List of Massacres of Indigenous Australians - 1700s

1700s

• 1790 In December, Governor Arthur Phillip issued an order for "a party...of two captains, two subalterns and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers from the garrison...to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; or, if that number shall be found impracticable, to put that number to death". This was largely in response to the spearing by Pemulwuy of the Governor's gamekeeper, McEntire, and his subsequent death. McEntire was suspected of violence towards Aboriginal people and Watkin Tench writes he was "the person of whom Baneelon had, on former occasions, shown so much dread and hatred". And, "from the aversion uniformly shown by all the natives to this unhappy man, he had long been suspected by us of having in his excursions shot and injured them". On his deathbed, McEntire "began...to accuse himself of the commission of crimes of the deepest dye", but "declared that he had never fired but once on a native, and then had not killed but severely wounded him in his own defence." Tench wrote of this denial, "Notwithstanding his deathbed confession, most people doubted the truth of the relation, from his general character and other circumstances."