a domesticated aboriginal youth who was in the employ of Mr. Bent's family as general servant, in the very widest sense of the word, his duties in the house being as multiform as his master's were in the office.
Tegg (such being the name by which the young black was known) is reported to have been a most intelligent lad of about seventeen, possessed of all the artifices common to his race, and above all that acuteness of vision, which, united to practice, made a perfect hunting-dog of him, able to follow even the smallest game by its tracks. This boy had been employed to chase bush-rangers, and on one occasion the gang led by Matthew Brady was dispersed through his co-operation with the police.
Colonel Arthur accepted Bent's offer and according to a pretty broad statement which appears in the Gazette of the 8th of April, 1825, promised the boy a boat, if successful, which he greatly coveted. This lad had acquired a notion of trading whilst living with the whites, and Bent says he meant to run her between Hobart Town and Bruny Island, to traffic with his countrymen there in kangaroo skins. But after the capture of Musquito by him, the promise was forgotten, and the keen feelings of the boy were so wounded by this cruel and impolitic breach of faith, that in sheer resentment of it he quitted Bent's employ, and says the Gazette quoted from just above, he was heard as he left the house, to say, "they promised me a boat, but they no give it; me therefore go with wild mob, and kill all white men come near me," a true exposition of the savage style of thought, which meditates indiscriminate and general resentment for a single wrong; and he accordingly joined the wild natives, transformed almost in a moment from a tractable youth to a very demon.
The young black, accompanied by two Europeans, named Godfrey and Marshall, all well armed, started from Hobart Town early in August, 1824 en route for the usual retreats of the Oyster Bay tribe. All of them must have been excellent walkers; for, notwithstanding the dreadful state of the East Coast road then, they reached Oyster Bay on the third day of their journey, a feat that would not be too easily accomplished even now.
The malevolent angel that had heretofore directed the movements, and watched over the safety of the grim chieftain Musquito, deserted his charge of this moment of danger, and took side with his enemy. For some cause, perhaps momentary caprice only, ​he was encamped with his two women by himself, the rest of the tribe being in another glen. Tegg had good information of his movements and of the direction he had taken, so he got on his tracks without difficulty. Fatigued as the party were after their rapid march, the pursuit commenced immediately, and before dusk of the day of their arrival at Oyster Bay, they came in view of the bivouac of the savage. He had, luckily, no dogs, and not expecting a hostile visit from anyone, he was not on the watch, as usual with him. His women were at a little distance from the wretched bark weather screen they had put up for him, to break the force of the cutting wind, which was cold enough now. Tegg directed his companions to take post between the chief and his females, which they did by stealthily advancing in the direction indicated by the young black, but who himself made a cat-like movement toward the hovel in which Musquito lay, half-roasting himself by the lire that blazed up merrily in front of it.
Musquito started from the ground at the first indication of approaching footsteps, at sound of which Tegg darted forward to confront him before could seize his arms, which Tegg divined but for once wrongly, that the other had at hand; but so assured was the doomed man of security, that he had not a spear in his camp. Tegg then fired at him, sending a ball through his body, from one barrel and two into his thighs from the other. But badly wounded as he was he ran off, but pain and loss of blood soon brought him to a stand.
In the meantime Godfrey and Marshall had taken both of Musquito's wives; and whilst the latter stood sentry over the two prisoners, Godfrey ran off to assist Tegg. On joining his youthful leader he found Musquito wounded, as said above, and at bay, but still making a poor effort to defend himself with sticks and stones. Seeing, however, the futility of resisting two armed men, he at length surrendered.
How it was that a man so badly wounded was got to Hobart Town, I have no information, but suppose he was sent round by water. He reached this place late in the evening of the 12th of August, and was placed in the Hospital, where the sable chief was interviewed by his brother potentate, the Governor; from whence, in process of time, he was removed to the Supreme Court, to take his trial for the murders named above, and from here, by a natural transition, to the condemned cell and gibbet.
If the report such as it is, that is given in the official Gazette of the trial of this man be correct, it is not easy to understand on what it was he was convicted; for whatever may have been his guilt, there was no legal proof of any, beyond presence at the hut along with sixty or seventy more, and some slightly suspi​cious circumstances, but not enough, at least, for a jury of our times to convict on, or on which a modern judge would condemn. But as it may have been thought necessary to make a few examples he may have been sacrificed to intimidate his surviving brethren into submission to the superior race; and from what I remember of the Governor of the time, of the judge who tried them, and of military juries generally, I don't believe that justice, or anything like it, was always done here fifty years ago.
But whatever was the motive that led to those executions, it quite failed of producing anything but evil, its only effect being to imbue the entire race with a most active spirit of resentment that never died out, so long as they remained at large—about ten years longer; and Colonel Arthur was quickly made to understand by their unceasing hostilities, and most sanguinary aggressions, that a grand mistake had been made, and that he had formed a very false estimate of their real character, if he thought to frighten them into submission by any such examples as these.
Before proceeding further with the few tales or legends of aboriginal existence that I have been able to collect together, I shall say a little of the intellectual endowments and martial character of the extinct Tasmanians, stating here once for all that I derive a very great deal of my information about them from the best living authority, namely, Mr. Alexander McKay, of Peppermint Bay, who knew this people intimately when in their wild state—who passed several years of an useful life, either in pursuit of them, or amongst them at their camp fires, and who did so much to aid their chief captor, Mr. George Augustus Robinson to "bring them in," as to call forth from the Government of the day, a special notice of the great value of his services.
Of the mental qualities of no race of men, has a falser estimate been made by nearly every writer on Tasmania than of the ancient possessors of the land. In consequence of the untrue delineation of the character of our natives, made by Hobart Town writers, and others who have copied from them; who knew nothing of the bush or its wild occupants, an idea prevailed which has not yet died out, that they stood almost on a level with the brutes of the forest.
The usual style of this class of writers may be gathered from the following sample of one of them that I extract from a work published in this very city of ours about forty-two years ago, whilst several tribes were still at large; which work was very extensively read at the time, both here and elsewhere, and has been purloined from often since. This anonymous writer thus expresses himself:—"Perhaps of all creatures that wear the human form, they ​may be justly placed in the very lowest scale of barbarism;" and he adds, "they live in a state of brute nature." But this was not the case, for they were naturally an intellectual race, with faculties susceptible of very easy culture, as they showed when in their wild state, by the clever manner in which (after a brief association firstly with the half civilised Musquito, and secondly, with some other domesticated blacks, such as Tegg for example, and many others,) they planned all their operations against the Settlers, in which they seldom failed of success; and by the facility with which, when in captivity and under good guidance, they received instruction, and accommodated themselves to European habits. They must not be judged of by what we of the present day saw of them in the dark state of their demoralisation at Oyster Cove, where, as at Flinders Island during the last years of their sojourn, they were suffered to sink into a state of degradation, even lower that from which they had emerged.
Forty years and more have passed away since they ceased to exist as an independent race of men; and their frequent hostile incursions into the settled districts, their slaughterings and houseburnings, are well-nigh erased from recollection; but that they were a most mischevious, determined, and deadly foe, is proved not only by a multitude of contemporaneous documents, preserved in the Colonial Secretary's Office, but by the newspapers of the day, that teem with narratives of their aggressiveness, and shew us that even in the days of their decay—chiefly from natural causes—they took life about five times as often as it was inflicted upon themselves, besides committing such devastations on property, as we in these peaceful times can scarcely be brought to understand.
THEIR RELUCTANCE TO KILL A WHITE WOMAN.
Mr. McKay, who knew this people so intimately, relates a circumstance in connection with their manifold aggressions on our people, that has not been published before. Indeed it could hardly be known to any except to one who like him, had lived very much amongst them. But it is so creditable to the great mass of them, that justice to the memory of this people requires that it should not go unrecorded. He reminded me of the fact of our women being sometimes killed by them in the many farm fights in which they were concerned; but he assures me that with hardly an exception the men highly disapproved of it; and that every one of this class of murders, with which the whole race was credited, were really traceable to two individuals only; both of whom were chiefs, namely, the leader of the Piper's ​River tribe, who was named Le-ner-e-gle-lang-e-ner, and Mon-te-pe-le-ter, the chief of the Big River people. McKay describes the first-named as a miserable little brute; and he believes his sway over the rest was acquired by his excessive impudence and persistent bullying of them, qualities which we see even in civilised life, place a man too often in front of his betters. The other was a finely made, strapping fellow, "Every inch a king," as poor Lear says.
McKay, whoso words I took down as he spoke them, says:—"It is very possible that in the excitement of fight, women may have been killed by other men; but except in the cases of the above named chiefs, there was no premeditation in the act, for they were naturally opposed to taking the life of a female. Of women slain by Montepeleter, were the two Misses Peters of Bagdad, Mrs. McCasker of Westbury, and several others. Of those killed by the other chief, he now remembers the name of one only; namely, Mrs. Cunningham, the wife of a veteran living at East Arm on the river Tamar. The murder of this last named person led to further outrages on the person of a black, who rated the little chief for what he had just done. This man was a Cape Portland native, but was staying with the Piper's River fellows at the time" (this practice of visiting seem to have been quite common amongst friendly tribes), "and when he heard of the death of this woman, he spoke very disapprovingly of it, adding that the men of his tribe never killed a white woman. Greatly incensed at his interference, the chief angrily enquired what business it was of his, who was not one of his people? The two disputants soon got to very high words, when all at once the long named chief seized his spear, and drove it through the Cape Portlander's body, and killed him on the spot."
The poor victim's wife an their child were present at the moment; and she having a keen perception of what would follow, if she remained even for a moment where she was, snatched up her child and hastened to make her escape from the murderer's presence; but his thirst for blood was not yet slaked, and he sent a spear after her that struck her on the forehead, but it luckily glanced off without seriously hurting her, and she eventually rejoined the tribe she belonged to.
GEOEGE AUGUSTUS ROBINSON.
In continuing these legends, it is now necessary to introduce to the reader a personage once well known to the colonists of both Tasmania and Victoria, who during his residence in this colony, rendered it such great and beneficial services as were not surpassed even by those performed by our third Governor, Colonel ​Sorell. This man was George Augustus Robinson, to whom Tasmania owed, but very imperfectly paid such a debt, as none but he could have laid it under, in removing from their ancient haunts, every remaining member, excepting four individuals who had escaped his notice, of the sixteen tribes of natives whom he found still in existence, (for several tribes whom he enumerates had wholly died out before) when he undertook the seemingly hopeless task of transplanting them, firstly to Swan, next to Vansittart's or Guncarriage, and finally to Flinder's Islands. They were truly an aggressive race, and the colonists of Tasmania, caluminated as they have been, were never more libelled than by those scribblers, who have described them as uniformly, or even generally, the assailants of the primitive inhabitants of this country.
In the long warfare that ensued between black and white, after their disconnection, as described foregoingly, the aboriginals, with some, but not very many exceptions, began every skirmish, our own race having generally by far the worst of the fight; and if during the historic age of Tasmania, the blacks diminished from several thousands to a very few hundreds, it was owing far more to sickness than strife that they were thus thinned out—sickness, taking the form of fatal catarrhal complaints, that sent them by thousands to the grave.
Forcible measures having quite failed to subdue, or even seriously to damage these people, or to check their unceasing aggressions, Robinson tried other means with them, namely, pacific overtures and conciliation; and what could not be effected by the combined action of several thousand armed men, he and they who acted under him achieved, without using violence of any kind: and in about five or five and a half years (between 1829 and 1834) he succeeded in removing every one of them who were left, with the slight exception named above, from the mainland of Tasmania.
I will now take leave to give the details of some of his many pursuits after them, which he continued to make with the most unremitting perseverance at all seasons, and often under circumstances most adverse to success, for five years, during which the native tribes fell one by one into the snare; for, beyond doubt, they were the victims of the well-devised and cleverly-conducted artifices of a man from whom they had no more chance of escaping than a fly has when entangled in the web of the spider.
His first enterprise against them, undertaken at the end of December, 1829, was quite an unsuccessful one, and excited nothing but derision, and, of course, increased his discredit with ​the colonists, who believed him be nothing but a plausible charlatan. He despised their taunts, and replied not a word to one of them.
Several months of apparent inaction, but of real preparation, then followed, and it was not before May of 1830 that he set out again with 18 others, 10 of whom were blacks, to confer with the enemy.
Landing at a place on the South Coast, called Recherche Bay, from an open boat, so leaky that it was with the last difficulty he kept her from sinking with her living freight (all thanks to official red-tapeism), he at once pushed over to a further point called Spring River, from which he started inland with his blacks and three Europeans, the rest remaining with the boat. From here he proceeded cross-country to Port Davey, traversing a mountainous, difficult, and heavily-wooded tract, and reached the great open country beyond, about the 17th of May. This part of Tasmania was then, and still is, a perfect alpine solitude, and he saw not the trace of man till he reached the last-named place. "Here," he says, "a numerous band of natives appeared in sight. On observing my people they fled, setting the heath on fire as they went along." He was anxious to confer with them, but the suspicious savages evaded the desired interview. Sending forward some of his blacks who spoke the dialect of the South Coast tribes, they overtook them, and explained the object of this unexpected intrusion on lands that had never been visited by a white man before, and very seldom since, the coast line alone being known then. Their mission was greatly facilitated by one of the women being related to the stranger blacks, and a long-lost brother of hers was found amongst them. The tribe consented to receive Robinson, and the next day was fixed on for his first interview with the wild aboriginal man of the country; the meeting to take place at a point amongst the mountains, about three miles from his tent. Here he went accordingly with his natives and three armed Europeans. The appearance of the latter with their muskets at once excited their suspicions that his mission was not of the pacific nature they expected, and they broke up and left before he could reach them. From this time he determined never again to go amongst them with arms of any sort, and if possible only with his blacks.
Nothing daunted by this failure, he sent after them again, and his black ambassadors once more succeeded in arranging for an interview, and his first meeting with them took place on the 21st. "The object of my mission," he says, "I fully explained to them, with which they appeared highly pleased. With this people I sojourned for about three weeks, travelling with, and ​sleeping amongst them around their fires at night, accompanied by a few aboriginals attached to the expedition." (Report, July 27, '30)
"During this visit, one of the women of the party, "he says, "espoused a man of the Nine-nees," that is, the Port Davey tribe, and of course followed him no further.
Soon after leaving the Niue-nees, he visited some other tribes with whom he opened an intercourse in his usual manner. "Several of these," he says,, "evinced a hostile feeling, which was ultimately overcome."
There were persons amongst the natives whom he fell in with on this occasion who had formerly lived with the settlers, and spoke our language well. But they used it only in abuse of him, "making use," he says, "of very scurrilous language." The tribes that these men lived with were, he tells us, the most ferocious of any he visited, no doubt instructed by these "civilised blacks," as this class of natives were not very properly called, and of whom I shall have more to say before I have done with the subject.
I should have said before that Port Davey is situated almost exactly at the south-west corner of Tasmania; and from hence Mr. G. A. Robinson, the native protector, in this expedition proceeded overland to Emu Bay, on the north coast, about 160 miles off, by direct measurement; but in following the tracks of the wandering tribes dwelling in the western hemisphere of Tasmania, his route was so circuitous, and his counter-marches so frequent, that he walked 1,000 miles in all before he reached the bay. How he supported his people during his ten weeks' journey does not appear (for he says the only provision he carried was a little wheat meal); but I presume he roughed it, to use a bush phrase, along with his sable friends, living on kangaroos, wombats, opossums, or anything that came to hand first.
He completed this tedious journey on the 26th July, having sown the seeds of future success amongst more than half the native races, and might have taken pretty nearly as many of them as he thought fit, but he was restrained by his orders, which at this time were to conciliate only. During his absence a general order was issued encouraging the apprehension of the natives, but of this he was ignorant until the opportunity was gone, at least for the presnt.
His next expedition was as barren of results as his first one. He this time traversed the East Coast districts, were large bodies of natives were said to have appeared, but could not get on their tracks, and he returned from his wearying enterprise, to experience new proofs of public distrust in lam, by which he was in no way distressed.
​He was, however, soon afterwards enabled to give proof of his powers to do as he liked with the natives, and to induce their surrender at his will, or pretty nearly so, now that his instructions permitted him to do so, of which he quickly availed himself.
He went again, unarmed as usual, amongst several confederated tribes living in the eastern districts of the colony, and soon induced 13 of their people to follow him into hopeless captivity, and located them for the present at a temporary asylum, formed at a place called Swan Island, lying off the north-east coast of Tasmania. He learned from his prisoners that they had just returned from an expedition, against others of this unfortunate race, over whom they had obtained a victory, if it may he so termed where only three of the vanquished were slain. Those tights often lasted for hours, but such was the dexterity of the savage in evading the spears of his adversaries that they seldom struck him. Without moving an inch from his post, he would avoid a discharge of three or four well-directed spears sent at him at the same instant. By a contortion of his body, a moveof his head to the right or left, or raising his leg or arm, he seldom failed escaping them all, any one of which would have transfixed the less agile European with the most perfect certainty.
He remained at Swan Island till the middle of the year 1831, organising his new establishment, roving amongst the many islands of Bass's Straits, quarrelling with their occupants, the sealers, about their women, and boring the Government as often as he could with letters filled with abuse of these men, and sickening details of their cruelties; about which I need say no more than I have already done, except that he would have their women, many of whom he took from them, but they also concealed many, whom he never got; after which he returned to his more proper calling of following the natives of the wilderness.
But during nearly the whole of the year 1831, his successes were inconsiderable. He pursued his prey with his accustomed ardour, but the natives avoided and constantly escaped from him; and the most he effected during the best part of that year was the partial disorganisation of some of the tribes, by the rather unexpected but fortunate capture of two or three of their chiefs.
But he was more fortunate just at the close of this year, and removed to Flinder's Island, on which the aboriginal establishment was now planted, the remains of two once powerful and still very sanguinary tribes, after such a series of marches and counter marches, of trials, hopes and disappointments, which he describes in lengthy detail, as it is quite wearying to wade through, the account of his meeting with them and their surrender being the only portions of two long-winded reports, dated ​respectively the 5th and 30th January, 1832, that are worth quoting, and from which the substance of what follows is derived.
In the pursuit of these tribes he was accompanied by a party of 15, mostly blacks, and he fell in with the enemy on the great central plateau of Tasmania, which he crossed and re-crossed times almost without number before he could come upon the active and suspicious tribes he was after. He was at a place called Bashan Plains on the 25th of December, when he saw their smoke under a mountain called the Platform Bluff, which, however, was a long way off. How he knew them to proceed from the fires of the blacks I know not, but he constantly asserts in his writings that his own trackers knew the smoke of a native's fire from that of the white—whether by its volume or what he does not say; and it seems they were never mistaken.
I pause a moment to say that habit, or the exigencies of their state, had given this race a wonderful acuteness of observation, not intelligible to us. Thus we learn from the report of another of their pursuers—not a very successful one—namely the once well-known Jorgen Jorgensen, that they possessed a faculty for discovering water in situations where no European would think of looking for it, and that these strange places were their favourite camping grounds; and this it is possible, may on this occasion, have been the key, enabling them to determine whether or not the smoke they saw proceeded from fires kindled by some of themselves, from observing them in a place to which none but their own people would resort.
Christmas Day, of 1831—which must have been a dreary one to him and his companions—was passed on the elevated pasture field of Bashan Plains. It was noticed of Robinson on this day, though he was not much given to fits of dejection, he was rather downcast, the natural effect of langour occasioned by the weariness of an unusually protracted chase after the tribe, whom he began to despair of overtaking. But towards evening of this day, the heart-cheering intelligence was brought him by some of his sable scouts, that the smokes of their camp fires were visible, and that they were in the glens of the mountain called the Platform Bluff. The news once more rekindled the usual ardor with which he always undertook a pursuit, and the march recommenced.
When he came on their footmarks at last, his people—such was their acute knowledge of these faint imprints on the grass, which a European would not discern at all—that they at once pronounced them to be those of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes united. ("A female," says he, "assured me they were the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes. She knew them by their ​footmarks.") He followed on their trail till the last day of 1831, when he says:—"I succeeded in effecting a friendly communication with those sanguinary tribes." But his own dark-coloured friends were so much afraid of the strangers, that it was long before he could persuade them to go over to them. They told him they were quite certain these men would kill them all, and made all sorts of excuses to get out of it; but he would not hear them, and one of them, a chief, ran away sooner than face them. His messengers at length consented to go to them, but quite failed in their mission, and instead of procuring a friendly meeting the two tribes marched in a body to his tent to destroy him. He says:—"In less than half-an-hour I heard their war-whoop, by which I knew they were advancing upon me. I also heard the rattle of their spears as they drew near." It must have been a moment of deep anxiety and fear to all; but the wonderful presence of mind of the man, which never deserted him in danger, now carried him successfully through this awful interview, and the extraodinary negotiation which concluded it.
They were now within about thirty yards of him, with their spears poised for the attack, and they were just about discharging them, when they were completely thrown off their guard, at hearing him address them in their mother tongue. The effect of his words on the minds of these unsophisticated children of the wilderness was magical, and they involuntarily lowered their weapons as if spell-bound; and it is a singular fact that before dayclose, they gave themselves up to him as prisoners, and consented to accompany him to Hobart Town, about a hundred miles off, where thousands of us saw them all a few days afterwards, peacefully encamped on his own premises in Elizabeth-street, just opposite James' Brewery. These people had with them one hundred dogs.
In his journey to Hobart Town with them, he placed them under no restraint whatever. He permitted them to leave his camp at will, to hunt or otherwise amuse themselves; but such was the ascendency he acquired over them from the first, that they made no effort to quit him, but slept around his tent every night.
In thus giving up their wild liberty, they were seduced by the fair and captivating promises he made them, firstly of an interview with the Governor, who, he told them, would redress all their wrongs, whatever they were; and secondly, of future support and governmental protection against outrage.
It was an awful day for the natives when they trusted the good faith of the Government, which seized them as prisoners directly they got them, and consigned them to the Straits islands, ​where in a dozen years or so, four-fifths of them died. But I have been told by one of the very few whom Robinson admitted to intimacy, that he was often heard to speak regretfully about the promises he made them on behalf of the Government, being so faithlessly kept.
He always considered the removal of these two tribes as his crowning achievement, and he speaks of it with a little pardonable bombast. "This," he writes, "is all that remains of both tribes. Tranquillity is, therefore, through the blessing of the Almighty, restored to the colony, and the people are treated as human beings ought to be treated. No restraint in any way has been placed upon them." But this tranquillity was not yet restored, for many tribes remained to be brought in, which he afterwards secured, who, by living more remotely from the settled districts than those just ensnared, had less opportunities of doing mischief than them, but still never neglected to do it whenever they got the chance.
The men he had just taken delivered to him several stand of arms that they had stolen in different enterprises. He says, "previous to leaving the natives' encampment the tribes despatched four of their females for spears, when they shortly returned with three large bundles, and the chief of the Big River tribe took me to a tier of hills, and surrendered to me six stand of firearms loaded, viz.:—three muskets and three fowling-pieces."
The attenuated remnants of these once powerful tribes, formerly numbering perhaps a thousand people, yielded, all told, only 26 individuals. Yet were they still as troublesome as in the days of their strength, and committed more murders and robberies, in their decay than they were known to have done at any former period. Like most of their race, they had not suffered much from the hostility of the colonists, nor even greatly from rival tribes, of whom they were generally the masters.
Without going into the general subject of the decay of this race in this place, I may venture a passing remark on the subject of their rapid and remarkable declension, which had been going on for some years before this time, as if the very plague had seized on them. Whole tribes (some of which Robinson mentions by name as being in existence 15 or 20 years before he went amongst them, and had probably never had a shot tired at them) had absolutely and entirely vanished. To the causes to which he attributss this strange wasting away, as coming under his own personal observation, I think infecundity, produced by the infidelity of the women to their husbands in the early times of the colony, may be safely added. This, I believe, was not a ​mere occasional, but very general failing, amongst the women; and prostitution, all the world over, vitiates the powers of the females, wholly obstructing production. Robinson always enumerates the sexes of the individual she took, and distinguishes between childhood, adolescence, and manhood; and, as a general thing, found scarcely any children amongst them, and quite reversely of the natural condition of our race adultness was found to outweigh infancy in a remarkable degree everywhere. In the present instance his capture was found to consist of sixteen men, nine women, and one child.
The well-known doctrine of Strezelecki that the savage woman, after contamination by the white, is invariably and for ever infertile, is only an amusing fiction, instances of the contrary having occurred, both in New South Wales and Tasmania, in cases where I presume the cohabitation was not a very protracted one. Nor can the decadence I have spoken of be traced to infanticide, at any rate of children of their own blood, of whom the mother was passionately fond; though it seems possible that the peculiar exigencies of their state may have sometimes produced a forced, but certainly most unwilling abandonment of them. Instances of infanticide did, indeed, come within Robinson's knowledge; but then the victims were half castes, whom the savage women both of Australia and Tasmania, is known to have detested. In one of the cases in question a mother suffocated two of her offspring by thrusting grass into their mouths till they died. (Report 13th May, 1831.) In concluding his account of this cruel tragedy, he says:—"The aboriginal females in the Straits do not entertain an equal degree of fondness for those children who they have derived from Europeans, in confirmation of which several facts are on record." And he adds, in reference to these murders "this circumstance is borne out by the united testimony of the aboriginal women of the establishment." (Swan Island). But this subject will be treated of hereafter.
The removal of this horde of depredators and professional murderers, from whom the colonists had suffered more than all the rest, was a very eminent service. It is not indeed easy to understand its value now that the large majority of those who were the objects of their craft and passions have passed away by death or emigration; but any one whose recollections, like my own, will carry him back to the period I am writing of, or who will take the trouble to read through the accounts of the crimes of this people, written at the time, and printed in the early publications of the colony, or preserved in at least a thousand M.S. reports, chiefly from the police magistrates of the territory, will be made to comprehend that the capture of these two tribes was ​an advantage of the highest order to the community.
The black associates of Robinson received a considerable reward at his instance. I do not know its amount, but it was no trifle, and they were to have it in anything they liked, and Robinson was directed to ascertain in what way they would like it paid them and strangely enough, they, every one of them, chose sheep, and a flock, I think, of 500, but am not quite sure (for I write of their numbers from memory only) was placed on Flinders Island for them. He himself received a gift of £300, additional to £100 already paid him. (Colonel Arthur's order, 14th February, 1832.)
ROBINSON AT THE ARTHUR RIVER.
The five years that he pursued them were years of real toil of painful anxiety and bitter privation to him; but he never intermitted pursuit, so long as he thought one of them remained at large; and though in the end he brought all in but the trifling remnant I have named, he never shed one drop of blood. He visited the encampments of even the most hostile of the tribes without arms of any kind, and in seeming confidence, but doubtlessly not without fear, which he must often have felt most keenly, as on many occasions he was in great danger of their spears; but speaking their language, he successfully negotiated with every tribe for its surrender, and brought all in, either to Launceston or Hobart Town. His services were amongst the greatest benefactions the colony has ever received from anyone; and though like all public men who have disdained to bid for popular applause, he had a host of detractors, still no one who remembers the ever recurring incursions of the aborigines into the settled districts, their well devised onslaughts, their murderings and burnings, which he put an end to, will ever underrate his merits, or assign him any other than a very high place amongst those who have done good service to the country.
I have spoken above of the manifold risks he ran in his missions to the encampments of the blacks. But from the following extracts from a letter of Robinson's, that has been kindly presented me by his most intimate friend, Mr. G. Whitcombe, it appears he considered one of the greatest dangers he ever encountered from the natives, was at the Arthur River in the North Western districts, from a horde of blacks, headed by a chief named Wyn, all the details of which are contained in the reports he made to the Government, of this assault upon him, which I shall presently quote from.
West Hunter Island, October the 4th, 1832.
My Dear Sir,—Little did I imagine when I last addressed ​you that I should have been so suddenly called upon to encounter one of the greatest dangers that I have ever been exposed to during the whole course of my long career in the aboriginal service. My escape from the hands of these misguided savages is to me a matter of the greatest astonishment, and almost miraculous.
I trust I am fully sensible of the goodness of God in preserving me amid so very many dangers, more particularly on this extraordinary occasion, which was premeditated, and my destruction at that time appeared inevitable.
I had all along considered that my labour was nearly at an end, being well acquainted with these aborigines from the intercourse that I had with them at the time of my first expedition, from the good effects produced on that occasion, led me very naturally to conclude that I should shortly be able to remove them. From a conviction of this circumstance I had written to Mrs. Robinson, acquainting her that I thought I should be able to spend a part of the summer with my family in Hobart Town, provided that my successes met with no reverse; and although I was sensible that the conduct since pursued towards them had considerably excited them, still I flattered myself that I should be able to overcome this difficulty. This attack was therefore the more sudden and unexpected; from the excited state of the aborigines along the western coast, more time and trouble will be requisite ere they are removed, and although I am persuaded of its being effected, still I know that armed parties could not effect the least possible good. … Thrice have I journeyed down the western coast, and thrice have I been successful. It is my intention to visit my family forthwith, either from here or Macquarie Harbour. … I have been most shamefully neglected as regards supplies. I have here now upwards of fifty souls depending on me for subsistence, and all that I have received from the commissariat at Launceston is one cask of flour, one bag of biscuit, and one cask of salt beef, and 50 blankets. …
I remain, my dear Sir, Yours sincerely, G. A. Robinson.
To Geo. Whitcomb, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
Several months had elapsed since his last success (over the Oyster Bay and Big River tribes) before he was prepared to take the bush again in earnest. This time he proceeded against the people inhabiting the north-western districts, where the Van Diemen's Land Company have large possessions, as they had at the time I am writing of. These districts were then infested by ​four tribes, each numerically reduced to insignificance, partly through the ravages of the sealers, but chiefly from causes quite apart from war, except, perhaps, tribal war. These men had made many incursions into the estates of the company, plundering their outstations, and lulling their servants, with more than usual impunity, but had received one or two checks lately from a small Government party, acting under a person named Alexander M'Kay, formerly one of the most active and useful attachés of the aboriginal embassy under Robinson, from whom he had shortly before parted in anger, at some neglect he felt he had received at the hands of his leader. This man, when acting under Robinson, had taken several natives himself, and handed them over to his superior. He had also performed other meritorious services, which received no recognition whatever, nor were placed to his account in any manner. He was not a man to bear with this kind of treatment, and refused to remain in his service any longer, and, proceeding to Hobart Town, made a report of his own services to the Governor, who always had a high opinion of him. There was mutual dislike between the master Robinson and the servant M'Kay; and that of the former was greatly increased by the spirited action of the other, and he was very little pleased to hear that, directly after his interview with the Governor, he was placed in charge of a small roving party who acted independently of himself. M'Kay was a resolute, active, and persevering young man, and, perhaps, the best bushman who ever traversed the wilds of Tasmania. He soon effected good service, and took several men of the same tribes whose remains Robinson himself was now in pursuit of, for which he received the complimentary acknowledgements of the Government, that were conveyed to him by the manager of the Van Diemen's Land Company's Estates, Mr. Curr.
Robinson, like the race he subdued, never forgot an affront; and had such a dislike of this useful servant of the government, that many of his after reports teem with abuse of him; and every failure of his own against the tribes M'Kay had visited are ascribed to his rash and imprudent attacks, as he call them on the natives which he constantly asserts had thrown the tribes of this quarter, and those of the whole of the West Coast also, into such a state of excitement, that for a time they would hold no intercourse with him, and refused (like Rachel mourning for her children) to be comforted with his assurances of protection, redress. &c. He magnified the defensive action of this man into a barbarous aggression, and a felling blow that he dealt one of ​an attacking party on his hard head with the butt of a pistol, in rescuing one of his company from the fury of several of them who had him down, was enlarged into murder, though the man was only stunned and made prisoner of by M'Kay. The manner in which he assails his old servant, even for years after, shows that forgiveness was not amongst his virtues.
The savages of this quarter were a very pugnacious set of fellows, and had long been the objects of the miscreancy of the sealers, and hated the white race accordingly, and they gave the conciliator of their people more trouble than any others, and never was he and his party in such danger of their lives as now, for which M'Kay gets the entire credit.
Of the four tribes inhabiting the north-west districts, he, with great trouble, removed three entirely, and four adults of the other; which last he calls the Tackine or Sandy Cape natives. They were found to number 23 persons, of whom four only were children; a quarter of a century before their strength was probably 50 times greater. The remnants of the three entire tribes that he now took, laid down their spears to him between the 19th of June and the 15th July, 1832, and the four Tackines came over to him on the 4th of September.
His account of these transactions is contained in two reports, dated 29th July, and 11th September, 1832, from both of which the following extracts are taken:—
"In my communication with the 'Tackine' or Sandy Cape natives, I had to encounter one of the greatest dangers that I had ever been exposed to during the whole of my long career in the aboriginal service. … These people came with the avowed purpose of massacring my aboriginal attendants and to have seized upon the women and dogs, and to have returned again to their own country. … The first indications of these aborigines were discovered on the 31st ult., (August), between six and seven miles north of the Arthur River. From those traces it was apparent that the natives had returned to their own country. They had been on a war expedition in quest of the people I had removed. … On my arrival to within one and a half miles of the river, I halted my people and formed an encampment. Three of the recently captured aborigines, with four of my friendly natives, I sent forward to proceed with all possible celerity, and to omit no endeavour until they had effected a communication, and which they considered they could do without my being present.
"On the 3rd inst., I set out to meet the natives, having the previous evening descried a large smoke, a signal that my natives had got to them, and which had been previously agreed upon ​between me and them. Conceiving that my presence would give them confidence, I crossed the Arthur River, accompanied by four of the friendly natives (this he did on a raft). Soon after I had crossed, a body of wild natives, well armed with spears, were descried in the woods, and advancing to where I then stood. This was at meridian. On their arrival I proposed to cross the river and proceed to my encampment; but this was objected to, and it was suggested that we should remain for the night on the south side of the river, and that the male aborigines should hunt for game.
"Previous to setting off on the hunting excursion, I distributed amongst them presents of beads, knives, boxes, handkerchiefs, &c., with which they appeared highly delighted.
"At the time I met these people I was unaccompanied by any but my aboriginal attendants, and without the slightest means of protection," (he means fire arms, for his men had their spears). "I sojourned for upwards of 18 hours with them."
He says that during the whole night he was with the Tackines "I was kept in a state of the most awful suspense that it is possible to imagine; for it was not till night set in that I was made acquainted with the extreme danger of my situation. Escape appeared to me impossible, and every moment I expected to be massacred. … I was in the midst of them. They slept not, but employed themselves in preparing their spears; some sitting with them across their shoulders, others held them across their knees, while others kept walking about. Their fires were put out, and they sat by the embers. My aborigines kept their fires in for the purpose of watching them, and the better to see their spears coming." (Then follows a little half-poetical bosh about nothing being heard but the "hoarse whisperings" of his new acquaintances, &c., which is not worth quoting.) "On this occasion I deemed it prudent not to evince the least feeling of alarm." So he undressed and lay down in his blanket as usual.
"At the earliest dawn of day, they made a large fire, round which the men assembled, and began preparing their weapons intended for my destruction. At this juncture, one of the wild natives (a relative of one of my friendly aborigines) commenced a vehement discussion, and argued against the injustice of killing me, and asked why they would kill their friend and protector?
"I had by this time put on my raiment. My aboriginal companions were exceedingly alarmed, and on looking for their spears, found that the wild natives had taken them away during the night. … In the midst of the discussion I rose up and stood in front of them, with my arms folded, thinking to divert their savage purpose. I said if they were not willing to go with ​me, they could return again to their own country. Scarcely had I spoken when they shouted their war-whoop, seized their spears, and proceeded at once to surround me. … My aborigines shrieked and fled. The natives had nearly encircled me—their spears raised, were poised in the air—the friendly aborigines were gone. At this crisis I made off, although I saw not the slightest chance of escape. I pursued my way rapidly through some copse, winding round the aclivity of some low hills, and took a north-east direction towards an angle of the river, on approaching which I saw one of my friendly natives that had escaped, who, with much trepidation, said that all the rest of the natives were killed. At the same instant she descried the hostile blacks approaching, and in much alarm begged me to hide whilst she swam the river and went to the encampment. To have attempted concealment at such a crisis would have been next to suicide, and looking up (for the river hath steep banks on either side) I saw one of the wild natives looking for my footsteps. At this moment he turned, and I lost sight of him. I saw no chance of escape except by crossing the river—the difficulty seemed insurmountable—I could not swim—the current was exceedingly rapid, and it required time to construct a machine" (i.e., a raft, or catamaran). "The natives were in strict search after me, and I expected every moment to be overtaken. … I made an attempt to cross on a small spar of wood, and was precipitated into the river, and nearly carried away by the current. After repeated attempts, I succeeded with the aid of the woman. When about midway the aborigines again made their appearance, and followed my track down to the river. My clothes were left behind. I then returned to my encampment, where my son and some natives were staying. With these people I returned again to the river, and was agreeably disappointed to find that my aboriginal friends escaped unhurt, and that two of the hostile blacks had joined them. The wild natives had assembled on the opposite bank of the river. Here they continued to exhibit the most violent gestures, and were exceedingly boisterous in their declamations, threatening to cross the river and massacre us.
"From these fugitives I learnt that when the hostile blacks found that I had escaped, they searched the bushes, supposing I had hid myself." He also learned that it was their intention to have killed the whole of the party except the women. But for Robinson himself was reserved a special fate, namely, the mutilation and burning of his body, "and my ashes," he says, "made into Ray-dee or Num-re-mur-he-kee (i.e., amulets to be worn by the natives)."
​"My exit from the hands of these savages was so sudden and so unexpected, that with all the vigilance (for which they are so remarkable) they scarcely saw me; and the effect produced on their credulous minds led them to believe that I was influenced by more than an ordinary spirit; to this superstitious notion may be attributed in a great measure the preservation of the people's lives. Failing in their attempt to kill me, they became suddenly dismayed, and the consequences that would ensue as a punishment caused them greatly to despond, on observing which, the strangers that now accompanied me reproached and taunted them. They would not nay-wid-ding-er (i.e., eat much), the num-mer (white man) would return with plenty of pur-da-bar (guns,) and kill them all.
"Whilst at the Arthur River, I entered into a parley with the hostile blacks across the river, and assured them that I had no bad feeling towards them—that I forgave them the attack they had made on my life;" and on giving them his usual assurances of protection, &c., two others swam the river and joined him.
But notwithstanding their despondency and dismay, they were greatly irritated at the desertion of any of their people to the enemy particularly their chief, Wyne, who, "putting himself in a menacing attitude, threatened to come over and murder us." Their terrors of the nummer and his purdabar had quite subsided, and Robinson had great difficulty, he says, to prevent a collision; and had his presence of mind failed him for a moment, the death of all was certain. But following the native custom, he sent up a a huge telegraphic smoke, as if signalling for the assistance of his whites, on observing which the natives went away, and Robinson was not long in doing the same, only in an opposite direction, with his unexpected prize, and eventually reached the land's end of Tasmania in the north-west, namely, Cape Grim, as quickly as he could reach there, followed by his 27 prisoners, who, it may be safely presumed, had no idea that he was only leading them into captivity, from whence they were never to emerge.
Reaching the Cape, after a march of 40 miles, he immediately transferred his prisoners to some large islands called the Hunters, that lie a few miles off this headland. A sealer's boat was luckily lying at the place, and their removal was effected at once, where they would all have been starved but for the fortunate circumstance of the shores and off lying rocks of these islands abounding with sea birds and their eggs just at this season—chiefly the albatross and penguin. The natives were very partial to birds, and Robinson says that when they were very ill they would often eat one, when they rejected all other food, and here ​they had an abundance of their most favourite diet.
But death which was now demolishing this people, well nigh as rapidly as he could cut them down, followed on their tracks, and overtook them here also; and 13 of them succumbed to his shafts within the first fortnight of their landing on the Hunters. The doom of numbers of them appears to have been greatly accelerated by removal from their ancient haunts, and the partial adoption, perhaps too hastily, of European habits. Thus in 1829, when he gathered together a couple of score of them on Bruny Island, 22 of them died between the 12th of June and the 23rd of September of that year, in other words in about 15 weeks. (Report, 23rd of September, 1829.) This mortality was also very rapid at their little village, which they called Wyba-Luma, at Flinders Island, where Robinson says about 250 were landed altogether, of whom 120 had gone to the grave, by the date of his general report on their condition of "July 1836;" of the remaining 130 (exclusive of a few births that happened at Wyba-Luma) 46 only were living, on the removal of the establishment to Oyster Cove in 1847, the great majority of whom were young or middle-aged persons when taken and landed there. When I visited Oyster Cove eight years afterwards, April 1855, 30 of this miserable remnant were lying in the little graveyard of the Cove, and at this moment of writing, one only (Robinson's first and principal decoy-duck) survives to mourn over the fall, and possibly to deplore, the active share she had in the ruin of her race.
I have but a few more words to say about the captives on Hunter's Island, and these are only to describe the rapidity of their decay, when sickness seized upon them; and here again I must quote from Robinson, who was the eye-witness of these death-bed scenes. Speaking first of his domesticated blacks, he says, he is happy to say that they are in a state of "invalescence," for he is fond of unusual words; but he "regrets to state that the strangers have been subjected to a severe mortality, and out of the 27 of the last removed, 13 are defunct. This dire malady," he says, "had every appearance of an epedemic, the patient seldom living longer than 48 hours after being attacked. All ages and sexes fell victims to its ravages, and they generally expired in a state of delirium. They were all in apparent health when first brought to the settlement."
It would be tiresome to pursue him in his other hard and long journeys, after the residue of the blacks who dwelt either in the interior districts or the west coasts. It is enough to say that in the end he removed them all except four. The last tribe that was brought in was captured by his son G. A. Robinson, on the 28th December, 1834. It consisted of only eight persons.
​In reporting this ultimate success of his party, he pledges himself to the Government that the entire native race are removed "with the exception of one individual, who was very old, and in a precarious and sickly state. The entire aboriginal population," he continues, "are now removed, and so firmly convinced am I of this fact that I pledge myself to pay the reward heretofore offered by the Government for all the aboriginals that may hereafter be brought in. The final tranquility of the colony, as regards the aborigines, is firmly established." (Report, 3rd Feb., 1835,) But he was not quite correct, for about nine or ten years afterwards four more were taken, who, there can be no doubt, were the last of them, for the smoke of the savage has been no more seen in Tasmania since.
Whatever the future historian of Tasmania may have to say of this ancient people, he will do them an injustice if he fails to record that, as a body, they held their ground bravely for 30 years against the invaders of their beautiful domains.
Robinson was never the popular man he might have been had he been a little more sociable than he was. There was nothing rude or repulsive about him, but still his manner was not assuasive, and as he cared but little for society, he had few friends. He was moreover an enthusiast in everything that his natural tastes permitted him to indulge in, particularly in religious observances, and was an occasional visitor at the hospital, goal, etc., and sometimes read, and at others gave the best advice he could to the unfortunate occupants of these establishments. But the times were not favourable for such devotional practices as these, nor was the small class of devotees to whom he belonged, treated with much reverence then, and though he was never known to take a part in any dishonourable act, still the current of popular dislike ran so strongly against him, on both sides of the island, that he was almost universally denounced as an impostor, and no terms, however vulgar, were too vulgar if only applied to him. The Government, too, while it affected to applaud him in print, and even to reward his services, was not a sincere encourager of his, and its petty subordinates, with many of whom he had necessary transactions, taking their cue from above, seemed to vie with each other to impede, distress, and annoy him, from no other motives, as I believe, than those that sprang from an illaudable sentiment of jealousy—he and those under him having achieved, single-handed, so to speak, what the Governor and his subordinates, backed by four thousand armed men, had failed to accomplish.
This pitiful feeling, I have read, was once exhibited towards him in a manner that he must have felt keenly enough. It was just ​after some one of his marvellous adventures in the North, that he came into Launceston so emaciated by privation and overwork, and altogether so wretched, that he might have passed for a pauper, as indeed he appeared to be.
Though both himself and mission were known to the community he was sojourning amongst, the ill-feeling referred to a little above, showed itself unworthily enough just now; and the friendless man might have wandered through the streets uncared for and hardly noticed, but for one gentleman, who, though a stranger to him personally, knew him by repute, and who held very different opinions from others respecting the real character of the man, and of the great value of his services to Tasmania, which he had the moral courage to avow, whilst he vindicated him and the cause he served from the aspersions of those who affected to treat him, at one time as a madman, and at others as an impostor. Moved by the pitiable condition of the wretched wanderer, he at once offered him and his attendant blacks a home so long as it suited him to remain in Launceston, which Robinson willingly and gratefully accepted, and on every after visit he made to the town both he and his followers were welcomed at the same friend's roof. This gentleman was Mr George Whitcomb.
The service thus feelingly rendered was never afterwards forgotten by Robinson, and to the end of his life he kept up a most friendly correspondence with his old benefactor, under whose roof, as the poet Campbell says, he found
A home to rest, a shelter to defend; Peace and repose, a Briton and a friend.
I am unable to name the time of Robinson's arrival here. I believe he was in humble circumstances then, a poor artizan and probably a steerage passenger, a class whose names seldom appear in the published shipping reports. He was a good tradesman and soon established himself here as a master builder, but he was no designer or architect, as may be seen in the case of his own residence in Elizabeth-street (now No. 168), which was built by himself, or after his own designs, and its present curious roof added in after times under his own direction.
FABLE OF A WHITE MAN AMONGST THE BLACKS.
There prevailed here at one time an universal belief that a man of our own race was living with the blacks, not only on terms of amity, but as the active abbetor of, and instructor in their hostile operations against the colonists, This story which was only one of the many Munchausen-like inventions about the natives, with which public credulity was pretty well satiated at this time, originated with a mendacious witness, who told it to the Aboriginal Committee, of whom I have spoken before.
Information so startling, and yet so probable, when viewed connectedly with the many well matured devices of the blacks for surprising the settlers, which men of such low intelligence as they were erroneously believed to possess, received for a long time a too ready credence, and the Committee hastily accepting the intelligence as a most valuable addition to the evidence they had collected, commended the author, as I have been told, to the Government for a special reward, and which I believe he received. But M'Kay, who often related the report to different parties of natives, says they—one and all—gave the most unequivocal denial to it, and assured him there was not the smallest ground on which to base such an invention. But the story, as some will still remember, had gained such credit with the public, that it was nowhere doubted, and on one occasion it nearly cost M'Kay his life, through his being mistaken for the mythical "white man."
A military, but none too martial settler, had just so far completed a residence on a new location as to make it passably habitable for himself and wife; and in a placid mood of mind, such as steals over us when quite at peace with ourselves and the world, was making an ocular survey of this conception of his genius, in company with the partner of his cares and troubles, just as a tribe of natives, who approached it by the rear as stealthily as so many cats, had gotten possession of it by the back entry. Having satisfied himself by a minute examination of its front elevation, that everything was quite to his mind, he retraced his steps to take another look at the internal arrangements, but only to find every room occupied by a horde of stark naked blacks, more like demons than beings of this world, as wild as the winds of winter, and armed at all points either for attack or defence. According to their crude ideas of enjoyment, they were very pleasantly occupied in turning everything topsy-turvey, having a general rummage, and helping themselves to what they liked best.
At a scene so portentous as this, the captain very naturally ​started, a good deal after the maner of Hamlet at the sight of his father's ghost; but his fears being more strongly upon him than those of the Dane, his placidity and pluck evaporated simultaneously, and he dropped his wife's arm as quickly as if she had the plague, made for the garden fence (to which he had secured his horse not ten minutes before) cleared it at one leap like a kangaroo, and next vaulting into the saddle, the line fellow was off with the velocity of Camilla herself,—or as M'Kay in his half-poetical phraseology says, "he hooked it," so quickly that some of the natives coming out for a shot at him, went in again at observing him quite out of range already.
As he was tearing along like the spectre huntsman and hell-dogs of Boccaccio, he chanced to meet my honest friend M'Kay, who, accompanied by a lot of blacks, was in pursuit of the very tribe from whom the astounded shepherd-militant was fleeing like a mardi-hare. Finding himself placed, as his disordered imagination suggested, between two fires, namely, the vagabonds who had captured his citadel following hard behind, while another set of villians were coming on him in front, the excessive peril of his situation as he believed it, gave him a spark of that false courage that is generated by despair; and raising his gun, which everyone carried then, he was about sending a shot through M'Kay, but was thrown off his guard by the cool impudence of the latter, quietly enquiring, "What the devil had put him in such a flutter?" An explanation now took place that satisfied the military man he was in no danger from the new comers, and M'Kay who was then a match even for a professional walker, hurried raipidly forward to the rescue of the lady, whom her husband had left in the hands of the blacks. But they were gone; and she was nowhere to be found, an idea naturally arose that they had carried her off, and for a while the worst fears were entertained for her safety.
But enquiry soon brought the fact to light, that after the captain's flight, the clatter of horses' hoofs and the shouts of riders were distinguished by the sharp-eared natives, and the greater part of them made off in a body, but not quite all, a few groups of them still hovering about the premises like disappointed spirits. But directly the coast was thus far cleared and the premises vacated, the lady re-entered them alone, and securing a loaded pistol that her husband had left behind him in his precipitation, she marched undauntedly from room to room, and finally into one of the back ones, of which the window was unglazed, calico supplying temporarily the place of glass. As she entered, she observed the head of a black, who was outside, placed against the temporary weather screen as if he were ​listening. The unflinching heroine walked straight to it and fired on him, but as might be expected of one of her sex, unaccustomed to the use of arms, missed him, and he fled to the woods.
The horsemen whose advance the natives had heard, now galloped up, and rescued the lady from her perilous positon, and she was eventually restored by them to her recreant husband.
THE DEATHS OF CAPTAIN THOMAS AND MR. PARKER.
In a previous part of this paper, I have had occasion to speak of the frequency with which murder and other outrage was done by the primitive inhabitants of this country on the colonists, and of the savage violence with which they treated any victim who fell into their hands, instances of which came to light almost every week, but particularly at those times when the natives were on the move from district to district, or from the coasts into the interior and vice versa; their migrations frequently extending over large portions of the island. These ever recurring instances of slaughter, fire-raising, &c., &c., kept the colonists in a state of constant ferment and excitement such as a few of the present generation can have any conception of; and the conversations of every fire-side related in some form or other to these deplorable acts of the natives, which but for the will of the Almighty in afflicting them with sickness in a very fatal form, might, and most probably would have continued to this hour; for with the advantages they possessed of a most difficult country for an European to advance through, it is not easy to understand how they could have been put down, had the tribes remained at anything like their original strength.
But of all the murders that were committed on our race by this people, none that I recollect caused the same amount of regret and consternation as were felt at the deaths of Captain Bartholomew Boyle Thomas, and his faithful farm overseer Mr. James Parker, who died by the hands of the blacks on the 31st of August, 1831; that is to say by the hands of a detachment of the Big River tribe, then encamped very far away from the river by the name of which they were known to the colonists, namely, at Port Sorell on the North Coast.
Captain Thomas had settled in Tasmania about five years before the date indicated above, landing in Hobart Town from the ship Albion on the 3rd of May, 1826. He came hither as manager of an Agricultural Company that had been formed in England the year before—a season known in commercial history as the Year of Bubbles, when all sorts of mad projects that an inordinate thirst for gain could beget, were afloat in England, ​two of which, that were amongst the least unsound of them, were connected with Tasmania, one styled the Van Diemen's Land Company and the other the Van Diemen's Land Establishment, it was with the last named that Thomas was connected, as manager I believe.
The professed, or indeed the real aim of the Establishment, was the improvement of the live stock of the colony, for which purpose some of the best blood that the ample means of the company enabled them to procure was shipped for this colony, along with a number of farmers and farm-hands, to manage the lands and stock of the Establishment. But the fatality that brought to grief nearly all the companies of 1825, attacked this one also with disaster, but it survived it. The misfortune arose from the I death of a very large proportion of its costly blood stock between land and land. Thus of five and thirty most valuable horses shipped in England, only twelve were disembarked here, the rest dying at sea; and much the same thing happened to their sheep and horned cattle.
If I remember rightly, it was the first intention of the manager to take up the large tract of land that the partners were entitled to on the coast of Bass's Straits, nearly opposite to Waterhouse Island, which may be about twenty miles westerly of Cape Portland; but happier thoughts eventually prevailed, and the fine estate of Cressy, by Longford, was fortunately selected instead.
But some disagreement occurring between the partners at home, and the manager on the spot, Captain Thomas, he cut the connection, receiving, as I have read, a good round sum for what he gave up, with which he fixed himself at Port Sorell, on a tract of land he was entitled to, and which he called Northdown; and was the first settler established on the long line of coast between Emu Bay and the western head of the Tamar.
I have here to state that after the death of the gentlemen whose names are at the head of this section, their bodies remained undiscovered for many days, notwithstanding the vigorous but not very well managed search that was made to find them. But they were eventually traced out by the indefatigable Mr. M'Kay, from whose narrative and the newspaper report of the inquest, given in a journal then published in Launceston called the Independent, it is that the following sketch is compiled.
At this time M'Kay was employed by the Government, but under Robinson, in pursuit of the natives, and he was just then stationed at the Western Marshes, near to the present Deloraine. In the absence of his chief, M'Kay, was at the head of a small party, amongst whom were one or two blacks. News did not then ​travel quite so quickly as now, and it took six days for the report of these deaths to reach Launceston, so several days were passed before it penetrated the solitudes of the future Deloraine. As said before these gentlemen were slain on the 31st of August, and M'Kay thinks it was on the 6th of the next month, that he chanced to meet Dr. Westbrook, the same he believes who afterwards practiced in Hobart Town, who was passing near to his camp on this day. The doctor knowing M'Kay and the business he was upon, told him what had taken place, and that up to this time, the search parties who were out had failed to discover their bodies. M'Kay immediately took steps to join in the search.
He started accordingly to the residence of Captain Moriarty, who was a magistrate living on his own beautiful estate of Dunorlan, near the Whitefoord Hills, and about, six miles beyond Deloraine, to take counsel with him, and to get whatever assistance the active seaman could afford him. The news of these deaths had just before reached Dunorlan, and at the moment of M'Kay's arrival the Captain was discussing the matter with one of the Thomas' family, a nephew of the murdered man, by whom the intelligence had reached thus far into the wilderness.
As this was the age of bushranging, and also when the natives were very active in the practice of mischief, detachments of military were to be met with in every district into which settlement had penetrated, and there was one stationed in this neighbourhood, whom Moriarty found means of starting to Port Sorell, putting them under the guidance of M'Kay, who was the best bushman in the country, as hundreds could then have avouched as well as myself, who have travelled some thousands of miles with him in past years. Moriarty directed M'Kay to lead the soldiers to the Port straight through the bush, whilst he and young Thomas rode there by the usual track.
On reaching the port, M'Kay found Moriarty already there, and that the usually lifeless district was all astir with armed men, of which every district had either sent or was sending in its quota to recover the bodies, for no one now doubted that both had been murdered. The soldiers were acting under the orders of Ensign Dunbar, who had come from George Town, while the constables and civilians were directed by Moriarty and a Dr. Smith, and such was the number of parties, that camp fires were seen nearly everywhere; and in nearly every direction except (as usual) the right one, men were to be met perambulating the bush through all the hours of daylight; but though it was now ten days since the missing men were last seen, not a trace of them had been found up to this time.
I must now go back to the day of the murders to give the ​particulars of some occurrences that took place, it may be an hour before the deplorable transactions which form the subject of this paper were completed.
On the day of his death Captain Thomas accompanied by Mr. Parker, rode down to the usual lauding place to superintend the discharge of a large boat loaded with provisions and stores for Northdown that had just before this arrived from Launceston. Two bullock carts followed them to commence the conveyance of the freight to the homestead. The boat was a very large one, and the weight of goods on board amounted to several tons. Near to the boat a large tent was pitched, for the convenience of the boatmen when on shore.
A goodly detachment of the Big river tribe were at this time sojourning at Port Sorell, some of whom were sauntering about the shore, but the greater number stood about the tent of the boatmen, who being well armed caused the natives to be civil enough; for they were a set of cunning fellows, and never attacked at a disadvantage. But each side was on the watch, the one to rush the boat, and the other to entrap the blacks, for the sake of the reward that was offered for all who were brought in alive, which I think was five pounds a head, with a good chance of some Governmental indulgence being added thereto, if the service rendered were considerable. With this view the men gave them liberally of whatever they seemed to covet most, such as tea, sugar, tobacco, and bread, which latter, says one of the witnesses at the inquest, they asked for by the name of "breadlie;" but they were too wide awake for their would be captors, for though two of them entered the tent (most likely only to see whether it were worth plundering) not one of them would trust himself within the boat.
When Thomas and Parker come down to the port, the blacks, though bent on mischief, appeared to be perfectly quiet and friendly with their new acquaintances, which the former who was as guileless and confiding as a child, quite mistook the meaning of. He was one of those kindhearted fellows who never suspect others of being worse than themselves, or of entertaining designs that have no place in their own thoughts. He had long held the belief, that this people were poor inoffensive creatures if left alone, and that the manifold acts of violence done by them were defensive only, and not the result of premeditation, as was constantly charged against them, of which opinions their present seemingly pacific demeanour was an abundant confirmation, as he thought; and he at once took the fatal resolution of visiting their camp alone, with the view of aiding the Government in its so-called merciful endeavours, to establish a good understanding ​with them and thus effecting the conciliation of the two races which it professed or pretended to aim at, which was something like trying to patch up the long established quarrel between the cats and dogs.
On reaching the boatmen's tent, he enquired of the blacks (some of whom of nearly every tribe spoke our language as Robinson was constantly discovering) if there were many others about? to which one of them, holding up all his fingers replied in passable English, "good many more," (evidence). "Captain Thomas," continues the witness, "asked them to take him to them, which they readily agreed to do," in other words the savages were only too happy to separate him from his party and get him into the bush. Thomas now dismounted from his horse to accompany them; but here Parker, who had none of the fine feelings, as they are called, of his employer, and no good opinion of the natives strove hard to dissuade him from engaging in so rash an enterprise as the one he was going on, saying to him—"Surely, Captain Thomas, you are never going to trust yourself with those blackguards, who'll kill you directly they are out of our hearing"; but the infatuated settler was not to be persuaded out of his belief of the harmlessness of their nature, and merely replied, "Oh, they are not so bad as they are represented, I am not afraid, and will go by myself." Parker stood amazed at the indiscretion of the other, but mistrustful as he was of the natives himself, the noble-minded fellow, after a moment's thought would not suffer him to go alone, so springing from his horse and shouldering his double-barrel gun, he strode after him. Parker was a very robust young man, a little over thirty and possessed of wonderful resolution, and he had no doubt, armed as he was, of being able to protect his employer against half a dozen of them if they came to blows; but the poor fellow had no idea of the artifice inherent in the savage, and in this one particular they were an overmatch for him.
Before following Thomas, he gave a few hasty directions to the bullock drivers, not to start until they returned, which he hoped would not be long first; and on parting from them—as it proved for ever—he ordered them not on any account to let their horses get astray, as they should want them directly they came back.
As Thomas and himself proceeded towards the camp of the blacks, their two or three attendants were, as if by pre-arrangement, soon reinforced by others; one fellow meeting them here, another a little further on, and a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, somewhere else, until they grew like Falstaff's recruits into a large but most disreputable looking troop, of whom the majority ​kept an eye on the unarmed captain, whilst two or three only, but the most resolute of their number, marched on either side of his companion, of whom the most conspicuous were two named Mac-a-mee and Wow-ee, by whom the assault that followed was commenced; the former, unarmed, walking on the right, and the other, bearing a heavy waddy, on the left hand.
The party had moved forward about two miles when the assault commenced, by Mac-a-mee, as quick as thought, snatching the gun out of Parker's hand, which he did with such force as to turn him more than half round, and then running off as fast as he could with the prize. At this moment Parker's face was turned away from the other savage, who swinging his waddy aloft, dealt him such a blow on his temple, that he reeled and fell to the ground, apparently a lifeless man.
It is not in the power of language to describe the excitement of the men of the tribe at witnessing the fall of another of the enemies of their race, nor the scene that took place at this moment between them and their wives, such as no one would expect to read of as an usual incident in savage life, the men rushing up with yells of savage joy to finish the fallen man, and the women equally vociferous, interposing, by entreaty, to stay the wrath of their husbands, and to save him from death, but without effect in the case of either victim, and it is a fact that on finding themselves powerless to prevent murder they sullenly withdrew from the scene, neither threat nor persuasion availing to recall them; and without thought of the danger they ran in exposing themselves at such a moment to the whites, they marched in a body to Northdown, where, as will be presently seen they were made prisoners of, as well as some of the men, namely, Mac-a-mee, Wow-ee, and Calamarowenee, who followed them thither to force them to return, but which the poor creatures refused to do.
In the end, Parker was literally nailed to the ground by the spears of the blacks, twelve of which were driven through and through him, every wound, according to the testimony of Dr. Smith, being quite sufficient to cause death.
Captain Thomas, on seeing the fate of his friend, to whom he could give no assistance, ran off, screaming out murder as loudly as he could, which the natives, who were often capital mimics, afterwards told M'Kay of, without knowing what he meant by it. He was an uncommonly active man, and on fair ground ran with such speed that few could contend against. But swift footed as he was, he was no match here for the agile savage unencumbered by clothes; and several young fellows starting after him were at his heels by the time he had got sixty yards, which ​was the distance he ran when they overhauled him. The captain wore a half military frock coat at the time, at the skirt of which the foremost of them made a grasp, and, though it gave way, his speed was so checked that they had him before he could advance another yard. He was knocked over directly and speared to death, his body being pierced quite through in ten places.
The demeanour of the women at this time, as it is described above, was only what they always displayed on occasions like this. They were seldom present at a fight, unless it were an unexpected one, being always left behind, as many have thought, for their safety, but really because their presence was embarrassing to their husbands, for, with rare exceptions, they were against excessive violence being done, and it would not be difficult to give instances where their interposition in stopping it was more successful than it was at this time.
We must now go back to the beach, where we left the two carters, whom Parker had directed to remain, until Captain Thomas and himself returned to them, and where they awaited until the sun was getting low, loitering about till the last minute, so as not to go without them, and firing their guns for their return but to no purpose, for they were both dead long before this; so yoking up their bullocks, they reluctantly faced homewards, taking with them the two horses of the now missing men.
By the time the drivers had got about half way to Northdown they were joined by the black women, who had quitted the tribe after the murders described above, and now followed the carts as though they were of the party. But they had not gone far before they were overtaken by the three men named a little above, who seemed by their gestures, to insist upon their immediate return to the camp; but they were too much excited by the events of the day to obey, so they continued to follow the bullock carts, the three men walking with them, sometimes entreating them to return, and at others threatening them with their waddies if they persisted in going on; but they were not in any temper to do the bidding of the others, and sullenly kept on their way with the drivers.
It was night when they reached Northdown, and as the blacks seldom travelled after dark, there was no help for it, but for all of them to remain at the homestead; and Mrs. Parker, though very little pleased at her husband's absence, having at present no serious fears for his safety, kindly directed the men to look after the wants of these most unexpected, and none too welcome visitors; and she further instructed four of the servants to go to the port at daylight, and, if possible, to trace out the whereabouts of her husband and his employer; and then commenced the ​wearisome search that followed, and which, but for M'Kay (as I gather from the newspapers of the time), would have proved an unavailing one.
Next morning four of Thomas' assigned servants, as convicts in private employ were called, started on their mission; but not so the natives, the females of whom were still as sulky as black cockatoos are sometimes said to be, and would not return to their tribe; and as the men would not go without them, about a third of their number were billited at Northdown for two or three days, poor Mrs. Parker entertaining, but most unconsciously, the very individuals who had made her a widow.
The natives had not been long at Northdown, before some of Thomas' men, who began to suspect that foul play had been done, commenced making enquiries of such of the blacks as could understand them, where they had left the gentlemen whom everyone now felt anxious to hear something about. But though it was evident enough there was some misunderstanding amongst them, there was no getting them to play false to each other, and not a word could be extracted from them that the tribe knew anything about them; but this was not believed, so some of the farm servants, taking the law into their own hands, no uncommon practice with the blacks at that time, enticed them into the most secure room of the house, locked them up, set a sentry over them, and there kept them until the boat returned to Launceston, when they were all marched down to the beach, put on board and sent off to George Town gaol, which wretched place chancing to be empty at the time, they had it all to themselves.
As said before, the search was kept up from morning to night for many days, but neither Thomas nor Parker turned up, though it was now the 9th of September, or ten days after they were missed. Then it was that M'Kay with his soldiers and one native woman arrived at Port Sorell to aid the searchers. This woman whose tribal name M'Kay forgets, was known to our people as Black Sal, and like all the women whom Robinson instructed to assist him in the subjugation of her race, her whole heart and soul were in the business in hand. Like the still living Trucanini, she was one of the most artful and energetic of the decoy ducks whom he had trained to entrap the rest.
M'Kay, with the practised eye of a bushman, had not been long on the ground without seeing that the search was an ill-managed one, prosecuted by men of slight bush experience only, who instead of finding anyone, were constantly getting lost themselves, and that unless some other means were employed to discover the missing men or their remains, the entire plan must end in failure.
​M'Kay is, what poor Moriarty was, a born sailor, and being known to the Captain, had his confidence; and he now suggested the surest way to succeed was for himself to proceed directly to George Town, along with his companion Black Sal, to confer with the imprisoned natives; explaining to the Captain, that as he spoke their language, and understood their habits and style of thought, so different from ours, he felt quite sure, if they or their tribe knew anything of the missing men, he could extract a confession from them, and by their means recover their bodies, for no one now doubted that they were dead. A plan so feasable as this met with instant approbation, and he started next morning armed with a letter to the authorities at George Town, urging them to give their best assistance to M'Kay, to forward the business that all were interested in. He reached George Town on Monday the 11th, and presenting his credentials, was furnished with an order to confer with the prisoners as often as he pleased, and with another one directing the gaoler to render him every assistance in his power likely to promote the mission.
On entering this abode of misery he found the prisoners in a condition almost bordering on destitution, their wants most imperfectly attended to, their apartment cold and comfortless and themselves huddled together for a little warmth. Though the weather was icy cold, the officials with the customary apathy of the time, had allowed them no fire, the next thing, after food, that a native had most difficulty to dispense with. The condition of the poor shuddering wretches made him angry with the gaoler and they were so downcast, that it was sometimes before either would speak a word in reply to his questions. Now M'Kay is about as kind-hearted a man as you would meet with in a thousand and he could not stand the scene of wretchedness before him. His first impulse was to order a fire to be made, and everything that he thought that would be most acceptable to them to be provided, hot tea, bread, meat, and tobacco without restriction, and to use M'Kay's homely expression, they ate and drank like mad, but of course gave over at last.
One of the first effects of good cheer, on half famished men and women, is to produce good humour; and M'Kay noticed—after they had eaten to repletion—a very marked change in them all; the sullen frame of mind in which he found them having quite passed off, and even the strong feeling of aversion that they held towards the whites was a little assuaged—at least in favour of their benefactor. The good offices of the latter proceeded from a natural feeling of compassion; but not so "Old Sal," who having her own ends to serve, had been most assiduous in her attentions to them, even though she care not one straw ​about them. She now took her place beside one of her own sex, an extremely handsome young woman, as here and there one of them was, named Nung-in-a-bit-ta, and after a good deal of pleasant chit-chat about matters quite foreign to the real business she was upon, the cunning old faggot, by insensible degrees brought about the subject of the two missing men, and by dint of coaxing and cajolery (after the ways of woman) wormed the whole truth out of the poor simpleton, which was that they had been killed by the men of her own tribe. She spoke of Captain Thomas as "Kandownee," meaning, says M'Kay, a superior person, such as the chief of an establishment which she divined him to be, as distinguished from "Rageo," which meant a common fellow, like a stockkeeper for example, a class of persons whom the natives hated, Rageo being part of the term by which they designated the Devil, "Rageoroppa." "When we had got to be good friends," says M'Kay, "she confessed that they had died by the spears of her tribe, and that two of the three men then in gaol were the most active in the murders, which two she declared to be Macamee and Wowee; and she volunteered to show us the bodies of the murdered men," an offer which M'Kay accepted directly, and he started for Port Sorell next morning, accompanied by the two women, and an active constable of the George Town police, named George Warren.
The party was crossed over the water at Port Dalrymple Heads, and soon reached Port Sorell, which they passed over, on M'Kay signalising his arrival on the shore opposite the landing place. He next reported progress to Captain Moriarty and Doctor Smith, informing them at the same time that the new arrival, Nunginabitta, knew where the bodies of the murdered men lay, but which, from some caprice, she refused to show, if any other except himself, Warren, and Black Sal accompanied her, and her peculiar humour being respected, they started under her guidance, and she led them straight to where they had died. "She took us," says Warren in his evidence, "about two miles into the bush, when they," that is the two women, "stopped and cried, and would not go any further, but pointed to the place where the bodies were to be found," which according to M'Kay's statement to the jury, was about a hundred yards from where ​they sat down. M'Kay describes the spot where this tragedy was performed as nearly open ground, and very inferior, and as they approached the spot where Parker lay, many crows flew up from it, thus indicating the precise spot where he fell. Sixty yards further on the body of Thomas was discovered. It was thirteen days since they died, but the weather had been so cold that decomposition had not yet set in. Still the body of Parker presented a shocking spectacle, that M'Kay never speaks of, even now, without horror. I shall not perpetuate his description. Thomas seemed more like one asleep than dead.
M'Kay next went down to the port, and informed Dr. Smith he had seen the bodies, and several other persons went up under his guidance to where they were, and a kind of stage was built on which they were deposited for the night, and they were sent on to Launceston next morning, where they arrived the day afterwards.
A coroner's inquest was held directly but not concluded for several days, owing to the absence of M'Kay, who was required not only as a witness, but interpreter also. His absence was accounted for thus:—Nunginabitta had informed Old Sal (in strict confidence of course, but who blabbed directly) that her husband, Killmoronia, had taken some part in the death of Thomas, and had retreated to the Surry Hills, towards which M'Kay turned directly to pick him up, but was stopped in his advance by the first river westerly of Port Sorell, namely, the Mersey, which was then greatly swollen; and it was whilst he was making a raft to cross this dangerous stream, he learned that his new companion intended giving him the slip to rejoin her husband. But she being too important a personage to lose sight of just now, he marched her off to Launceston, where he arrived with her three or four days after the first assembling of the Coroner's jury, which both were required to attend directly. M'Kay having given his own evidence was next sworn to interpret hers. But after handing her over to the authorities she was injudiciously allowed to see the prisoners, and when she came before the jury she contradicted all she said before. It now came out she had passed the preceding night with them and she so prevaricated, that M'Kay at last told the jury "it was evident to him that a plan had been laid to get the prisoners off by contradicting her former evidence." She, however, still admitted their presence at the murders, but contended that they took no part in them. "She would not allow," says the report, "that any of the men present had anything to do with the murders, but that they were sitting down." The jury, however, did not believe her story, and all three men were adjudged ​to be guilty, were committed to gaol accordingly, and M'Kay bound over to appear at their trial; but the Attorney-General of the time, the shrewd but eccentric Algernon Montagu, who (if it were possible) cared less for public opinion than even the Duke of Wellington, would not prosecute, so they were discharged, that is, if consigning them to the islands of Bass' Straits could be called discharging them.
After it had become known to the men of the Big River tribe through M'Kay, that Thomas' dispositions towards their race were friendly, they expressed great sorrow at having killed him, in which M'Kay believed them to be perfectly sincere.
* ↑ At this horrible gaol delivery, no fewer than twenty-eight men died, They were executed on four nearly following mornings, in instalments of seven, eight, nine, and four persons.
* ↑ Now living at Peppermint Bay, D'Entrecasteux Channel.
* ↑ This woman was Truganini, who is still living.
* ↑ Robinson, in one of his reports, gives this word as their equivalent for Devil, but adds that they used the same to express thunder and lightning, which no doubt they connected with the Evil Presence. M'Kay says that nearly all of them declared to him, in the most serious manner, that they had seen the "old gentleman," at one time or another, and were highly offended with him if they caught him even smiling at their credulity.