Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania/Appendix
Appendix.
I have said nothing of Colonel Arthur's project for capturing the aborigines—a scheme that was devised and attempted in 1830; and I shall here say as little as I can of this absurd passage in the history of the colony.
The ill advised operations that he then undertook against so clever and crafty a foe, that have received the designation of the "Black War," (whereby he thought to enclose them within a moving line, advancing from north to south on a point of the coast, where two large peninsulas are united with the main by a narrow isthmus called East Bay Neck) was too chimerical in its conception, too absurd in its progress, and too inconsiderable in its results, to deserve serious notice. A line of troops and ready volunteers and others, numbering more than 4,000[1] persons, was stretched across the midland and eastern districts, to advance in thin but regular array. These districts, though open and level in some parts, are, as a whole, woody and very hilly; and as unfavourable for military operations of any kind, unless perhaps defensive ones, as it is possible to imagine. No such line could possibly move in such a country, with any degree of regularity; nor could the necessary communications be kept up. Some of the many intervening eminences have more the aspect and general character of mountains than of ordinary hills, and here and there are so covered with underwood that a rat could hardly creep through; others are precipitous, and most of them very steep. The late Captain Vicary, of the 63rd, told me that in crossing a very rugged eminence, called the Blue-hill, between the Clyde and Shannon Rivers, with his company, each man marching as usual a few yards apart, the regularity of their advance was wholly broken in ten minutes, and to use his own expression, "The devil a man of them did he see the whole of the rest of the day;" and this was daily the case with many other parties. Such a line was of course no line at all; and though for some weeks there were a tribe or two in its front, directly the acute savage understood the nature of the game that was going on, he burst through it and escaped, "leaving hardly a wreck behind." Two men were, however, taken, and two others shot, by a party led by a gentleman named Walpole (report, 29th October, 1830, Walpole's). This prize, such as it was, cost about £30,000. The men belonged to the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, who were then united, as Robinson found them at the end of the next year. They now consisted of 41 individuals, who, as we have precedingly seen, were reduced to 26 when caught. The plan of operations—conceived in ignorance of the difficulty of its execution—necessarily ended in failure.
Judged of by European standards of beauty, our natives were not generally a good looking race. But then the custom of both sexes to disfigure themselves—the men by smearing their heads with a compound of grease and ochre, and the women by shaving the head, so as to produce the appearance of absolute baldness—gave a repulsiveness of look to them that was not natural. Some of the youths of both sexes were passable enough, and one woman, whom I remember, who attracted crowds to see her when Robinson brought in the tribe she belonged to, was remarkably handsome. Some of the men, too, though very savage looking fellows, were, in most respects, in no way the inferior of the European. A native of one of the West Coast tribes, called Pen-ne-me-ric, whose portrait was painted with photographic exactness by an artizan of this town for transmission to Europe, possessed as fine and thoughtful features as anyone would desire to look upon. No fair judgment of them is to be formed, either from the paintings of Duttereau, or the few weird-looking old creatures that photography has preserved from absolute forgetfulness, who seem to have been selected from the most hideous of them.
From the causes mentioned above, more than from any natural defects, the most of them succeeded in making themselves repulsive enough; but had it been passible to have placed them in more favourable circumstances than those in which we found them, I believe that (colour apart) they would not have stood much behind any other race.
The following extract from a private letter of Robinson's to his friend Mr. George Whitcomb, gives us his opinion of the appearance and physique of the Tasmanian savage in his primitive state, or as he seemed to him to be, immediately after his withdrawel from his native wilds:—
"The undertaking in which I am engaged," that is against the blacks, "has been crowned with complete success. The little colony of blacks on Swan Island are all well and in excellent spirits. I fell in with these near to George's River, and fifteen miles inland, and conducted them through the forest (a distance of forty-five miles) to Swan Island. On this occasion I was only accompanied by one white man, as servant, and was unarmed. The aboriginies of Swan Island are a fine race of people, and not that miserable race that some have represented (or rather misrepresented) the aboriginal of Van Diemen's Land to be. They are equal if not superior to many Europeans. The most fallacious reports have been circulated to the prejudice of these poor benighted creatures. I have not yet in my long walk round the island and through the interior, met with that degenerated race, that some have represented the aboriginal of Van Diemen's Land to be, &c., &c."
The walk he speaks of, is described in an early part of this volume, viz., the very circuitous one of a thousand miles, that he travelled on the occasion of visiting the tribes who dwelt in the country that lay between Spring River and Emu Bay.
Erratum,—At page 34 for has been named before, read, will be named presently.
Henn & Co., Printers, 12, & 75, Elizabeth-street, Hobart Town.
- ↑ See Melville's "Van Diemen's Land Annual" (1833) page 94.