"rheumatism", deriving some satisfaction from the jocular remark that the boy suffered from stiffness—which, as he was lying dead in a scrub with a bullet through his bead, was quite true.
We will confine our instances to two, selecting recent ones—for the practice is not an old one, and has certainly not been abandoned. The cases occurred in the North.
The first case was that of a "boy" known as "Blondin." This trooper had "deserted"—that is, he had run away from one detachment to go back to the place from which he had been sent. The reason he gave for his action was that a gin belonging to his own tribe was attached to the camp to which he returned. The gin did no belong to him, but he seemed unwilling to leave the neighborhood even of a woman who belonged to the far-distant tribe from which be had been taken. He was arrested, handed over to an officer for punishment, and taken to the edge of a scrub and shot.
The next case was that of "Corney." This trooper had committed some offence of which we do not know the nature. He also was taken to a scrub, and found in a leaden bullet a sufficiently fatal disease to end his days.
The death—"execution" we presume it will be called—of one black trooper was accompanied by such circumstances of peculiar horror that it shows to what a depth white men may descend if compelled to follow the profession of a Native Police officer. The man to be shot was fastened to his gin by a handcuff secured round one ankle of each—the man and the woman. The white man having got both fastened in this manner, at the edge of a scrub, addressed the man in a sort of jocose tone, "You won't desert again, my man." Then he shot him. The wretched woman, nearly dead with fear, was compelled to drag the dead body into the scrub, where, after tormenting her by working on her terrors, the fastening was removed, and she was allowed to go free. This incident was told to two white men by the chief actor in it, and one of those men is our informant.
With this paper we propose to close the present series. It is not because our list is exhausted, unhappily that is of almost unlimited length. As we promised we would do in the beginning, we have only repeated stories which we had good reason to believe were true, and for which we could find authority that would be open to investigation by any properly constituted commission of enquiry. But we have at our disposal a mass of information which we cannot use. That information comes from men so situated that if it could be traced to them they would be exposed to much annoyance, and in some cases the danger of total ruin. Among these are men employed in the police force, who have been brought in unwilling contact with the system we have endeavored to illustrate. These men would be quite ready to give information if a genuine enquiry were instituted. The Government could verify all we have written from the evidence of their own officers if they really wished to do so. But the enquiries must be genuine, not of the merely official sort. As we have already explained, the basis of our system is the unwritten understanding that in dealing with the aboriginals those employed to suppress them may do what they please, provided they keep it quiet. They must not report, or if their official superiors require a report to silence the too pertinacious enquiries of some one who has an inkling of the truth, and is in a position that will not permit of his being ignored, they are expected to use language as the French cynic declared that it is commonly used—"to conceal the truth." The police employé who breaks this rigid but well understood rule imperils his position, and may length of service will not save him. Men cannot easily be found to incur their own ruin by speaking unwelcome truth, in order to expose conduct which the Government and Parliament of the colony expressly sanction. Let them, however, understand that the truth is really desired, and there will be no difficulty in obtaining it. And we have good reason to believe that not a few Native Police officers—men who have discharged their duty without unnecessary cruelty—and who themselves have often grown sick at heart over the work they have been compelled to do, would heartily welcome such an enquiry, for they would feel that it must lead to the establishment of a reformed system in which they could use their knowledge of the bush and of the natives in the performance of work which had nothing dishonorable about it, and, nothing which need fear the light of day. Till then such men must lie under the stigma which cannot fail to rest on the whole of a force which we treat so unfairly, and send out to do such abominable work.—Queenslander, July 3, 1880.
