Settler massacres on the Port Phillip Frontier, 1836–1851
2010; Routledge; Volume: 34; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14443058.2010.498091
ISSN1835-6419
Autores Tópico(s)Colonialism, slavery, and trade
ResumoAbstract This article addresses the vexed question of settler massacres of Aboriginal Victorians on the Port Phillip frontier 1836–1851. It argues for a new approach to the question by combining the models of Aboriginal resistance and settler activism within a framework that considers colonialism as a dynamic, contested and ongoing process. It then applies the methods of massacre investigation devised by historical sociologist Jacques Semelin to analyse a range of printed sources from the period to identify the scale, pre-conditions, types, prevalence and evidence of settler massacres across the three major pastoral regions in Port Phillip. In analysing the data, the article finds that settler massacres were widespread and responsible for the deaths of more than 11 per cent of the known Aboriginal population in Port Phillip in 1836. The data also identifies three pre-conditions and four types of massacre and that most were perpetrated by settlers but that the various mounted police units also played a key role. The article concludes that settler massacres have played a more significant role in the dramatic Aboriginal population decline in Port Phillip than historians of the Aboriginal resistance school have estimated. Keywords: massacressettlersAboriginescolonialismPort Phillip frontier Acknowledgements I would like to thank Tony Barta, Richard Broome, Raymond Evans, Ben Kiernan and Benjamin Madley for their editorial advice and insights on earlier drafts, and the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions. Any errors of fact and interpretation are, of course, my own. Notes 1. Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, New South Wales, 2005. 2. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, pp. 91–2. 3. See Keith Windschuttle, 'The myths of frontier massacres in Australia history, Part 1: The invention of massacre stories', Quadrant, vol. 44, no. 10, 2000, pp. 9–14 ; The Fabrication of Aboriginal History Volume I: Van Diemen's Land 1803–1847, Macleay Press, Sydney, 2002; 'Doctored evidence and invented incidents in Aboriginal historiography' in Bain Attwood & S. G. Foster (eds), Frontier Conflict: the Australian Experience, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2003, pp. 99–112; Henry Reynolds, 'Black deaths: the evidence', Age, 28 September 2000; Lyndall Ryan, 'The Aboriginal history wars', Australian Historical Association Bulletin, no. 92, 2001, pp. 31–7; Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster, 'Introduction' in Frontier Conflict, pp. 1–30; Robert Manne ed., Whitewash: On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Black Inc Agenda, Melbourne, 2003, pp. 187–224 and 277–298; Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark, The History Wars, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003, pp. 142–70; Bain Attwood, Telling the truth about Aboriginal history, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney, 2005, pp. 106–23. 4. Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1981; Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians: Black Responses to white Dominance 1788–1980, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1982; Richard Broome, 'Victoria' in Ann McGrath ed. Contested Ground: Australian Aborigines under the British Crown, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, NSW, 1995, pp. 121–67. 5. Henry Reynolds, The Other Side of the Frontier, James Cook University, Townsville, 1981, pp. 50–104. 6. Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, pp. 174–6; Broome, Aboriginal Australians, pp. 36–51; Broome, 'Victoria', p. 128; see also Richard Broome, 'The Struggle for Australia: Aboriginal-European Warfare 1770–1930' in Michael McKernan and Margaret Browne eds, Australia: Two Centuries of War & Peace, Australian War Memorial/Allen & Unwin Canberra, 1988, pp. 92–120; and 'Aboriginal Victims and Voyagers: Confronting Frontier Myths', Journal of Australian Studies, no. 42, 1994, pp. 70–9. 7. Jacques Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 3, no. 3, 2001, p. 384. 8. A. Dirk Moses, 'Genocide and settler society in Australian History', in A. Dirk Moses, ed. Genocide and Settler Society, Berghahn Books, New York, 2004, pp. 30–5. 9. R.H.W. Reece, Aborigines and Colonists: Aborigines and Colonial Society in New South Wales in the 1830s and 1840s, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1974; Michael Christie, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria 1835–86, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1979. 10. Reece, Aborigines and Colonists, pp. 24–5, 191–2. 11. Christie, Aborigines in Colonial Victoria, pp. 40–7, 152, 78. 12. Geoffrey Blainey, Triumph of the Nomads, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1975, pp. 101–12; A History of Victoria, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2006, pp. 30–2; A Land Half Won, Macmillan Australia, South Melbourne, 1980, p. 75. 13. Beverley Blaskett, 'The level of violence: Europeans and Aborigines in Port Phillip, 1835–1850' in Susan Janson and Stuart Macintyre eds, Through White Eyes, Allen & Unwin, North Sydney, 1990, pp. 77–100. 14. Michael Cannon, Who Killed the Kooris? William Heinemann Australia, Port Melbourne, 1990, pp. 41–64, 205–19. 15. Cannon, Who Killed the Kooris?, p. 231. 16. Cannon, Who Killed the Kooris?, p. 263. 17. A.G.L. Shaw, A History of the Port Phillip District; Victoria Before Separation , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, Paperback edition, 2003, pp. 139–42. 18. Peter Corris, Aborigines and Europeans in Western Victoria, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1968, pp. 153–158; Critchett, A Distant Field of Murder, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, pp. 242–55 and 'Encounters in the Western District', in Bain Attwood & Stephen G. Foster eds., Frontier Conflict, The Australian Experience, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, 2003, pp. 52–62. 19. Corris, Aborigines and Europeans in Western Victoria, pp. 115, 157. 20. Crichett, 'Encounters in the Western District', pp. 56–8. 21. Ian D. Clark, Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria, 1803–1859, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 1995. 22. Clark, Scars in the Landscape, p. 7. 23. Clark, Scars in the Landscape, pp. 2–9. 24. Phillip Pepper in collaboration with Tess de Araugo, What Did Happen to the Aborigines of Victoria Volume I: The Kurnai of Gippsland, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1985, pp. 37–9, 58–9, 99–101; Bain Attwood, 'Blacks and Lohans: Aboriginal-European Contact in Gippsland in the Nineteenth Century', PhD thesis, La Trobe University, 1984, pp. 84–90; Peter Dean Gardner, Gippsland Massacres: The Destruction of the Kurnai Tribes 1800–1860, 3rd edition, Self published, Ensay, Victoria, 2001. 25. Pepper and de Araugo The Kurnai of Gippsland, pp. 19, 43. 26. Attwood, 'Blacks and Lohans', pp. 60–4. 27. Gardner to Broome, pers.comm. 3 March 2002, in Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 416, fn. 42. 28. Gardner, Gippsland Massacres, pp. 95–101. 29. Gardner, Gippsland Massacres, p. 101. 30. Richard Broome, 'The Statistics of Frontier Conflict', in Frontier Conflict The Australian Experience, p. 94. 31. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 81. 32. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 81. 33. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 90. 34. Jessie Mitchell, '"The galling yoke of slavery": race and separation in colonial Port Phillip', Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 127–8. 35. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', p. 380. 36. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', p. 384. 37. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', pp. 381–2. 38. The printed primary sources consulted include: George Mackaness ed. George Augustus Robinson's Journey into South-Eastern Australia – 1844. Australian Historical Monographs, Vol. XIX (new series) Privately printed for the Author, Sydney, 1941; Ian D. Clark, ed., The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate, 1 January 1839–30 September 1852, 6 volumes, Heritage Matters, Ballarat, 1988–2000; Ian D. Clark, ed., The Papers of George Augustus Robinson, Port Phillip Protectorate, Vol. 1, Heritage Matters, Ballarat 2000; For settler correspondence see Thomas Francis Bride, Letters from Victorian Pioneers, edited with an introduction and notes by C.E. Sayers, Currey O'Neil, South Yarra, 1983; G.T. Lloyd, Thirty Three years in Tasmania and Victoria, Houlston and Wright, London, 1862; P.L. Brown, ed., The Narrative of George Russell of Golf Hill, Oxford University Press, London, 1935; Marnie Bassett, The Hentys; An Australian Colonial Tapestry, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1962; J.O. Randall, Pastoral Settlement in Northern Victoria, Vol. II, Chandos, Burwood, Vic., 1982; for Official papers see Michael Cannon, ed. Historical Records of Victoria, Foundation Series Volumes 2A and 2B 1835–1839, Victorian Government Printing Office, Melbourne, 1982, 1983; Historical Records of Australia, Series I, vols. xviii–xxi; British Parliamentary Papers, 1844, Vol. 34, London; Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council, New South Wales, 1843, 1845. 39. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 20; see also Blainey, A History of Victoria, p. 33. 40. Wray Vamplew, ed., Australians: Historical Statistics, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987, p. 26. 41. Ben Kiernan, 'Australia's Aboriginal Genocide', Yale Journal of Human Rights, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001, p. 52 and Keith Windschuttle, 'The myths of frontier massacres part II: the fabrication of the Aboriginal death toll', Quadrant, November 2000, p. 18; Lyndall Ryan, 'Massacre in the Black War in Tasmania 1823–34; a case study of the Meander River Region, June 1827, Journal of Genocide Research, vol.10, no.4, December 2008, p. 482. 42. See footnote 34. 43. Lyndall Ryan, 'List of multiple killings of Aborigines in Tasmania: 1804–1835', Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, [online], published in 5 March 2008, accessed 20 May 2010, URL: http://www.massviolence.org/List-of-multiple-killings-of-Aborigines-in-Tasmania-1804, ISSN 1961–9898. 44. Broome, Aboriginal Victorians, p. 81. 45. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', p. 383. 46. See Charles Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society: Aboriginal Policy and Practice –Volume I, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1970, p. 157. 47. Clark, Scars in the Landscape, pp. 46–7. 48. Gardner, Gippsland Massacres, pp. 69–72. 49. Don Watson, Caledonia Australis: Scottish Highlanders on the Frontier of Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic, 1984: Julie Carr, The Captive White Woman of Gipps Land: In Pursuit of the Legend, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Vic., 2001. 50. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', p. 383. 51. Cannon, The Aborigines of Port Phillip 1835–1839, p. 42. 52. Cannon, The Aborigines of Port Phillip 1835–1839, p. 42. 53. Cannon, Who Killed the Kooris? p. 221. 54. Aldo Massola, Journey to Aboriginal Victoria, Rigby, Adelaide, 1969, p. 88. 55. Clark, Scars in the Landscape, pp. 28–30. 56. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', p. 383. 57. Clark, Scars in the Landscape, p. 9. 58. Semelin, 'In consideration of massacres', p. 383. 59. Clark, The Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Volume Two: 1 October 1840–31 August 1841, p. 305. 60. Clark, Scars in the Landscape, pp. 94–6; Cannon, Aborigines and Protectors 1838–1839, pp. 668–79. 61. Shaw, A History of the Port Phillip District, p. 134. 62. Clark, Journals of George Augustus Robinson, Volume Two: 1 October 1840–31 August 1841, p. 336; Clark, Scars in the Landscape, pp. 73 and 77. 63. Gardner, Gippsland Massacres, pp. 53–66. This incident appears to have been a 'genocidal moment'. See A. Dirk Moses, 'Genocide and Settler Society in Australian History', p. 33. For a contrary view, see Paul R. Bartop, 'Punitive Expeditions and Massacres' in Moses, Genocide and Settler Society, pp. 199–205. For other accounts of the massacre see: Bruce Elder, Blood on the Wattle. Massacres and maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788, 3rd edition, New Holland, Sydney, 2003, pp. 119–125; Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Dafur, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2008, p. 297. 64. Gardner, Gippsland Massacres, pp. 53–66. 65. Ben Kiernan has recorded an undated 'battle' between settlers and Aborigines in Gippsland in the mid 1840s. In this case the settlers fired a brass cannon loaded with 'nails, broken bottles and anything' the settlers 'could lay their hands on'. See Kiernan, Blood and Soil, p. 298.
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