Part 49 (1/2)
At present our information respecting the customs, habits, weapons and dialects of the various tribes is too limited and too scattered to enable us to trace with accuracy the division to which each may have originally belonged, or the precise route by which it had arrived at its present location; but I feel quite confident that this may be done with tolerable certainty, when the particulars I have referred to shall be more abundantly and correctly recorded.
It is at least a subject of much interest, and one that is well worthy the attention of the traveller or the philanthropist. No one individual can hope personally to collect the whole material required; but if each recorded with fidelity the facts connected with those tribes, with whom he personally came in contact, a ma.s.s of evidence would soon be brought together that would more than suffice for the purpose required.
Chapter VIII.
EFFECTS OF CONTACT WITH EUROPEANS--ATTEMPTS AT IMPROVEMENT AND CIVILIZATION--ACCOUNT OF SCHOOLS--DEFECTS OF THE SYSTEM.
Some attempts have been made in nearly all the British Settlements of Australia to improve the condition of the aboriginal population; the results have, however, in few cases, met the expectations of the promoters of the various benevolent schemes that have been entered upon for the object; nor have the efforts. .h.i.therto made succeeded in arresting that fatal and melancholy effect which contact with civilization seems ever to produce upon a savage people. It has already been stated, that in all the colonies we have hitherto established upon the continent, the Aborigines are gradually decreasing in number, or have already disappeared in proportion to the time their country has been occupied by Europeans, or to the number of settlers who have been located upon it.
Of the blighting and exterminating effects produced upon simple and untutored races, by the advance of civilization upon them, we have many and painful proofs. History records innumerable instances of nations who were once numerous and powerful, decaying and disappearing before this fatal and inexplicable influence; history WILL record, I fear, similar results for the many nations who are now struggling; alas, how vainly, against this desolating cause. Year by year, the melancholy and appalling truth is only the more apparent, and as each new instance multiplies upon us, it becomes too fatally confirmed, until at last we are almost, in spite of ourselves, forced to the conviction, that the first appearance of the white men in any new country, sounds the funeral knell of the children of the soil. In Africa, in the country of the Bushmen, Mr.
Moffat says--
”I have traversed those regions, in which, according to the testimony of the farmers, thousands once dwelt, drinking at their own fountains, and killing their own game; but now, alas, scarcely is a family to be seen!
It is impossible to look over those now uninhabited plains and mountain glens without feeling the deepest melancholy, whilst the winds moaning in the vale seem to echo back the sound, 'Where are they?'”
Another author, with reference to the Cape Colony, remarks--
”The number of natives, estimated at the time of the discovery at about 200,000, are stated to have been reduced, or cut off, to the present population of about 32,000, by a continual system of oppression, which once begun, never slackened.”
Catlin gives a feeling and melancholy account of the decrease of the North American Indians, [Note 99: Vide Catlin's American Indians, vol. i. p. 4 and 5, and vol. ii. p. 238.] and similar records might be adduced of the sad fate of almost every uncivilized people, whose country has been colonized by Europeans. In Sydney, which is the longest established of all our possessions in New Holland, it is believed that not a single native of the original tribes belonging to Port Jackson is now left alive. [Note 100 at end of para.] Advancing from thence towards the interior a miserable family or two may be met with, then a few detached groups of half-starved wretches, dependant upon what they can procure by begging for their daily sustenance. Still further, the scattered and diseased remnants [Note 101 at end of para.], of once powerful, but now decayed tribes are seen interspersed throughout the country, until at last upon arriving at the more remote regions, where the blighting and annihilating effects of colonization have not yet overtaken them, tribes are yet found flouris.h.i.+ng in their natural state, free from that misery and diminution which its presence always brings upon them.
[Note 100: ”In the first year of the settlement of New South Wales, 1788, Governor Phillip caused the amount of the population of Port Jackson to be ascertained, by every cove in it being visited by different inspectors at the same time. The number of natives found in this single harbour was 130, and they had 67 boats. At the same time it was known that many were in the woods making new canoes. From this and other data, Governor Phillip estimated the population between Botany Bay and Broken Bay inclusive, at 1500.”--Aboriginal Protection Society's Report, May 1839, p. 13.
In Report of the same Society for July 1839, page 71, Mr. Threlkeld says--”Of one large tribe in the interior four years ago there were 164 persons--there are now only three individuals alive!!”]
[Note 101: ”The whole eastern country, once thickly peopled, may now be said to be entirely abandoned to the whites, with the exception of some scattered families in one part, and of a few straggling individuals in another; and these once so high spirited, so jealous of their independence and liberty, now treated with contempt and ridicule even by the lowest of the Europeans; degraded, subdued, confused, awkward, and distrustful, ill concealing emotions of anger, scorn, and revenge--emaciated and covered with filthy rags;--these native lords of the soil, more like spectres of the past than living men, are dragging on a melancholy existence to a yet more melancholy doom.”--STRZELECHI'S N. S. WALES, p.350.]
It is here that the native should be seen to be appreciated, in his native wilds, where he alone is lord of all around him. To those who have thus come into communication with the Aborigines, and have witnessed the fearless courage and proud demeanour which a life of independence and freedom always inspires, it cannot but be a matter of deep regret to see them gradually dwindling away and disappearing before the presence of Europeans. As the ravages of a flood destroy the country through which it takes its course, and which its deposit ought only to have fertilized, [Note 102 at end of para.] so the native, who ought to be improved by a contact with Europeans, is overwhelmed and swept away by their approach.
In Van Diemen's Land the same result has been produced as at Sydney, but in a more extended and exterminating manner.[Note 103 at end of para.]
There, instead of a few districts, the whole island is depopulated of its original inhabitants, and only thirty or forty individuals, the banished remnant of a once numerous people, are now existing as exiles at Flinders Island, to tell the tale of their expatriation. [Note 104 at end of para.] In Western Australia the same process is gradually but certainly going on among the tribes most in contact with the Europeans. In South Australia it is the same; and short as is the time that this province has been occupied as a British Colony, the results upon the Aborigines are but too apparent in their diminished numbers, in the great disproportion that has been produced between the s.e.xes, and in the large preponderance of deaths over births. A miserably diseased condition, and the almost total absence of children, are immediate consequences of this contact with Europeans. The increase or diminution of the tribes can only be ascertained exactly in the different districts, by their being regularly mustered, and lists kept of the numbers and proportion of the s.e.xes, births, deaths, etc.
[Note 102: ”Hard indeed is the fate of the children of the soil, and one of the darkest enigmas of life lies in the degradation and decay wrought by the very civilization which should succour, teach, and improve.”--ATHENAEUM.]
[Note 103: ”That the Aboriginal Tasmanian was naturally mild and inoffensive in disposition, appears to be beyond doubt. A worm, however, will turn, and the atrocities which were perpetrated against these unoffending creatures may well palliate the indiscriminate, though heart-rending slaughter they entailed. Such was the character of the Tasmanian native before roused by oppression, and ere a continued and systematic hostility had arisen between the races--ere 'their hand was against every man, and every man's hand against them.'”
--MARTYN'S COLONIAL MAGAZINE, May, 1840.]
[Note 104: ”At the epoch of their deportation, in 1835, the number of the natives amounted to 210. Visited by me in 1842, that is, after the interval of seven years, they mustered only fifty-four individuals.”
--STRZELECKI'S NEW SOUTH WALES, p. 352
Respecting the Aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, who were thus forcibly removed, Mr. Chief Protector Robinson (who removed them) observes (Parliamentary Report, p. 198), ”When the natives were all a.s.sembled at Flinders Island, in 1835, I took charge of them, and have continued to do so ever since. I did not find them retaining that ferocious character which they displayed in their own country; they shewed no hostility, nor even hostile recollection towards the whites.