Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-06-20
LAST OF AN
EXTINCT RACE
JUST ONE HALr-BREED LEFT OF
THE TASMANIANS
Aged Woman the Representative Of One
Of the Oldest Races in the Entire
World-Discovery Of this Mrs. s. of
Interest to Scientists.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL, June ia
cable dispatch from Australia while
ago said that Doctor Berry Of the
University of Melbourne had discovered
living representative of the extinct
native race of Tasmanians, whose home
was confined in the large island of Tas.
mania, south of the Australian main.
land. The person he found was a wo-
man about 10 years old, wno lives in
Kangaroo island, south Of the state Of
South Australia, hundreds OF miles t.
the west of the land of her aboriginal
fathers. q
Doctor Berry has printed his report
in the Proceedings of the Royal Society
of Victoria, and the picture Of the wo-
man is taken from that Journal. His
discovery has received nrch publicity
because the Tasmanians wer', IN some
respects, the most interesting of the
native peoples of Australia.
They could not live under prcrominat'
ing white influence and became extinct
about a generation ago. A few quarter
breeds still survive, but th,S woman is
half breed, her mother having been
native Tasmanian and her father n
white man.
Doctor Berry says that according to
the best accounts of the Tasmanians
this woman preserves many of the phys
zeal characteristics of her aboriginal an.
ccstry. Anthropologists have !eplored
the disappearance of the Taspianians all
the more because they died out before
the present scientific methods &c study.
ing the physical characteristics of alb
aboriginal peoples had cone into rs.
Kangaro oIsland, where the woman
was found, was discovered by Flinders
in 1902, and was so named by that navi-
gator because he found great number
of kaugaroos there.
How does it happen that Mrs. s., as
Doctor Berry GALES her, was born and
has always lived SO far away from the
home of her mothers people'
1t appears that prior to 1885 only a
few white men lived on the island. One
of them, known as Wally, arrived from
Tasmania in 1919, bringing with him
two aboriginal women, one Of whom
became the mother, about seventy.five
years ago, of this half-breed Tasmanian
girl. She is today, Doctor Berry says,
the nearest representative "of one Of
the most ancient races in the world. "
The girl was educated by the wife of
the head keeper of the Cape Willoughby
lighthouse, and was married to the late
William s. Her father died few years
later and her mother survived him about
ten years and was buried on the island.
Mrs. S. has one son and two daughters
who, of course, are quarter-breed Tas-
manians.
Doctor Berry says that in conversing
with Mrs. S. the two facts that i'm
pressed him most were her remarkable
intelligence and the absolute purity Of
her English speech.
"If | had not actually heard her, y
he says, 81 could not have believed
that such intelligence could have been
derived in one generation from race
often, but perhaps quite enormously,
supposed to have been one of the most
degraded and brutal among the races
of the world.
Others who know her are Of the same
opinion, and Doctor Berry quotes Mr..
Halleck, who says that "Mrs. William
$. is of bright and happy disposition,
most interesting eonversationalist and
withal extremely apt at repartee.'
The last Tasmanian man, William
Lanney, or King Billy, as the whites
more commonly knew him, came of the
ruling family among his people. He
died in 1869 in his thirty-fourth year.
The previous year he had walked proud,
ly on the Hobart Town Regatta ground
with Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh,
conscious that they alone of that as
semblage were persons of royal blood. -
But while Lanney was the last sur
viving man of his race, he was outlived
by the woman Truganni, or Lalla
Rookh, who died in May, 1876. With
her the native Tasmanian race became
extinct, and it is supposed that Mrs.
S. is the oldest person now living who
in any way represents these aborigines.
One of the chief reasons why the Tas-
manians excited so much interest was
that scientific men came to believe that
they were of great antiquity, even when
compared with any other inhabitants of
the world. In their stone implements
and in other respects they seemed to
represent the condition of palaeolithic
man and in the human scale they were
thought to be the lowest of modern no
mad tribes.
They seemed to have no relationship
to the natives of Australia and many
eminent men Of science, including Hulk
lev. long debated their probable origin,