Some Account of the Wars, Extirpation, Habits, &c., of the Native Tribes of Tasmania/Chapter 1
SOME ACCOUNT
OF THE
WARS, EXTIRPATION, HABITS, &c.,
OF THE
NATIVE TRIBES OF TASMANIA.
By J. E. Calder.
CHAPTER I.
The most interesting event in the history of Tasmania, after its discovery, seems to me to be the extinction of its ancient inhabitants; and as the causes that have led thereto have been only imperfectly told, I purpose throwing a little more light on the subject than has, as yet, been made public, which I derive from authentic official documents—not generally perused by writers on the colonies—that I have had the rare advantage of studying, and which contain, also, copious accounts of their wars on the whites, and some information about their habits.
It is believed they were never a numerous people, and at no period since the colonisation of the country, in 1803, do they seem to have exceeded 7,000—which may be safely taken as an outside estimate of their numbers.
One individual of the race is now its only living representative, a very old woman, known amongst the colonists by the name of Lalla, but whose native name is Truganini.
The first settlers after landing on these shores, lived peaceably in their new possession for several months before the two races came to blows; and the hostility thus begun continued, with no great intermission, until, and only ended with, the removal of the last of the blacks to Wyba Luma, which was the name they gave to their asylum on Flinders Island.
The first landing of the white pioneers of the colony took place on the 13th of June, 1803 (Evans, Bent.). The party located themselves on the shores of a little bay, which they called Risdon, about three or four miles north-easterly of Hobart Town, and on the opposite side of the Derwent. It consisted of a few soldiers, civil officers, and convicts, all under the command of Capt. Bowen, of the Royal Navy. They hutted themselves at Risdon, and remained in undisturbed possession of their encampment till the 3rd of May, 1803, when it was that the first rencontre took place between the soldiers and the blacks.
A few months before this last-named date, the first Governor of Tasmania (Colonel Collins) arrived here from Port Phillip, and fixed himself at Hobart Town, but without removing Bowen's little party from Risdon, which remained there under the independent command of that officer, who was superseded by the Governor five days after the skirmish, but not in consequence of it, as he had nothing to do with it.
At 11 o'clock of the morning of the 3rd of May the shouts of the natives were heard on the Risdon hills, as they drove a herd of kangaroos before them. They were armed with waddies only (short thick hunting clubs), and were accompanied by their women and children—a certain proof that they had no hostile intentions against anyone at the time, as it was their constant rule to leave them behind when they went out to fight. An eyewitness of the events of this deplorable day, of the name of White, who gave evidence on the 16th March, 1830, to a number of gentlemen, styled the Aboriginal Committee, thus describes the approach of the natives. He says;—"I was hoeing new ground near the creek. Saw 800 of the natives come down in a circular form, and a flock of kangaroos hemmed in between them. There were men, women, and children. They looked at me with all their eyes. I went down to the creek and reported them to some soldiers." It would seem that these savages were at this time unacquainted of the occupation of their country by Europeans, this witness saying, "Is sure they did not know there was a white man in the country when they came down to Risdon." A quarrel soon took place but it is not quite certain who began it; though, in balancing the evidence, the blacks seem to have been the aggressors. Captain Bowen was just then absent, on a visit to Slopen Island, and the troops were, at the moment, under the command of Lieutenant Moore.
The testimony of several witnesses was taken by the committee touching this unhappy event, which was generally confirmatory of White's, except that he—who was the only one actually present at the moment—declared, in opposition to all the rest, that the soldiers began the fight that took place, and not the blacks.
The following extract from the committee's report of the 19th March, 1830, thus sums up the evidence they took on this head:—"The committee have some difficulty in deciding whether it is to be considered as originating in an aggression by the natives, calling forth measures of self-defence, or in an attack upon them commenced by the settlers and military, under an impression that an attempt was about to be made on their position, by the unusually augmented numbers of the natives. It appears unquestionable that a person named Burke, whose habitation was considerably advanced beyond the rest, was driven from it by the natives, whose number was estimated at upwards of 500 (that is, by some of the witnesses), and much violence was threatened by them towards this man, his wife, and dwelling. . . . But whatever may have been the actual course of previous events, it is indisputable that a most lamentable encounter did at this time take place, in which the numbers of slain, men, women, and children have been estimated as high as 50; although the committee, from the experience they have had in the course of this enquiry of the facility with which numbers are magnified, as well as from other statements contradictory of the above, are induced to hope that the estimate is greatly overrated." One of the witnesses, the Rev. Mr. Knopwood, who was in the colony at the time, said he "does not know how many natives were killed, but supposes five or six."
Another battle is said to have been fought some time alter on the ground where the Hobart Town Hospital now stands, in which artillery is supposed to have been used against the blacks. But this oft-told tale seems to rest on no better proof than that a little grape-shot was afterwards found, and some skeletons disinterred, at this place. Mr. Knopwood disposes of this fable in his evidence thus:—"There were no natives killed upon the hospital hill at Hobart Town. Some shot and skeletons were found there some years after the settlement was formed—the shot were the remains of stores brought from Port Phillip, and the bones those of persons who arrived from India, died, and were buried there."
Numerous fictitious fights are recorded as having taken place in the early times of the colony, and which, though still repeated by lovers of the marvellous and horrible, were found to be utterly false on investigation. Thus, some time in 1828, a party of military and police, who were sent in pursuit of the blacks, instead of acting against them, lay idly by in the bush, and on returning to their station reported a success over the enemy, having killed seven of them, they said; which rumour soon magnified into, first, 17, then 40, 50, 70, and finally 100 (as stated in Mr. Gilbert Robertson's evidence, 3rd March, 1830). They surprised them, they said, in a ravine, a perfect cul de sac, from which there was no escaping. Another gentleman, also a Mr. Robertson—who, like his namesake, discredited the story, proceeded next day to the field of slaughter, along with one of the heroes of the fight, a corporal of the 40th Regiment; but, on reaching the ravine, the only victims of their fury were found to be three dead dogs. The soldier then said—"To tell you the truth, we did not kill any of them; we had been out a long time, and had done nothing, and said it in bravado."—(Evidence, 4th March, 1830.) These two examples of a hundred such battles will probably be enough.
That many hostile collisions occurred between the two races during the 30 years that succeeded the first colonisation of the country is true enough; but I know of no trustworthy record of more than one, two, three, or at most four persons being killed in any one encounter. The warfare, though pretty continuous, was rather a petty affair, with grossly exaggerated details—something like the story of the hundred dead men, reduced, on inquiry, to three dead dogs.
The gradual decrease and final extinction of the ancient inhabitants of Tasmania, which is now so very nearly accomplished, is assignable to very different causes than the hostility of the whites, to which it has been so much the fashion to ascribe it; for, up to the time of their voluntary surrender to the local Government, they not only maintained their ground everywhere (the towns excepted), but had by far the best of the fight. Tribal dissensions, causing mutual destruction (for such were their jealousies and hatreds, that they fought one another all the time they were thrashing the whites), contributed to their decrease in some degree, and the justly provoked hostility of the settlers aided the progress of their decay, but only in minor manner; for, beyond all doubt, they were no match for the blacks in bush fighting, either in defensive or offensive operations. The settler and his homestead were generally, but not always successfully, surprised by his subtle enemy; and in pursuit (if the savages were beaten off), the less active European, stood about the same chance of coming up with him, as the slow hound would have in a deer chase; and as far as I can learn from a pretty attentive perusal of the massive correspondence on the subject of the long quarrel between the two races, that is deposited in the office of the Colonial Secretary, filling nineteen awful volumes of manuscript papers, aggressiveness was almost always on the side of the blacks; and in this unequal contest the musket of the Englishman was far less deadly than the spear of the savage, at least five of the former dying for one of the latter. Thus, in the first and largest volume of the series above spoken of, which treats solely of these encounters, we learn that in the five years preceding the close of 1831, 99 inquests were held on such of the white people, whose bodies could be found after death, against 19 blacks, killed in these farm fights; and it is further recorded, that in the same period 69 Europeans were wounded against one, or at most two, of the other race; some of the latter were also taken. That many others on both sides were killed in the same period whose deaths are unreported, is very certain; and equally certain is it, or at least highly probable, that in these unrecorded encounters our countrymen got the worst of it, as they generally did. I have here to remark that the number of inquests actually held must have been much greater than what I have stated, as the coroners of three principal districts were unable to furnish the returns required by the Government, doubtless from the defective state of their office records. I say nothing of the operations of certain bands of whites, called "roving parties," one of which, at least, did kill several of them.
If it had been possible to bring the savage into fair and open fight, with something like equal numbers, all this would have been reversed, of course. But the black assailant was far too acute and crafty an enemy to be betrayed into this style of contest, and never fought till he knew he had his opponents at a disadvantage to themselves. He waited and watched for his opportunity for hours, and often for days, for he knew nothing of the value of time, and when the proper moment arrived he attacked the solitary hut of the stock-keeper with irresistible numbers, or the hapless traveller whom he met in the bush, taking life generally singly, but often; the largest number that I read of his destroying on any one occasion being four persons.
In the assaults on the dwellings of his enemy he contrived his attacks so cleverly as to insure success at least five times in six, and if forced to abandon his enterprise, his retreat, with few exceptions, was a bloodless one.
The natives so managed their advance on the point of attack as not to be seen until they were almost close to the dwelling of their victim. They distinguished between a house and a hut, and seldom approached the former, for they quite understood that there was some difference between the most imprudent stock-keeper, and his more thoughtful employer. They had several instances of this, and profited by their experience. There was no want of pluck in the former, but a great absence of vigilance; and until these barbarians were reduced to a mere remnant by disease and strife, they never attacked except in parties of 20, 50, or 100, or even greater numbers. Their mode of assaulting a dwelling when there were several inmates at home, which they knew by previous watching, was to divide into small gangs of five, ten, or more, each concealing itself as effectually as the clansmen of Roderick Dhu, their approach being so quiet, as to create no suspicion of their presence, to which the woody and uneven nature of the country is eminently favourable. Then one of these parties, which was prepared for instant retreat, made its presence known, either by setting fire to some shed or bush fence, or by sending a flight of spears in at the window, shouting their well known war-whoop at the same time. This never failed of bringing out the occupants, who, seeing the authors of the outrage, now at a safe distance, but in an attitude of defiance, incautiously pursued them; and no experience of the artifices of the savage, ever taught the assailed a lesson not to continue this insane practice. The blacks then retreated just as quickly as the others advanced, keeping out of gunshot and defying them, generally in good English, to come on; for it was always found that some of nearly every tribe spoke our language well, as will be presently explained. Having decoyed their pursuers to a safe distance into the woods, and generally with rising ground between them and the hut, the others sprang from their cover, and rushing the place, plundering it of its contents, often finishing their work by burning it to its foundations; first, however, killing, or leaving for dead, any unfortunate persons—mostly a mother and her children—who chanced to be left behind. They then fled with their booty, reuniting with the decoy party at some distant point.
In their first systematised assaults, which seem to have commenced about 1824, or a little earlier, their principal object was murder; but in later times, plunder was the chief motive of the savage in attacking the white; and murder, which was often superadded, only a secondary idea. They took everything that was useful, and often what was no use at all to them; and more than once afterwards when their encampments were surprised, perhaps 50 miles from any settlement, when instant flight was necessary, they left articles behind that they could not even have known the nature of, such, for example, as clocks, work-boxes, &c., of which there are still extant some curious inventories.
But provisions of all sorts, and, above all, blankets, firearms and ammunition, were the articles they prized most; of which latter they eventually surrendered many stand to the Goverment—pistols, muskets, fowling-pieces, powder and ball, all perfectly clean and dry, and in excellent order. Of these latter it was found that they knew not only the use, but were practised in using them; but there is no instance of their bringing them into the field, though they afterwards assured their principal captor and future "protector," Mr. George Augustus Robinson, they meant to have done so, but to the last they seem to have preferred their own arms in both fight and chase—namely, the spear and waddy.
Of firearms they had learned the use from both men and women of their own race, who, having been taken in early infancy by the settlers, were brought up in their own families, mostly as their own children; but they invariably left them when they grew up, and rejoined their own people, just like wood-pigeons, whose natural instincts can never be repressed. To these flights the youths were generally induced by the girls of their own race, with whom alone they could intermarry, and who had, therefore, no difficulty in enticing them into the woods. The natural propensity of the domesticated black females to be with their own people, operated similarly on them, and they became the instructors, in mischief at least, of the wild natives, and strangely enough, were foremost in every aggression on the whites, by whom, with hardly an exception, they had been treated with unvarying kindness, but they were probably thrust to the front by the others; and, possessed, as the whole race was, of most excellent memories, they never lost the language of our country.
Women, too, who had been either forcibly removed from their tribes, or purchased of their husbands or fathers, by a lawless handful of ruffians called sealers, sometimes escaped from their merciless masters, and after years of separation, rejoined their tribes, and became the most hostile of the enemies of all who belonged to the race of their persecutors; and notwithstanding the ancient custom of the blacks, not to permit the women to take any part in active war, these individuals could not be restrained from joining in, and sometimes leading the attack. One of these persons, called the Amazon by her captor Robinson, (a woman of one of the East Coast tribes whose real name was Walyer or Taierenore) planned and executed nearly every outrage that was committed in the districts bordering on the North and North-western coast. In the days of their decay, she collected the poor remnants of several tribes into one hostile band, of whom she was the leader and chieftainess; and true to the natural instincts of the savage, avenged the many indignities she had suffered at the hands of a sealer, on every one she fell in with who bore his complexion, telling Robinson that she would kill the whole race "as soon as she would crush a black snake."
But in their attacks on the widely separated dwellings of the stock-keepers, they were not always successful; and several instances are recorded of their defeat, and once by the intrepidity of a woman, who held her little fortress for six hours against eight of them (part of a band of 20). The account of this most gallant act is contained in an official report of Captain Moriarty, of the R.N., of the 25th of August, 1831.
Knowing by previous watching that this woman—a Mrs. Dalryrmple Briggs—and two female children, were the only occupants of her hut, they abandoned their usual stratagem in approaching it, and advanced undisguisedly to the door. Hearing "some little noise outside," says the report, "she sent the eldest child to see what was the matter, and hearing her shriek, went out herself with a musket. On reaching the door, she found the poor child had been speared. The spear entered close up in the inner part of the thigh, and had been driven in so far as to create a momentary difficulty in securing the child." The savages came on en masse, and so quickly, that she had scarcely time to close and barricade the doors and windows before they closed around her dwelling.
Her only means of defence was her musket and a few charges of duck-shot; and their only means of entry, the chimney, which in all bush huts are low, and so large, that two or three persons could jump down them at once. This being the weak point, our heroine took post here, and defied all their efforts to enter, firing her duck-shot at them, whenever they gave her a chance. They next tried to pull the chimney down; but she managed to give one of them such a dose of small lead that they desisted from the attempt. Baffled and repulsed they retired for about an hour, which time they employed in making a number of faggots, and then returned to the attack, to burn her out, as they could not force an entrance. They threw these blazing brands on the roof, to windward, says the report, but she contrived to shake them all off before ignition took place—how, is not stated. Her maternal affections and duties, quite mastering her natural fears, she actually maintained her post against them, for the time I have stated, when an armed and mounted party suddenly galloping up, the siege was raised.
The child that was speared was enticed outside by the blacks, (many of whom were famous mimics), imitating the cries of poultry when alarmed by hawks, &c. Moriarty's report also mentions, that these men had on the same day, attacked the hut of a person named Cubitt, and speared him; and further that the natives had assailed and badly wounded him eight times before; but another report from a different quarter states that he had always been very active against them; and as forgiveness is not amongst the attributes of the savage, nor forgetfulness one of his defects, they never appeared in his neighbourhood without letting him know that they still hold him in remembrance.
The craft of the savage and his uniform disposition to treachery, in his early intercourse with the settlers, are very faithfully described in the report of the Aboriginal Committee, 19th March, 1830. This committee consisted of some of the best informed and most intelligent men of the colonies of New South Wales and Tasmania, of whom Archdeacon Broughton, the immediate superior of the church of both colonies, was chairman. From this report I will here make an extract:—
"It is manifestly shown that an intercourse with them on part of the insulated and unprotected individuals or families has never been perfectly secure. Although they might receive with apparent favour and confidence such persons as landed from time to time on various parts of the coast, or fell in with them in remote situations, yet no sooner was the store of presents exhausted, or the interview from other causes concluded, than there was a risk of the natives making an attack upon the very persons from whom they had the instant before been receiving kindness, and against whom they had, up to that moment, suffered no indication of hostility to betray itself. . . . It is within the knowledge of many members of the committee, and has been confirmed by other statements, that even at this period" (they are speaking of the early times of the colony) "there was, beyond all doubt, in the disposition of the aborigines a lurking spirit of cruelty and mischievous craft, as upon very many occasions, and even on their retirement from houses, where they had been kindly received and entertained, they have been known to put to death with the utmost wantonness and inhumanity stock and hut keepers whom they fell in with in retired stations, at a distance from population, and whom there is every reason to believe had never given them the slightest provocation."
This general friendly disposition of the colonists towards them was almost invariably repaid by acts of savage violence; and they robbed and murdered whenever it was safe to do so. But notwithstanding all this, a kindly intercourse was still maintained with them, and they came to the settlers' houses and departed at will, without molestation of any kind; until Colonel Arthur, in 1825, wishing to terrify them by such an example as would show them they should not continue their murderous practices with impunity, caused some of the ringleaders and actual perpetrators of a shocking murder at Grindstone Bay, of a person named William Hollyoak, to be apprehended and brought to justice. The offence was proved by some men who escaped from the assault of the blacks, and the murderers were hanged for it; "after this," says the committee's report, "they came no more to the usual places of resort," and it may be added that they were never more known to visit the house of the settler, or the hut of the stock-keeper except as enemies.
Many of the tribes were united by relationship or other ties, and Colonel Arthur was soon made to understand that the example of these executions had quite the opposite effect to what he expected, for the aggressiveness of the enemy increased ten-fold from the time when they took place.
I have spoken before of the conduct of a few persons called sealers, as ministering to the bad feeling that so long prevailed amongst the natives towards the other race, and I will here say something about them.
These men dwelt on some of the islands in Bass's Straits, and the very worst accounts are given of them by the official protector of the blacks, Mr. G. A. Robinson; and though his statements are very generally confirmed by the prior evidence of some of the witnesses of the Aboriginal Committee, they are not quite so in every particular. Two of these gentlemen, who knew the sealers quite as well as he did, though they loudly denounced the brutality of some of them, accompany their testimony, as to their original possession of the native women, with some slightly palliative circumstances, which he, in his hatred of these men, either overlooked, or was ignorant of.
From the earliest times of the occupation of the country, a horde of reprobates lived on these islands, quite beyond the range of human observation, and equally beyond the controlling power of the Government. They consisted mostly of a mixed class of runaway convicts, of bad character and disposition, and of runaway sailors as profligate as themselves. They lived by collecting the beautiful skins of the seal, which formerly frequented the off-lying rocks of these islands in vast numbers, and are still to be found there, but so greatly thinned are they, and so shy that they are no longer sought after, or not much. These persons often resorted to the coasts of the main land to obtain kangaroo skins, in which they also traded; and if all that Robinson says of them is quite true, they never failed attacking the native tribes who frequented these parts, whenever and wherever they met them, carrying off their women and female children into slavery of the worst description, and shooting the men if they dared to interpose; and he gives such instances of their after cruelties to their captives as can hardly be read with patience. That there was great truth in what he said on this subject is indisputable, for he was quite fortified by the previous evidence of Captains Kelly and Hobbs, who had had accidentally, so to speak, much intercourse with these men in their own various coasting enterprises of discovery, survey, or whaling. But the protector shirks the question of this traffic in women, which the others, who hated these men quite as much as him, impute chiefly to the native men, who first bartered their women for the carcass of the seal or for hunting dogs. These unfortunate women became so useful to their masters, that when they could not get enough of them by purchase they kidnapped them, but made no active war on the blacks until the latter rose against them in a body and killed four of them, "since which time," says Robinson, "the sealers have shot the natives whenever they have met with them." (Appendix, Report 24th Oct., 1830,) These kidnappings contributed largely to the decay of two or three tribes less by their onslaughts on the men than the seizure of the women; and the protector, in one of his many reports on the condition of the natives, gives the names (mostly unpronouncable ones) of every individual then remaining of two of the tribes, who lived within reach of these fellows, viz.. 74, of whom only three were females; and two of these three did not belong properly to either tribe, being only visitors.
"This vast disproportion of the sexes," he says, in his report, 20th Nov., 1830, "has been occasioned principally by the sealers, who have stolen their women and transported them to the different islands." And in a marginal note against this passage, he says, "there are at the present time not less than 50 aboriginal females kept in slavery on the different islands in Banks' and Bass's Straits. (Banks' Strait separates the islands he refers to from the main land of Tasmania). But many of these women were, no doubt, obtained by purchase in former years, a practice which in those days was not confined to them, but was universal. But this is a matter that Robinson does not touch on.
To recapture these women and take them under his own protection was always a pet scheme of his, and the means by which he effected it were not always very straightforward or always approved by the Government he served, who made him restore some of them, who, if they were slaves, as he constantly represents them, were the mothers of the sealers' children. No doubt the conduct of these men, like that of other slave-dealers, was very bad, but he seems to have painted it as disadvantageously as he could. Captain Kelly—no friend of the sealer—states that many of the women preferred living on the islands rather than return to their own people, by whom it is well known they were often very badly treated. "The women," Kelly says, in his evidence, "were not always unwilling to go, and after a time preferred stopping on the islands of the straits." He then gives such a fearful account of the torments some of them endured, especially from one miscreant named Harrington, that if they preferred the treatment he describes, to what they underwent from their own husbands, their condition at all times must have been a truly unhappy one.
I learned from Archdeacon Reibey, who visited the straits about eight years ago, that there were then five of these women living on the islands, all very old; but I have since heard that all are dead.
These sealers were never numerous. The protector of the aborigines, in one of his reports, gives the names of all of them living, 29 persons. Their descendants at this day, who are called "the half-castes of the straits" (being the blood of the two races), do not exceed 100 persons.
To put down such an enemy as the aboriginal of Tasmania, who, I have shown, was neither to be easily met with in fight nor overtaken in pursuit, in both of which he so often proved himself the superior man, was obviously a most difficult task; and either his never-ceasing surprises of the settlers must be quietly borne with, or his race must be removed. For a long time the Government retaliated with idle proclamations only, published in the official Gazette with as much seriousness as if it really believed this captivating journal reached the hands of these barbarians, and were of course only so many contributions to the waste-paper basket of the colony. One of these silly advertisements defined the limits of the districts they were to live in, and directed them in mandatory terms never more to pass the lines described in this terrible order which could not be conveyed to them, nor understood if it were. Abandoning at last this absurd mode of procedure which lasted much too long, while the blacks were devastating the homes of the colonists, almost with impunity, Colonel Arthur took more active measures for the protection of the people, and equipped several "roving parties," as they were called, to beat up the natives' encampments, and if possible to convey to the enemy a message of peace; and as these parties were mostly accompanied by captive blacks, half tamed into subordination, partial intercourse with some of the tribes took place, and beyond doubt it somehow became known to them that the wish of the Governor was to protect equally both races, for when Robinson afterwards got a footing amongst them, he not only found that they were well aware that the desire of the whites was for peace, but that the expiring tribes, who were then dying off almost as fast as they could lie down, wore not unwilling to "come in," as he calls it, i.e., to surrender. The dissemination of this desire, in whatever way it reached them, was the principal good done by the roving parties—that is, if it were effected by them, as it is said to have been; though considering what was the practical action of some of them, I should think they did more to increase than allay enmity, and it is more likely they heard it from the civilised youth of their own race, who so often eloped from the guardianship of the settler.—But the tribes still remained as intractable as ever, until a man who spoke their own language, and was master of their various dialects (of which Robinson says there were six), went boldly amongst them, accompanied by ten or a dozen of their own countrymen, whom he had perfectly subdued to his will, and conciliated into affection for his person, and in about five years of most unremitting exertion and toil brought in the whole of them (except about four) who, to the great astonishment of every one but himself, were found not to number more than 250. The causes of this declension I shall explain in their proper place, taking Robinson for my authority. In his various reports he always maintained that this people was nothing but a remnant of the six or eight thousand who were living in 1804, and his reports of their strength he had from the most accurate sources, viz., the natives themselves (who, though they had no words to express numbers higher than four, could repeat the names of the individuals of the tribes, and thus he learned their real force), which he never rated eigher than 700—that is, after 1830; and year after year his estimates decreased as they died out, and he then reports 500, and finally 300 or 400, and when he got the last of them they had sunk to the number given above, that is—to about 250.
I hope I shall not be charged with digressing in saying a little about these roving parties, some of whom appear to have wholly neglected their duty, while others quite over-did it. One leader is charged with acting as a land agent whilst in the field, instead of following the blacks—that is, looking up suitable spots for emigrants to settle on for a private compensation; another with gross improprieties with the half-civilised women of the blacks who accompanied him as trackers and interpreters; others, with shooting them when they came on the wild tribes—an odd way of delivering a pacific message; but as some of these charges rest on the report of persons evidently unfriendly to them, they must be read with caution. But when one of these leaders, who was the most active and trusted of the whole of them, tells such a story as the following of himself in an official report to the Government, we have no difficulty in believing that they were not a well-selected set of men for the delicate mission they were entrusted with. He says:—
"On Thursday, the 1st inst. (i.e., September, 1829). I started again in pursuit of the aboriginies, who have been committing so many outrages in this district. On Wednesday I fell in with their tracks." These he followed. "We proceeded," he continues, "in the same direction until we saw some smoke at a distance. I immediately ordered the men to lie down, and could hear the natives conversing distinctly. We then crept into a thick scrub, and remained there until after sunset. . . . Made towards them with the greatest caution. At 11 o'clock p.m. we arrived within 21 paces of them. The men were drawn up on the right by my orders, intending to rush upon them before they could rise from the ground; hoping I should not be under the necessity of firing upon them; but unfortunately, as the last man was coming up, he struck his musket against that of another, which immediately alarmed their dogs, about 40. They came at us directly. The natives arose from the ground, and were in the act of running away into a thick scrub when I ordered the men to fire upon them, which was done, and a rush by the party immediately followed. We only captured that night one woman and a male child, about two years old. The party were in search of them the remainder of the night, but without success. Next morning we found one man very badly wounded in the ankles and knees. Shortly after we found another; ten buck shot had entered his body—the man was alive, but very bad. There were a great number of traces of blood in various directions, and I learnt from them we took that 10 men were wounded in the body, who they gave us to understand were dead or would die, and two women in the same state had crawled away, besides a number that were shot in the legs. . . . On Friday morning we left the place for my farm, with the two men, woman and child, but found it quite impossible that the two former could walk, and after trying them by every means in my power for some time found I could not get them on; I was obliged therefore to shoot them." The number of buck shot that he poured in amongst the sleeping tribe, he says, was 328.
He proceeds to say that he took the unfortunate mother's child from her directly he reached home, sending the mother, herself, to Campbell Town Gaol, of the infant, he says, "I have kept the child, if His Excellency has no objections, I intend to rear it;" and coolly adds in reference to the assault on the tribe, "the whole of the men behaved exceeding well on this occasion." (Report, 7th September, 1829.)
At a distance of little more than a dozen miles from Hobart Town is a huge island called Bruny, containing much about one hundred thousand acres, which was formerly inhabited by a considerable tribe of natives. In past years, these people had often committed the usual outrages of the Tasmanian savage on his white neighbour. But this ill-feeling had partly died out through the intercourse they had had with large parties of whalers, stationed for long periods of every year in some of the bays of the island, where they prosecuted, what was then termed the Bay Fishery. These rough fellows, it is well known, cultivated an intimacy with the too facile females of the blacks, conciliating some of the men with presents of food &c., though others were greatly displeased at this intimacy, and indignantly rejected their false friendship; but not so the majority of them. Propriety of demeanour was not uniformly amongst the virtues of the female savage, and very simple acts of good nature propitiated and secured the connivance of, at least, some of the other sex. But all this, though known well enough afterwards, was very little understood at the time. Here, therefore, Colonel Arthur, some time in 1828, formed an asylum for the reception and conciliation of captured blacks who came in slowly enough, and by ones and twos only. From motives of policy, and possibly of humanity, they were well treated—that is, they were clothed, fed, and hutted, as he meant to set them free again, that they might rejoin their own tribes, and spread amongst them reports of his kindness, and of the friendly disposition of the Government towards them. This he afterwards did, as far as he could; and I quite believe that some good resulted from it, in smoothing the way to their ultimate surrender to Robinson. As for this being actuated by any feeling of compassion towards them, or disposition for "the amelioration of this unhappy race," of which he made such a fuss in his proclamations, letters, and official memoranda, on this subject, I don't believe a syllable of them, or that he cared a rap about them, or what became of them, so long as he could get them into his hands, and thus remove the reproach of their existence at large from the history of his Government. For example sake only, he hanged altogether four of these savages, two at one time and two at another; but when he had the opportunity of punishing any of the very few murderers of this people, he never, as far as I can discover, even censured the authors of this wickedness, his public manifestoes breathing vengeance against any and every body who wantonly molested the blacks notwithstanding, which, I believe, they were put forth for after-effect only. Beyond doubt there were instances of the murder of these people which went unpunished and uncensured. Justice metaphorically represented as blind, was literally so in these cases, and no one stepped forth to avenge the criminality of the white against his sable brother. The cruel act of shooting the two disabled and dying savages above recorded, is a case in point. Far from even censuring the author of this inhuman outrage, he never lost his confidence, but for long afterwards was his trusted councillor in all matters connected with the so called conciliation of "this unfortunate and helpless people," as he was fond of calling them.
Of the asylum at Bruny, Robinson volunteered to take charge—an office more of love than profit—for the consideration of £100 a-year, and a personal ration. He was, by trade, a master builder, but gave up his business, said to have been a lucrative one, for a more congenial occupation, which exactly accorded with the natural tastes of the man. His appointment is dated "March 1829."
He was a person of uncommon energy, and possessed of that indomitable perseverance that never yields to difficulties that the will can overcome. In his many well-planned enterprises, for what he always calls the "subjugation" of the savages, he was often in great danger of their spears; but no risks, however iminent, daunted him for a moment. If they repulsed his advances, or even beat him off, he was at them again next moment. When once on the trail of a tribe, the days, or even the hours, of their liberties were numbered, and their long-known haunts "knew them no more for ever." His heart and soul were devoted to the work of ridding the country of them, without shedding their blood; and when he undertook the seemingly hopeless task, he never doubted his ability to remove every one of them from the main land, which he ultimately effected, with the exception of four, of whose existence he seems to have been misinformed. They must have been reported dead, for at the close of his labours he assured myself who knew him, not intimately, but pretty well, that only one man was unaccounted for, who he believed had died in the bush; and which circumstance I have since seen mentioned in one of his official reports. He was a man of strong common sense, but imperfect education. His first reports, though not badly worded, betray his ignorance of spelling, and also that his grammatical studies were not very complete. But he either improved in these little matters afterwards, or placed his writings for correction in the hands, probably, of a convict clerk, who was subsequently attached to his service. In quoting from these, which I shall have to do rather largely, I shall of course not adhere to his peculiar method of jumbling the letters of the alphabet together, which practice he seems to have learned in the schools of Mrs. Tabitha Bramble or Jeames Yellowplush. He was rather pompous in manner, and vain of his services, in having almost single-handed put an end to 30 years of petty warfare; and his "dispatches," as he invariably calls his interminable reports, in magniloquence of style, throw into the shade altogether the official bulletins of such men as Napoleon, Wellington, and others; still they contain much little known information on very interesting subjects. In his ordinary demeanour he was more patronising than courteous; and somewhat offensively polite, rather than civil. For a long time he quite failed of conciliating the colonists as he had done the savages, and was at first looked on by them as nothing but an impostor; and the flaming descriptions he gave everybody of his friendly interviews with the blacks, which at first had no visible results, were as generally as unjustly discredited.
His first care after taking charge of the new establishment on Bruny Island, was to learn the language and various dialects of the natives; and being a man of excellent natural abilities, he soon mastered this part of his self-imposed work, and thus had a great advantage over all others, as no one but himself knew a word of it; and in a few months afterwards he reports that he had so far got over this difficulty as to be able to converse with them, and that he had commenced the compilation of a vocabulary, which, in the end, must have been a pretty complete dictionary; but I believe he never gave it up to the Government. The language of the tribes seems to have been simple enough, consisting chiefly of verbs, adjectives, and substantives; and from the few authentic translations that have reached us of conversations, &c., a good deal must have been left to the understanding of the person addressed. A couple of examples taken from one of Robinson's long letters will illustrate my meaning. Thus a man whose wife was dying, and to whom he offered food for her, said, "Tea-noailly—parmatter—panmerlia—linener, noaillly," which he translates, "Tea, no good—potatoes—bread—water, no good; meaning," says Robinson, "that his wife had no wish for food of any kind." He gives a portion of a Sunday address that he made to them (for he was an occassional preacher), as follows:—"Matty nyrae Parlerdee, Matty nyrae Parlerdee. Parleevar nyrae, parleevar loggernu taggeerer lowway waeranggelly. Parlerdee lowway. Nyrae raegee merrydy nueberrae. Parlerdee waeranggelly. Kannernu Parlerdee. Nyrae Parlerdee neuberrae nyrae raegee timene merrydy. No ailly parlevar loggernu tageerer toogunner. Raegorropper, tienee maggerer. Parleevar tyrer, tyrer, tyrer. Nyrae parleevar maggerer. Parlerdee waeranggelly timene merrydy, timene taggathe." Which he translates thus:—
"One good God. One good God. Native good. Native dead, go up sky. God up. Good white man sick looks God sky; speaks (or prays) God. Good God sees good white man no sick. Bad native dead goes down, evil spirit (or devil) fire stops. Native cry! cry! cry! Good native stops God sky, no sick, no hungering."
The frequent occurrence of all the liquid letters in the few words given above will strike every reader. Their language, which is all but lost, was peculiarly soft; and except when excited by anger or surprise, was spoken in something of a singing tone, producing a strange but pleasing effect on the sense of the European.
Three or four months after his appointment to the charge of the asylum, he volunteered to visit the wild tribes in their native haunts, and to use his best efforts to conciliate them. He says, "I have proposed to the natives that they accompany me on the expedition, to which they appear extremely anxious. They are well suited to such a purpose. Their aptitude to descry objects is astonishing, so much so that where my vision has required a glass, they can distinguish. . . . Their presence would gain the confidence of the other tribes. They tell me how they would proceed. That upon observing the natives they would go to them and would tell them that I was very good,—that they had plenty of bread, potatoes, clothes, and huts to live in. &c."
In his many missions to the tribes, he had always several of his trained blacks with him, and often no others; and strangely enough he never, except once, approached their bivouacs with arms of any kind; and though he generally carried some with him, he always made it a point to leave them at his encampment whenever (after discovering them) he went forward to meet them. This procedure, seemingly so dangerous to himself, and novel to them, appears to have had generally an excellent effect, though there were instances of the contrary—namely, in cases where the wrath of the resentful savage was so inextinguishable and deeply rooted that he refused all intercourse, and would meet him and his party on no other terms than those of mortal strife. In one instance, the natives pursued him most perseveringly for hours, determined to kill him and all his followers; and the escape of the unarmed party was almost more than miraculous. In his flight he had to pass through the densest of forests, with the blacks almost at his heels; and to cross a large and rapid river, bank high with water, caused by recent rains; and though he could not swim a stroke, one of faithful followers, whom he always calls his sable friends, got him through every difficulty, and he reached his camp in safety. This repulse daunted him not in the least degree, for after a very brief rest, he went after them again, and after another parley with them of some duration, in which all his persuasive powers were called forth, two of them swam the river and joined him, and two others came in the same day, and before very long he had the whole of them safe. (I shall presently give the details of this adventure from Robinson's own narrative.) He never fired a shot, or used physical force to a native in his life, and I wish I could add that he is quite free from the suspicion of using deception and making promises to them in the name of the Government, which he should have known could not be kept. It was never quite believed by many of the colonists that he got them all by fair persuasion; this I have heard hinted twenty times or more, and I notice in one of his reports that he pretty well convicts himself of this. He was a diffuse and seemingly careless writer, but no man knew better than he how to frame his letters to the Government so as to leave little trace of error behind him. But in a moment of great and natural elation, just after capturing the very worst and most sanguinary of the tribes, the Big River and Oyster Bay people united, he incautiously lets out the secret of his success. He says, "I have promised them an interview with the Lieutenant-Governor, and told them that the Government will be sure to redress all their grievances." (Report, 5th January, 1832.) On hearing which they gave in without one other word, and followed him rejoicingly to Hobart Town, a hundred miles from the scene of their surrender; from whence, instead of having their grievances redressed, whatever they were, they were immediately consigned to the barren solitudes of Flinder's Island (then a new asylum), where the earthly career of four-fifths of them was ere long fulfilled.
His well-instructed, but unsuspecting sable friends were mere decoy ducks, used by him to bring the wild flight into the net of the fowler; and cleverly did he make them play his game. His black associates numbered amongst them, people of nearly every tribe, and were devotedly attached to him by companionship, and many acts of kindness, which though doubtless spontaneous, served his ultimate ends.
On discovering the smoke of the hostile bands, to which his acute trackers never failed to lead him (except once or twice, when their own fears of their wild brethren so overcame them that they dare not approach until forced on again and again by Robinson), it was his invariable practice to halt his party, and form his camp, where he himself remained, with perhaps one or two of his own race (whom he constantly calls his "Uropeans"), and then sent out his natives to negotiate with them for a friendly interview with himself. After a few hours delay, or at the most a day or two, they returned to him, usually with the good tidings that the natives would receive him, when he went forward, and they met in peace. Their astonishment at seeing him trust himself amongst them unarmed, and unattended by any of his Europeans, and at hearing themselves addressed by the white stranger in their own beautiful language was always very great. These circumstances, coupled with the gratifying promises he made them for their future repose and comfort, completed the work of their subjugation, as he aptly calls it.
He often remained at the huts of these simple-minded children of the forest for weeks together, taking part with them in their hunting excursions and nocturnal sports, which, from previous companionship with his domesticated blacks, he quite understood; all of which was only smoothing the road by which he ultimately led them to the great graveyard of Flinders Island.
These pleasant meetings were not always unattended with personal inconvenience; and once during a three weeks' association with this "interesting people," as he often styles them, they infected him and all his blacks with a grevious fit of the itch, which, no doubt, greatly incommoded the party. "During my stay with this people," he writes, (July 27, 1830), "myself and aborigines became infected with a cutaneous disorder to which the natives are subject."
This friendly interview, of which I shall have to speak more in detail presently, ended in nothing but the establishing of friendly feelings, which, indeed, was all that his instructions at this time permitted. He left them with the best opinions of himself and of the Government he served, which were disseminated amongst all the tribes with whom they were on friendly terms. Presently under the heading of "Legends of our Native Tribes," I shall give some of the most notable of his enterprises against the blacks; but will now proceed to the subject of their
CUSTOMS, HABITS, ETC.
Of the mode of warfare of this people little remains to be added to what I have already said, though I shall be unable to avoid incorporating a few incidental remarks on the subject in some of the passages that follow; for example, in describing their weapons, &c., it may be referred to again.
THEIR DECAY.
It was held by some very intelligent witnesses who were examined by the Aboriginal Committee in 1830, and who had been in the colony from the day of its foundation, that at the time of the first landing of the European settlers the number of savages then in the woods was not less than 7,000, a fact which could not be certainly known, but which might be pretty fairly guessed from the number of known tribes, and a good estimate of their strength. In Robinson's time there were 16 tribes still in being, and he says it had come to his knowledge that several others that were extant 15 or 20 years before he wrote (Report, 27th July, 1830) were extinct then (that is, they were in existence in about 1810 to 1815). On the South Coast alone, lie enumerates by name five[1] that have died out, besides several others in the east, whom he does not name. Of the districts of the north, or the interior, he at that time knew nothing. Many of the tribes that were known to the early colonists numbered from 400 to 600 persons, and if there were 20 or 25 tribes existent then, 7,000 can hardly be an exaggerated estimate. If 500 of these were killed defensively by the settlers, or aggressively by the sealers and bushrangers, we may be assured that it is an outside number. A very few hundreds were made prisoners.
Indeed all reliable evidence, of which there is plenty extant, shows that what they suffered from the whites has been most grieviously exaggerated, and by no one so much, but in general statements only, as by Mr. Robinson himself; for he gives not the smallest proof of it, except in the instance of the sealers, and hardly once names the bushrangers. But he adduces abundant examples of murders by the blacks—the "poor helpless, forlorn, oppressed blacks," as he calls the one race, and the "merciless white" the other—expressions he so often uses, without the least proof of their applicability to either race, that one sickens of their repetition. From all that I can learn, by the attentive perusal of a vast mass of documentary evidence, I do not believe even as many as 500 of them were killed, and about that number made prisoners. Of the assumed number, 7,000, who were in the colony in 1803 and 1804, at least 6,000 must have died at their own encampments, from causes not induced by war, except tribal wars. These latter, taken singly, though not very bloody, produced collectively a large number of deaths. Their rapid declension after the colony was founded is traceable, as far as our proofs allow us to judge, to the prevalence of epidemic disorders; which, though not introduced by the Europeans, were possibly accidentally increased by them. The naked savage soon discovered the comforts of covering, and such things as blankets and clothing were often given them by the settlers, or were distributed amongst them by the Government in large quantities; and in their almost countless hut robberies they never failed of taking away every blanket they found there.
But of all created animals, the untaught savage is the most imprudent; and he often kept his prize no longer than it suited the idle habits of the wanderer to carry it. Hence, he was wrapped up like a mummy one week, and was as naked as a newly-born infant the next. The climate of Tasmania is also a variable one. True, there is hardly such a thing known as extreme heat or cold, but there are very rapid changes of temperature, from moderate heat to coolness. Cold, in the Englishman's sense of the word, is unknown, except in the high lands of the country, where for five months of the year it is bitter enough, and something like a seventh or eighth of its area, is over 2,000 ft. high; and no little part of these high-lying lands is double that elevation, and a good deal more, and, therefore, both chilly and humid. The surface is quite as varying as the climate, hence the general beauty of the scenery. Now any person, whether savage or civilised, who wraps up at one time and goes perfectly naked at another, exposed to very frequent changes of temperature, is certainly not likely to keep long in health, but is assuredly laying the foundation of fatal consumptive complaints, from which (such was the peculiar constitution of the Tasmanian savage) almost immediate death was certain, and whenever he took cold it seems to have settled on his lungs from the first. Speaking of the many deaths occurring amongst this people from this cause, Robinson says, "they are universally susceptible of colds, and unless the utmost providence is taken to check its progress at an early period, it fixes itself on the lungs, and gradually assumes the complaint spoken of, i.e., Catarrhal Fever." (Report, May 24, 1831). Again speaking of the tribes inhabiting the Western districts, he says, "the number of aboriginals along the Western Coast has been considerably reduced since the time of my first visit," that is, at the beginning of 1830, "a mortality has raged amongst them, which, together with the severity of the season and other causes, has rendered their numbers very inconsiderable." (July 29, 1832). I am little versed in the science that treats of epidemic diseases, and cannot therefore explain the processes by which they are spread through entire communities with something like telegraphic rapidity, but it is visible to us all, and therefore requires no verbal proof; and the savage of Tasmania was more than ordinarily liable to its attacks, which, unlike the European, he knew no remedy for, and sought only to relieve his pain by a process far more likely to be injurious than beneficial, namely, the excessive laceration of his body with flint, or glass if he could get it, which, by producing weakness, made death only the more speedy and certain. He had none of the appliances or comforts of civilised life, and succumbed at once. Colds, settling almost instantly on the lungs, sent them to the grave by hundreds; and no wonder that Robinson found a whole tribe housed in a single hut, for whom a twelvemonth before six or seven were necessary; and I quite believe that the original cause of their decay lay in their own imprudence, generating fatal catarrhal complaints, from which an European, by proper remedial measures, resorted to early, would easily have recovered. These imprudences were, of course, practised only by a few tribes inhabiting the settled districts, but the consequences, which are of course epidemic, infected all before long.
Many of the tribes, particularly of the Western and South Western Coast districts, which were known to be very strong in numbers, long after the first colonisation of the country, were not exposed to contact with the whites, and yet when taken, they hardly ever consisted of 20 persons, and when larger numbers were brought in at any one time they were always of more than one family.
Of their rapid mortality when under the immediate observation of the protector at Bruny, Flinders, and Hunter's Islands, I have said something elsewhere. But it may not be improper to add that at the last-named asylum, sickness was sometimes induced by the neglect of the Government, which persisted for some months in supplying them with salt provisions (in spite of the repeated and strenuous remonstrances of Robinson), which they hated the very name of, and only ate from necessity, but to which they were too long restricted. The little game there was left on the island, after the incursions of the sealers were prohibited, was speedily demolished by the natives. Of shell-fish, there were few or none hereabouts, and no other fish would any native of Tasmania ever touch; whether it was natural aversion or superstition is not known, but scale-fish of any kind was as much an abomination to the entire race as swine's flesh to the Jew or Mussulman; and they would literally rather starve than eat it. In this respect they quite differed from the New Holland savages, by whom it is greatly relished. From some not very satisfactory explained cause, the sheep on the island were not touched. Robinson says they were too young and too small for killing; but the consequence of restricting the natives to salt provisions was to bring on scorbutic complaints, which terminated fatally in some instances.
TREATMENT OF THE DEAD.
In one of the protector's earliest reports, 12th June, 1829, he gives some lengthy, but very interesting, particulars of their mode of disposing of the bodies of their dead. He relates nothing but what he saw himself, of the death of the patient or patients, and final disposal of their corpse. As nothing can be more simple or touching than his account on the subject, I shall quote all he says about them. The scenes he describes took place on Bruny Island in 1829:—
"Extracts from my journal.—Monday, May 18, 8 a.m.—Visited the aboriginal family, Joe, Mary, and two children. Mary evidently much worse, appeared in a dying state. Looked wistfully at me, as if anxious for me to afford her relief. Alas! I know not how to relieve her. Only the Lord can relieve in such trying circumstances. Inquired of her husband the cause of her affliction; he said 'Merriday, byday, ligdinny, lommerday' (sick, head, breast, belly). On each of those parts incisions had been made with a piece of glass bottle. The forehead was much lacerated, the blood streaming down her face. Her whole frame was wasted. She had a ghastly appearance; she seemed in dreadful agony; her husband, much affected, frequently shed tears. . . . Made her some tea; could not bear the afflicting scene; returned to my quarters; the husband soon following me, his cheeks wet with tears, said his 'luberer, lowgerner un-uenee' (wife, sleep by the fire). Stopped about half an hour. I made him some tea for his children. Asked him if he would take his luberer any. He said, 'tea-noailly, parmatter, panmerha, linener no-ailly' (tea no good, potatoes, bread, water no good), meaning his wife had no wish for food of any kind. In about half an hour I met him coming towards my quarters with his two children, kangaroo skins, &c. At about a hundred yards distant I saw a large fire. It immediately occurred to me that his wife was dead, and that the fire I then saw was her funeral pile. I asked him where his luberer was. He said, 'loggeenee uenee' (dead—in the fire). Walked to the place; the wind had wafted the fixe from her body; her legs were quite exposed (here follow a few illegible words); the fire had burnt out; the body was placed in a sitting posture. While ruminating on the dire mortality that had taken place amongst the people of this tribe, I was interrupted in my reverie by the husband of deceased, who requested I would assist him in gathering who-ee (wood) for the purpose of consuming the remains of the body. My feelings were considerably excited at this—an office of all others I never could have conceived I should have been called on to assist in."
Poor Joe's own turn came in less than a fortnight, and Robinson's journal thus describes his death, and gives this time a fuller detail of the funeral ceremonies of a native.
"Sunday, May 31, 5 p.m.—The sick aborigine requested to have a fire made outside the hut, to which he desired to be carried. Imagining that this man could not survive long without immediate medical relief, I ordered the boat to be got ready, intending to send him to town. But God's will be done. He expired ere it was ready. These are afflictive providences. In the death of this man and his last wife Mary, the establishment has sustained a great loss. He was kind, humane, and remarkably affectionate to his children.[2] … Last Sabbath he appeared in good health, but his spirits were evidently broken since the death of his last wife. He has left two helpless orphans to lament his loss. I took occasion to converse with the natives on account of the death of his two wives, but they told me they did not like to speak of it." (It is right to say that they never spoke of the dead, nor ever again mentioned their names.)
MANNER OF BURNING THE DEAD.
"I was busy preparing for his departure to Hobart Town for medical assistance, when the groans of this man ceased, and with them the noise of the other natives. A solemn stillness prevailed—my apprehensions became excited—I went out—he had just expired. The other natives were sitting round, and some were employed in gathering grass. They then bent the legs back against the thigh, and bound them round with twisted grass. Each arm was bent together, and bound round above the elbow. The funeral pile was made by placing some dry wood at the bottom, on which they laid some dry bark, then placed more dry wood, raising it about 2 ft. 6 in. above the ground; a quantity of dry bark was then laid upon the logs, upon which they laid the corpse, arching the whole over with dry wood, men and women assisting in kindling the fire, after which they went away, and did not approach the spot any more that day. The next morning I went with them to see the remains, and found a dog eating part of the body. The remains were then collected and burnt.
"I wished them to have burnt the body on the same spot where his wife had been burnt, but whether because it was too much trouble, or from superstitious motives, I know not; but they did not seem at all willing; I therefore did not urge it. . . . After the fire had burnt out, the ashes were scraped together, and covered over with grass and dead sticks."
While the natives were making the funeral pile, Robinson took occasion to extract from them what their ideas were of a future state, and where they thought the departed went to. They all answered "Dreeny," that is to England, saying, "Parleevar loggernu ueuee, toggerer Teeny Dreeny, mobberly Parleevar Dreeny," (native dead, tire; goes road England, plenty natives England). From what they had seen of the productions of the superior race, they probably thought there was no happier abode in the universe than England.
He tried to convince them that England was not the home of the departed, and though like some other orators, he talked them down, he did not argue them out of their belief.
It has been often said that they had no idea that there was such a thing as a future state; but this simple reply shows that, however imperfect their notions were on this subject, they quite believed in a life beyond the grave, or rather after the destruction of the body at the funeral pile. He adds that they were fatalists, and also that they believed in the existence of both a good and evil spirit. The latter, he says, they called Rageo wropper, to whom they attributed all their afflictions. They used the same word to express thunder and lightning. He also says that the dying native had a keen perception of his approaching end, and when he knew it was at hand his last desire was to be removed into the open air to die by his fire.
Robinson was a reformer, and an enthusiast in everything, and was too fond of persuading them to put off ancient practices for European customs. I believe he almost thought he could make an Englishman out of black materials. Before long he induced them not to paint themselves, from which, no doubt, they derived warmth; and he now persuaded them to submit to the burial of their dead, instead of burning them. It matters little in what way the living consign their dead to decay, but he was no respecter of ancient customs, and when I visited the asylum at Bruny immediatrly after its abandonment in 1830, I saw many grave-mounds there.
In the same report, he says they always retired to rest at dusk, rising again at midnight, and passing the remainder of the night in singing to his own very particular discomfort, as there was no more sleep for him after they woke up. "My rest," he says, "has been considerably broken"—by this disagreeable practice of theirs of night-singing—"in which they all join. This is kept up till daylight; added to this is the squalling of their children," and here he ends the sentence.
In a subsequent report, August 6, 1831, written after he became acquainted with the hostile tribes, he says that the most popular of their songs were those in which they recounted their attacks on, and their fights with, the whites.
It has been customary to rank the Tasmanian savages with the most degraded of the human family, and possessed of inferior intelligence only. But facts quite disprove this idea, and show that they were naturally very intellectual, highly susceptible of culture, and above all, most desirous of receiving instruction, which is fatal to the dogma of their incapacity for civilisation. Reasoning from such facts as that they went perfectly naked, were unacquainted with the simplest arts, were even ignorant of any method of procuring fire, and erroneously thought to have no idea of a Supreme Being or future condition, they were almost held to be the link that connected man with the brutes of the field and forest.
The aboriginal's wants were indeed so few, and the country in which it had pleased the Almighty to place him supplied them all in such lavish abundance that he was not called on for the exercise of much skill or labour in satisfying his requirements. He had no inducement to work, and (like all others who are so situated) he did not very greatly exert himself. Necessity, said to be the parent of invention, was known to him only in a limited degree; and his ingenuity was seldom brought into exercise. His faculties were dormant from the mere bounty of providence. The game of the country and its vegetable productions would have amply supported a native population ten or a dozen times larger than it ever was. Kangaroos, opossums, wombats, birds, shell-fish, were plentiful, far in excess of his wants. Of fruits there are indeed none worthy the name. But in the vast forests of the country are to be found very many vegetables which, though quite disregarded by Europeans, were relished by the savage; and Robinson in one of his letters speaks of his resorting to their practice of using certain edible ferns, which are so abundant in many districts that credulity could hardly believe it. How they prepared them, or what species they used, he does not say. Indeed the subject of their customs and peaceful pursuits does not seem to have been a favourite study of his, and except their practice of lacerating the sick and burning their dead, which he has been at the pains to describe, we gather very little knowledge of their habits from his letters, except from scattered incidental remarks.
His country lying a little north of a line, mid-distant from the pole and equator, the climate of its low-lying lands is necessarily mild and very agreeable, so that bodily covering of any kind, though prized after habituation to it, was easily dispensed with, and the skin of the kangaroo, so fastened over one shoulder as not to impede the free use of the arms, was enough for the female and her infant, the adult male going generally quite naked. That he was ignorant of any artificial means of procuring fire may be traced to the nature of the woods of the country, which with hardly an exception, are nearly as hard as whin-stone, and not very inflammable either, so that no amount of manual friction could possibly ignite them. Hence his fire, however he first obtained it, like that of Vesta, was never suffered to die out, it being the province of the women to keep it constantly supplied with fuel when the tribe was stationary, and to preserve it when on the move, by bark torches renewed as required. That he had his own ideas, not very perfect ones, of a good and evil spirit, and believed also that absolute annihilation did not occur with death, we have already seen. He, perhaps, did not reflect much on these subjects, but then he was quite uninstructed, and no state of isolation could have been more complete than his own; so that knowledge of any kind from sources outside his island home never reached him. But when once taught, there never was a people, according to Robinson, who more readily received instruction, or were more eager for it than the savages of Tasmania. School learning was acquired rapidly by them, even the adults. Scriptural truth was taught them both by their protector and a catechist specially appointed to instruct them, and they seem to have understood it, and for a short time it may be said of them, in the language of a sacred writer that they "saw it and considered it well, they looked upon it and received instruction." But of their capacity for civilisation, as explained by Robinson, I shall speak by-and-by.
In stature some of them were tall, and a few were robust; but the most of them were slimly-built persons, wiry and very agile. The features of neither sex were prepossessing, especially after they had passed middle age. Their noses were broad, and their mouths generally protruded extremely. In youth, some of the women were passably good-looking, but not so the most of them; and only one of the many I have seen—the wife of a chief—was handsome. The women however appeared to great disadvantage, by their fashion of shaving the head quite closely, which in their wild state was done with flints and shells, and afterwards with glass, when they could get it. The men, on the contrary, allowed their natural head covering, wool, to grow very long, and plastered it all over very thickly with a composition of red ochre and grease, and when it dried a little their locks hung down so as to resemble a bundle of painted ropes, the red powder from which falling over their bodies (which were naturally a dull black colour), gave the naked savage a most repulsive look.
The shoulders and breasts were marked by lines of short, raised scars, caused by cutting through the skin and rubbing in charcoal. These cuts somewhat resemble the marks made by a cupping instrument, but were much large and further apart.
They never permitted their wives or children to accompany them in their war expeditions, either against the whites or enemies of their own race, but left them in places of security and concealment; and Robinson told me that though their wives went with them in their hunting excursions, they did not allow them to participate in the sport, and that they acted only as drudges to carry their spears and the game; but that the fishing business (for shell-fish only, obtained by diving) was resigned wholly to them. The men, he said, considered it beneath them, and left it and all other troublesome services to them, who, in nine cases out of ten, were no better than slaves. If a storm came on unexpectedly, the men would sit down while the women built huts over them, in which operation, as in all others of a menial nature, the man took no part. To make his own spears, to hunt, fight, and salve himself with his ochreous mixtute, were his principal, and perhaps only, occupations.
The huts of this people were the frailest and most temporary structures conceivable. They were often meant only for a night, and perhaps were seldom occupied for a week, though those of some of the west coast tribes were most substantial. Uniformity of design was, of course, quite out of the question; for these hovels were suited to the circumstances of the moment only. Some that I once met with in the Western Mountains seem to have been constructed in a great hurry, and were composed of a few strips of bark laid against some large dead branches that were used just as they had fallen from the trees above. Others that I have seen had, pretty evidently, been occupied for several nights. These were also of bark, supported on sticks driven a little into the ground, and were adorned, according to their ideas of ornament, with several rude charcoal drawings, one representing a kangaroo of unnatural appearance, that is, with its forelegs about twice as long as the hinder ones; another was meant for an emu; a third was also an animal that might have been either a dog, a horse, or a crocodile, according to the fancy of the connoisseur. But the chef-d'-œuvre was a battle piece, a native fight—men dying and flying all over it. These huts were closed only on the weather side, and perfectly open in front, some large enough for several persons, others less; and the one with the elaborate designs was, I suppose, the residence of a single man, being the least of all.
His spear was a long thin stick pointed at both ends, made of a hard heavy wood, called by the colonists tea-tree. The weapon of the adult was 10 ft. long or more, and was thrown from the hand only, with great force and precision, having a range of, I believe, about 60 or 70 yards. Both the throwing-stick and shield of the New Hollander were unknown to him. The only other weapon he used was the waddie. This was made of the same wood as the spear; not two feet long, and thicker at one end than the other. It was held by the thinner end, and was used either as a club or a missile. Used for the latter purpose, it was hurled with awful force and certain aim. When his other weapons failed him he fought with stones, and even with these he was a very formidable opponent. The waddie, however, was chiefly used in the chase.
In fight, the vengeance of the savage was not appeased by the death of an enemy. The mutilation of the body, and particularly of the head, always followed, unless the victor was surprised or apprehended surprise. This was done either by dashing heavy stones at the corpse, or beating it savagely with the waddie. In many of the inquests that I have spoken of in the early part of this paper the deceased were hardly recognisable.
The Tasmanian aboriginal in advancing on an unsuspecting victim whom he meant to kill treacherously, approached, apparently quite unarmed, with his hands clasped and resting on the top of his head, a favourite posture of the black, and with no appearance of a hostile intention. But all the time he was dragging a spear behind him, held between his toes, in a manner that must have taken long to acquire. Then by a motion as unexpected as it was rapid, it was transferred to the hand, and the victim pierced before he could lift a hand or stir a step. This practice and some others of theirs, are, I believe, common in New Holland, and seem to favour the idea of original migration from thence. But they were not of the same stock. There was one very marked difference between the races, the Australian being a straight-haired man, and the Tasmanian a wool-headed.
The hatred of the women for their half-caste offspring has been named before, and I have been told that the New Holland woman has the same aversion. My informant was a gentleman who had resided long in the wilds of Australia, and said that though children of mixed blood were to be met at the encampments of the blacks, he never saw an adult half caste amongst them, and he believed they destroyed them. There are about a hundred of them now living in the Straits, the results of union between the sealer and the savage, many of whom have not only reached adultness but old age. But here the parents lived together in settled life, and the fathers, bad as they are said to have been, were there to protect their children. No doubt the characters of these men have been taken from the worst and most hardened of them. But in Australia I have heard that the union from which these unfortunates are produced is of the most temporary nature, and usually dissolved after a brief intimacy, the care of the offspring of it being wholly surrendered to the mother, in whose charge it seems never to reach even adolescence.
It is nowhere stated, that I know of, that polygamy was practised by the Tasmanian; but as the man Joe, whose death and funeral ceremonies I have recorded, had two wives at the same time, it cannot be said that the practice was unknown to them.
To the other services rendered by the woman must be added the entire care of the children. She carried her infant, not in her arms, but astride her shoulders, holding its hands.
The construction and propulsion of the catamaran, or boat of the native, was also the work of the women. This "machine," as Robinson contemptuously calls it, was only used by the people of the south and west coasts. The northern and east coast tribes, he says, "have not the slightest knowledge of this machine." (Report, Feb. 24th, 1831). The configuration of the north and east coasts—which are not much indented with bays—made it hardly necessary to the people inhabiting them. It was of considerable size, and something like a whale-boat, that is, sharp-sterned, but a solid structure, and the natives in their aquatic adventures sat on the top. It was generally made of the buoyant and soft velvety bark of the swamp tea-tree (Melaluca Sp.), and consisted of a multitude of small strips bound together.[3] The mode of its propulsion would shock the professional or amateur waterman. Common sticks with points instead of blades were all that were used to urge it with its living freight through the water, and yet I am assured that its progress was not so very slow. My informant, Alex. M‘Kay, told me they were good weather judges, and only used this vessel when well assured there would be little wind and no danger, for an upset would have been risky to some of the men, who unlike the women, were not always good swimmers, though most of them were perfect. In crossing from South Bruny to Port Esperance, which they sometimes did, the distance is not less than eight or ten miles, and in stormy weather this is no pleasant adventure, even in a first-class boat.
They were great flesh-eaters but not cannibals, and never were; and some of them being incautiously asked if they ever indulged in this practice, expressed great horror at it. They never named the dead, and certainly never ate them. Large and small game was supplied them so plentifully, that they had no occasion to resort to the revolting custom.
Their mode of ascending trees after opossums, was to cut small notches in the barrel, just large enough to admit the toes. These were cut with a sharp stone. The labour of making these stepping-places with these simple instruments was such as to cause them to cut them at long intervals, which induced the discoverer of the country, Tasman, to believe that they must be of gigantic stature, which I need hardly say they were not. Their condition in a land of plenty rendered an acquaintance with arts of any kind nearly unnecessary. The fabrication of their simple arms, baskets, canoes, string, and necklaces, I believe, exhausts the list of their manufactures.
Their baskets were made of the long leaves of the plant called cutting-grass very neatly woven together; and the necklaces of small, beautiful shells, iridescent, the purple tint predominating. These shells in their natural state have no great beauty, but after removing their outer coating, their appearance is quite altered. This removal they effected with acids, how obtained in their wild state I know not, but I presume from wood. In their captivity at Oyster Cove, where they made them for sale, they used vinegar. I think a moderate heat was necessary in removing this outer covering, for on visiting their huts when they were preparing them, a woman handed me a saucer of them, which she took from the fireplace.
Robinson's reports are so much taken up with his own personal adventures—sufferings from excessive fatigue, his successes and many disappointments, and complaints of the most annoying red-tapeism of the commissariat and port offices, which were then enough to drive one to the mad-house,—that, as I have said before, he does not tell us very much about their customs, which would have relieved the tediousness of his writings. He speaks a little, incidentally, of their internecine strife, and of the ineffaceable hatred of rival tribes, which he takes credit for having entirely allayed, after their removal to Flinders Island, though I shall show he was not quite successful, and that when his back was turned it was very difficult to keep them from coming to blows. Nor does he say one word about their general assemblies of confederated tribes, which they are known to have held, probably to concert measures relating to war. A curious account of one of their places of meeting is preserved in an official letter, written by Mr. W. B. Walker, dated December 24, 1827, from which the following is taken:—
"Some time since Mr. W. Field had occasion to search for a fresh run for some of his cattle, in the course of which he found a fine tract of land to the west of George Town, in which is an extensive plain, and on one side of it his stockkeepers found a kind of spire, curiously ornamented with shells, grasswork, &c. The tree of which it is formed appeared to have had much labour and ingenuity bestowed upon it, being by means of fire brought to a sharp point at top, and pierced with holes in which pieces of wood are placed in such a manner as to afford an easy ascent to near the top, where there is a commodious seat for a man. At the distance of 15 or 20 yards round the tree are two circular ranges of good huts, composed of bark and grass, described as much in the form of an old-fashioned coal-scuttle turned wrong side up, the entrance about 18 in. high, 5 ft. or 6 ft. high at the back, and 8 ft. or 10 ft. long. There are also numerous small places in form of birds'-nests, formed of grass, having constantly 14 stones in each. The circular space between the spire and the huts has the appearance of being much frequented, being trod quite bare of grass, and seems to be used as a place of assembly and consultation. In the huts and the vicinity were found an immense number of waddies, but very few spears. The stockkeepers, several of whom have given me the same account, call them preaching places, and state that there are two others, but of inferior construction, one about five miles from the Supply Mills, and the other west of Piper's Lagoon, north of the Western River (now the Meander). One of my informants, who has been much in the habit of kangaroo hunting, says they are places of rendezvous, where the natives keep a large stock of spears and waddies. He described the spears as carefully tied to straight trees with their points at some distance from the ground. He states that he has frequently met small parties of natives on their way to and from the two last-named places, and that the parties that ramble about this part come from thence."
Animosities ran high amongst them, and their quarrels never died out except with the extinction of their enemies. They made long marches to surprise them; and to come on them unperceived, if possible, was their constant object. But it was most difficult to approach them thus, the greatest circumspection being necessary, for such was their vigilance, that it was rare to catch them off their guard; and this difficulty must have been much increased when they became possessed of dogs, of which every tribe had an immense pack, varying from 30 to 100. In a country less abounding in game than Tasmania, such numbers could not have been kept. There seems to have been an hereditary feud between the men of the east and the west, and whenever their captor, Robinson, met them, they were either on the march to meet their ancient opponents, or were returning from a victory; for I do not recollect a single instance in which they ever acknowledged defeat.
It was not till after his bush labours were over that Robinson took charge of Wyba-Luma (as the natives called their village on Flinders Island) with the designation of commandant. He was nominally so from the first, but his long and frequent absences from it required that a resident manager of the place should be there; and this office at one time was filled by a gentleman of the name of Nickolls, who appears to have had the greatest difficulty in repressing the ill feeling of the members of rival tribes who were then on the island, who, according to the good old customs of their fathers before them, were always for fighting it out, and settling their little differences in this way. This gentleman thus wrote to the Colonial Secretary on the 9th June, 1835:—"The greatest drawback to a perfect civilisation is the determined hostility of the Ben Lomond and Big River tribes to each other. The Western natives have attached themselves to one or other of the two tribes, as their inclination led them; thus virtually making the whole body for the purposes of war to consist of only two tribes. It requires great vigilance to prevent them from breaking out into open hostilities: a very little would set them in flame, they are so very jealous of each other. Upon the arrival of those from town who principally belong to the Ben Lomond tribe, at present rather the weakest in number, I much fear a rupture will take place if extreme caution is not used."
But matters went further than this soon afterwards, and the two parties went out to fight, and were only prevented from doing so by the prudence of that gentleman and his family, who reminded them of the expected arrival of the Governor amongst them (which was then looked for), and how it would displease him to hear of their differences, and so on; and my informant told me that just at this moment the topmasts of a vessel were seen on the horizon, which it was thought might be those of the brig having him on board (though they were not so), and they desisted. Their march was described to me as a very regular one, and that they stepped pretty well together, singing or shouting some war chant, and rattling their spears as they went along, striking the ground with great force with the foot every third or fourth step. The look of each was determined and ferocious beyond expression. Mr. Nickolls soon afterwards retired from the island, and Robinson, after the completion of his bush services, took charge of the establishment himself.
CAPACITY FOR CIVILISATION.
Of their mental faculties and aptitude for acquiring knowledge he speaks in laudatory terms. In a lengthy report, dated July, 1836, he gives a great deal of valuable information on these interesting subjects, which dispels the long received notion that they were incapable of civilisation; and as this intelligence relating to an extinct race can hardly fail of gratifying laudable curiosity, I shall repeat a good deal of what he says, running the extracts I make into a continuous narrative:—
"The minds of the aborigines," he says, "are beginning to expand. They have more enlarged views of their present situation, and are grateful for the favours conferred upon them. They are volatile in their spirits, and are extremely facetious and perfectly under command. They studiously avoid exciting my displeasure, and appear grieved if they imagine I am in the least offended. The natives are placed under no kind of restraint, but every degree of personal freedom consistent with a due regard to their health, and the formation of religious and civilised habits. The natives are now perfectly docile, and the greatest tranquility exists among them. The mortality that has taken place among the aborigines on the islands may be attributed to a variety of causes, but the following appear to be the chief—the exposed and damp situations of their dwellings, and the frail manner of their construction; their want of clothing, the saline property of the water, and the continued use of salt provisions. The catarrhal and pneumonic attacks to which they are so subject, and which are the only fatal diseases among them, are caused by the injudicious system of changing their food and manner of life.
"The natives are instructed in the principles of the Christian religion. Public worship is celebrated twice on the Sabbath. The service is commenced by singing, and reading from the Scriptures select portions, &c. A short prayer, a few cursory remarks from Scripture are then delivered, when the service is concluded by singing and prayer. The native youth, Walter, acts on these occasions as clerk, giving out the hymns, and reading the responses. The rest of the service is conducted by the catechist.
"Catechetical instruction is the best suited to the capacities of the natives; for which purpose the catechist was a short time since to commence a course of this instruction on Tuesday evenings and which is the only weekly religions instruction afforded the natives.
"In reference to the foregoing subjects, I am proud to state that the most astonishing and marked improvement has taken place among the aborigines. In the attendance at divine worship the people are left in a great degree to their own choice, and which, in matters of religion, I think they ought. But as example teaches before precept, I am a constant and regular attendant. Their conduct during divine worship is of the most exemplary kind. They are quiet and attentive to what is said, and the church is crowded. The ignorance of the natives heretofore in the first principles of religion was more the fault of the system than of the people, for I am fully persuaded they are capable of high mental improvement.
SACRED MELODY.
"This had always appeared to me a delightful part of worship, and as the natives were generally partial to music, I requested singing to be introduced. It is truly gratifying to see with what avidity they listen to this part of devotion. The singing of the women and of the native youth has a pleasing effect, their melody being soft and harmonious.
"My family and the civil officers and their wives act as teachers (i.e., of the native schools), and the average attendance is from 60 to 80. No language can do justice to the intense anxiety manifested by the adult aboriginal for learning, it must be seen to be properly comprehended. The desire of the natives for learning is not the result of compulsion, but is the free exercise of their own unbiassed judgment. Six months have now passed away since the schools were commenced, and there is not the slightest diminution of their number. The same vehement desire continues unabated. The anxiety of the natives for the attainment of knowledge is great. Their proficiency is astonishing. Some are now able to read in words of three syllables. The juveniles are making considerable proficiency in learning, and several are in writing, and have acquired a knowledge of the relation of numbers, and some can add tolerably correctly.
"The aborigines have shown every disposition to become civilised. The men are employed in rural and other pursuits, and the women are occupied in domestic concerns, and for which these people have shown the greatest aptitude, and by their frequent enquiries evinced the strongest desire to become acquainted with the arts of civilised life. Their wild habits are fast giving way. Their corroberies (i.e., violent dances, accompanied by vociferous singing) and perigrinations into the bush are less frequent. They are becoming more cleanly in their persons, and are rapidly acquiring industrious habits. The use of ochre[4] and grease, to which they were so much addicted, they have entirely refrained from. The women take particular pains in the arrangement of their domestic economy. Their cottages are carefully swept twice a day. The cleanliness, order, and regularity observed by the inmates of the new cottages in the disposition of their culinary utensils, furniture, bedding, would do credit to many white persons. In sewing, the women have made great proficiency. They make all their dresses. The native women provide fuel for their fires, they also wash their own clothes, bedding, &c. The male aboriginals are equally industrious. A road more than half a mile in length, cut through a dense forest in the rear of my quarters, to the beach, as well as cross roads, have been done by them. Several acres of barley, the first grown upon Flinder's Island, have been reaped by them with the assistance of the civil officers, and the facility with which they executed this branch of husbandry was a matter of surprise to every one. The Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, taken collectively, are the most advanced in civilisation, (these and the Stony Creek tribe were the most ferocious and predatory of all the natives), and the western tribes, who occupied a country far remote from any settlement, and, therefore, could not have acquired any previous knowledge of rural pursuits, were equally as ready at reaping as the others. Indeed, their aptitude to acquire knowledge can scarcely be credited.
"The natives now cook their own meat and bake their own bread. The contrast between their present and past condition in this respect is striking in the extreme. In their primitive state their mode of cooking was to throw the animal upon the fire, and when half warmed through, take out the entrails, and rub the inside over with the paunch. It was then eaten. Their mode of cooking now is widely different. They follow the example of the whites, and adopt their practices in everything.
"Their chief amusement is hunting (and it seems they soon extirpated the game). When at the settlement, they amuse themselves by dancing, bathing, cricket, trap-ball playing, and recently they have constructed swings. But the amusement to which they are most partial is marbles. The women join in the dance, and have lately taken a fancy to play at marbles also. I have given several entertainments in the bush, which the officers have attended. These festivities afforded them much amusement."
He concludes an interesting report by saying he believes they have no desire to return to their old haunts and ways of life, and so long as he was with them to keep their minds and bodies in exercise it is very likely they thought but little on the subject of their former wild existence. But I have been told that their natural longing for their own districts afflicted them greatly after his family left the island, and that they often sat for hours looking at the hills of the main land, which in cleae whether were visible from Flinders Island. But after years of confinement at the Wyba-Luma settlement, they lost hope and fell into apathy.
After retiring from the office of commandant of Flinders, Robinson settled in the colony of Victoria; where for many years he was chief protector of aborigines. He was a native of London, I believe, and died a very few years ago at Bath, in comfortable, but I understand, not affluent circumstances.
Little more remains to be said of the natives but what is unpleasant to relate.
On the retirement of this most useful and energetic man from the public service of Tasmania, it was difficult to meet with a fitting successor for the office he had tilled, and impossible to find one like himself. Such servants are not to be replaced. Persons of better education there were plenty, but who lacked the qualities he possessed in so great a degree, to guide, instruct, and attach the natives to his person. His successors were not of his mould at all, and some of them had no love for anything relating to the duties of their pastoral and paternal office, except its emoluments; and all that he had done for them was rapidly undone. And those who saw the aborigines after their removal from Wyba-Luma to Oyster Cove could never believe them to be part of the same people, who ten years before had given such goodly proof of rapid emergence from barbarity.
A plausible successor of Robinson's, a man of the pseudo dilettante class (a class that flourishes very luxuriantly in Tasmanian soil), probably sick of his isolation, persuaded the headstrong Governor of the colony to transplant the black establishment from Wyba-Luma to Oyster Cove; the worst and most dangerous neighbourhood that could have been selected in all Tasmania. Nothing could surpass the general sterility of the soil of this place (except five or six acres of it) or the moral taint of its atmosphere, its neighbourhood being then inhabited only by woodcutters, who (particularly in those days) contained some of the worst and lowest of our population amongst them. This removal, as I think I have said before, took place in about 1847. Their retrogression was pretty well fulfilled before they quitted their asylum in the Straits, but here their recession into something worse than their original barbarity took place. The apathy into which they had been permitted to sink from neglect of cultivation prevented any recurrence to their old predatory habits, for they had now hardly life and spirit left for action beyond excursions to the public-house whenever they could raise the means, either by the sale of necklaces (or worse practises) or the good nature of visitors, to obtain drink, or as they called it "giblee." Here for several years they were under no other supervision than that of a petty constable or two, and menials, while their paid superintendent was pursuing his elegant studies and follies in Hobart Town, 20 miles off. He was removed from his office, or probably retired, in 1855, but not until the demoralisation of the natives was completed, and the natives had become, when I and many others saw them, nothing better than a horde of lazy, filthy, drunken, listless barbarians; and in everything except the practice of theft, a good deal the inferior of the gipsy.
- ↑ These were the Mo-le-oke-er-dee, Nue-non-i-e, Tur-rer-he-gu-on-ne, Pan-ger-mo-ig-he, and Nee-l-won-ne, which were doubtlessly the names of their districts and hunting grounds.
- ↑ Another of these Bruny islanders, named Woureddy, had the same good qualities, but they were rare amongst the men, who were very tyrannical.
- ↑ They were sometimes made of wood, a friend of mine who lately conversed with Trucanina, was told by her that she had been on Maria Island; and on his asking Trucanina how she got there, she replied, "on logs."
- ↑ The natives called this mineral Lat-teen-er, or Lat-te-win-er. See Robinson's note to Editor of Courier, March, 1833.