CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1830, Late Winter
Towards Hobart
The Captive’s Poor Health
When Richard Tyrrell and William Holmes left the convict settlement at Green Ponds (now Kempton) for Hobart, the Aboriginal man seemed well. But as the group walked on he ‘was taken ill’, and looked to be ‘in a Dangerous State’, struggling with the journey.1 As they ‘arrived near the Crown Inn Bagdad, he then fell on the Ground and appeared quite senseless’. But they pushed on. ‘Tyrell took him up in his Arms and covered him with a great Coat,’ and the two custodians ‘took it [in] turns to carry him’. They wanted ‘to get to the Public Works at the New Bridge Bagdad, in order to procure a Government Cart to Convey him to Bridgewater’. Yet the man’s condition appeared to be worsening.
‘He lay down and appeared dying’, so the constables ‘covered him with Blankets and a Great Coat’, and a nearby spectator ‘fetched some refreshment for him’. But the man resisted, and they ‘could not put any thing into his mouth’. Being now within a mile of the convict station, Tyrrell went ahead and asked the overseer ‘for a Government Cart to Convey the Native to Hobarton’. The overseer ‘refused saying he had orders not to let any person have a Cart’, telling Tyrrell the constables ‘might go and hire one’. Not for the first time in the war, bureaucratic inflexibility and a lack of inter-departmental cooperation stalled even relatively straightforward tasks.
The overseer at least agreed that Tyrrell could take ‘a Couple of Men to assist in placing him in a Wheelbarrow to Convey him to the Hut’ where they intended to stop for the night. The man was wheeled down the road and taken inside, where ‘A Good fire was made and he was placed in Blankets, and every attention paid to him the Two Women and Child’. But the infant was ‘crying so much’ that the overseer’s wife ‘came and examined it, and found it in a bad state for want of proper treatment’. She ‘washed it, and put it on [sic] some clean clothes’.
‘As we knew it was the Lieutenant Governors [sic] order to treat the Aborigines with Humanity,’ Holmes and Tyrrell noted in their report, ‘and as the man appeared to be in a Dying state we did not Hand cuff them together’. They also noted that the assistant surgeon from the Richmond district ‘came, and left some Medicine to be given’, but ‘The Man refused taking any thing’. Then the party settled in for the night. Holmes and Tyrrell ‘sat up until about Twelve’. When ‘the Natives appeared quiet and as if asleep’ the two constables also readied themselves for sleep. They ‘had not had any rest for Two nights previous’. They then ‘lay down taking care to fasten the Door, Tyrrell lay across the Door way’.
Then, after a few hours of sleep, the constables ‘awoke and found the Door open and the Natives gone, it appeared one or more of them had gone up the Chimney’. As they raised the alarm, they discovered the overseer’s wife had only just heard the baby cry. Holmes and Tyrrell were convinced that they only ‘miss’d them before they had been gone a quarter of an hour’.
Apparently ‘a hue and cry was raised’ in the area, ‘but in vain’.2 One of the pursuers ‘discovered one of their fires, where they had thrown aside the clothing which had been given them at Oatlands’. After the publicity given to the capture of these four people, their escape was a source of considerable embarrassment.
Fisher’s Triumph and Peletega’s Subjugation
Yet even while some Aboriginal people were escaping from colonial confinement, more were being captured. After reporting the Bagdad escapees, the Hobart Town Courier described an encounter in the Bothwell district the following evening:
A party of the blacks have for these last few days made their appearance in the neighbourhood of the Clyde and Shannon, and on Sunday night Constable Fisher with a small party overtook some of them at the Shannon and had a skirmish, when one woman was shot, a boy wounded (who escaped) and a noted chief taken prisoner of very large and athletic frame named Peletega.3
This incident instigated an ideological contestation between the hawkish and dovish elements of colonial society, at least as captured by the press following Peletega’s arrival in Hobart a few days after his capture. The Colonial Times gave its readers an extended account of what it characterised as a ‘farce’ and ‘a ridiculous and degrading scene’:
It appears that some days back an engagement took place up at the Shannon between some Constables and a tribe of the Aborigines, two of the latter were killed and one taken prisoner … and the prisoner of war was led in chains to the capital – and something in a similar manner was he brought to town as a dancing bear is led by his master. A large and heavy cart chain was twisted round his neck, and the other end of it was in the left hand of one of the conquerors, who most manfully, fearlessly, and courageously stepped out, being defended only with an unsheathed long sword in his right hand, and on either side a man under arms with loaded musket and fixed bayonets; in this manner was the poor creature led to the gaol, where, on his arrival, he was heavily ironed.4
‘Nothing would have given us greater pleasure,’ the editor concluded, ‘than to have seen His Excellency witness this degrading scene, and we venture to assert it would have been the last of the kind.’ But the editor was probably quite wrong. Upon receiving word of Peletega’s capture, Arthur had given Vicary clear instructions: ‘The Native Chief who has been captured should be sent under a very sufficient and secure escort to Hobart Town immediately.’5 Arthur’s main concern was to avoid any further escapes.
Nonetheless, the Colonial Times used Peletega for much effect. By presenting this captive in contrast to his situation – ‘grinning and laughing’ while being marched into town, nonchalantly smoking a pipe while ‘the irons were being put on his legs’ – the episode worked as a means of criticising the prosecution of the war, at least regarding the treatment of prisoners. The Colonial Times’s ‘farce’ dripped with editorialising.
On the same page as the story about Peletega was a glowing report of ‘the expedition sent by government under Mr. Robinson to conciliate the native tribes’, which had reportedly resulted in much ‘friendly intercourse’. Diplomacy and hostility were thereby contrasted, without the connection having to be made too explicit. Even while recognising the need for ‘catching and gaining them [Aboriginal people] over to civilisation, or else effectually to deter them from continuing their ravages’, the paper was speaking to current politics. Hoping to ‘tame and instruct these poor people to habits of useful industry’ constituted a political argument unrelated to the war itself. The Colonial Times advocated that using Aboriginal people as labourers would be better for the colony than the ‘attempt now making to introduce Chinese labourers amongst us’, a reference to the recent importation of Chinese mechanics into Launceston by the Nimrod.6
The Colonial Times’s concern with the importation of Chinese labour went mostly unnoticed and unremarked, but the rival Hobart Town Courier took the opportunity to respond to its war commentary:
We have received several letters from the neighbourhood of the Clyde, complaining of the observations of a contemporary, the Colonial Times, on the conduct of Constable Fisher who happily succeeded the other day in securing Peletega, the powerful and crafty chief of the tribe of blacks, which has of late been so troublesome in that quarter. We trust, however, that neither Fisher nor any other person will be deterred by any ill natured remarks of the kind from strenuously doing his duty. Had Fisher not used the means he did to secure his captive with a chain, he would have been subjected to the same reproach as those who were lately allowed the blacks to escape at Bagdad. The greatest circumspection is indeed necessary to guard against the cunning of these poor but at present very dangerous people, and no possible means should be neglected which common sense and humanity will dictate, to keep them safe when in custody or to guard against their cunning attacks when at large. In this case Peletega, whose tribe consisted of about 100 blacks, and who had shewn himself on former occasions a most determined enemy of the whites, was conducting by Fisher from Mr. Howell’s farm on the Shannon to Bothwell, when on the road he made a daring attempt to escape, which had nearly proved fatal to Fisher before he was aware of it. He had placed one finger in his mouth, and was endeavouring to force out his eye with his thumb, until after a desperate struggle he was overpowered.7
Peletega’s case was one of the few public reports of Aboriginal people being conveyed into custody. While there were contested presentations of the sequence of events, they are generally not mutually exclusive at the level of descriptive detail. The difference in the way they were presented says more about divergent attitudes – not over conflict, capture and expulsion, which all agreed on – but on the treatment of the captives.
The Politics and Economics of Capture
The captivity of Aboriginal people was even treated with some literary flippancy. One story of ‘a very active and determined young man’ catching ‘a wild woman’ while on a morning walk is a case in point. The woman struggled by biting her captor ‘severely’ on the hand, but ‘he would not relinquish his prize, and the wood nymph has, by this time, probably rewarded his virtue’.8
The Colonial Times also received letters complaining of their coverage of Fisher’s chaining of Peletega. The editor of the Colonial Times referred to one of these, a ‘Mr. A____’s letter, dated Clyde’, which clearly reflected a very hostile attitude towards Aboriginal people.9 The editor was ‘sorry to find in him a supporter of such a system as the one alluded to’, and suggested that the writer’s ‘very vindictive feeling he seems to manifest, is the only real cause which prevents a unison between the Aborigines and ourselves’.
But while intimating shock at Mr A’s views, the Colonial Times had certainly stoked enmity. It was this paper, after all, that in February had reported the burning ‘of the whole of Mr. Howell’s premises and property’ by Aboriginal people, putting before the reading public the image of his wife and children fleeing the burning building, leaving a destitute family dwelling under a bark shelter dependent on blankets from the local police magistrate.10
Arthur was impressed by Howell’s efforts to capture Peletega and their propagandistic potential. As the Colonial Secretary wrote to Vicary:
I am to request that you will have the goodness to inform Mr Howell that The Lieut Governor has heard with the greatest satisfaction of the energy and enterprise he has evinced, in following up the Natives, after their recent attack upon his premises, and that he may rely upon it, His Excellency will not permit such conduct to pass without marking it with some strong testimony of his approbation.11
A few weeks later a public notice was gazetted, drawing the public’s attention to ‘the indefatigable energy which has been displayed by Mr. Humphrey Howell, of the Clyde, in pursuit of the Aboriginal Natives’.12 Arthur was, the notice affirmed, ‘much gratified to observe, that notwithstanding the severe losses which he has suffered from their frequent attacks he has invariably acted towards them with humanity, as well as firmness’.
Howell’s efforts were rewarded with a grant of 1000 acres. Another government notice of the same date publicly rewarded John Batman with 2000 acres of land for his ‘twelve months, in pursuit of the Aborigines’.13 One of Batman’s men was rewarded with a conditional pardon, and four more with tickets of leave. There was a strong culture of public reward and recognition – for certain types of people at least.
Fisher also received a ticket of leave for his services in capturing Peletega and conveying him to Hobart within days of the capture.14 But greater rewards were held out for continued service. ‘A Ticket of Leave will be immediately prepared for Constable Fisher,’ the Colonial Secretary told Vicary, ‘whom you will be so good as to inform, that if he is disposed to continue his services in the Police, and shall be further successful in capturing the Aborigines, The Lieut Gov will be happy to reward him with some further mark of His Excellency’s approbation.’15
It was a considerable turnaround for Fisher. Initially sentenced to death, he was transported as a reprieve, and held the sort of conduct record that might normally have mitigated against reward.16 His track record in the convict system included refusing to work, assaulting and beating someone, possessing stolen goods as well as various absences, for which he received two 50-stroke lashings, was sentenced to work on a chain gang, and at one stage was reduced to a diet of bread and water. One of his cases was even referred to Arthur, who might have noticed on Fisher’s record that the convict sported a tattoo of a ‘Naked Woman’.17
Nonetheless, Fisher was appointed to the field police in 1827, initially at New Norfolk.18 When caught ‘Illegally retailing Spirits’ while a field police constable, Anstey recommended that he ‘lose his prom[ise]d TL for all his former serv[ic]e’. Only a few months prior to capturing Peletega, Fisher was sentenced by Vicary to serve another three months in the field police for an unspecified ‘Neglect of duty & pretence of illness’. Yet a single capture had dramatically advanced him through the convict system. He may not have become a public example like George Anstey, Humphrey Howell or John Batman, but within the system there could be little doubt that Fisher’s conduct in this matter brought him reward and made him an exemplar for other convicts. Moreover, Fisher got a further reward when he received a bounty for Peletega’s capture. A page from the accounts of the ‘Aboriginal Department’, which now survives as a stray relic of a much larger body of accounting, records that £5 was paid to a party led by Fisher for ‘Apprehending one male Aborigine’ at the ‘Blue Hills’.19
Two other disbursements on this page of accounts were for ‘apprehending one male and one female Aborigine’ (£10), also taken at the Blue Hills, and for ‘one male Aborigine’ (£5) taken at ‘Abyssinia’. One of Howell’s assigned servants from the Peletega capture led the other ‘Blue Hills’ success, which suggests there was another dedicated roving party. This stray page also referred to a ‘Receipt attached’, pointing to yet more records originally produced during the war. But while the bounty system appears to have operated relatively smoothly, the Lieutenant Governor seems to have felt the need to respond to the negative press concerning Peletega’s treatment.20
Government Notice 161 from 20 August was a carefully worded response to the Colonial Times issue of the same date, and stated that ‘The Lieutenant Governor has learned with much regret’ that the system of rewards ‘appears in some recent instances to have been misapprehended’. Using ‘any sort of violence or restraint to such of the Aboriginal Natives as may approach the European inhabitants with friendly views’ was, Arthur declared, against ‘the spirit’ of the system or any previous government proclamations or notices. Rather, he clarified that ‘the reward was offered for the capture of such natives only as were committing aggression on the inhabitants of the settled districts … no violence or restraint shall be offered to the inoffensive natives of the remote and unsettled parts of the territory.’ The notice effectively asserted the humanity of government policy past and present, without specifically mentioning the means of capturing hostile Aboriginal people or detaining them once they were prisoners of war.
Despite this public gesture, the means of capture remained a political sore point, as highlighted by another story in the Colonial Times referring to events in late August 1830:
One day last week a servant of Captain Wood, of the Clyde, brought into Hobart Town an Aboriginal prisoner which he had captured. It appears, from what we have heard, that a mob of these misguided wretches rushed on the man in question, who took shelter in a stock-hut, where fortunately for him there happened to be some fire-arms ready-loaded, which he put immediately into requisition, and in the course of a short time, as we are informed, killed several of the Natives, and took the one in question prisoner. On arriving in Hobart Town, Captain Wood’s man conveyed the black to the Police Office, of course expecting to be immediately paid the reward … but he was there desired to leave the man, and his case would in due course be laid before His Excellency. The man was apparently not very well satisfied in his own mind about the time which might elapse before his reward would be forthcoming, and he therefore refused to deliver over his prisoner without payment there and then. Ultimately a letter was written to His Excellency by the Magistrate, and handed to the man, who attended at Government house accompanied by his prisoner.21
With the aid of one of the Aboriginal men dwelling at George Augustus Robinson’s property in suburban Hobart, Arthur interviewed the captive, learned ‘that the white men had destroyed several of his companions’ and authorised payment of the bounty anyway.
Mobilising Political Will
As the colony endured another winter of warfare, August 1830 became something of a month for rallying cries and hardening public attitudes. ‘The country about Bothwell is in a sad state,’ the Colonial Times stated, because attacks ‘on the Settlers … are every day getting more and more frequent’.22 Referring to reports ‘that Captain Wood’s men have had several skirmishes with the different mobs’, the newspaper also carried other stories about fighting, including the case of a settler who Batman found with ‘an axe stuck in the back of his skull’. The Launceston Advertiserreported Aboriginal people stealing guns from shepherds, as well as the marriage of a ‘domesticated’ Aboriginal couple. The overall picture was of intense combat across the settled districts, and little hope of reconciliation. ‘Something must be done!’, the Colonial Times argued, because ‘the plan at present adopted will leave no other chance of obtaining peace than the annihilation of the whole race’.
Parties of the old inhabitants, with persons who are acquainted with the country as well as the Natives themselves, would be the right kind of men to employ capturing them, and in the end these must be the persons fixed upon; not one party but scores be regularly appointed, who would be able to watch all the different passes at once.
The Hobart Town Courier shared a similar sentiment that something ‘bold’ was required.23 Claiming that ‘the record of the truth is the duty of the public journalist’, the editor argued that the colony must ‘plan and act upon a uniform system’ and take ‘a more stern and defensive posture’ within the settled districts. It too offered examples of violence, like the case of ‘a horde of the Aborigines’ who stole some shepherds’ guns, and successfully speared one of them who ‘had his arm completely transfixed by a spear; and received a tremendous blow between the shoulders from a waddy’.
The depth of the crisis was indicated by the account of a woman firing at Aboriginal assailants in her husband’s absence, successfully frightening them off, while her ‘youngest son, a little boy about 4 years old’, brought a second gun while she ‘maintained her ground’. They reportedly lay down to avoid her shots, before heading off and robbing a different hut. Dozens of other reports followed, filling most of the page, and providing a growing list of colonial victims from settlers and shepherds to ‘old John York’s horse’.
In response to ‘the repeated and very distressing Outrages which are still daily committed by the Aborigines’ – but also seemingly to address the public agitation on this issue – Arthur called for the Aborigines Committee to reassemble.24 Their first point of business was to determine whether Arthur’s most recent government notices were contradictory. Where Government Notice 160 outlined a bounty system for the capture of Aboriginal people, Government Notice 161 cited the ‘friendly intercourse’ with tribes achieved by George Augustus Robinson and Captain Welch beyond the settled districts, and requested ‘that all Settlers and others will strictly enjoin their Servants cautiously to abstain from acts of aggression against these benighted beings, and that they will themselves personally endeavour to conciliate them wherever it may be practicable’.25
Obligingly, the Aborigines Committee met on Saturday 28 August and declared there were no contradictions. The committee also considered ‘Whether more vigorous measures should be adopted to repel the Aborigines from the Settled Districts’, and ‘What measures they would recommend should be adopted towards the disposal of such of the Aborigines as should be captured.’ Determining that Aboriginal people ‘have been actuated by the most rancorous animosity’, the committee agreed that they should be removed ‘by every means that can be exercised’. The committee suggested sending captives to Maria Island, which had a convict station and military presence already in place.
Such conclusions were hardly surprising as on Friday 27 August, the day before this meeting, Arthur had taken a couple of decisive actions. He issued another government notice, which repeated that numbers 160 and 161 had been ‘misinterpreted’:
the measures which are indispensable for the defence and protection of the settlers should be tempered with humanity, and that no means of conciliation should be spared; but it was not intended to relax in the most strenuous exertions to repel and drive from the settled country those Natives who seize every occasion to perpetrate murders, and to plunder and destroy the property of the inhabitants.26
Arthur further used this notice to instruct police magistrates to check defensive arrangements in their districts and urge settlers and servants ‘to keep their arms in good order’. He forbade aggressions beyond the settled districts or upon surrendering people, but gave broad sanction to much else. ‘They are,’ he clarified, ‘by every possible means, to be captured, or driven beyond the settled districts.’ The Aborigines Committee subsequently reached similar conclusions, which they expressed with similar phrasing.
At midday on that Friday Arthur also turned his Executive Council to the issue of the war.27 They were presented with evidence sent from the interior of ‘various outrages committed by the Natives’, and requests from Anstey and Vicary for firmer measures and greater military support. Arthur then presented the earlier report of the Aborigines Committee, which asserted that conciliation had ‘proved quite ineffectual’ and affirmed ‘it had become essentially necessary to adopt the most vigorous measures’.
The council then concluded that the present crisis pointed to the necessity of strong measures. Aboriginal attacks ‘on men armed and unarmed, and on defenceless women and children, can be considered in no other light than as acts of warfare against the settlers generally’. The council recorded their collective belief ‘how absolutely necessary it is that the settled districts at least should be freed from their presence’, and recorded their misgivings about further attempts at negotiation. According to the minutes of the meeting:
In such a state of things, it appears to the Council that the time is now arrived when it has become absolutely necessary that some vigorous effort, upon a more extended scale than has hitherto been practicable, should be made for expelling these miserable people forthwith from the settled districts. … even if it should cost more lives than the Council anticipates, it is a measure dictated not less by humanity than by necessity, since it is calculated to bring to a decisive issue a state of warfare which there seems no hope of ending by any other means, and which, if much longer continued, the Council fears will become a war of extermination.
By this political reasoning, a massive act of ethnic cleansing was a logical necessity, required to prevent an extinction. But the rationale was less important than the cover. With the support of his Executive Council and the Aborigines Committee, and apparently encouraged by public calls for action, Arthur had sufficient demonstrable political support for a massive military operation.
General Mobilisation
Preparations for mass military mobilisation within the colony were soon underway. On 9 September 1830 Arthur issued Government Order 9, calling for ‘a general and simultaneous effort’.28 Arthur asked ‘every settler’ who could join the effort ‘to place himself under the direction’ of the police magistrates, which would form a ‘volunteer force’ to manoeuvre in conjunction with the military and field police. Urban volunteers could join adjacent rural districts. Furthermore, to ‘augment to the greatest possible extent’ the roving parties, ‘all the prisoners holding tickets of leave, who are capable of bearing arms’ were required to report to the police magistrates. The settled districts were divided into seven military zones of command, headed by five captains and two lieutenants, with Major Douglas taking overall command of the military per prior arrangements. While clarifying that ‘no individual is to expect any specific reward’, Arthur nonetheless mentioned ‘that a service rendered to the public is never overlooked or forgotten by the colonial government.’ The ‘general movement’, as the operation was termed, was designated to start on 7 October.
But such an operation did not simply spring forth from the ferment of a weekend in late August 1830. As the prior appointment of Douglas to overall command illustrates, Arthur had been contemplating such a manoeuvre for months. A clue to this is in his increasing focus on defences in the north of the island, just as Robinson’s diplomatic mission rounded from the west coast into the north.
A letter from the Colonial Secretary to Smith at Norfolk Plains reveals that orders were issued ‘to detach a party of Four men to Foulger’s Hut, at the back of the Van Diemen’s Land Establishment, provided the building is entirely given up for the use of the Military’.29 A few days later Smith was asked ‘whether you feel yourself able to afford any protection from the Police of your District to the Settlement at Port Sorell’, further indicating a focus on the defences of the north coast.30 As already seen, Arthur’s focus in the western settled districts at this time mostly concerned capture missions and captives, but he was also irritated by ‘learning that the Assistant Surveyor’s hut has been robbed and the Arms taken from it by the Natives’ in the Bothwell district.31 Arthur wanted it ‘minutely and carefully investigated’. As the Colonial Secretary expressed it to Vicary, ‘His Excellency cannot permit, either by carelessness or negligence, that the Blacks should be suffered to possess themselves of Arms’. Although Aboriginal people still mainly attacked with spears and waddies, the prospect of their wider adoption of firearms terrified colonists. But while offering another instance of that worrying trend of Aboriginal people taking guns, the incident also highlighted the continued surveying of that district, despite being so hotly contested.
While having already laid some of the groundwork, Arthur began mobilising men as soon as the decision for a general offensive was made. One of the first groups to be directed to this cause arrived in Hobart on the David Lyon, a convict transport that reached Hobart from London on 19 August.32 Aboard was a guard, consisting of a captain, an ensign, a sergeant, and ‘38 rank and file’ from the 17th Regiment. The male convict transports generally brought military guards with them, who often then got deployed on duty within the colonies. But Arthur also wanted to use the convicts for the war effort. The Colonial Secretary informed Anstey that 20 of the David Lyon prisoners were being sent to his district, ‘whom, you will have the goodness to assign to such settlers in your District (being in want of Servants) as appear to you to be the most exposed to the attacks of the Natives’.33 Vicary was also sent 20 prisoners and a similar letter. The convicts had been conscripted to the war effort. They would help bolster the defences at huts, but they would also provide settlers with a larger pool of servants to co-opt into the General Movement when the time came.
Private capture missions did not cease with the General Movement, but the publicity associated with bringing captives to Hobart probably encouraged more captors to simply apply at their nearest Police Office, which is what Arthur had originally envisioned anyway.
During September Vicary asked the Colonial Secretary whether bounties were to be paid to the principal captor or to ‘all the persons present and assisting’, which at least suggests bounties were being presented in his district.34 Arthur determined that the reward should be shared, although the documentation of this process has been mostly lost. Even the captives arriving from Robinson’s mission are relatively poorly documented. Among the August shipping arrivals in Launceston were ‘four Aborigines’ from Circular Head on the northwest coast. Robinson had sent them, along with letters for the Reverend Bedford and the Lieutenant Governor, aboard the schooner Friendship.35
Yet while the bounty system survived its bad publicity, some of the roving parties did not. In late August Simpson forwarded ‘Mr Batman’s last report of his proceedings’.36 The report itself is no longer with the covering letter, but annotations overleaf by Arthur reveal his frustration: ‘Mr Batman’s Services have ended, as most of the other Expeditions have done, unsuccessfully!’
Like Robertson before him, Batman’s failure to take sufficient captives to end the hostilities was an embarrassment for the Lieutenant Governor, especially considering their publicity. But despite this misgiving, Arthur did not give up on roving parties altogether; he just became more discreet about their establishment, and clearer about their contractual terms.