Black War - Details

Details

As the Black War was never officially declared, historians vary in their dating of the extended conflict.

According to James Bonwick, the start of the Black War is 1804. The first conflict between colonists and Aboriginals was on 3 May 1804. There were three surviving eyewitness accounts of what happened on that day. It is known that a large group of Abo­riginals, possibly numbering 300 or more, came into the vicinity of the British settlement. The official report by Lt Moore, the commanding officer at the time, referred to an ‘attack’ by Aboriginals armed with spears and indicated that two Aboriginals were killed and an unknown number wounded. Moore reported having fired a shot from a carronade (a small cannon) to ‘intimidate’ and disperse the Aboriginals but the report does not say whether it fired solid or canister shot or merely a blank charge meant to frighten. He reported no deaths from the cannon shot, however. The second account, also recorded shortly after the events, was contained in a letter written by the surgeon, Jacob Mountgarrett to Reverend Robert Knopwood. The letter referred to a ‘premeditated’ attack on the settlers in which three Aboriginals were killed. In addition to the cannon shot, 2 soldiers fired muskets in protection of a Risdon Cove settler being beaten on his farm by Aboriginals carrying waddies (clubs). These soldiers killed one Aboriginal outright, and mortally wounding another who was later found dead in a valley. It is therefore known that in the conflict some Aboriginals were killed, and that the colonists "had reason to suppose more were wounded, as one was seen to be taken away bleeding". The conflict apparently arose when the Aboriginals discovered that some of the settlers had been hunting kangaroos. It is also known that an infant boy about 2–3 years old was left behind in what was viewed as a "retreat from a hostile attempt made upon the borders of the settlement". The last of the three accounts claimed that "There were a great many of the Natives slaughtered and wounded". This was according to Edward White, an Irish convict present on the scene of the events, speaking before a committee of inquiry in 1830, nearly 30 years later, but just how many he did not know. White, apparently the first to see the approaching Aboriginals, also said that "the natives did not threaten me; I was not afraid of them; (they) did not attack the soldiers; they would not have molested them; they had no spears with them; only waddies", though that they had no spears with them is questionable, and his claim needs some qualification. His contemporaries had believed the approach to be a potential attack by a group of Aboriginals that greatly outnumbered the colonists in the area, and spoke of "an attack the natives made", their "hostile Appearance", and "that their design was to attack us". White also claimed that the bones of some of the Aboriginals were shipped to Sydney in two casks but this claim, like the others he made, is uncorroborated by any other eyewitness. Early Tasmanian history then went on to tell a story of hostilities between colonists and Aboriginals, and sporadic and retaliative guerrilla-tactic conflict by the Aboriginals in the early years of colonial settlement, usually over food resources, cruel treatment and killing of natives, and the abduction of aboriginal women and children as sexual partners and servants, escalating in the 1820s with the spread of pastoralism.

Others date the conflict to 1826, when the Colonial Times newspaper published an announcement about self-defense reflecting the public mood of the colonists at the time. This was published at a time when relations between Aboriginals and settlers had almost reached the stage of open hostility, a result partly of the usurpation of the natives' hunting grounds, partly of the cruel treatment and killing of natives by shepherds, stockmen, bushrangers and sealers, and partly of the kidnapping of native children. The viewpoint of the settlers seemed to require either the extermination of the Aboriginals or their removal from lands that the settlers wanted to possess.