Frontier to Protectionism History 9 william oates

Overview Post-First Contact Disease Frontier Violence Government & Settler Tactics Aboriginal Tactics Native Mounted Police Massacres-Myall Creek and others Tasmania Protectionist beginnings

Post-First Contact “The physical dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land was quite a different phenomenon to their legal dispossession.”1

Post-First Contact “In the face-to-face contact, the process of colonial takeover featured both conflict and co-operation.”1

Post-First Contact “Many Australian colonisers, especially its men, personally implemented the usurpation of land. The story often became violent as Aboriginal people and whites battled for land and other resources.”1

Disease

Disease David Collins: The number that it swept off, by their own accounts, was incredible. At that time a native was living with us; and on our taking him down to the harbour to look for his former companions, those who witnessed his expression and agony can never forget either.

Disease David Collins: He looked anxiously around him in the different coves we visited; not a vestige on the sand was to be found of human foot; the excavations in the rocks were putrid bones of those who had fallen victim to the disorder; not a living person was anywhere to be met with.2

Disease Was disease a ‘natural’ outcome of ‘first contact’? Could it have been a deliberate act of ‘germ warfare’?

Painting by Augustus Earle captures the effect of dispossession on Aborigines in the Sydney area – early 1830s

Frontier Violence “I look on the blacks as a set of monkeys, and the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better. I would never consent to hang a white man for a black one.” (Letter to the Australian, 18th Dec 1838)

Frontier Violence

Frontier Violence “Atrocities against the indigenes were often hidden from the public records. The British knew well the implications of committing deeds to paper which, although publicly condoned, did not conform to the ‘letter of the law’.

Frontier Violence “The frontiersmen clothed violence in euphemisms such as ‘dispersing’, ‘breaking up’, ‘shaking up’, ‘giving a fight’ and ‘teaching them a lesson’. While frontier warfare was considered men’s business, white women sometimes participated.”3

Frontier Violence White settlers in Qld killed some 10 000 Aborigines between 1824 & 1908. As well as death by conflict and massacres Aboriginal people were killed by being given foods laced with poison and having their waterholes poisoned.

Frontier Violence Massacres: Wiradjuri 1824 Along the Darling River 1835 to 1865 Major Nunns contribution 1838 Gippsland region 1840 to 1851 Yeeman 1857 Cullin-la-Ringo 1861 Forest River 1926

Government & Settler Tactics Series of Kidnappings Hostage taking was practiced to acquire intelligence Bennelong – who was forcibly kept in British custody in chains

Government & Settler Tactics Poisoning of water-holes Poisoned flour (arsenic) Man-Traps Raping of women Torture

Aboriginal Tactics

Aboriginal Resistance

Native Mounted Police Established in 1848

Native Mounted Police “set an Aborigine to kill an Aborigine” Underlying premise: “set an Aborigine to kill an Aborigine”

Native Mounted Police “Led by white officers, and equipped with horses, authority and guns, this band of murderous little bastards was the perfect killing machine!” (Rosser, B. 1990)

Native Mounted Police Trained Aborigines were engaged to hunt, track & kill other Aborigines Ceased operation in 1900

‘The Avengers’, an undated watercolour by S. T ‘The Avengers’, an undated watercolour by S. T. Gill, depicts the response which the settlers on the frontier had to Aborigines. Often the attacks upon Aboriginal camps were unprovoked and unjustified.

Massacres-Myall Creek & others

Myall Creek Massacre Seven men (white) were found guilty & hung for the murder of 28 Aboriginal people Changed the way violence was conducted on the frontier

Tasmania Conciliation 1828: Lieutenant-Governor Arthur’s proclamation. Role of Governors Answerable to London not elected constituents Native & colonist subject to the rule & protection of Law.

Tasmania ‘Black War’? The ‘Black Line’ 1824 to 1831 “The proclamation of martial law in November 1828 was a defacto declaration of war.” (Windshuttle 2002) Does it take two to make a ‘war’? The ‘Black Line’

Protectionist Beginnings Qld – Archibald Meston Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act [1897]

A good Read

Notes A McGrath, ed., Contested Ground – Australian Aborigines under the British Crown, St Leonards, 1995, p. 15 B Elder, Blood on the Wattle – Massacres and Maltreatment of Australian Aborigines since 1788, NSW, 1988, p. 15